The Specialty of the House

by Stanley Ellin

  ‘I’m sorry. No wine is worth a fraction of this. Especially a wine that may be dead in the bottle.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Kassoulas lightly, ‘then perhaps that’s what I’m paying for – the chance to see whether it is or not.’

  ‘If that’s your reason—’ I protested, and Kassoulas shook his head.

  ‘It isn’t. The truth is, my friend, this wine solves a difficult problem for me. A great occasion is coming soon, the fifth anniversary of my marriage, and I’ve been wondering how Madame and I could properly celebrate it. Then inspiration struck me. What better way of celebrating it than to open the Saint-Oen and discover it is still in the flush of perfect health, still in its flawless maturity? What could be more deeply moving and significant on such an occasion?’

  ‘That makes it all the worse if the wine is dead,’ I pointed out. The check was growing warm in my hand. I wanted to tear it up but couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  ‘No matter. The risk is all mine,’ said Kassoulas. ‘Of course, you’ll be there to judge the wine for yourself. I insist on that. It will be a memorable experience, no matter how it goes. A small dinner with just the four of us at the table, and the Saint-Oen as climax to the occasion.’

  ‘The piece de resistance must be an entrecote,’ breathed de Marechal. ‘Beef, of course. It will suit the wine perfectly.’

  I had somehow been pushed past the point of no return. Slowly I folded the check for the hundred thousand francs and placed it in my wallet. After all, I was in the business of selling wine for a profit.

  ‘When is this dinner to be held?’ I asked. ‘Remember that the wine must stand a few days before it’s decanted.’

  ‘Naturally, I’m allowing for that,’ said Kassoulas. ‘Today is Monday; the dinner will be held Saturday. That means more than enough time to prepare every detail perfectly. On Wednesday I’ll see that the temperature of the dining room is properly adjusted, the table set, and the bottle of Saint-Oen placed upright on it for the sediment to clear properly. The room will then be locked to avoid any mishap. By Saturday the last of the sediment should have settled completely. But I don’t plan to decant the wine. I intend to serve it directly from the bottle.’

  ‘Risky,’ I said.

  ‘Not if it’s poured with a steady hand. One like this.’ Kassoulas held out a stubby-fingered, powerful-looking hand which showed not a sign of tremor. ‘Yes, this supreme vintage deserves the honor of being poured from its own bottle, risky as that may be. Surely you now have evidence, Monsieur Drummond, that I’m a man to take any risk if it’s worthwhile to me.’

  I had good cause to remember those concluding words at a meeting I had with Sophia Kassoulas later in the week. That day she phoned early in the morning to ask if I could meet her for lunch at an hour when we might have privacy in the restaurant, and, thinking this had something to do with her own plans for the anniversary dinner, I cheerfully accepted the invitation. All the cheerfulness was washed out of me as soon as I joined her at our table in a far corner of the dimly lit, almost deserted room. She was obviously terrified.

  ‘Something is very wrong,’ I said to her. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Everything,’ she said piteously. ‘And you’re the only one I can turn to for help, Monsieur Drummond. You’ve always been so kind to me. Will you help me now?’

  ‘Gladly. If you tell me what’s wrong and what I can do about it.’

  ‘Yes, there’s no way around that. You must be told everything.’ Madame Kassoulas drew a shuddering breath. ‘It can be told very simply. I had an affair with Max de Marechal. Now Kyros has found out about it.’

  My heart sank. The last thing in the world I wanted was to get involved in anything like this.

  ‘Madame,’ I said unhappily, ‘this is a matter to be settled between you and your husband. You must see that it’s not my business at all.’

  ‘Oh, please! If you only understood—’

  ‘I don’t see what there is to understand.’

  ‘A great deal. About Kyros, about me, about my marriage. I didn’t want to marry Kyros, I didn’t want to marry anybody. But my family arranged it, so what could I do? And it’s been dreadful from the start. All I am to Kyros is a pretty little decoration for his house. He has no feeling for me. He cares more about that bottle of wine he bought from you than he does for me. Where I’m concerned, he’s like stone. But Max—’

  ‘I know,’ I said wearily. ‘You found that Max was different. Max cared very much for you. Or, at least, he told you he did.’

  ‘Yes, he told me he did,’ Madame Kassoulas said with defiance. ‘And whether he meant it or not, I needed that. A woman must have some man to tell her he cares for her or she has nothing. But it was wicked of me to put Max in danger. And now that Kyros knows about us Max is in terrible danger.’

  ‘What makes you think so? Has your husband made any threats?’

  ‘No, he hasn’t even said he knows about the affair. But he does. I can swear he does. It’s in the way he’s been behaving toward me these past few days, in the remarks he makes to me, as if he were enjoying a joke that only he understood. And it all seems to have something to do with that bottle of Saint-Oen locked up in the dining room. That’s why I came to you for help. You know about these things.’

  ‘Madame, all I know is that the Saint-Oen is being made ready for your dinner party Saturday.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what Kyros said. But the way he said it—’ Madame Kassoulas leaned toward me intently. ‘Tell me one thing. Is it possible for a bottle of wine to be poisoned without the cork being drawn? Is there any way of doing that?’

  ‘Oh, come now. Do you seriously believe for a moment that your husband intends to poison Max?’

  ‘You don’t know Kyros the way I do. You don’t know what he’s capable of.’

  ‘Even murder?’

  ‘Even murder, if he was sure he could get away with it. They tell a story in my family about how, when he was very young, he killed a man who had cheated him out of a little money. Only it was done so cleverly that the police never found out who the murderer was.’

  That was when I suddenly recalled Kassoulas’ words about taking any risk if it were worthwhile to him and felt a chill go through me. All too vividly, I had a mental picture of a hypodermic needle sliding through the cork in that bottle of Saint-Oen, of drops of deadly poison trickling into the wine. Then it struck me how wildly preposterous the picture was.

  ‘Madame,’ I said, ‘I’ll answer your question this way. Your husband does not intend to poison anyone at your dinner party unless he intends to poison us all, which I am sure he does not. Remember that I’ve also been invited to enjoy my share of the Saint-Oen.’

  ‘What if something were put into Max’s glass alone?’

  ‘It won’t be. Your husband has too much respect for Max’s palate for any such clumsy trick. If the wine is dead, Max will know it at once and won’t drink it. If it’s still good, he’d detect anything foreign in it with the first sip and not touch the rest. Anyhow, why not discuss it with Max? He’s the one most concerned.’

  ‘I did try to talk to him about it, but he only laughed at me. He said it was all in my imagination. I know why. He’s so insanely eager to try that wine that he won’t let anything stop him from doing it.’

  ‘I can appreciate his feelings about that.’ Even with my equanimity restored I was anxious to get away from this unpleasant topic. ‘And he’s right about your imagination. If you really want my advice, the best thing you can do is to behave with your husband as if nothing has happened and to steer clear of Monsieur de Marechal after this.’

  It was the only advice I could give her under the circumstances. I only hoped she wasn’t too panic-stricken to follow it. Or too infatuated with Max de Marechal.

  Knowing too much for my own comfort, I was ill at ease the evening of the party, so when I joined the company it was a relief to see that Madame Kassoulas had herself well in hand. As for Kassoulas, I could detect no change
at all in his manner toward her or de Marechal. It was convincing evidence that Madame’s guilty conscience had indeed been working overtime on her imagination and that Kassoulas knew nothing at all about her affaire. He was hardly the man to take being cuckolded with composure, and he was wholly composed. As we sat down to dinner, it was plain that his only concern was about its menu, and, above all, about the bottle of Nuits Saint-Oen 1929 standing before him.

  The bottle had been standing there three days, and everything that could be done to insure the condition of its contents had been done. The temperature of the room was moderate; it had not been allowed to vary once the bottle was brought into the room, and, as Max de Marechal assured me, he had checked this at regular intervals every day. And, I was sure, had taken time to stare rapturously at the bottle, marking off the hours until it would be opened.

  Furthermore, since the table at which our little company sat down was of a size to seat eighteen or twenty, it meant long distances between our places, but it provided room for the bottle to stand in lonely splendor clear of any careless hand that might upset it. It was noticeable that the servants waiting on us all gave it a wide berth. Joseph, the burly, hardbitten majordomo who was supervising them with a dangerous look in his eye, must have put them in fear of death if they laid a hand near it.

  Now Kassoulas had to undertake two dangerous procedures as preludes to the wine-tasting ritual. Ordinarily, a great vintage like the Nuits Saint-Oen 1929 stands until all its sediment has collected in the base of the bottle, and is then decanted. This business of transferring it from bottle to decanter not only insures that sediment and cork crumbs are left behind, but it also means that the wine is being properly aired. The older a wine, the more it needs to breathe the open air to rid itself of mustiness accumulated in the bottle.

  But Kassoulas, in his determination to honor the Saint-Oen by serving it directly from its original bottle, had imposed on himself the delicate task of uncorking it at the table so skillfully that no bits of cork would filter into the liquid. Then, after the wine had stood open until the entree was served, he would have to pour it with such control that none of the sediment in its base would roll up. It had taken three days for that sediment to settle. The least slip in uncorking the bottle or pouring from it, and it would be another three days before it was again fit to drink.

  As soon as we were at the table, Kassoulas set to work on the first task. We all watched with bated breath as he grasped the neck of the bottle firmly and centered the point of the corkscrew in the cork. Then, with the concentration of a demolitions expert defusing a live bomb, he slowly, very slowly, turned the corkscrew, bearing down so lightly that the corkscrew almost had to take hold by itself. His object was to penetrate deep enough to get a grip on the cork so that it could be drawn, yet not to pierce the cork through; it was the one sure way of keeping specks of cork from filtering into the wine.

  It takes enormous strength to draw a cork which has not been pierced through from a bottle of wine which it has sealed for decades. The bottle must be kept upright and immobile, the pull must be straight up and steady without any of the twisting and turning that will tear a cork apart. The old-fashioned corkscrew which exerts no artificial leverage is the instrument for this because it allows one to feel the exact working of the cork in the bottleneck.

  The hand Kassoulas had around the bottle clamped it so hard that his knuckles gleamed white. His shoulders hunched, the muscles of his neck grew taut. Strong as he appeared to be, it seemed impossible for him to start the cork. But he would not give way, and in the end it was the cork that gave way. Slowly and smoothly it was pulled clear of the bottle-mouth, and for the first time since the wine had been drawn from its barrel long years before, it was now free to breathe the open air.

  Kassoulas waved the cork back and forth under his nose, sampling its bouquet. He shrugged as he handed it to me.

  ‘Impossible to tell anything this way,’ he said, and of course he was right. The fumes of fine Burgundy emanating from the cork meant nothing, since even dead wine may have a good bouquet.

  De Marechal would not even bother to look at the cork. ‘Only the wine. And in an hour we’ll know its secret for better or worse. It will seem like a long hour, I’m afraid.’

  I didn’t agree with that at first. The dinner we were served was more than sufficient distraction for me. Its menu, in tribute to the Nuits Saint-Oen 1929, had been arranged the way a symphony conductor might arrange a short program of lighter composers in preparation for the playing of a Beethoven master-work. Artichoke hearts in a butter sauce, langouste in mushrooms, and, to clear the palate, a lemon ice unusually tart. Simple dishes flawlessly prepared.

  And the wines Kassoulas had selected to go with them were, I was intrigued to note, obviously chosen as settings for his diamond. A sound Chablis, a respectable Muscadet. Both were good, neither was calculated to do more than draw a small nod of approval from the connoisseur. It was Kassoulas’ way of telling us that nothing would be allowed to dim the glorious promise of that open bottle of Nuits Saint-Oen standing before us.

  Then my nerves began to get the better of me. Old as I was at the game, I found myself more and more filled with tension and as the dinner progressed I found the bottle of Saint-Oen a magnet for my eyes. It soon became an agony, waiting until the entree would be served, and the Saint-Oen poured.

  Who, I wondered, would be given the honor of testing the first few drops? Kassoulas, the host, was entitled to that honor, but as a mark of respect he could assign it to anyone he chose. I wasn’t sure whether or not I wanted to be chosen. I was braced for the worst, but I knew that being the first at the table to discover the wine was dead would be like stepping from an airplane above the clouds without a parachute. Yet, to be the first to discover that this greatest of vintages had survived the years—! Watching Max de Marechal, crimson with mounting excitement, sweating so that he had to constantly mop his brow, I suspected he was sharing my every thought.

  The entree was brought in at last, the entrecote of beef that de Marechal had suggested. Only a salver of petite pois accompanied it. The entrecote and peas were served. Then Kassoulas gestured at Joseph, and the majordomo cleared the room of the help. There must be no chance of disturbance while the wine was being poured, no possible distraction.

  When the servants were gone and the massive doors of the dining room were closed behind them, Joseph returned to the table and took up his position near Kassoulas, ready for anything that might be required of him.

  The time had come.

  Kassoulas took hold of the bottle of Nuits Saint-Oen 1929. He lifted it slowly, with infinite care, making sure not to disturb the treacherous sediment. A ruby light flickered from it as he held it at arm’s length, staring at it with brooding eyes.

  ‘Monsieur Drummond, you were right,’ he said abruptly.

  ‘I was?’ I said, taken aback. ‘About what?’

  ‘About your refusal to unlock the secret of this bottle. You once said that as long as the bottle kept its secret it was an extraordinary treasure, but that once it was opened it might prove to be nothing but another bottle of bad wine. A disaster. Worse than a disaster, a joke. That was the truth. And in the face of it I now find I haven’t the courage to learn whether or not what I am holding here is a treasure or a joke.’

  De Marechal almost writhed with impatience.

  ‘It’s too late for that!’ he protested violently. ‘The bottle is already open!’

  ‘But there’s a solution to my dilemma,’ Kassoulas said to him. ‘Now watch it. Watch it very closely.’

  His arm moved, carrying the bottle clear of the table. The bottle slowly tilted. Stupefied, I saw the wine spurt from it, pour over the polished boards of the floor. Drops of wine splattered Kassoulas’ shoes, stained the cuffs of his trousers. The puddle on the floor grew larger. Trickles of it crept out in thin red strings between the boards.

  It was an unearthly choking sound from de Marechal which tore me free
of the spell I was in. A wild cry of anguish from Sophia Kassoulas.

  ‘Max!’ she screamed. ‘Kyros, stop! For God’s sake, stop! Don’t you see what you’re doing to him?’

  She had reason to be terrified. I was terrified myself when I saw de Marechal’s condition. His face was ashen, his mouth gaped wide open, his eyes, fixed on the stream of wine relentlessly gushing out of the bottle in Kassoulas’ unwavering hand, were starting out of his head with horror.

  Sophia Kassoulas ran to his side but he feebly thrust her away and tried to struggle to his feet. His hands reached out in supplication to the fast emptying bottle of Nuits Saint-Oen 1929.

  ‘Joseph,’ Kassoulas said dispassionately, ‘see to Monsieur de Marechal. The doctor warned that he must not move during these attacks.’

  The iron grasp Joseph clamped on de Marechal’s shoulder prevented him from moving, but I saw his pallid hand fumbling into a pocket, and at last regained my wits.

  ‘In his pocket!’ I pleaded. ‘He has pills!’

  It was too late. De Marechal suddenly clutched at his chest in that familiar gesture of unbearable pain, then his entire body went limp, his head lolling back against the chair, his eyes turning up in his head to glare sightlessly at the ceiling. The last thing they must have seen was the stream of Nuits Saint-Oen 1929 become a trickle, the trickle become an ooze of sediment clotting on the floor in the middle of the vast puddle there.

  Too late to do anything for de Marechal, but Sophia Kassoulas stood swaying on her feet ready to faint. Weak-kneed myself, I helped her to her chair, saw to it that she downed the remains of the Chablis in her glass.

  The wine penetrated her stupor. She sat there breathing hard, staring at her husband until she found the strength to utter words.

  ‘You knew it would kill him,’ she whispered. ‘That’s why you bought the wine. That’s why you wasted it all.’

  ‘Enough, madame,’ Kassoulas said frigidly. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying. And you’re embarrassing our guest with this emotionalism.’ He turned to me. ‘It’s sad that our little party had to end this way, monsieur, but these things do happen. Poor Max. He invited disaster with his temperament. Now I think you had better go. The doctor must be called in to make an examination and fill out the necessary papers, and these medical matters can be distressing to witness. There’s no need for you to be put out by them. I’ll see you to the door.’