Рекс Стаут - A Right to Die

“I’m calling you to account here and now.”

“Pfui. You know you can’t. However, we’ll give you one bit of information, privileged or not, which probably is connected with his death. He called on the telephone shortly after five o’clock yesterday and spoke with Mr. Goodwin. Archie, the possibly relevant portion of the conversation, beginning with his saying that he might have something to tell you later.”

I told it, to Cramer. “He said, ‘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?’ I said, ‘Yes, but I’m here now. Shoot.’ He said, ‘Well, I— No, I won’t. I wouldn’t want to— No. Maybe I just imagined it, but I’m going to find out. I may ring you this evening.’ I said, ‘How are you going to find out?’ He said, ‘Oh, ask a few questions. I wish I hadn’t mentioned it. It’s probably nothing.’”

“Who was he—”

“No,” Wolfe snapped. “Mr. Goodwin is my agent. Archie, did he give you any hint of whom he was going to question or about what?”

“No.”

“Have you any notion about it?”

It was obvious he wanted another no, so I supplied it. He turned to Cramer. “Nor have I; but I suspect that his contemplated action led to his death, and so we report the conversation. If you can learn whom he expected to question before I do, you’ll get the murderer.”

“Damn you,” Cramer said, icy again. “ Damn you. You already know.”

“I do not. I haven’t even a conjecture. I have some information you don’t have, but I am convinced that it has no bearing on the identity of the murderer. I have no conjecture on that either. That was our last word from Mr. Vaughn; he didn’t call again. Before, I had an advantage: you thought Dunbar Whipple was the culprit, and I didn’t. Now I have no advantage whatever. We’re up the same stump.”

“You don’t say your word of honor.”

“I use that phrase only when I must, to satisfy you. This time I wouldn’t crook a finger to satisfy you. I wish you would leave. I need to discuss the situation with Mr. Goodwin.”

“Go right ahead. I won’t interrupt.”

“Indeed you won’t. What effect do you think automation will have on Homo sapiens?”

“Go to hell,” Cramer said and got up and walked out. I went to the door but didn’t stick my head into the hall until the front door slammed, and then only to see that he was outside. I returned to my desk, sat, and said, “All right, discuss.”

He said, “Ggrrrrhh.”

“Then I’ll discuss. You told him that what Vaughn told me Tuesday had no bearing on his death. You got me to say that I had no notion about whom Vaughn was going to question or what about, when you know darned well I had. Yesterday you weren’t interested in what Vaughn told me on the phone, that Mrs. Brooke could imitate Susan’s voice. If it turns out that she killed Susan and Vaughn how will you react to my discomfiture?”

“I have assumed she didn’t.”

“I know you have. I haven’t. There has been no sign whatever that Vaughn ever had any contact with anyone involved, except the Brookes. Who else could he possibly have been going to ask a few questions?”

“I don’t know. But as for Mrs. Brooke, in addition to the lack of acceptable motive, she couldn’t have made that telephone call, mimicking Miss Brooke, unless she knew of the eight-o’clock rendezvous, and that’s unlikely; and if she didn’t make the call, who did? Possibly, of course, Miss Brooke; but by no means certainly; I still question it. But the chief point about Mrs. Brooke: returning home, she told Mr. Vaughn that she had seen Mr. Whipple entering the building. Consider it. She is in the apartment, having wiped her fingerprints from the club with which she has just killed her sister-in-law; any idiot would do that. She scoots; any idiot would do that too. Outside, on the street, does she stand there until she sees Mr. Whipple arrive and enter? Nonsense. Then does she catch a glimpse of him, arriving, as she flees? Possibly; but if so, would she tell Mr. Vaughn that she saw him arrive? I don’t believe it.”

I looked at it for five seconds. “What else?”

“Nothing ponderable.”

“Okay.” I stood up. “I’m taking a leave of absence without pay. Two hours or two days, I don’t know.”

He nodded. “With luck it will be two hours. Your time would be better spent on Mr. Vaughn, even with Mr. Cramer’s legion underfoot.” He reached for the little stack of mail.

I blew.

I never, in these reports, skimp any step that counts, forward or backward. If I score a point, or if I get my nose pushed in, I like to cover it. But it would be a waste of time and space to tell you, for instance, how the Park Avenue hallman reacted to the fact that this time I could talk, or how Dolly Brooke took the news, news to her, that Peter Vaughn was dead. What matters is that it wasn’t a step in either direction, except for me personally, since Wolfe had already crossed her off. In less than two hours I got the kind of alibi you do get sometimes, the kind you file under finished business. At seven-forty Wednesday evening Kenneth and Dolly Brooke had sat down to dinner at the table of another couple in the same apartment house; a little before nine two other couples had joined them for an evening of bridge; and they had quit around one o’clock. I checked it with all three of the women, two in person and one on the phone, and with two of the men. When I got back to the old brownstone, Wolfe was in the dining room, halfway through lunch, and one glance at my face told him how it stood. I took my seat, and Fritz came, and I helped myself to a healthy portion of broiled shad that had been marinated in oil and lemon juice seasoned with bay leaf, thyme, and Oregano, and three ladles of pureed sorrel. I took only three ladles because at bedtime I would go to the kitchen, heat the leftover sorrel, spread it on a couple of slices of Fritz’s bread, and sprinkle it with nutmeg. Serve with a glass of milk. Have a spoon handy to salvage the purée that dribbles onto the plate when you bite.

When we went to the office neither of us mentioned Dolly Brooke. I merely said, as I sat, “I’ll deduct twenty-two dollars for the two hours.”

He grunted. “I prefer not to share the cost of this performance. I’m paying a debt.” He flipped a hand to dismiss it. “Presumably Mr. Vaughn telephoned from his home.”

“Only presumably. When I rang his home about half an hour later I was told he had just gone out, by a maid, on a guess.”

“Where does he live?”

“East Seventy-seventh Street, between Fifth and Madison. Presumably with his parents; it’s listed as Mrs. Samuel Vaughn.”

“We need to know his movements yesterday, both before and after he telephoned.”

“We sure do.”

“How do you propose to proceed?”

“Ask people questions. Routine. If you want to speed it up at a price, Saul and Fred and Orrie could help. One advantage, everybody would have the answers ready because they would already have told the cops.”

He growled. “Intolerable.”

“Yes, sir. The dust would make it harder. It might be better if we just sat here and tried to guess who, or at least what kind of who, Vaughn was going to ask questions of. I had a try at it in the taxi on the way home.”

“And?”

“The shape he was in when he left here Tuesday morning, he must have gone straight home and flopped. He was surely flat by one o’clock. He told me on the phone he had slept seventeen hours, and that has him awake at six a.m., so he had all day, and unquestionably he had seen somebody before he phoned me. He said he might have something important to tell me a little later. He wouldn’t have said that, especially the ‘important,’ if he merely had some wild idea. He was going to follow up something he had seen or heard. Satisfactory?”