A Right To Die (11 page)

“What are you doing out there?”

I bellowed back, “Breathing!” went in, shut the door, and followed him to the office. It was useless to try to start conversation until he had put a spray of Phalaenopsis Aphrodite in the vase and glanced through the mail. It’s some kind of compulsion. I suspect that he always hopes to find a letter from a collector in Honduras or somewhere, saying that he has found a clear solid blue orchid and is sending it to Wolfe by air, no charge, to show his appreciation for something or other.

It wasn’t there that morning. I open the mail. He put it aside and turned to me. “Mr. Magnus?”

“He’ll be here this afternoon. Miss Kallman had it all arranged when she phoned while I was at breakfast, very much on the job, which may mean something and may not. But something more interesting; I know where Dolly Brooke went in her car that evening.”

“You do.”

“Yes, sir. Peter Vaughn came and we talked nearly an hour. He just left. I don’t think you need it verbatim, so I’ll just tell it.”

I did so. Not word for word, but I covered all the points. After the first few sentences he leaned back with his chin down and closed his eyes, as he always does when all he needs is his ears. When I finished, explaining that I had let him go because I was human, as he had said, he held it for another minute and then opened his eyes.

He grunted. “You are not more human than I am. You are merely more susceptible, more sociable, and more vulnerable.”

“Just words. Shall we settle it now?”

“No. We have something more urgent to settle. Is it possible that Mr. Vaughn’s account is gammon?”

“Not a chance. He’s wide open. I wouldn’t even name odds.”

“Did that woman kill her?”

“I pass. Again no odds, for a different reason. I may understand women better than Vaughn does, I hope I do, but I pass as it stands now. The only visible motive is a little limp. If she did it to keep scandal from the family name, what about this scandal'Pass.”

He straightened up. “Whether she did or not, we could have Mr. Whipple released from custody today. Tomorrow at the latest.”

“Sure. If she sticks to the line she gave Vaughn, and she had better. She’ll have to. As I told Vaughn, it’s obvious that Susan wasn’t in there alive when Whipple arrived. Shall I get Cramer'I promised Vaughn nothing.”

He made a face. “I don’t like it.”

“You wouldn’t. You’re on record that the only way to clear Whipple is to produce the murderer, and she may not be it. We have found an out for him, but we can’t be sure he would stay out. She might change the script and say she didn’t enter the building, and we can’t prove she did. I don’t like it either.”

“You just said she would have to stick to the line she gave Vaughn.”

“I’m more vulnerable than you are. I talk too fast. As soon as I said it I realized it wasn’t true.”

He growled. “Confound it.” He made fists and rested them on the edge of his desk. He looked at the left one, saw nothing helpful, looked at the right one, saw no better, and looked at me. “When can you get her here?”

“Oh, thirty minutes or thirty hours. When do you want her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Tell me when you do. Of course I’ll have to pry her loose, and I only have one pry. On the way she’ll have plenty of time to decide what line to take.”

He scowled at me. I scowled back, but his face gives him the advantage. Finding that that wasn’t getting us anywhere, he leaned back and closed his eyes, and his lips started working. They pushed out, then drew in, and kept at it-out and in, out and in& Man at work, or possibly genius at work. I never interrupt the lip act because I can’t; he’s not there. It may last anywhere from half a minute to half an hour; I always time it, since there’s nothing else to do. That time it was four minutes. He opened his eyes and asked, “Can Saul be here at two o’clock?”

“Yes. I rang him before breakfast. He had a chore for this morning, but he’ll be free around noon and will call.”

“Tell him two o’clock. Get Mr. Whipple.”

Everything pertaining to a current operation is kept in a locked drawer, and I had to use a key to get the extension number at the university. Then there was a wait because he was in another room. When I had him, Wolfe got on. Naturally Whipple had questions about last night’s meeting, and Wolfe tolerated him as much as he would a client who was going to get a fat bill. Not more. He stopped him by saying he hadn’t called to report.

“I report only when there has been progress. I called because I need your help. I need two Negroes, and I assume you have Negro friends. Two men neither too young nor too old, preferably between thirty and fifty. Not too light, the blacker the better. Not elegant in appearance; that’s essential. Rather roughly dressed if possible. Average intelligence will do, or even below average; no acumen or skill is necessary. I need them here by two o’clock, or two-thirty at the latest. I don’t know how long they’ll have to stay, but I think not more than two hours, perhaps less. They will be asked to do nothing reprehensible or hazardous; they will take no risk of any kind. Can you supply them?”

Silence for five seconds, then: “I suppose it’s something about-for my son?”

“Certainly, since I’m asking your help. There may be a development that will show promise.”

“Thank God.”

“He is not its source. Can you supply two such men?”

“I will. You’d better repeat the specifications.”

Wolfe did so, but I didn’t listen. I was too busy trying to guess what kind of charade was going to have two roughly dressed middle-aged Negroes in the cast. Plus, apparently, Saul Panzer.

We hung up and he turned to me. “Your notebook. On my letterhead, but not a letter. A document. Dated today. Two carbons. Double-spaced. ‘I hereby affirm that at or about twenty minutes past eight in the evening of Monday, March second, nineteen sixty-four, I took my motor car from the’-name the garage and its address-’and, comma, unaccompanied, comma, drove it to One Hundred and Twenty-eighth Street in Manhattan, New York City. I parked the car, comma, walked to the entrance of the building at’-give the address-’entered the building, comma, and ascended two flights of stairs. On the third floor, I& ‘”

At least half of the hallmen in New York apartment houses are either hard of hearing or don’t give a damn. I know how to pronounce my name without mumbling, but I have heard myself announced as Godwin, Gooden, Gordon, Goodman, and variations; and with a message of five words or more they’re hopeless. So that Tuesday afternoon when I entered the lobby of that sixteen-story Park Avenue palace and crossed the maybe-Oriental carpet to meet the hallman, I was prepared. I had it in my hand. Reaching him, I pointed emphatically to my mouth, shook my head, and handed it to him-a slip of paper on which I had typed:

Please tell Mrs. Kenneth Brooke that Mr. Goodwin is here and wants to go up and tell her the answer to the question which Mr. Wolfe refused to answer last Friday evening.

He looked at me suspiciously and asked, “Deaf and dumb?”

I shook my head.

“Oh, you can hear?”

I nodded.

He read it again, went through a door, used a phone, and came out. “Fourteen A,” he said, and I crossed the carpet again, to the elevator. I had saved three minutes and a lot of breath.

I was admitted to Fourteen A, to a foyer bigger than my bedroom, by the lady of the house, the full-sized positive blonde. Since she was now definitely a candidate, she deserved more than mere curiosity. As I disposed of my coat and hat on a chair and followed her through an arch into a room in which a concert-size piano was merely a speck in a corner, I was trying to see a sign of a murderer in her. After all the years I should know better, and I do, but it’s automatic and you can’t control it.

She crossed to one of two divans at right angles to the fireplace, and when she had sat I took a nearby chair. She looked at me with her round blue eyes as a lady of that much house looks at an article like a private detective and said, “Well?”

“It was just a dodge,” I said, “to get up and in.”

“A dodge?”

“Yes. Mr. Wolfe wants to see you. You wouldn’t be impressed by the reason he had for deciding that Dunbar Whipple was innocent because it was strictly personal. The same with me. Whipple was in the office for more than an hour last Tuesday, a week ago today, and from what he said and the way he said it we were convinced that he hadn’t killed Susan Brooke.”

She stared. “Just what he said?”

“Right. But now we have a better reason-maybe not actually better, but a different kind. Now we know. Since you stood at the door a while, listening, and heard nothing, and knocked on the door, and stood some more to listen, and knocked again, and got no response, and still heard nothing; and since when you left the building you watched the entrance, and Susan didn’t arrive but Whipple did, it’s obvious that she wasn’t in the apartment alive when he entered. That’s simple, isn’t it?”

She was fairly good. She had parted her lips, and her frown was okay. But what she said wasn’t so hot. She said, “What on earth do you think you’re saying'Are you crazy?”

Of course people have word habits, she had asked her husband if he was crazy, but she should have done better. “That’s wasted, Mrs. Brooke,” I said. “Peter Vaughn couldn’t handle his conscience, and we have it all from him-that is, his end of it. We have some from others too-people who saw you.”

“You’re crazy! What could you have from Peter Vaughn?”

I shook my head. “Really, it’s no good. For his part, corroboration to burn. The hallman and elevator man who saw him come and go, and you go and come, your eight-year-old son-but it shouldn’t be necessary to drag him in-the man at the garage. Peter’s part is solid. It’s the other part that Mr. Wolfe wants to discuss with you. I go on talking to give you time to swallow it. He wants to see you, now, and I came to escort you. The other time you wanted to see him, to find out if he knew that you had gone there that evening. Now it’s his turn, he wants to see you. Let’s go and get it over with.”

I thought, as I talked, that she was going to go feminine on me, and so she did. She stretched an arm to put her hand out, but I wasn’t close enough for her to touch me without leaving the divan. The feminine was in her eyes, and in her chin as it quivered a little, but that was all, except her saying, “I don’t want to go.” Pure feminine.

“Of course you don’t. So come on.” Masculine. I stood up.

“You said ‘the other part.’ What other part?”

“I’m not sure. It’s what Mr. Wolfe wants to ask you about. I advise you to come and find out.”

“I’m not& I’ll come& later.” She got to her feet, took a step, and put her hand on my arm. “Later?”

“It’s already later. Whipple has been in the coop four days, and he’s innocent and you know it.” I took her ann and turned her, masculine but not rough, and she moved. She said she had to tell the maid and headed for a door in the rear, and I thought she might forget to come back, but no. When she returned she had a new look; she had decided to cope. If I had touched her arm I would have been cold-shouldered. But she permitted me to hold her platinum mink and to open and close the door. Down in the lobby, as the hallman opened that door for us, I told him distinctly, “You may keep that slip of paper for a souvenir,” and he almost lost his grip on the door. In the taxi she wasn’t talking; she kept her head turned, looking out the window. Undoubtedly she was doing what I had told Wolfe she would have time for, deciding on her line.

The charade began when we entered the hall of the old brownstone. The front door on the left, which is to the front room, was ajar half an inch, so I knew the office was empty, and Saul knew we had arrived. The whole ground floor is soundproofed, including the doors. She preferred to keep her coat, and I took her to the oflice, to the red leather chair, told her there would be a brief wait, left, closing the door, and proceeded to the alcove at the end of the hail. Wolfe was there by the hole in the wall with the panel opened. He looked a question, and I nodded. If there had been any important departure from the script, either at his end or mine, we would have had to go to the kitchen to discuss it.

I looked at my watch: 3:18. The wait was to be ten minutes from the time we entered the house, at exactly a quarter past. We stood it out. At 3:24 we both got our eyes at the hole, and it was close quarters. For the twentieth time I decided that the hole must be enlarged.

It was an absolutely perfect performance. All three of them, including Saul, had arrived before two o’clock, and I had been present at the briefing, though not at the rehearsing. Simply perfect. At 3:25 the connecting door to the front room opened and they entered, Saul in the lead, and she turned her head to face them. It can’t be marked against Saul that he didn’t look sinister, he couldn’t, with his big nose and flat ears and high sloping forehead. The first Negro was a big husky guy, as black as Case Faison, in a blue sweater and gray slacks that hadn’t been pressed since Christmas. The second one was small and wiry, not so black, in a brown suit with light tan stripes, white shirt, and red tie. Neat and clean, but not elegant.

Saul led the way across and stopped at Wolfe’s desk, and they lined up there, side by side, facing Dolly Brooke in the red leather chair, ten feet away. For thirty long seconds they stood, no movement, gazing at her. She gazed back. At one point her jaw moved and I thought she was going to speak, but she didn’t. Of course Saul was counting the seconds. I have timed him on it and he’s never off more than one to a minute. He looked at the other two, and they both nodded. He nodded back and they filed out, not to the front room but to the hall, closing the door behind them.

I slid the panel shut, no noise, and Wolfe and I went to the kitchen. When the door had swung shut he grunted and said, “Satisfactory.”

“Awful corny,” I said, “and awful tough. Why she didn’t scream or throw something or jump up and run I don’t know. I wish I understood women.”

“Pfui. Need you report?”

“No. I followed instructions and she reacted more or less as expected. What I need after that is a drink, and I have six or seven minutes.” I went to a cupboard for a bottle of Big Sandy and to a shelf for a glass, poured, and took a healthy sip. Fritz, who was at the sink sprinkling watercress, said, ‘There’s milk in the refrigerator.”

“Not when I’ve just watched three grown men bully a poor little woman.” I took a sip.

“She is not little and she may be a murderer.”

“Murderess. You mustn’t call a female Jew a Jewess, and you mustn’t call a female Negro a Negress, but it’s okay to call a female murderer a murderess.” I took a sip.

“Why?” he demanded.

“Because they resent it. That’s another civil right, resenting things. I resent being called a private eye or a hawkshaw, so don’t do it.” I looked at my watch, took a sip, put the glass on the big table, and told Wolf; “Time’s up unless you want to stretch it.”

“I don’t.” He moved and I followed. Saul was in the hall, up front. He had let the other members of the cast out and was standing by, to stop her if she decided to duck. Wolfe sent him a nod, which he had coming, and opened the door to the office.

Dolly Brooke turned her head, jumped up, and demanded, “Who were those men?”

He circled around her to his desk, sat, and regarded her. “Will you please be seated, madam?”

“Tricks,” she said. “Tricks! Who were they?”

“When you stand I must crane. Will you sit?”

She sat down, on the edge of the chair. “Who were they?”

“I may name them later, or may not. Obviously they were identifying you as someone they had seen somewhere. It-“

“Where?”

“Let me finish a sentence. Mr. Goodwin has told you of the information furnished by Mr. Vaughn regarding his movements that Monday evening. As evidence of Mr. Whipple’s innocence that information was invaluable, but it had a flaw. Faced with it, you might say that the account you gave Mr. Vaughn was an invention; that you had not entered the building; even that you had not driven there. Therefore it was necessary to establish the fact that you had entered the building and approximately the times you entered and left. That has been done. The white man was Mr. Saul Panzer, who has no peer as an investigator. The Negroes were reputable citizens who live in Harlem. For the present I withhold their names; you may learn them later, in a courtroom, if the point becomes an issue.”

“Are you& ” She let it hang. Her face had taken me along on her trip as she realized she had been flushed out of the tall grass. “You mean they saw me?”

Wolfe turned a palm up. “Could I make it any plainer, madam?”

He sure could. Me, I would have just said yes. I happen to prefer a straightforward lie to one with curves, but I adniit it’s a question of personal taste. It isn’t that he wants to have an out; he simply likes them fancy.

She looked at me, saw only a manly truth-loving phiz, returned to Wolfe, and took a skip. “Peter Vaughn,” she said with feeling. “I owe this to him.” Another skip. “My husband.” Still another. “Do the police know?”

“Not yet.” Wolfe opened a drawer and took out a document. “I suppose they’ll have to eventually, but it’s barely possible that they won’t. Archie?”

I arose and took the document and handed it to her and stayed on my feet, since she would soon need a pen.

“Read it,” Wolfe said. “I made it as brief as possible.” She was a slow reader. I thought she would never finish the first page, and she took even longer with the second. Finally she looked up. “If you think I’m going to sign this,” she said, “you’re crazy.”

“You won’t even consider it?”

“I will not.”

“Get Mr. Cramer, Archie.”

“Who is Mr. Cramer?”

“A police inspector.”

I was at my desk, starting to dial.

“Don’t do that!” she yelled. I could use a nicer word, but a yell is a yell. As I went on dialing, she bounced out of the chair, to me, and grabbed my arm and jerked. She turned to Wolfe and presumably was glaring; her back was to me.

“I won’t squabble,” Wolfe snapped. “You will sign that statement, now, or you will stay until Mr. Cramer comes.” He turned his head and roared. “Saul!”

The door opened and Saul was there. “This woman prevented Archie from making a telephone call,” Wolfe told him. “Don’t let her do it again.”

Three men and one poor little woman. Saul advanced. I lifted the receiver, which I had cradled. “Don’t,” she said. She touched my arm. “Please don’t. I’ll sign it.” The document was on the floor, where it had dropped when she bounced. Saul picked it up and handed it to her. She went to the chair and sat, and I took her a pen. The little stand beside the chair was mainly for signing checks, but it would do for signing statements too.

“All three copies,” Wolfe said, and I got the two carbons from a drawer and took them to her. As she did each one I took it and gave the signature a look. It slanted up, which I understand means something, I forget what. I went to my desk and put them in the locked drawer. Saul went over to a chair by the bookshelves.

Dolly Brooke said, begging, not telling, “My husband mustn’t know. The police mustn’t know.”

Wolfe eyed her. “It’s thorny,” he said. “With that statement I could get Mr. Whipple released from custody, but to clear him conclusively I must expose the murderer. The statement would be more to the point if it said that when you knocked at the door Miss Brooke admitted you, and you killed her.”

She goggled. “Are you crazy?”

“No. Did you'Kill her?”

“No!”_

“I hope not. If you did, as long as I reserve that statement, I’ll be withholding vital evidence; and I prefer to reserve it, tentatively. You say the police mustn’t know. On the contrary, they probably must, sooner or later; but I would like to postpone it until I can name the murderer, and it’s possible that by then your movements that evening will be of no consequence. I have-“

“You won’t tell them?”

“Not immediately. I have a question that is of consequence. I want you to concentrate on it all your powers of observation and memory. If you didn’t kill her, the person who did left the apartment and building within minutes, perhaps seconds, of the time you arrived. Possibly as you arrived. He may have been in the third-floor hall, leaving, as you mounted the stairs, and retreated to the floor above, remained there until you departed, and left the building soon after you. Or, bolder or stupider, he may have passed you on the stairs, descending as you mounted. Search your memory. Whom did you see, either while you were in the building, or leaving it after you did, as you stood and watched the entrance?”