Рекс Стаут: A Right to Die

The details were about as scanty as in the early edition. Susan Brooke’s corpse had been found shortly before nine o’clock Monday evening in a room on the third floor of a building on 128th Street, a walk-up of course, by a man named Dunbar Whipple, who was on the staff of the Rights of Citizens Committee. Her skull had been crushed by repeated blows. I already knew that much. Also I already knew what the late city edition added: that Susan Brooke had been a volunteer worker for the ROCC, and she had lived with her widowed mother in a Park Avenue apartment; and that Dunbar Whipple was twenty-three years old and was the son of Paul Whipple, an assistant professor of anthropology at Columbia University. One thing I had not actually known but could have guessed if I had put my mind on it: the police and the district attorney’s office had started an investigation.

When the roe and sauce and rolls were where they belonged, and some salad, I refilled my coffee cup and took it to the office. Wolfe was at his desk, tapping his nose with a pencil, scowling at a crossword puzzle. I went to my desk, sat, and sipped coffee. After a while he switched the scowl to me, realized I hadn’t earned it, and erased it.

“Confound it,” he said, “it’s preposterous and in-suiting that I might lose your services and talents merely through the whim of a mechanism. How high up were you at noon?”

“Oh, four miles. I know. You regard anything and everything beyond your control as an insult. You—”

“No. Not in nature. Only in what men contrive.”

I nodded. “And what they do. For instance, committing murder. Have you any news besides what’s in the Times!”

“No.”

“Any callers? Whipple?”

“No.”

“Do you want a report on Racine?”

“No. To what purpose?”

“I merely ask. I need a shave. Since there’s nothing urgent, apparently, I’ll go up and use a mechanism. If I did report I wouldn’t have to speak ill of the dead.” I left the chair. “At least I won’t—”

The doorbell rang. I went to the hall for a look through the one-way glass, saw two men on the stoop, and stepped back in. “Two Whipples, father and son. I have never seen the son, but of course it is. Have they an appointment?”

He glared. I stood, but evidently he thought the glare needed no help, so I went down the hall to the front and opened the door. Paul Whipple said, “We have to see Mr. Wolfe. This is my son Dunbar.”

“He’s expecting you,” I said, which was probably true, and sidestepped to give them room.

A day or two earlier I would have been glad to meet the Negro specimen that Susan Brooke intended to marry, just to size him up. All right, I was meeting him, and he looked like Sugar Ray Robinson after a hard ten rounds, except that he was a little darker. A day or two earlier he would probably have been handsome and jaunty; now he was a wreck. So was his father. When I started a hand for his hat he let go before I reached it, and it dropped to the floor.

In the office I nodded the father to the red leather chair and moved up one of the yellow ones for the son. Dunbar sat, but Whipple stood and looked at Wolfe, bleary-eyed. Wolfe spoke. “Sit down, Mr. Whipple. You’re crushed. Have you eaten?”

That wasn’t flip. Wolfe is convinced that when real trouble comes the first thing to do is eat.

Dunbar blurted at Wolfe, “What did you do? What did you do?”

Whipple shook his head at him. “Take it easy, son.” He twisted around to look at the chair, saw it there, and sat. He looked at Wolfe. “You know what happened.”

Wolfe nodded. “I have read the paper. Mr. Whipple. Many people in distress have sat in that chair. Sometimes I cannot supply advice or services, but I can always supply food. I doubt if you have eaten. Have you?”

“We’re not here to eat!” Dunbar blurted. “What did you do?”

“I’ll talk, son,” Whipple told him. To Wolfe: “I know what you mean. I made him eat a little just now, on the way here. I felt I had to tell him what I asked you to do, and he wants to know what you said. You understand that he’s — uh — overwrought. As you said, in distress. Of course I would like to know too, what you did. You understand that.”

“Yes. I myself have done nothing.” Wolfe leaned back, drew in air through his nose, all there was room for, which was plenty, and let it out through his mouth. “Archie. Tell them.”

Dunbar blurted at me, “You’re Archie Goodwin.”

“Right.” I moved my eyes to Whipple. “Did you tell him exactly what you asked Mr. Wolfe to do?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Okay. A friend of mine named Lily Rowan invited Miss Brooke to lunch, and I was there. At lunch nothing was discussed but the ROCC. After lunch Miss Rowan gave Miss Brooke a check for a thousand dollars for the ROCC and asked her some questions about herself. Nothing cheeky, just the usual line. Miss Brooke mentioned that she had worked for the Parthenon Press and at the UN, and I spent three days checking that, mostly at the UN. I found nothing that you could use, and yesterday I took a plane to Chicago and drove to Racine, Wisconsin. At Racine I talked with two men who had known Miss Brooke and her family, a newspaperman and a private detective, and got no hint of anything you could use. You wanted to find out what was wrong with her. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“I decided that there was nothing worth mentioning wrong with her and never had been. When I turned in at the hotel last night I intended to leave this morning, and at seven a.m. Mr. Wolfe phoned and told me what had happened, and I left right away and returned to New York. Any questions?”

Dunbar moved. On his feet, peering down at me, his shoulders hunched, he looked like Sugar Ray starting the tenth round, not ending it. “You’re lying,” he said, not blurting. “You’re covering up, I don’t know what, but I’m going to. You know who killed her.” He wheeled to Wolfe. “So do you, you fat ape.”

“Sit down,” Wolfe said.

Dunbar put his fists on Wolfe’s desk and leaned over at him. “And you’re going to tell me,” he said through his teeth.

Wolfe shook his head. “You’re driveling, Mr. Whipple. I don’t know what you’re like when you are in command of your faculties, but I know what you’re like now. You’re an ass. Neither Mr. Goodwin nor I had ever heard of you or Miss Brooke. I don’t suppose you suspect your father of hiring me to arrange for her death, and I doubt if—”

“That’s not—”

“I’m talking. I doubt if even in your present condition you suspect Mr. Goodwin or me of doing it unbidden. But you may—”

“I didn’t—”

“I’m talking! You may understandably surmise that in his contacts with various persons Mr. Goodwin unwittingly said or did something which led to a situation that resulted in the death of Miss Brooke. You may even surmise that he was aware of it, or is. In that case, I suggest that you sit down and ask him, civilly. He is fairly headstrong and can’t be bullied. I stopped trying years ago. As for me, I know nothing. Mr. Goodwin’s plane was late, he arrived only an hour ago, and we haven’t discussed it.”

Dunbar backed away, came in contact with the rim of the chair seat, bent his knees, and sat. His head went down and his hands came up to cover his face.

Whipple said, “Take it easy, son.”

I cleared my throat. “I have had a lot of practice reporting conversations verbatim. Also tones and looks and reactions. I am better at it than anyone around except a man named Saul Panzer. I don’t believe that anything I have said or done had anything to do with the death of Susan Brooke, but if Mr. Wolfe tells me to — I was and am working for him — I’ll be glad to report it in full. I think it would be a waste of time. As for my covering up, nuts.”