Рекс Стаут - A Right to Die

Wolfe was trying to look as if he didn’t mind having unexpected company and not succeeding. “I told them they could tell you but no one else.”

“They won’t. You said there might be a development that would show promise. Did it?”

“Yes and no.” Wolfe drank, put his cup down, and took a deep breath. “Mr. Whipple. I intended to reserve this, and if you had telephoned I would have. But you troubled to come, and you have a right to your question. Your son could be out tomorrow. Perhaps on bail, but at liberty.”

The cheaters dropped to the floor, but the rug is soft. “My God,” he said, just loud enough to hear. “I knew it. I knew you could do it.”

“I haven’t done much. I won’t give you the particulars; I’ll only tell you that I have verifiable information which makes it highly unlikely that Susan Brooke was alive when your son arrived at the apartment. It is sufficiently persuasive to convince the police that it would be inadvisable to hold your son on a murder charge. But it doesn’t give the murderer’s name or even hint at it.”

Whipple was staring, concentrating. Without his glasses he looked older. “But I don’t— If she was dead when he got there...”

“Yes. The information makes that conclusion hard to challenge. I can have him released, probably under bail as a material witness. Then the police will be galled. They will suspect you and your wife, and everyone associated with the Rights of Citizens Committee. They will suspect your son, not of actually doing the deed but of being implicated. He can be conclusively cleared only by producing the murderer, and that will be much more difficult with the police everywhere, harassing everyone, including me. Especially me. I don’t want to give them the information I have. I want them to keep your son in custody, satisfied that they have the culprit. You can of course make that impossible. You can tell me that if I withhold the information you’ll tell them I have it. If you do, I’ll have to give it to them at once and quit. Have I made it clear?”

“Yes.” Whipple lowered his head. I had seen many people, sitting in that chair, lower or turn their heads when they found how hard it was to use their brains while they were meeting Wolfe’s eyes. Seeing the glasses on the floor, he bent over to pick them up, got his handkerchief out again, and rubbed, slow motion.

“I won’t urge you,” Wolfe said.

He looked up. “Oh, you don’t have to. I was thinking about my wife. If she knew he could be home tomorrow — but she doesn’t have to know.” He jerked his shoulders up. “I won’t tell her,” He put the glasses on. “The information — will it keep? Can you still use it, if...”

“I can use it at any time. I have it in writing, a signed statement, by the woman your friends saw here this afternoon.”

“Will they be involved?”

“No.”

“Do I know her?”

“I doubt it. I won’t name her.”

“I–I’m going to ask a question.”

“You have already asked three. I may answer it.”

“Do you know — I mean do you think you know — who killed her?”

“No. I have no inkling. I have no plan. I have only a commitment, and I intend to meet it, though at the moment I have no idea when or how. How many times has the answer to some bothersome question come while you were brushing your teeth?”

“More than once.”

“I’ll be brushing mine in a couple of hours. Not with an electric thing; with that machine the fear of electrocution would squelch all mental processes. As an anthropologist, are you concerned with the menace of automation?”

“As an anthropologist, no.”

“As a man you are.”

“Why... yes.”

“Your son is twenty-one years old. Are you aware that by averting this calamity for him we will be compelling him inevitably to suffer a worse one?”

Very neat. Confronted by a father worried sick about a son locked up for the big one, he had dealt with that in less than a quarter of an hour and steered him to automation; a fresh audience, better than me, since he had had me at dinner. Neat.

I should have known better. As I sat at my breakfast table in the kitchen Wednesday morning, disposing of corn muffins and shirred eggs with sherry and chives, my eyes were on the Times propped on the rack, but they were sharing attention with my ears. If the house phone buzzed it would be Wolfe, in his room, to tell me to come up for instructions. I should have known better. His line about getting answers to questions while brushing his teeth had been merely a way to sneak up on automation. I don’t say he had never got an idea while brushing his teeth, but if so it was when we were on something urgent. There was nothing urgent about this. What the hell, Dunbar Whipple was safe and sound, getting three meals a day — though it would have been different if Wolfe had been eating the meals. That would have been urgent.

That Wednesday was about as unsatisfactory a day as I have ever spent, speaking professionally. Wolfe’s taking time out from a job was nothing new, far from it, but always before I had had the satisfaction of poking him; as I said, that was one of my main functions. Now I couldn’t. I was on record that nobody could do anything, and that day nobody did, for sure. The only action performed or word spoken that had anything to do with the case came around five o’clock when Wolfe was up in the plant rooms fiddling with the orchids. The phone rang, and I said aloud, “Automation again.” I lifted the receiver.

“Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.”

“This is Peter Vaughn. I’m calling now because I knew Wolfe wouldn’t be there. I can’t take him.”

“Neither can I. Today. Are you up and dressed?”

“Sure. I slept seventeen hours. I wanted to know, have you seen her?”

“Yes, and so has Mr. Wolfe. She spent an hour here yesterday afternoon. Relax. She admits it as you told it. Naturally you want to know if we have passed it on. We haven’t. For the present we’re saving it. I wouldn’t advise you to drop in on her for tea. She’d probably put vinegar in it, or something worse. By the way, I meant to ask you yesterday, have you ever heard her do imitations? People’s voices?”

“Yes, often. She’s good at it. She was on the stage, you know.”

“Oh, she was?”

“Yes, Dolly Drake. Not a star, nothing like that. I believe she quit when she married Kenneth, but of course I didn’t know them then. Why? Why do you ask?”

“Just checking a little point. Routine. I suppose she could do Susan’s voice, for instance.”

“Certainly, I’ve heard her. I’ve heard her do Susan making a speech on civil rights. Naturally I didn’t like it, but she’s good. Listen, something I wasn’t going to mention, but I guess I will. I may have something important to tell you a little later. Can I get you there this evening?”

“Yes, but I’m here now. Shoot.” “Well, I— No, I won’t. I wouldn’t want to— No. Maybe I just imagined it, but I’m going to And out. I may ring you this evening.”

“How are you going to find out?”

“Oh, ask a few questions. I wish I hadn’t mentioned it. It’s probably nothing. I want to say I’m damned grateful to you and Wolfe, not telling the police. I was pretty sure you hadn’t; they would have been at me. I’m damned grateful.”

He hung up, and I was grateful to him. He had given me something to nibble at. Was there any chance he was going to produce an item we could work on, and if so, what would it be? It would have to be about Dolly Brooke, since she and Kenneth were his only connection, but it wouldn’t be about the item he had just supplied, that Dolly could imitate Susan’s voice, since he had asked why I asked. Yet it might. He might have asked why I asked to see if I knew something he knew or suspected. I should have hung on. I rang him. First Heron Manhattan; he hadn’t been in today. Then his home; he had just gone out and they didn’t know where.