This Way Outby Fredric Brown

THE DETECTIVE-SERGEANT was big and slow moving, but he was not stupid. He knew a suicide when he saw one, but he also knew better than to take anything at all for granted. Even on something like this you checked every tiny detail, and once out of a thousand times there might be something wrong. This could be the thousandth time; any case could.

He said, Okay, take it, and the two men with the stretcher rolled the one hundred and sixty pounds of cold meat that had been John Carey onto it, picked up the handles, and went out of the door.

The manager of the hotel had been hovering anxiously outside the door; now the Detective-Sergeant told him to come in. The manager came in quickly and closed the door behind nun even more quickly. He averted his eyes from the huge red stain on the beige carpeting.

The Detective-Sergeant took a notebook out of one pocket and a pencil out of another. He nodded to the manager. Have a seat, Mr. Weissman. His pencil hovered over the notebook. This John Carey, Mr. Weissman. Did you know him, outside of his staying here?

Well, indirectly. He was a friend of a friend of mine, Lee Wheeler. Maybe that's why he decided to come here to live. In fact, Mr. Wheeler told me he recommended the Colbrook to Mr. Carey.

How long ago was that?

Mr. Carey moved here three months ago, right after his wife and son were killed in an accident. He sold his house and came to live here, in a hotel. This is a residential hotel; all of our guests are more or less permanent.

The Detective-Sergeant looked up from his notebook. Wife and son both killed at the same time? Carey . . . Say, was that the case three months ago of the auto that got hit by the Limited and carried a mile before the train could stop?

Yes. The boy-he was eighteen-was taking his mother out for a Sunday afternoon drive while Mr. Carey was out of town. It was a horrible thing.

Oh. They were his only living relatives, if I remember right. I read about the case, but I didn't connect the name Carey.

Yes, I never talked about it to Mr. Carey, of course, but my friend who was a friend of his told me. The boy was his only son, and he had no other relatives.

The Detective-Sergeant nodded. The note John Carey had left on the dresser, in handwriting that was presumably his own-but that would be verified-had been merely a request, addressed to no one in particular, that he be buried in Lot 4, Section 7 of Parkhill Cemetery, beside his wife and son.

That fitted, too. When you've checked on several hundred suicides you get to know psychology.

The physical factors had fitted at sight. Now the psychological ones were becoming equally obvious. The motive, too. Not motive, exactly; one doesn't have a motive for committing suicide, one has a reason, or a set of reasons.

He said, And now about this morning.

The maid came at ten o'clock-that's about the usual tune she gets to this room-and found the door locked. I mean, she found it locked from the inside, so her pass key wouldn't work. When a guest goes out and locks his door, her pass key works. So she knew that Mr. Carey was still in his room, you understand. But in the three months Mr. Carey had been here he'd never once slept late on a week day. So the maid phoned down to me and asked me if maybe she should knock on the door.

And you told her. . . ?

I told her I'd give him a ring. I went over to the switchboard and was about to tell the operator to ring 816, when I saw her push a plug into the 816 hole. He didn't answer. I waited a minute until she pulled out the plug and then I asked her if that call had been completed and she said no, that 816 had not answered. So then I got really worried.

And went up to his room?

Well, I did one other thing first. I figured there was a good chance the call was from his office, to find out why he hadn't come in. You see, nobody else, no friend of his, for instance, would expect to find him in around ten o'clock of a working day; they'd expect him to be at his office as he should be. So I thought maybe his office was calling him. And I called up his office.

Where is that? The Detective-Sergeant poised his pencil.

In the State Bank Building. The firm is Carey & Greene; they're export and import brokers. I asked for Mr. Greene and he was in so I told him who I was and why I'd called. He said yes, it was he who had just phoned for Mr. Carey. He'd wondered why Mr. Carey hadn't come in, because he'd missed two appointments that morning already. Then I told him about the door being locked from the inside, and he said maybe I'd better break down the door.

Did suicide seem to have occurred to him? To Mr. Greene, I mean?

From how worried he sounded, I'd say it had. And I can see why. Mr. Carey had been despondent lately and acting queerly. Frankly, it was the first thing I thought of, and I imagine Mr. Greene would have thought of it for the same reason I did. Of course, he'd know about Mr. Carey having lost his family all at once and-well, you see what I mean.

The Detective-Sergeant nodded.

I got Dr. Deane, the manager went on, and Joe, the janitor, and we came up here. I knocked and when there wasn't any answer, I told Joe to break in. He didn't have to break the door down; he knows how to hit the lock with a hammer so as to break that.

And all three of you came in here?

Just Dr. Deane. Joe didn't come in at all, and I just stepped inside the doorway and watched Dr. Deane bend over the-over Mr. Carey. When he told me Mr. Carey was dead-not that I couldn't see that at first glance from the doorway-I called the police. And that's all.

Thanks, said the Detective-Sergeant. Well, guess I'll run along. I'll have a talk with his partner, Greene. Thanks for your help, Mr. Weissman.

At the door the Detective-Sergeant stopped and looked at the broken lock. The manager went past him into the hallway. Then the Detective-Sergeant joined the manager outside. A plain-clothes man was leaning against the wall just outside the door. The Detective-Sergeant told him, Stick here till they get a new lock put on the door and the room is sealed. Then you can report back in. Tell the Chief I got one more call to make.

Okay. Straight suicide?

Sure.

Riding down in the elevator with the manager, he thought of one more thing. He said, You said this Carey had been acting queerly. How?

Well, it's hard to put my finger on it. Sort of a listening look on his face, like he was hearing something or expecting to hear something. Just a guess, but I'd say he thought he was hearing voices.

A lot of them do, said the Detective-Sergeant.

* * *

A lot of them do. John Carey had. Not voices, exactly, but a voice. One voice, and it had taken him quite a while to place it and to know for sure whose voice it was.

And then he learned that it was his own, and everything was clear to him.

The first time he had heard it had been three weeks after the funeral, the double funeral that had marked the end of everything in his life that he had really cared about.

He'd wanted to kill himself then, right after the funeral, but he'd lacked the courage to do it. It was doubly hell not to want to live, and still to lack the courage to die. But then the voice . . .

It had startled him the first time he'd heard it. It had been right in the middle of a conversation, while he'd been trying to get rid of an obstreperous redheaded book salesman. He was stuck with the salesman because he'd been alone in the office; Dave Greene had been away and the stenographer had been out to lunch. He'd finally convinced the fellow he didn't want any books and had got him shut up and ready to leave, and then-in the welcome silence- the voice had said, Kill yourself, John Carey.

Of course it had startled him; he'd been looking right at the book salesman and although he was a little nearsighted he could see well enough to be sure the book salesman hadn't said it. And obviously, too, the book salesman hadn't heard it.

He had thought, Am I going crazy? and that had worried him for a while. Then he accepted that he was, and it was merely a matter of screwing up his courage to the action. The voice had helped.

The second time he'd heard it, over a week after the first, he'd been out in the open in a park, the park he always crossed on his way home, and there'd been no one near but a bum asleep on a park bench. The third time had been once while he was crossing the lobby of his hotel.

It was after that third time that he had placed the voice as his own. There'd been something familiar about its intonation all along, but he hadn't guessed for a while. One's own voice is not as familiar as one thinks, for one hears it quite differently from the way other people do. But a little trick of emphasis that he knew to be his own gave him the clue the third time he heard the voice.

He'd heard it once in a theater lobby, once in the office when only Dave had been there with him-and of course Dave hadn't heard it-once on the street, just after he'd given an unshaven duty-looking panhandler a quarter, once on a streetcar. A dozen tunes in a little over two months.

He'd have gone to a psychiatrist if he'd thought it really worth while, if he'd really wanted to live. But why not welcome insanity if it helped him get the guts to do what he really wanted to do, anyway?

Finally, the courage. The razor. The end.

* * *

The Detective-Sergeant said, My name's Weston. Police. You're David Greene?

Yes. Sit down, Mr. Weston. You-you just came from the hotel? When the Detective-Sergeant nodded, Greene asked, May I ask how it happened?

A razor.

How horrible. And yet. . . I can't help thinking maybe he's better off. He's been living in a nightmare for three months since-you know what happened?

Yes, his wife and son were killed. His reason for doing it's clear enough. Something like that, happening all at once and unexpectedly, preyed on his mind until-well, he did it.

Greene asked, There's no doubt at all that-that it was suicide, is there?

Not a shadow. Locked in his room from the inside. Even the window locked, not that anyone could have got in an eighth-story window, anyway. Motive clear. Left a note telling where he wanted to be buried. There were even trial marks on the side of his neck.

Trial marks?

That's what we call them. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned that; it's not nice to think about when it's somebody you knew. Trial marks are shallow, preliminary cuts on the side of the neck of a suicide who cuts his throat. Almost always find 'em in a genuine suicide who cuts his throat. They almost never have the courage for a full sweep of the razor the first time. There's anywhere from one to half a dozen of them. He had three. Not nice to think about, but well, they were there. Did he have any other worries besides the loss of his family? Financial, I mean?

I don't think so. I don't know whether he had much saved up, if any, but he was solvent. I'm reasonably sure he wasn't in debt. Probably a few thousand dollars ahead, at a guess. Does the state get it, by the way?

If he didn't leave a will and no relatives come forward.

There won't be any relatives to come forward. Odd thing, both he and his wife were foundlings, each brought up in an orphan asylum. And I doubt if there's a will. A new one, I mean, made since his wife and son died. The one he made before that wouldn't mean anything now; it left everything to his wife.

Would you have known if he made a new will?

I think he'd have mentioned it. He did tell me that he was letting all his personal insurance policies lapse because there wasn't any point in keeping them up. I imagine he felt the same way about whatever money he had.

Unless he decided he'd rather have it go to some charity instead of the state.

Greene shrugged. I believe he was too despondent even to think of that. I could be wrong, of course. If he did make a new will it'll be in his safety deposit box in the bank downstairs and you'll find it when you open the box.

Don't think I'll do that, the Detective-Sergeant said. The state will appoint an executor, anyway. Let him take care of the court order to open the box. Unless you think there's something in it that might have a bearing.

I don't know what.

Oh, by the way, I've been wondering whether to put it down as suicide while of unsound mind or whether to leave that open. It doesn't really matter, I guess. The manager at his hotel, though, thought he'd been-uh-a little off the beam lately. Like he was hearing voices. A lot of them do. What's your opinion, Mr. Greene?

Well, he had been acting strangely. But then he's been- had been, I mean-in a daze ever since the accident. I mean, since he learned of it. Just going through the motions of living and working, like an automaton, like a man walk-big in his sleep, if you know what I mean.

Sure. But do you think the hotel manager is right about the voices business?

Well-once when he and I were alone in the office, he asked me suddenly if I'd heard anything. I asked him what he meant and he said to skip it. That's the only thing I can think of. It could have been that, or it could have been that he did hear some sound from outside the office that I didn't hear. He had pretty acute hearing; his eyes were rather bad, but his hearing was much better than average. Better than mine.

Just one more thing, Mr. Greene. Routine. Did anyone benefit financially by his death? Or is anyone harmed by it financially? How does it affect your business?

I gain by it, I'm afraid. In fact, I'm glad-that's a hell of a word to use; I don't mean it the way it sounds-that, since he did kill himself, he did it behind a locked door and left a note. If there was any suspicion of-of foul play, I believe you call it, I'd have a pretty strong motive in our partnership insurance.

Life insurance, you mean?

Yes. As part of our partnership agreement we each carried a rather large insurance policy on the other, so the survivor wouldn't be handicapped in carrying on the business alone. It's customary in partnerships. Incidentally, that's what I meant when I said he'd dropped his personal insurance. That was the policy on which his wife was beneficiary. The policy on which I'm beneficiary-and it's a pretty big one-wasn't dropped, of course; it was a business obligation.

The Detective-Sergeant nodded. He, too, was glad that a motive didn't matter and that the whole thing was purely routine and that he was now through with it, except for turning in his report.

The Detective-Sergeant's feet hurt and he wanted to sit there a minute longer, so he asked, Partners pretty long, you and Carey?

Eight years. He got me in this business, and it's a funny business for me to be in, after all the knocking around I did and the things I tried before that. With a carnival, in vaudeville when there was still some vaudeville to be in, bit parts on the legitimate stage-and here I end up a merchant, and with a business of my own. Have a cigar, Mr.-Sorry, I've forgotten your name.

Weston. Sure, thanks. The Detective-Sergeant struck a match and leaned forward to hold a light for Greene's cigar and then lighted the one Greene had just given him.

It was a good cigar, probably a quarter one.

Greene said, You know I've always had a kind of hankering to be in your business. Or, more likely, to be a private detective. Suppose I'll never get a chance to-I'm making too much money to change to anything else.

Not much money in being a private detective.

I suppose not. But I think I'd be good at it. I have a hunch I'd be pretty good at shadowing and things like that. And I know damn well I'd be good at disguises. The bit parts I used to handle on stage were character roles and I got 'em because I was so good at make-up. And voice control, so I could sound like a doddering old man or a pansy or what have you. Or imitations. I used to be able to do Winchell so you couldn't tell him from Walter.

Through fragrant smoke, the Detective-Sergeant said, You wouldn't get much chance to use disguises or do imitations as a private detective. Probably not a damn bit more chance than you get in the business you're in. That what you did in vaudeville-mutations?

I had a vent act. Ventriloquism.

The Detective-Sergeant sighed and stood up. He said, And I used to play trombone once and be pretty good at it. And look at me now. Well, thanks for the cigar. And so long.

So long, Greene said.