Rex Stout: When a Man Murders…

He clamped his jaw and then relaxed it. “This is where I didn’t shine, I admit that, but it wasn’t just cold feet. I went up to the door of his room, twenty-three-eighteen, without phoning, and I lifted my hand to knock, but I didn’t. Because I realized I was trembling, I was trembling all over. I stood there a while to calm down, but I didn’t calm. I realized that if I went in there and put it to him and he said nothing doing, there was no telling what might happen. The way I was feeling I was a lot more apt to queer it than help it. So I just ducked it. I’m not proud of it, but I’m telling you, I gave it a miss and came away. Caroline was waiting for me in a bar down the street, and I went and told her, and that wasn’t easy either, telling her I had muffed it. Up to then she had thought I could handle about anything that came along. She thought I was good.”

“I still do, Paul,” she told him.

“Yeah? I can’t touch you.”

“Not now. Not until—” Her hand fluttered. “Don’t keep saying that.”

“Okay, we’ll skip it.” He went back to Wolfe. “So I told her the man-to-man approach was a bum idea, and we sat and chewed at it. We decided that none of our friends was up to it. The lawyer I use for the agency wouldn’t be worth a damn. When one of us thought of you — I forget which — it clicked with both of us, and I went to a booth to phone for an appointment. Maybe you can get him down here and you make him the proposition yourself, or if he won’t come you can send Archie Goodwin to see him. Caroline has the idea it might be better to send Goodwin because Karnow’s thin-skinned and you might irritate him. We’ll leave that to you. I wish I could say if you get him to take our offer you can write your own ticket, any amount you want to make it, but in that case we won’t be any too flush so I have to mention it. Five thousand dollars, something like that, we could manage that all right. But for God’s sake go to it — now, today, tonight!”

Wolfe cleared his throat. “I’m not a lawyer, Mr. Aubry, I’m a detective.”

“I know that, but what’s the difference? You have a reputation for getting things out of people. We want you to detect a way of getting Karnow to accept our proposition.”

Wolfe grunted. “I could challenge your diction, but you’re in no mood to debate semantics. And my fees are based on the kind and amount of work done. Your job seems fairly simple. In describing it to me, how candid have you been?”

“Completely. Absolutely.”

“Nonsense. Complete candor is beyond the reach of man or woman. If Mr. Karnow accepts your proposal, can I rely on you to adhere to its terms as you have stated them?”

“Yes. You’re damn right you can.”

Wolfe’s head turned. “Mrs. Karnow, are you—”

“She’s not Mrs. Karnow!” Aubrey barked. “She’s my wife!”

Wolfe’s shoulders went up half an inch and dropped back. “Madam, are you sure you understand the proposal and will faithfully adhere to it?”

“Yes,” she said firmly.

“You know that you will be relinquishing a dower right, a legal right, in a large property?”

“Yes.”

“Then I must ask a few questions about Mr. Karnow — of you, since Mr. Aubry has never met him. You had no child by him?”

“No.”

“You were in love when you married, presumably?”

“We thought — I guess we were. Yes, say we were.”

“Did it cool off?”

“Not exactly.” She hesitated, deciding how to put it. “Sidney was sensitive and high-strung — you see. I still say ‘was’ because for so long I thought he was dead. I was only nineteen when we were married, and I suppose I didn’t know how to take him. He enlisted in the Army because he thought he ought to, because he hadn’t been in the World War and he thought he should do his share of peeling potatoes — that was how he put it — but I didn’t agree with him. I had found out by then that what I thought wasn’t very important, nor what I felt either. If you’re going to try to get him to agree to this of course you want to know what he’s like, but I don’t really know myself, not after all this time. Maybe it would help for you to read the letters I got from him after he enlisted. He only sent me three, one from Camp Givens and two from Korea — he didn’t like writing letters. My husb — Paul said I should bring them along to show you.”

She opened her bag, fished in it, and produced some sheets of paper clipped together. I went to get them and hand them to Wolfe, and, since I would probably be elected to deliver the proposal, I planted myself at his elbow and read along with him. All three letters are still in the archives in our office, but I’ll present only one, the last one, to give you a sample of the tone and style:

Dear Carrie my true and loving mate I hope:

Pardon me, but my weakness is showing. I would like to be where you are this minute and tell you why I didn’t like your new dress, and you would go and put on another one, and we would go to Chambord and eat snails and drink Richebourg and then go to the Velvet Yoke and eat lady fingers and drink tomato soup, and then we would go home and take hot baths and go to sleep on fine linen sheets spread over mattresses three feet thick, covered with an electric blanket. After several days of that I would begin to recognize myself and would put my arms around you and we would drown in delight.

Now I suppose I should tell you enough about this place to make you understand why I would rather be somewhere else, but that would be too easy to bother with, and anyway, as you well know, I hate to write, and especially I hate to try to write what I feel. Since the time is getting closer and closer when I’ll try to kill somebody and probably succeed, I’ve been going through my memory for things about death. Herodotus said, “Death is a delightful hiding-place for weary men.” Epictetus said, “What is death but a bugbear?” Montaigne said, “The deadest deaths are the best.” I’ll quote those to the man I’m going to kill and then he won’t mind so much.

Speaking of death, if he should get me instead of me getting him, something I did before I left New York will give you quite a shock. I wish I could be around to see how you take it. You claim you have never worried about money, that it’s not worth it. Also you’ve told me that I always talk sardonic but haven’t got it in me to act sardonic. This will show you. I’ll admit I have to die to get the last laugh, but that will be sardonic too. I wonder do I love you or hate you? They’re hard to tell apart. Remember me in thy dreams.

Your sardonic

As I went to my desk to put the letters under a paperweight Caroline was speaking. “I wrote him two long letters every week. I must have sent him over fifty letters, and he never mentioned them the few times he wrote. I want to try to be fair to him, but he always said he was egocentric, and I guess he was.”

“Not was,” Aubry said grimly. “ Is. He is. ” He asked Wolfe, “Doesn’t that letter prove he’s a nut?”

“He is — uh — picturesque,” Wolfe conceded. He turned to Caroline. “What had he done before he left New York that — upon his death — gave you quite a shock?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Naturally I thought he had changed his will and left me out. After word came that he was dead I showed that letter to the lawyer, Jim Beebe, and told him what I thought, and he said it did sound like it, but there had been no change made in the will as far as he knew, and Sidney must have been stringing me.”

“Not too adroitly,” Wolfe objected. “It isn’t so simple to disinherit a wife. However, since he didn’t try — What do you know about the false report of his death?”