Рекс Стаут: A Right to Die

He pulled on his pipe, found it was out, and lit it. Through the smoke screen he said, “I don’t know why you’re trying to sneak up on me like this. If you want to ask me about that man that killed himself, go ahead and ask, but I don’t know much.”

I usually manage my face fairly well, but with him there was no reason to be on guard, and it showed. What showed was how that “man that killed himself” hit me. Here, all of a sudden, was dirt. It might even be the blackest dirt, such as that she had killed a man and got it passed off as suicide. The way it hit me, it was obvious that not only had I not expected to find anything much, I hadn’t wanted to.

Drucker asked, “What’s the matter? Did you think I wouldn’t know I was being played?”

I produced a grin. “You don’t. Even if I wanted to try playing you, for practice, I know damn well I couldn’t. I know nothing about the man that killed himself. I was merely checking on Susan Brooke in Racine. Maybe you’re playing me?”

“No. As soon as you mentioned Susan Brooke, naturally I supposed that was the item you were checking on.”

“It wasn’t. I knew nothing about it. You said go ahead and ask. Okay, I ask.”

“Well.” He pulled at the pipe. “It was that summer when she was back from college. A young man came to town to see her, and he was seeing her, or trying to. At twenty minutes to six in the afternoon of Friday, August fourteenth, nineteen fifty-nine, he came out of the house, the Brooke house, stood on the porch, pulled a gun from his pocket, a Marley thirty-eight, and shot himself in the temple. You say you didn’t know about it?”

“Yes. I did not. Was there any doubt about it?”

“None at all. Three people saw it happen. Two women on the sidewalk in front of the house and a man across the street. You would like to know about Susan Brooke, where did she fit in, but I can’t tell you of my own knowledge. I only know what was printed and what a friend of mine told me who was in a position to know. The man was a college boy, Harvard. He had been pestering her to marry him, and he came to Racine to pester her some more, and she and her mother gave him the boot, so he checked out. As you know, that happens, though personally it is beyond what I can understand. There may be good and sufficient reasons for a man to kill himself, but I will never see that one of them is a woman saying no. Of course it’s a form of disease. You’re not married.”

“No. Are you?”

“I was. She left me. It hurt my pride, but I’ve slept better ever since. Another thing, if a man and wife are together the way they should be, it’s natural and healthy for them to talk about his work, and a private detective can’t do that. Can he?”

We started talking shop and kept at it for more than an hour. I didn’t try to get him back on Susan Brooke. But when he left, around ten o’clock, I told myself that the Globe was a morning paper, so the staff would be there now, and if her past was a vital element in an investigation of great moment, I would go and take a look. So I used the phone, got Leamis, and received permission to inspect the back file.

The wind had eased up some, but the cold hadn’t, and it pinched my nose. In the Globe building the presses had started; there was vibration on the ground floor, and even more on the second, where I was taken to a dim and dusty room and turned over to an old geezer with no teeth, or anyway not enough. He warned me to do no clipping or tearing and led me to a bank of shelves marked 1959.

The light was bad, but I have good eyes. I started at August 7, a week before the date Drucker had named, to see if there was any mention of a Harvard man’s arrival or presence in town, but there wasn’t. On the fifteenth, there it was, front page. His name was Richard Ault and his home town was Evansville, Indiana. It was front page again on Sunday the sixteenth, but on Monday it was inside and on Tuesday there was nothing. I went on and finished the week but drew blanks, then went back to the first three days and read them again.

There was no hint anywhere of any covering up. The three eyewitnesses had been interviewed, and there were no discrepancies or contradictions. The porch was in plain view from the sidewalk; the two women had seen him with the gun in his hand before he had raised it, and one of them had yelled at him. The man had run across the street and had got to the porch as Mrs. Brooke and Susan emerged from the house. Susan had refused to be interviewed that evening, but had told her story to a reporter Saturday morning and had answered his questions freely.

Even if I had been hell-bent on getting something on her I would have had to cross that off and look elsewhere. I put the papers back where they belonged, told the guardian I had done no clipping or tearing , returned to the hotel, treated myself to a glass of milk in the coffee shop, and went up to bed.

I don’t know whether I would have looked any further in Racine or not if there had been no interruption. Probably not, since I had learned what was in her mind when she said “then something happened,” and that was what had sent me. The interruption woke me up Tuesday morning. I had left a call for eight o’clock, and when the phone rang I didn’t believe it and looked at my watch. Ten after seven. I thought, Damn hotels anyway, reached for the phone, and was told I was being called from New York. I said here I am, and was figuring that in New York it was ten after eight, when Wolfe’s voice came.

“Archie?”

“Right. Good morning.”

“It isn’t. Where are you?”

“In bed.”

“I do not apologize for disturbing you. Get up and come home. Miss Brooke is dead. Her body was found last evening with the skull battered. She was murdered. Come home.”

I swallowed with nothing to swallow. I started, “Where was—” and stopped. I swallowed again. “I’ll leave—”

“When will you get here?”

“How do I know? Noon, one o’clock.”

“Very well.” He hung up.

I permitted myself to sit on the edge of the bed for ten seconds. Then I got erect, dressed, packed the bag, took the elevator down and checked out, walked to the parking lot and got the car, and headed for Chicago. I would get breakfast at the airport.

It wasn’t noon, and it wasn’t one o’clock, when I used my key on the door of the old brownstone on West 35th Street. It was five minutes to two. The plane had floated around above a fog bank for half an hour before landing at Idlewild — I mean Kennedy International Airport. I put my bag down and was taking my coat off when Fritz appeared at the end of the hall, from the kitchen, and came.

“Grâce à Dieu” he said. “He called the airport. You know how he is about machines. I’ve kept it hot. Shad roe fines herbes , no parsley.”

“I can use it. But I—”

A roar came. “Archie!”

I went to the open door to the dining room, which is across the hall from the office. At the table, Wolfe was putting cheese on a wafer. “Nice day,” I said. “You don’t want to smell the herbs again so I’ll eat in the kitchen with the Times. The one on the plane was the early edition.”

We get two copies of the Times , one for Wolfe, who has a tray breakfast in his room, and one for me. I proceeded to the kitchen, and there was my Times , propped on the rack, on the little table where I always eat breakfast. Even when I’m away for a week on some errand Fritz probably puts it there every morning. He would. I sat and got it and looked for the headline, but in a moment was interrupted by Fritz with the platter and a hot plate. I helped myself and took a bite of the roe and a piece of crusty roll dabbed in the sauce, which is one of Fritz’s best when he leaves the parsley out.