never in any trouble worth mentioning. I suppose you know she went away to college.'
'Yeah, I know.'
'And then New York. The years she was at college she wasn't here much even in the summers; she and her mother took trips. In the last eight or nine years I don't think Susan Brooke has been in Racine more than four or five months altogether. The past four years she hasn't been here at all.'
'Then I'm wasting the client's money. But I understand she came here, came home, when she finished college. In nineteen fifty-nine. But maybe you wouldn't know; her father was dead then. Not long after that they left for New York. Do you happen to know how long after?'
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 gaard, 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 parch, 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
The wind had eased up some, but the cold hadn't, and it pinched my nose. In the
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?'
