A Right to Die

'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.

4

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-A 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.

'_Grace a 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.

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 insulting 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 hail 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