Champagne for One

by Rex Stout

  “But good God! They know about-about me!”

  “They know no more than they knew before. They get a dozen accusatory unsigned letters every day, and have learned that the charges in most of them are groundless. As for your refusal to answer questions, a man of your standing might be expected to take that position until he got legal advice. It’s a neat situation, very neat. They will of course make every effort to find confirmation of that note, but it is a reasonable assumption that no one can supply it except the person who sent the note, and if he dares to do so we’ll have him. We’ll challenge him, but we’ll have him.” He glanced up at the wall clock. “However, we shall not merely twiddle our thumbs and wait for that. I have thirty minutes. You told me Wednesday morning that no one on earth knew of your dalliance with Miss Usher; now we know you were wrong. We must review every moment you spent in her company when you might have been seen or heard. When I leave, at four o’clock, Mr Goodwin will continue with you. Start with the day she first attracted your notice, when she waited on you at Cordoni’s. Was anyone you knew present?”

  When Wolfe undertakes that sort of thing, getting someone to recall every detail of a past experience, he is worse than a housewife bent on finding a speck of dust that the maid overlooked. Once I sat for eight straight hours, from nine in the evening until daylight came, while he took a chauffeur over every second of a drive, made six months before, to New Haven and back. This time he wasn’t quite that fussy, but he did no skipping. When four o’clock came, time for him to go up and play with the orchids, he had covered the episode at Cordoni’s, two dinners, one at the Woodbine in Westchester and one at Henke’s on Long Island, and a lunch at Gaydo’s on Sixty-ninth Street.

  I carried on for more than an hour, following Wolfe’s modus operandi more or less, but my pulse wasn’t pounding from the thrill of it. It seemed to me that it could have been handled just as well by putting one question: “Did you at any time, anywhere, when she was with you, including Canada, see or hear anyone who knew you?” and then make sure there were no gaps in his memory. As for chances that they had been seen but he hadn’t known it, there had been plenty. Aside from restaurants, he had had her in his car, in midtown, in daylight, seven times. The morning they left for Canada he had parked his car, with her in it, in front of his club, while he went in to leave a message for somebody.

  But I carried on, and we were working on the third day in Canada, somewhere in Quebec, when the doorbell rang and I went to the hall for a look through the one-way glass and saw Inspector Cramer of Homicide.

  I wasn’t much surprised, since I knew there had been a pointer for them if they were interested enough; and just as Laidlaw’s subconscious had made his decision in advance, mine had made mine. I went to the rack and got Laidlaw’s hat and coat, stepped back into the office, and told the client, “Inspector Cramer is here looking for you. This way out. Come on, move-”

  “But how did-”

  “No matter how.” The doorbell rang. “Damn it, move!”

  He came, and followed me to the kitchen. Fritz was at the big table, doing something to a duck. I told him, “Mr Laidlaw wants to leave the back way in a hurry, and I haven’t time because Cramer wants in. Show him quick, and you haven’t seen him.”

  Fritz headed for the back door, which opens on our private enclosed garden if you want to call it that, whose fence has a gate into the passage between buildings which leads to Thirty-fourth Street. As the door closed behind them and I turned, the doorbell rang. I went to the front, not in a hurry, put the chain bolt on, opened the door to the two-inch crack the chain allowed, and spoke through it politely.

  “I suppose you want me? Since you know Mr Wolfe won’t be available until six o’clock.”

  “Open up, Goodwin.”

  “Under conditions. You know damn well what my orders are: no callers admitted between four and six unless it’s just for me.”

  “I know. Open up.”

  I took that for a commitment, and he knew I did. Also it was conceivable that some character-Sergeant Stebbins, for instance-was on his way with a search warrant, and if so it would take the edge off to admit Cramer without one. So I said, “Okay, if it’s me you want,” removed the bolt, and swung the door wide; and he stepped in, marched down the hall, and entered the office.

  I shut the door and went to join him, but by the time I arrived he wasn’t there. The connecting door to the front room was open, and in a moment he came through and barked at me, “Where’s Laidlaw?”

  I was hurt. “I thought you wanted me. If I had-”

  “Where’s Laidlaw?”

  “Search me. There’s lots of Laidlaws, but I haven’t got one. If you mean-”

  He made for the door to the hall, passing within arm’s length of me en route.

  The rules for dealing with officers of the law are contradictory. Whether you may restrain them by force or not depends. It was okay to restrain Cramer from entering the house by the force of the chain bolt. It would have been okay to restrain him from going upstairs if there had been a locked door there and I had refused to open it, but I couldn’t restrain him by standing on the first step and not letting him by, no matter how careful I was not to hurt him. That may make sense to lawyers, but not to me.

  But that’s the rule, and it didn’t matter that he had said he knew our rules before I let him in. So when he crossed the hall to the stairs I didn’t waste my breath to yell at him; I saved it for climbing the three flights, which I did, right behind him. Since he was proving that in a pinch he had no honour and no manners, it would have been no surprise if he had turned left at the first landing to invade Wolfe’s room, or right at the second landing to invade mine, but he kept going to the top, and on in to the vestibule.

  I don’t know whether he is off orchids because Wolfe is on them, or is just colour blind, but on the few occasions that I have seen him in the plant rooms he has never shown the slightest sign that he realizes that the benches are occupied. Of course in that house his mind is always occupied or he wouldn’t be there, and that could account for it. That day, in the cool room, long panicles of Odontoglossums, yellow, rose, white with spots, crowded the aisle on both sides; in the tropical room, Miltonia hybrids and Phalaenopsis splashed pinks and greens and browns clear to the glass above; and in the intermediate room the Cattleyas were grandstanding all over the place as always. Cramer might have been edging his way between rows of dried-up cornstalks.

  The door from the intermediate room to the potting room was closed as usual. When Cramer opened it and I followed him in, I didn’t stop to shut it but circled around him and raised my voice to announce, “He said he came to see me. When I let him in he dashed past me to the office and then to the front room and started yapping, ‘Where’s Laidlaw?’ and when I told him I had no Laidlaw he dashed past me again for the stairs. Apparently he has such a craving for someone named Laidlaw that his morals are shot.”

  Theodore Horstmann, at the sink washing pots, had twisted around for a look, but before I finished was twisted back again, washing pots. Wolfe, at the potting bench inspecting seedlings, had turned full around to glare. He had started the glare at me, but by the time I ended had transferred it to Cramer. “Are you demented?” he inquired icily.

  Cramer stood in the middle of the room, returning the glare. “Some day,” he said, and stopped.

  “Some day what? You will recover your senses?”

  Cramer advanced two paces. “So you’re horning in again,” he said. “Goodwin turns a suicide into a murder, and here you are. Yesterday you had those girls here. This morning you had those men here. This afternoon Laidlaw is called downtown to show him something which he refuses to discuss, and when he leaves he heads for you. So I know he has been here. So I come-”

  “If you weren’t an inspector,” I cut in, “I’d say that’s a lie. Since you are, make it a fib. You do not know he has been here.”

  “I know he hopped a taxi and gave the driver this address, and whe
n he saw he was being followed he went to a booth and phoned, and took another taxi to a place that runs through the block, and left by the other street. Where would I suppose he went?”

  “Correction. You suppose he has been here.”

  “All right, I do.” He took another step, towards Wolfe. “Have you seen Edwin Laidlaw in the last three hours?”

  “This is quite beyond belief,” Wolfe declared. “You know how rigidly I maintain my personal schedule. You know that I resent any attempt to interfere with these two hours of relaxation. But you get into my house by duplicity and then come charging up here to ask me a question to which you have no right to an answer. So you don’t get one. Indeed, in these circumstances, I doubt if you could put a question about anything whatever that I would answer.” He turned, giving us the broad expanse of his rear, and picked up a seedling.

  “I guess,” I told Cramer sympathetically, “your best bet would be to get a search warrant and send a gang to look for evidence, like cigarette ashes from the kind he smokes. I know where it hurts. You’ve never forgotten the day you did come with a warrant and a crew to look for a woman named Clara Fox and searched the whole house, including here, and didn’t find her, and later you learned she had been in this room in a packing case, covered with osmundine that Wolfe was spraying water on. So you thought if you rushed up before I could give the alarm you’d find Laidlaw here, and now that he isn’t you’re stuck. You can’t very well demand to know why Laidlaw rushed here to discuss something with Wolfe that he wouldn’t discuss downtown. You ought to take your coat off when you’re in the house or you’ll catch cold when you leave. I’m just talking to be sociable while you collect yourself. Of course Laidlaw was here this morning with the others, but apparently you know that. Whoever told you should-”

  He turned and was going. I followed.

  Chapter Eleven

  At five minutes past six Saul Panzer phoned. That was routine; when one or more of them are out on a chore they call at noon, and again shortly after six, to report progress or lack of it and to learn if there are new instructions. He said he was talking from a booth in a bar and grill on Broadway near Eighty-sixth Street. Wolfe, who had just come down from the plant rooms, did him the honour of reaching for the phone on his desk to listen in.

  “So far,” Saul reported, “we’re only scouting. Marjorie Betz lives with Mrs Elaine Usher at the address on Eighty-seventh Street. Mrs Usher is the tenant. I got in to see Miss Betz by one of the standard lines, and got nowhere. Mrs Usher left Wednesday night, and she doesn’t know where she is or when she’ll be back. We have seen two elevator men, the janitor, five neighbours, fourteen people in local shops and stores, and a hackie Mrs Usher patronizes, and Orrie is now after the maid, who left at five-thirty. Do you want Mrs Usher’s description?”

  Wolfe said no and I said yes simultaneously. “Very well,” Wolfe said, “oblige him.”

  “Around forty. We got as low as thirty-three and as high as forty-five. Five feet six, hundred and twenty pounds, blue eyes set close, oval face, takes good care of good skin, hair was light brown two years ago, now blonde, wears it loose, medium cut. Dresses well but a little flashy. Gets up around noon. Hates to tip. I think that’s fairly accurate, but this is a guess with nothing specific, that she has no job but is never short of money, and she likes men. She has lived in that apartment for eight years. Nobody ever saw a husband. Six of them knew the daughter, Faith, and liked her, but it has been four years since they last saw her and Mrs Usher never mentions her.”

  Wolfe grunted. “Surely that will do.”

  “Yes, sir. Do we proceed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. I’ll wait to see if Orrie gets anywhere with the maid, and if not I have a couple of ideas. Miss Betz may go out this evening, and the lock on the apartment door is only a Wyatt.”

  “The hackie she patronizes,” I said. “She didn’t patronize him Wednesday night?”

  “According to him, no. Fred found him. I haven’t seen him. Fred thinks he got it straight.”

  “You know,” I said, “you say only a Wyatt, but you need more than a paper clip for a Wyatt. I could run up there with an assortment, and we could go into conference-”

  “No,” Wolfe said firmly. “You’re needed here.”

  For what, he didn’t say. After we hung up all he did was ask how I had disposed of Laidlaw and then ask for a report of the hour and a quarter I had spent with him, and I could have covered that in one sentence just by saying it had been a washout. But he kept pecking at it until dinner time. I knew what the idea was, and he knew I knew. It was simply that if I had gone to help Saul with an illegal entry into Elaine Usher’s apartment there was a chance, say one in a million, that I wouldn’t be there to answer the phone in the morning.

  But back in the office after dinner he decided it was about time he exerted himself a little, possibly because he saw my expression when he picked up his book as soon as Fritz had come for the coffee service.

  He lowered the book. “Confound it,” he said, “I wait to see Mrs Usher not merely because her daughter said she hated her. There is also the fact that she has disappeared.”

  “Yes, sir. I didn’t say anything.”

  “You looked something. I suppose you are reflecting that we have had two faint intimations of the possible identity of the person who sent that communication to the District Attorney.”

  “I wasn’t reflecting. That’s your part. What are the two intimations?”

  “You know quite well. One, that Austin Byne told Laidlaw that he had seen Faith Usher at Grantham House. He didn’t name her, and Laidlaw did not regard his tone or manner as suggestive, but it deserves notice. Of course, you couldn’t broach it with Byne, since that would have betrayed our client’s confidence. You still can’t.”

  I nodded. “So we file it. What’s the other one?”

  “Miss Grantham. She gave Laidlaw a bizarre reason for refusing to marry him, that he didn’t dance well enough. It is true that women constantly give fantastic reasons without knowing that they are fantastic, but Miss Grantham must have known that that one was. If her real reason was merely that she didn’t care enough for him, surely she would have made a better choice for her avowed one, unless she despises him. Does she despise him?”

  “No.”

  “Then why insult him? It is an insult to decline a proposal of marriage, a man’s supreme capitulation, with flippancy. She did that six months ago, in September. It is not idle to conjecture that her real reason was that she knew of his experience with Faith Usher. Is she capable of moral revulsion?”

  “Probably, if it struck her fancy.”

  “I think you should see her. Apparently you do dance well enough. You should be able, without disclosing our engagement with Mr Laidlaw-”

  The phone rang, and I turned to get it, hoping it was Saul to say he needed some keys, but no. Saul is not a soprano. However, it was someone who wanted to see me, with no mention of keys. She just wanted me, she said, right away, and I told her to expect me in twenty minutes.

  I hung up and swivelled. “The timing,” I told Wolfe, “couldn’t have been better. Satisfactory. I suppose you arranged it with her while I was out getting Laidlaw. That was Celia Grantham. She wants to see me. Urgently. Presumably to tell me why she insulted Laidlaw when he asked her to marry him, though she didn’t say.” I arose. “Marvellous timing.”

  “Where?” Wolfe growled.

  “At her home.” I was on my way, and turned to correct it. “I mean her mother’s home. You have the number.” I went.

  Since there were at least twenty possible reasons, excluding personal ones, why Celia wanted to see me, and she had given no hint which it was, and since I would soon know anyhow, it would have been pointless to try to guess, so on the way uptown in a taxi that’s what I did. When I pushed the button in the vestibule of the Fifth Avenue mansion I had considered only half of them.

  I was wondering which I would be for Hackett, t
he hired detective or the guest, but he didn’t have to face the problem. Celia was there with him and took my coat as I shed it and handed it to him, and then fastened on my elbow and steered me to the door of a room on the right that they called the hall room, and on through it. She shut the door and turned to me.

  “Mother wants to see you,” she said.

  “Oh?” I raised a brow. “You said you did.”

  “I do, but it only occurred to me after Mother got me to decoy for her. The Police Commissioner is here, and they wanted to see you but thought you might not come, so she asked me to phone you, and I realized I wanted to see you too. They’re up in the music room, but first I want to ask you something. What is it about Edwin Laidlaw and that girl? Faith Usher.”

  That was turning the tables. Wolfe’s idea had been that I might manage, without showing any cards, to find out if she was on to our client’s secret, and here she was popping it at me and I had to play ignorant.

  “Laidlaw?” I shook my head. “Search me. Why?”

  “You don’t know about it?”

  “No. Am I supposed to?”

  “I thought you would, naturally, since it’s you that’s making all the trouble. You see, I may marry him some day. If he gets into a bad jam I’ll marry him now, since you’ve turned out to be a skunk. That’s based on inside information but is not guaranteed. Are you a skunk?”

  “I’ll think it over and let you know. What about Laidlaw and Faith Usher?”

  “That’s what I want to know. They’re asking questions of all of us, whether we have any knowledge that Edwin ever knew her. Of course he didn’t. I think they got an anonymous letter. The reason I think that, they wanted to type something on our typewriters, all four of them-no, five. Hackett has one, and Cece, and I have, and there are two in Mother’s office. Are you thwarting me again? Don’t you really know?”