Champagne for One

by Rex Stout

  “Go ahead.”

  “I wouldn’t if I thought you would misunderstand. You are looking for a murderer, and Celia would be quite capable of murder if she thought the occasion demanded it. The only discipline she recognizes is her own. But I can’t imagine an occasion that would have led her to kill Faith Usher. I haven’t seen her for four years.”

  “Then if she had had contact with Faith Usher you wouldn’t know about it. Least but not last, Mrs Robilotti.”

  “Well.” She smiled. “She is Mrs Robilotti.”

  I smiled back. “I agree. You certainly have known her. She was Mrs Albert Grantham. I am tempted to add something.”

  “You may.”

  “I wouldn’t if I thought you would misunderstand. I feel that if you knew anything that would indicate that Mrs Robilotti might have killed Faith Usher you would think it was your duty to tell me about it. So I can simply ask, do you?”

  “That’s rather cheeky, Mr Goodwin. But I simply answer, I do not. Ever since Mr Grantham died Mrs Robilotti has been coming here about once a month except when she was travelling, but she has never been at ease with the girls, nor they with her. Of course she came while Faith was here, but as far as I know she never spoke with her except as one of a group. So my answer to your question is no.”

  “Who picks the girls to be invited to the annual dinner on Grantham’s birthday?”

  “When Mr Grantham was alive, I did. The first few years after he died, Mrs Grantham did, on information I supplied. The last two years she has left it to Mr Byne, and he consults me.”

  “Is that so? Dinky didn’t mention that.”

  ” ‘Dinky’? “

  “Mr Byne. We call him that. I’ll ask him about it. But if you don’t mind telling me, how does he do it? Does he suggest names and ask you about them?”

  “No, I make a list, chiefly of girls who have been here in the past year, with information and comments, and he chooses from that. I make the list with care. Some of my girls would not be comfortable in those surroundings. On what basis Mr Byne makes his selections, I don’t know.”

  “I’ll ask him.” I put a hand on her desk. “And now for the main point, what I was mostly counting on if you felt like helping me. It’s very likely that the event or the situation, whatever it was, that led to Faith Usher’s death dated from before she came here. It could have happened after she left, but you wouldn’t know about that anyway. She was here nearly five months. You said you ask the girls as few questions as possible about their pasts, but they must tell you a lot, don’t they?”

  “Some of them do.”

  “Of course. And of course you keep it in confidence. But Faith is dead, and you said you’d help me if you could. She must have told you things. She may even have told you the name of the man who was responsible for her being here. Did she?”

  I asked that because I had to. Mrs Irwin was much too smart not to realize that that was the first and foremost question a detective would want answered about Faith Usher’s past, and if I hadn’t asked it she would have wondered why and might even have been bright enough to suspect that I already knew. There wasn’t much chance that she had the answer, in view of her tone and manner when she said that she had never heard of Edwin Laidlaw.

  “No,” she said. “She never said a word about him to me, and I doubt if she did to any of the girls.”

  “But she did tell you things?”

  “Not very much. If you mean facts, people she had known and things she had done, really nothing. But she talked with me a good deal, and I formed two conclusions about her-I mean about her history. No, three. One was that she had had only one sexual relationship with a man, and a brief one. Another was that she had never known her father and probably didn’t know who he was. The third was that her mother was still alive and that she hated her-no, hate is too strong a word. Faith was not a girl for hating. Perhaps the word is repugnance. I made those three conclusions, but she never stated any of them explicitly. Beyond that I know nothing about her past.”

  “Do you know her mother’s name?”

  “No. As I said, I have no facts.”

  “How did she get to Grantham House?”

  “She came here one day in March, just a year ago. She was in her seventh month. No letter or phone call, she just came. She said she had once read about Grantham House in a magazine and she remembered it. Her baby was born on May eighteenth.” She smiled. “I don’t have on my tongue the dates of all the births here, but I looked it up for the police.”

  “Is there any possibility that the baby is involved? I mean in her death? Anything or anyone connected with it or its adoption?”

  “Not the slightest. Absolutely none. I handle that. You may take my word for it.”

  “Did she ever have any visitors here?”

  “No. Not one.”

  “You say she was here five months, so she left in August. Did someone come for her?”

  “No. Usually the girls don’t stay so long after the baby comes, but Faith had rather a bad time and had to get her strength back. Actually someone did come for her-Mrs James Robbins, one of our directors, drove her to New York. Mrs Robbins had got a job for her at Berwick’s, the furniture store, and had arranged for her to share a room with another girl, Helen Yarmis. As you know, Helen was there Tuesday evening. Helen might know if anything-Yes, Dora?”

  I turned my head. The woman who had opened the door-middle-aged and a little too plump for her blue uniform-stood holding the knob. She spoke. “I’m sorry to interrupt, Doctor, but Katherine may be going to rush things a bit. Four times since nine o’clock, and the last one was only twenty minutes.”

  Mrs Irwin was out of her chair and moving. By the time she reached me I was up too, to take the hand she offered.

  “It may be only a prelude,” she said, “but I’d better go and see. I repeat, Mr Goodwin, I wish you success, in spite of what success would mean. I don’t envy you your job, but I wish you success. You’ll forgive me for rushing off.”

  I told her I would, and I could have added that I’d rather have my job than hers, or Katherine’s either. As I got my coat from a chair and put it on I figured that if she had been there fifteen years and had averaged one a week Katherine’s would be the 780th, or even at two a month it would be the 360th… On my way out to the car I had a worry. If I met the girls on their way back the manoeuvre would have to be repeated with me headed downhill and them up, and I didn’t like the idea of them rubbing their fronts along the side of the car again, with the door handles. But luckily, as I started the engine, here they came, straggling from the tunnel of the driveway into the cleared space. Their faces were even pinker and they were puffing. One of them sang out, “Oh, are you going?” and another one called, “Why don’t you stay for lunch?” I told them some other time. I was glad I had turned the car around on arrival. I had an impulse to tell them Katherine was tuning up for her big act to see how they would take it, but decided it wouldn’t be tactful, and when they had cleared the way I fed gas and rolled. The only one who didn’t tell me good-bye was out of breath.

  Chapter Eight

  When we have company in the office I like to be there when they arrive, even if the matter being discussed isn’t very important or lucrative, but that time I missed it by five minutes. When I got there at five past six that afternoon Wolfe was behind his desk, Orrie Gather was in my chair, and Helen Yarmis, Ethel Varr, and Rose Tuttle were there in three of the yellow chairs facing Wolfe. As I entered, Orrie got up and moved to the couch. He has not entirely given up the idea that some day my desk and chair will be his for good, and he liked to practise sitting there when I am not present.

  Not that it had taken me six hours to drive back from Grantham House. I had got back in time to eat my share of lunch, kept warm by Fritz, and then had given Wolfe a verbatim report of my talk with Mrs Irwin. He was sceptical of my opinion that her mind was sound and her heart was pure, since he is convinced that every woman alive has a screw loos
e somewhere, but he had to agree that she had talked to the point, she had furnished a few hints that might be useful about some of our cast of characters, and she had fed the possibility that Austin Byne might not be guileless. Further discourse with Dinky was plainly indicated. I dialled his number and got no answer, and, since he might be giving his phone a recess, I took a walk through the sunshine, first to the bank to deposit Laidlaw’s cheque and then down to 87 Bowdoin Street.

  Pushing Byne’s button in the vestibule got no response. I had suggested to Wolfe that I might take along an assortment of keys so that if Byne wasn’t home I could go on in and pass the time by looking around, but Wolfe had vetoed it, saying that Byne had not yet aroused our interest quite to that point. So I spent a long hour and a quarter in a doorway across the street. That’s one of the most tiresome chores in the business, waiting for someone to show when you have no idea how long it will be and you haven’t much more idea whether he has anything that will help.

  It was twelve minutes past five when a taxi rolled to a stop at the curb in front of 87 and Byne climbed out. When he turned after paying the hackie, I was there.

  “We must share a beam,” I told him. “I feel a desire to see you, and come, and here you are.”

  Something had happened to the brotherhood of man. His eye was cold. “What the hell-” he began, and stopped. “Not here,” he said. “Come on up.”

  Even his manners were affected. He entered the elevator ahead of me, and upstairs, though he let me precede him into the apartment, I had to deal with my coat and hat unaided. Inside, in the room that would require only minor changes, my fanny was barely touching the chair seat when he demanded, “What’s this crap about murder?”

  “That word ‘crap’ bothers me,” I said. “The way we used it when I was a boy out in Ohio, we knew exactly what it meant. But I looked it up in the dictionary once, and there’s no-”

  “Nuts.” He sat. “My aunt says that you’re saying that Faith Usher was murdered, and that on account of you the police won’t accept the fact that it was suicide. You know damn well it was suicide. What are you trying to pull?”

  “No pull.” I clasped my hands behind my head, showing it was just a pair of pals chatting free and easy, or ought to be. “Look, Dinky. You are neither a cop nor a district attorney. I have given them a statement of what I saw and heard at that party Tuesday evening, and if you want to know why that makes them go slow on their verdict you’ll have to ask them. If I told them any lies they’ll catch up with me and I’ll be hooked. I’m not going to start an argument with you about it.”

  “What did you say in your statement?”

  I shook my head. “Get the cops to tell you. I won’t. I’ll tell you this: if my statement is all that keeps them from calling it suicide, I’m the goat. I’ll be responsible for a lot of trouble for that whole bunch, and I don’t like it but can’t help it. So I’m doing a little checking on my own. That’s why I wanted to see Mrs Irwin at Grantham House. I told you I had been offered five hundred bucks for a story on Faith Usher, and I had, but what I was really after was information on whether anyone at that party might have had any reason to kill her. For example, if someone intended to kill her at that party he had to know she would be there. So I wanted to ask Mrs Irwin how she had been picked to be invited and who had picked her.”

  I gave him a friendly grin. “And I asked her and she told me, and that was certainly no help, since it was you, and you weren’t at the party. You even faked a cold to get out of going-and by the way, I said I wouldn’t broadcast that, and I haven’t.” I thought it wouldn’t hurt to remind him that there was still a basis for brotherhood.

  “I know,” he said, “you’ve got that to shake at me. About my picking Faith Usher to be invited, I suppose Mrs Irwin told you how it was done. I know she told the police. She gave me a list of names with comments, and I merely picked four of the names. I’ve just been down at the District Attorney’s office telling them about it. As I explained to them, I had no personal knowledge of any of those girls. From Mrs Irwin’s comments I just picked the ones that seemed to be the most desirable.”

  “Did you keep the list? Have you got it?”

  “I had it, but an assistant district attorney took it. One named Mandelbaum. No doubt he’ll show it to you if you ask him.”

  I ignored the dig. “Anyway,” I said, “even if the comments showed that you stretched a point to pick Faith Usher, that wouldn’t cross any Ts, since you skipped the party. Did anyone happen to be with you when you were making the selections? Someone who said something like, ‘there’s one with a nice name, Faith Usher, a nice unusual name, why don’t you ask her?’ “

  “No one was with me. I was alone.” He pointed. “At that desk.”

  “Then that’s out.” I was disappointed. “If you don’t mind my asking, a little point occurred to me as I was driving back from Grantham House-that you were interested enough to take the trouble to pick the girls to be invited, but not enough to go to the party. You even went to a lot of trouble to stay away. That seemed a little inconsistent, but I suppose you can explain it.”

  “To you? Why should I?”

  “Well, explain it to yourself and I’ll listen.”

  “There’s nothing to explain. I picked the girls because my aunt asked me to. I did it last year too. I told you last night why I skipped the party.” He cocked his head, making the skin even tighter on his cheekbone. “What the hell are you driving at, anyhow? Do you know what I think?”

  “No, but I’d like to. Tell me.”

  He hesitated. “I don’t mean that, exactly, what I think. I mean what my aunt thinks-or I’ll put it this way, an idea she’s got in her mind. I guess she hasn’t forgotten that remark you made once that she resented. Also she feels that Wolfe overcharged her for that job he did. The idea is that if you have sold the police and the District Attorney on your murder theory, and if they make things unpleasant enough for her and her guests you and Wolfe might figure that she would be willing to make a big contribution to have it stopped. A contribution that would make you remember something that would change their minds. What do you think of that?”

  “It is an idea,” I conceded, “but it has a flaw. If I remembered something now that I didn’t put in my statement, no contribution from your aunt would replace my hide that the cops and the D.A. would peel off. Tell your aunt that I appreciate the compliment and her generous offer, but I can’t-”

  “I didn’t say she made an offer. You keep harping on your damn statement. What’s in it?”

  That was what was biting him, naturally, as it had bit Celia Grantham and Edwin Laidlaw, and probably all of them. For ten minutes he did the harping on it. He didn’t go so far as to make a cash offer, either on his own or on behalf of his aunt, but he appealed to everything from my herd instinct to my better nature. I would have let him go on as long as his breath lasted, on the chance that he might drop a word with a spark of light in it, if I hadn’t known that company was expected at the office at six o’clock and I wanted to be there when they arrived. When I left he was so frustrated he didn’t even go to the hall with me.

  I had shaved it pretty close, and that was the worst time of day for uptown traffic, so I didn’t quite make it. It was six-five when I climbed out of the taxi and headed for the stoop. If you think I was straining my nerves more than necessary, you don’t know Wolfe as I do. I have seen him get up and march out and take to his elevator merely because a woman has burst into tears or started screaming at him, and the expected company, he had told me, was three females, Helen Yarmis, Ethel Varr, and Rose Tuttle, and there was no telling what shape they might be in after the sessions they had been having with various officers of the law.

  Therefore I was relieved when I entered the office and found that everything was peaceful, with Wolfe at his desk, the girls in a row facing him, and Orrie in my chair. As I greeted the guests Orrie moved to the couch, and when I was where I belonged Wolfe addressed me.
/>   “We have only exchanged civilities, Archie. Have you anything that should be reported?”

  “Nothing that won’t wait, no, sir. He is still afraid of a woman.”

  He went to the company. “As I was saying, ladies, I thank you for coming. You were under no obligation. Mr Gather, asking you to come, explained that Mr Goodwin’s opinion, expressed in your hearing Tuesday evening, that Faith Usher was murdered, has produced some complications that are of concern to me, and that I wished to consult with you. Mr Goodwin still believes-”

  “I told him,” Rose Tuttle blurted, “that Faith might take the poison right there, and he said he would see that nothing happened, but it did.” Her blue eyes and round face weren’t as cheerful as they had been at the party, in fact they weren’t cheerful at all, but her curves were all in place and her pony tail made its jaunty arc.

  Wolfe nodded. “He has told me of that. But he thinks that what happened was not what you feared. He still believes that someone else poisoned Miss Usher’s champagne. Do you disagree with him, Miss Tuttle?”

  “I don’t know. I thought she might do it, but I didn’t see her. I’ve answered so many questions about it that now I don’t know what I think.”

  “Miss Varr?”

  You may remember my remark that I would have picked Ethel Varr if I had been shopping. Since she was facing Wolfe and I had her in profile, and she was in daylight from the windows, her face wasn’t ringing any of the changes in its repertory, but that was a good angle for it, and the way she carried her head would never change. Her lips parted and closed again before she answered.

  “I don’t think,” she said in a voice that wanted to tremble but she wouldn’t let it, “that Faith killed herself.”

  “You don’t, Miss Varr? Why?”

  “Because I was looking at her. When she took the champagne and drank it. I was standing talking with Mr Goodwin, only just then we weren’t saying anything because Rose had told me that she had told him about Faith having the poison, and he was watching Faith so I was watching her too, and I’m sure she didn’t put anything in the champagne because I would have seen her. The police have been trying to get me to say that Mr Goodwin told me to say that, but I keep telling them that he couldn’t because he hasn’t said anything to me at all. He hasn’t had a chance to.” Her head turned, changing her face, of course, as I had it straight on. “Have you, Mr Goodwin?”