Champagne for One

by Rex Stout

  Champagne for One

  Rex Stout

  Champagne for One Rex Stout Series: Nero Wolfe [31] Published: 1995 Tags: Cozy Mystery, Vintage Mystery, Early 20th Century

  Cozy Mysteryttt Vintage Mysteryttt Early 20th Centuryttt

  SUMMARY: Whoever administered the deadly dose of champagne isn’t talking, and neither is the victim, as Nero Wolfe searches for the antidote to the perfect crime. Includes never-before-published memorabilia from the life of Rex Stout.

  Rex Stout

  Champagne For One

  Chapter One

  If it hadn’t been raining and blowing that raw Tuesday morning in March I would have been out, walking to the bank to deposit a couple of cheques, when Austin Byne phoned me, and he might have tried somebody else. But more likely not. He would probably have rung again later, so I can’t blame all this on the weather. As it was, I was there in the office, oiling the typewriter and the two Marley.38’s, for which we had permits, from the same can of oil, when the phone rang and I lifted it and spoke.

  “Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.”

  “Hello there. This is Byne. Dinky Byne.”

  There it is in print for you, but it wasn’t for me, and I didn’t get it. It sounded more like a dying bullfrog than a man.

  “Clear your throat,” I suggested, “or sneeze or something, and try again.”

  “That wouldn’t help. My tubes are all clogged. Tubes. Clogged. Understand? Dinky Byne-B-Y-N-E.”

  “Oh, hallo. I won’t ask how you are, hearing how you sound. My sympathy.”

  “I need it. I need more than sympathy, too.” It was coming through slightly better. “I need help. Will you do me a hell of a favour?”

  I made a face. “I might. If I can do it sitting down and it doesn’t cost me any teeth.”

  “It won’t cost you a thing. You know my Aunt Louise. Mrs Robert Robilotti.”

  “Only professionally. Mr Wolfe did a job for her once, recovered some jewellery. That is, she hired him and I did the job-and she didn’t like me. She resented a remark I made.”

  “That won’t matter. She forgets remarks. I suppose you know about the dinner party she gives every year on the birthday date of my Uncle Albert, now resting in peace perhaps?”

  “Sure. Who doesn’t?”

  “Well, that’s it. Today. Seven o’clock. And I’m to be one of the chevaliers, and listen to me, and I’ve got some fever. I can’t go. She’ll be sore as the devil if she has to scout around for a fill-in, and when I phone her I want to tell her she won’t have to, that I’ve already got one. Mr Archie Goodwin. You’re a better chevalier than me any day. She knows you, and she has forgotten the remark you made, and anyhow she has resented a hundred remarks I’ve made, and you’ll know exactly how to treat the lady guests. Black tie, seven o’clock, and you know the address. After I phone her, of course she’ll ring you to confirm it. And you can do it sitting down, and I’ll guarantee nothing will be served that will break your teeth. She has a good cook. My God, I didn’t think I could talk so long. How about it, Archie?”

  “I’m chewing on it,” I told him. “You waited long enough.”

  “Yeah, I know, but I kept thinking I might be able to make it, until I pried my eyes open this morning. I’ll do the same for you some day.”

  “You can’t. I haven’t got a billionaire aunt. I doubt if she has forgotten the remark I made because it was fairly sharp. What if she vetoes me? You’d have to ring me again to call it off, and then ring someone else, and you shouldn’t talk that much, and besides, my feelings would be hurt.”

  I was merely stalling, partly because I wanted to hear him talk some more. It sounded to me as if his croak had flaws in it. Clogged tubes have no effect on your esses, as in “seven” and “sitting”, but he was trying to produce one, and he turned “long” into “lawd” when it should have been more like “lawg”. So I was suspecting that the croak was a phoney. If I hadn’t had my full share of ego I might also have been curious as to why he had picked on me, since we were not chums, but of course that was no problem. If your ego is in good shape you will pretend you’re surprised if a National Chairman calls to tell you his party wants to nominate you for President of the United States, but you’re not really surprised.

  I only stalled him long enough to be satisfied that the croak was a fake before I agreed to take it on. The fact was that the idea appealed to me. It would be a new experience and should increase my knowledge of human nature. It might also be a little ticklish, and even dismal, but it would be interesting to see how they handled it. Not to mention how I would handle it myself. So I told him I would stand by for a call from his Aunt Louise.

  It came in less than half an hour. I had finished the oiling job and was putting the guns in their drawer in my desk when the phone rang. A voice I recognized said she was Mrs Robilotti’s secretary and Mrs Robilotti wished to speak with me, and I said, “Is it jewellery again, Miss Fromm?” and she said, “She will tell you what it is, Mr Goodwin.”

  Then another voice, also recognized. “Mr Goodwin?”

  “Speaking.”

  “My nephew Austin Byne says he phoned you.”

  “I guess he did.”

  “You guess he did?”

  “The voice said it was Byne, but it could have been a seal trying to bark.”

  “He has laryngitis. He told you so. Apparently you haven’t changed any. He says that he asked you to take his place at dinner at my home this evening, and you said you would if I invited you. Is that correct?”

  I admitted it.

  “He says that you are acquainted with the nature and significance of the affair.”

  “Of course I am. So are fifty million other people-or more.”

  “I know. I regret the publicity it has received in the past, but I refuse to abandon it. I owe it to my dear first husband’s memory. I am inviting you, Mr Goodwin.”

  “Okay. I accept the invitation as a favour to your nephew. Thank you.”

  “Very well.” A pause. “Of course it is not usual, on inviting a dinner guest, to caution him about his conduct, but for this occasion some care is required. You appreciate that?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Tact and discretion are necessary.”

  “I’ll bring mine along,” I assured her.

  “And of course refinement.”

  “I’ll borrow some.” I decided she needed a little comfort. “Don’t worry, Mrs Robilotti, I understand the set-up and you can count on me clear through to the coffee and even after. Relax. I am fully briefed. Tact, discretion, refinement, black tie, seven o’clock.”

  “Then I’ll expect you. Please hold the wire. My secretary will give you the names of those who will be present. It will simplify the introductions if you know them in advance.”

  Miss Fromm got on again. “Mr Goodwin?”

  “Still here.”

  “You should have paper and pencil.”

  “I always have. Shoot.”

  “Stop me if I go too fast. There will be twelve at table. Mr and Mrs Robilotti. Miss Celia Grantham and Mr Cecil Grantham. They are Mrs Robilotti’s son and daughter by her first husband.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Miss Helen Yarmis. Miss Ethel Varr. Miss Faith Usher. Am I going too fast?”

  I told her no.

  “Miss Rose Tuttle. Mr Paul Schuster. Mr Beverly Kent. Mr Edwin Laidlaw. Yourself. That makes twelve. Miss Varr will be on your right and Miss Tuttle will be on your left.”

  I thanked her and hung up. Now that I was booked, I wasn’t so sure I liked it. It would be interesting, but it might also be a strain on the nerves. However, I was booked, and I rang Byne at the number he had given me and told him he could stay home and gargl
e. Then I went to Wolfe’s desk and wrote on his calendar Mrs Robilotti’s name and phone number. He wants to know where to reach me when I’m out, even when we have nothing important on, in case someone yells for help and will pay for it. Then I went to the hall, turned left, and pushed through the swinging door to the kitchen. Fritz was at the big table, spreading anchovy butter on shad roes.

  “Cross me off for dinner,” I told him. “I’m doing my good deed for the year and getting it over with.”

  He stopped spreading to look at me. “That’s too bad. Veal birds in casserole. You know, with mushrooms and white wine.”

  “I’ll miss it. But there may be something edible where I’m going.”

  “Perhaps a client?”

  He was not being nosy. Fritz Brenner does not pry into other people’s private affairs, not even mine. But he has a legitimate interest in the welfare of that establishment, of the people who live in that old brownstone on West Thirty-fifth Street, and he merely wanted to know if my dinner engagement was likely to promote it. It took a lot of cash. I had to be paid. He had to be paid. Theodore Horstmann, who spent all his days and sometimes part of his nights with the ten thousand orchids up in the plant rooms, had to be paid. We all had to be fed, and with the kind of grub that Wolfe preferred and provided and Fritz prepared. Not only did the orchids have to be fed, but only that week Wolfe had bought a Coelogyne from Burma for eight hundred bucks, and that was just routine. And so on and on and on, and the only source of current income was people with problems who were able and willing to pay a detective to handle them. Fritz knew we had no case going at the moment, and he was only asking if my dinner date might lead to one.

  I shook my head. “Nope not a client.” I got on a stool. “A former client, Mrs Robert Robilotti-someone swiped a million dollars’ worth of rings and bracelets from her a couple of years ago and we got them back-and I need some advice. You may not be as great an expert on women as you are on food, but you have had your dealings, as I well know, and I would appreciate some suggestions on how I act this evening.”

  He snorted. “Act with women? You? Ha! With your thousand triumphs! Advice from me? Archie, that is upside down!”

  “Thanks for the plug, but these women are special.” With a fingertip I wiped up a speck of anchovy butter that had dropped on the table and licked it off. “Here’s the problem. This Mrs Robilotti’s first husband was Albert Grantham, who spent the last ten years of his life doing things with part of the three or four hundred million dollars he had inherited-things to improve the world, including the people in it. I assume you will admit that a girl who has a baby but no husband needs improving.”

  Fritz pursed his lips. “First I would have to see the girl and the baby. They might be charming.”

  “It’s not a question of charm, or at least it wasn’t with Grantham. His dealing with the problem of unmarried mothers wasn’t one of his really big operations, but he took a personal interest in it. He would rarely let his name be attached to any of his projects, but he did with that one. The place he built for it up in Dutchess County was called Grantham House and still is. What’s that you’re putting in?”

  “Marjoram. I’m trying it.”

  “Don’t tell him and see if he spots it. When the improved mothers were graduated from Grantham House they were financed until they got jobs or husbands, and even then they were not forgotten. One way of keeping in touch was started by Grantham himself a few years before he died. Each year on his birthday he had his wife invite four of them to dinner at his home on Fifth Avenue, and also invite, for their dinner partners, four young men. Since his death, five years ago, his wife has kept it up. She says she owes it to his memory-though she is now married to a specimen named Robert Robilotti who has never been in the improving business. Today is Grantham’s birthday, and that’s where I’m going for dinner. I am one of the four young men.”

  “No!” Fritz said.

  “Why no?”

  “You, Archie?”

  “Why not me?”

  “It will ruin everything. They will all be back at Grantham House in less than a year.”

  “No,” I said sternly. “I appreciate the compliment, but this is a serious matter and I need advice. Consider: these girls are mothers, but they are improved mothers. They are supposed to be trying to get a toehold on life. Say they are. Inviting them to dinner at that goddam palace, with four young men from the circle that woman moves in as table partners, whom they have never seen before and don’t expect ever to see again, is one hell of a note. Okay, I can’t help that; I can’t improve Grantham, since he’s dead, and I would hate to undertake to improve Mrs Robilotti, dead or alive, but I have my personal problem: how do I act? I would welcome suggestions.”

  Fritz cocked his head. “Why do you go?”

  “Because a man I know asked me to. That’s another question, why he picked me, but skip it. I guess I agreed to go because I thought it would be fun to watch, but now I realize it may be pretty damn grim. However, I’m stuck, and what’s my programme? I can try to make it gay, or clown it, or get one of them talking about the baby, or get lit and the hell with it, or shall I stand up and make a speech about famous mothers like Venus and Mrs Shakespeare and that Roman woman who had twins?”

  “Not that. No.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know. Anyway, you are just talking.”

  “All right, you talk a while.”

  He aimed a knife at me. “I know you so well, Archie. As well as you know me, maybe. This is just talk and I enjoy it. You need no suggestions. Programme?” He slashed at it with the knife. “Ha! You will go there and look at them and see, and act as you feel. You always do. If it is too painful you will leave. If one of the girls is enchanting and the men surround her, you will get her aside and tomorrow you will take her to lunch. If you are bored you will eat too much, no matter what the food is like. If you are offended-There’s the elevator!” He looked at the clock. “My God, it’s eleven! The larding!” He headed for the refrigerator.

  I didn’t jump. Wolfe likes to find me in the office when he comes down, and if I’m not there it stirs his blood a little, which is good for him, so I waited until the elevator door opened and his footsteps came down the hall and on in. I have never understood why he doesn’t make more noise walking. You would think that his feet, which are no bigger than mine, would make quite a business of getting along under his seventh of a ton, but they don’t. It might be someone half his weight. I gave him enough time to cross to his desk and get himself settled in his custom-built oversize chair, and then went. As I entered he grunted a good morning at me and I returned it. Our good mornings usually come then, since Fritz takes his breakfast to his room on a tray, and he spends the two hours from nine to eleven, every day including Sunday, up in the plant rooms with Theodore and the orchids.

  When I was at my desk I announced, “I didn’t deposit the cheques that came yesterday on account of the weather. It may let up before three.”

  He was glancing through the mail I had put on his desk. “Get Dr Vollmer,” he commanded.

  The idea of that was that if I let a little thing like a cold gusty March rain keep me from getting cheques to the bank I must be sick. So I coughed. Then I sneezed. “Nothing doing,” I said firmly. “He might put me to bed, and in all this bustle and hustle that wouldn’t do. It would be too much for you.”

  He shot me a glance, nodded to show that he was on but was dropping it, and reached for his desk calendar. That always came second, after the glance at the mail.

  “What is this phone number?” he demanded. “Mrs Robilotti? That woman?”

  “Yes, sir. The one who didn’t want to pay you twenty grand but did.”

  “What does she want now?”

  “Me. That’s where you can get me this evening from seven o’clock on.”

  “Mr Hewitt is coming this evening to bring a Dendrobium and look at the Renanthera. You said you would be here.”

&nb
sp; “I know, I expected to, but this is an emergency. She phoned me this morning.”

  “I didn’t know she was cultivating you, or you her.”

  “We’re not. I haven’t seen her or heard her since she paid that bill. This is special. You may remember that when she hired you and we were discussing her, I mentioned a piece about her I had read in a magazine, about the dinner party she throws every year on her first husband’s birthday. With four girls and four men as guests? The girls are unmarried mothers who are being rehabil-”

  “I remember, yes. Buffoonery. A burlesque of hospitality. Do you mean you are abetting it?”

  “I wouldn’t say abetting it. A man I know named Austin Byne phoned and asked me to fill in for him because he’s in bed with a cold and can’t go. Anyhow, it will give me a fresh outlook. It will harden my nerves. It will broaden my mind.”

  His eyes had narrowed. “Archie.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do I ever intrude in your private affairs?”

  “Yes, sir. Frequently. But you think you don’t, so go right ahead.”

  “I am not intruding. If it is your whim to lend yourself to that outlandish performance, very well. I merely suggest that you demean yourself. Those creatures are summoned there for an obvious purpose. It is hoped that they, or at least one of them, will meet a man who will be moved to pursue the acquaintance and who will end by legitimating, if not the infant already in being, the future produce of the womb. Therefore your attendance there will be an imposture, and you know it. I begin to doubt if you will ever let a woman plant her foot on your neck, but if you do she will have qualities that would make it impossible for her to share the fate of those forlorn creatures. You will be perpetrating a fraud.”

  I was shaking my head. “No, sir. You’ve got it wrong. I let you finish just to hear it. If that were the purpose, giving the girls a chance to meet prospects, I would say hooray for Mrs Robilotti, and I wouldn’t go. But that’s the hell of it, that’s not it at all. The men are from her own social circle, the kind that wear black ties six nights a week, and there’s not a chance. The idea is that it will buck the girls up, be good for their morale, to spend an evening with the cream and get a taste of caviar and sit on a chair made by Congreve. Of course-”