Рекс Стаут - A Right to Die

“You’re an officer of the law, dedicated to the service of justice, and you’re needed to identify a murderer — a double murderer. I’m sticking my neck out. If you call the New York Police Department and spill it, my name is mud, and I doubt if you’ll be needed. If you come with me, justice will be served just as well or better, you can hang around a day or two if you care to, and if you like to see your picture in the paper, the Gazette has a circulation of over a million. Of course if Evansville couldn’t manage even for an hour without you...”

“You don’t have to clown it, Goodwin. Is this straight, Marjorie Ault is a murderer?”

“My neck’s out far enough.”

“When are you leaving?”

“There’s a plane from Louisville at five p.m. I have a car I rented there. I’d like to ask that lawyer, Littauer, a couple of questions.” I stood. “How long have you been on the force?”

“Twenty-six years.”

“Then what the hell, you don’t have to spell your name. I would deeply appreciate it if you’d leave the monkey wrench in the drawer. Say we leave at one-thirty?”

He wasn’t sure, he would ring me around noon, but from the look in his eye and the grip in his hand as we shook I was satisfied that I would have a companion for the trip home.

It was exactly three o’clock when, after leaving a call for seven-forty-five, I got between sheets in the hotel room, and I certainly needed a nap, but there was something on my mind. Not whether it was in the bag, that was okay, but how we got it. Had it been luck or genius or what? It had been years since I had given up trying to figure how Wolfe’s mind worked, but this was special. I hadn’t happened to notice that there was an au in four of the names: Paul, Ault, Maud, and Vaughn, but I might have; anybody might. That was nothing special. The point was, if I had noticed it, then what? I would have filed it as just coincidence, and probably Wolfe had too. But although filed, that au in four of the names was still somewhere in his mind later, when it got really tough, so in going over and over it, every detail and every factor, that popped up. Okay, but then what? Did he deliberately team them up?

Paul and Ault

Paul and Maud

Paul and Vaughn

Ault and Maud

Ault and Vaughn

Maud and Vaughn

Then did he consider each pair and finally decide that the one that might not be just coincidence was Ault and Maud, because if a woman named Ault changed her name she might pick one that had au in it? No. I could have done that myself. I hadn’t, but I could. What had happened in his mind that had made him phone Samuel Vaughn and Otto Drucker, and send me to Evansville, was something that had never happened in mine and never would. He had said “tenuous almost to nullity.” But there I was in Evansville, and I knew who had killed Susan Brooke and Peter Vaughn, and probably I never would have known if Wolfe hadn’t started reflecting on a diphthong. Reflecting that I had been wasting some precious time, I turned over to go to sleep, but jor butted in. She had not only used the Ault au in Maud, she had also used the Marjorie jor in Jordan. If Wolfe had known Mrs. Ault’s name was Marjorie he would have sewed it up a week ago. On that I slept.

I had left a call for 7:45 because on 35th Street it would be 8:45 and I wanted to get Wolfe before he went up to the plant rooms. I did. Fritz answered and relayed it to Wolfe’s room, and his voice came, gruff.

“Yes?”

“Me. I’ve had four hours’ sleep and I need more, so I’ll make it brief. If I talked for an hour you’d like every word of it. Wrapped up. Not a single snag. Reserve a room at the Churchill for Mr. George Sievers.” I spelled it. “He’ll arrive around eight-thirty this evening and so will I. Tell Fritz not to keep my dinner warm; I’ll eat with Sievers on the plane.”

“Are there any relatives in Evansville?”

“No. She’s alone in the world, as she told you.”

He grunted. “Very satisfactory.” He hung up.

Sometimes I think he overdoes it. I admit everything had been said that needed saying, but he might at least have asked how the weather was or if my bed was all right. It was. I rolled over and went back to sleep.

It wasn’t absolutely essential to see H. Ernest Littauer, and I don’t know when I would have moved again if the phone hadn’t rung. As I reached for it I glanced at my wrist: 10:42. It was Lieutenant Sievers. He said he had fixed it to go, and there was an hour’s difference between Evansville and Louisville, so we should roll by one o’clock to make the five-o’clock plane. I made it to my feet with the help of a healthy groan and headed for the bathroom.

Perhaps the trouble with my experiences with lawyers is that I am never a prospective client, ready with a checkbook for a retainer. All I ever have is questions, usually questions they would prefer not to answer, and so it was with H. Ernest Littauer, in a big sunny room with a fine view of the Ohio River. I merely wanted to know if he had been in communication with Mrs. Marjorie Ault during the past year or so, and he merely didn’t want to tell me. And he didn’t, but I gathered that he had no idea where she was and didn’t care.

When I got to the parking lot at a quarter to one, Sievers was already there, with a suitcase big enough to last at least a week, and I suspected I had been a little too hospitable. It wasn’t going to be billed to a client. But he was going to help clean up the mess, so he was welcome. He was good enough company, though not in the class of Otto Drucker. By the time we touched concrete at Idlewild — I mean Kennedy International Airport — it was obvious that he was only a good working cop, which was why after twenty-six years he was still a lieutenant. He said he preferred to handle his evening himself if he wasn’t needed, so I taxied him to the Churchill and proceeded to 35th Street.

It was only eight-forty, but Wolfe was in the office with coffee, and that deserved a grin. Business was not to be mentioned at meals, so he had either started dinner early or speeded it up in order to be away from the table when I arrived. There was a hint of feeling in his look and voice as he greeted me, as there always is when I return safe and sound from a trip in long-distance machines. I stood in the middle of the rug and took a good stretch, and said, “My God, it’s cold around here, much colder than down on the Ohio River. The warmth in this room is wonderful, even if I had no personal connection with its production. I admit that the rapid advance of automation may result—”

“Sit down and report!”

I did so, verbatim. He didn’t lean back and shut his eyes; there was no need to, since it was only the happy ending. When I finished by saying that we might be stuck for a week in town by Lieutenant Sievers he didn’t bat an eye.

He picked up his coffee cup and emptied it and put it down. “Archie,” he said, “I tender my apologies. I noticed that confounded diphthong Monday evening, and I could have sent you to Evansville then. Three wretched days.”

“Yeah. Well, you finally got around to it. I accept the apology. It’s too bad it’s Friday night, the weekend, and some of them may not be available tomorrow, maybe none of them. I suggest that they deserve to be present, all the ROCC crowd, even Oster. Also Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Brooke. And why not Susan’s mother? In a way, her more than anyone else. She was there in the house with Susan when Richard Ault shot himself on the porch. According to Drucker, she helped Susan give him the boot. She ought to—”

I stopped short.

Wolfe asked, “What?”

“Nothing. But that’s what you thought about the diphthong: it wasn’t worth considering. What if she decided to get the mother too and picked tonight for it? That would be just great.”