Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 31

by Champagne for One

  As I said, I would have picked her for my sister because she looked as if she needed a brother, but her being the prettiest one of the bunch may have been a factor. She had perked up some too, with her face muscles relaxed, and, in spite of the fact that she got off the beat now and then, it was a pleasure to dance with her. Also now and then, when she liked something I did, there would be a flash in her eyes with the greenish flecks, and when we finished I wasn’t so sure that it was a brother she needed. Maybe cousin would be better.

  However, it appeared that she had ideas of her own, if not about brothers and cousins, at least about dancing partners. We were standing at a window when Edwin Laidlaw, the publisher, came up and bowed to her and spoke.

  “Will you dance with me, Miss Usher?”

  “No,” she said.

  “I would be honored.”

  “No.”

  Naturally I wondered why. He had only a couple of inches on her in height, and perhaps she liked them taller—me, for instance. Or perhaps it was because he hadn’t combed his hair, or if he had it didn’t look it. If it was more personal, if he had said something that offended her, it hadn’t been at the table, since they hadn’t been close enough, but of course it could have been before or after. Laidlaw turned and went, and as the band opened up I was opening my mouth to suggest that we try an encore, when Cecil Grantham came and got her. He was about my height and every hair on his head was in place, so that could have been it. I went and got Ethel Varr and said nothing whatever about her face changing. As we danced I tried not to keep twisting my head around, but I had to maintain surveillance on Faith Usher and her bag, which was still on the chair.

  When something awful did happen I hadn’t the slightest idea that it was coming. I like to think that I can count on myself for hunches, and often I can, but not that time, and what makes it worse is that I was keeping an eye on Faith Usher as I stood talking with Ethel Varr. If she was about to die, and if I am any damn good at hunches, I might at least have felt myself breathing a little faster, but not even that. I saw her escorted to a chair by Cecil Grantham, fifteen feet away from the chair the bag was on, and saw her sit, and saw him go and return in a couple of minutes with champagne and hand her hers, and saw him raise his glass and say something. I had been keeping her in the corner of my eye, not to be rude to Ethel Varr, but at that point I had both eyes straight at Faith Usher. Not that I am claiming a hunch; it was simply that Rose Tuttle’s idea of poison in champagne was fresh in my mind and I was reacting to it. So I had both eyes on Faith Usher when she took a gulp and went stiff, and shook all over, and jerked halfway to her feet, and made a noise that was part scream and part moan, and went down. Going down, she teetered on the edge of the chair for a second and then would have been on the floor if Cecil hadn’t grabbed her.

  When I got there he was trying to hold her up. I said to let her down, took her shoulders, and called out to get a doctor. As I eased her to the floor she went into convulsion, her head jerking and her legs thrashing, and when Cecil tried to catch her ankles I told him that was no good and asked if someone was getting a doctor, and someone behind me said yes. I was on my knees, trying to keep her from banging her head on the floor, but managed a glance up and around, and saw that Robilotti and Kent and the band leader were keeping the crowd back. Pretty soon the convulsions eased up, and then stopped. She had been breathing fast in heavy gasps, and when they slowed down and weakened, and I felt her neck getting stiff, I knew the paralysis was starting, and no doctor would make it in time to help.

  Cecil was yapping at me, and there were other voices, and I lifted my head to snap, “Will everybody please shut up? There’s nothing I can do or anyone else.” I saw Rose Tuttle. “Rose, go and guard that bag. Don’t touch it. Stick there and don’t take your eyes off it.” Rose moved.

  Mrs. Robilotti took a step toward me and spoke. “You are in my house, Mr. Goodwin. These people are my guests. What’s the matter with her?”

  Having smelled the breath of her gasps, I could have been specific, but that could wait until she was dead, not long, so I skipped it and asked, “Who’s getting a doctor?”

  “Celia’s phoning,” someone said.

  Staying on my knees, I turned back to her. A glance at my wristwatch showed me five past eleven. She had been on the floor six minutes. There was foam on her mouth, her eyes were glassy, and her neck was rigid. I stayed put for two minutes, looking at her, ignoring the audience participation, then reached for her hand and pressed hard on the nail of the middle finger. When I removed my fingers the nail stayed white; in thirty seconds there was no sign of returning pink.

  I stood up and addressed Robilotti. “Do I phone the police or do you?”

  “The police?” He had trouble getting it out.

  “Yes. She’s dead. I’d rather stick here, but you must phone at once.”

  “No,” Mrs. Robilotti said. “We have sent for a doctor. I give the orders here. I’ll phone the police myself when I decide it is necessary.”

  I was sore. Of course that was bad; it’s always a mistake to get sore in a tough situation, especially at yourself; but I couldn’t help it. Not more than half an hour ago I had told Rose to leave it to me, I would see that nothing awful happened, and look. I glanced around. Not a single face, male or female, looked promising. The husband and the son, the two guests of honor, the butler, the three chevaliers—none of them was going to walk over Mrs. Robilotti. Celia wasn’t there. Rose was guarding the bag. Then I saw the band leader, a guy with broad shoulders and a square jaw, standing at the entrance to the alcove with his back to it, surveying the tableau calmly, and called to him.

  “My name’s Goodwin. What’s yours?”

  “Johnson.”

  “Do you want to stay here all night, Mr. Johnson?”

  “No.”

  “Neither do I. I think this woman was murdered, and if the police do too you know what that means, so the sooner they get here the better. I’m a licensed private detective and I ought to stay with the body. There’s a phone on a stand in the reception hall. The number is Spring seven-three-one-hundred.”

  “Right.” He headed for the arch. When Mrs. Robilotti commanded him to halt and moved to head him off he just side-stepped her and went on, not bothering to argue, and she called to her men, “Robbie! Cecil! Stop him!”

  When they failed to react she wheeled to me. “Leave my house!”

  “I would love to,” I told her. “If I did, the cops would soon bring me back. Nobody is going to leave your house for a while.”

  Robilotti was there, taking her arm. “It’s no use, Louise. It’s horrible, but it’s no use. Come and sit down.” He looked at me. “Why do you think she was murdered? Why do you say that?”

  Paul Schuster, the promising young lawyer, spoke up. “I was going to ask that, Goodwin. She had a bottle of poison in her bag.”

  “How do you know she did?”

  “One of the guests told me. Miss Varr.”

  “One of them told me too. That’s why I asked Miss Tuttle to guard the bag. I still think she was murdered, but I’ll save my reason for the police. You people might—”

  Celia Grantham came running in, calling, “How is she?” and came on, stopping beside me, looking down at Faith Usher. “My God,” she whispered, and seized my arm and demanded, “Why don’t you do something?” She looked down again, her mouth hanging open, and I put my hands on her shoulders and turned her around. “Thanks,” she said. “My God, she was so pretty. Is she dead?”

  “Yes. Did you get a doctor?”

  “Yes, he’s coming. I couldn’t get ours. I got—What good is a doctor if she’s dead?”

  “Nobody is dead until a doctor says so. It’s a law.” Some of the others were jabbering, and I turned and raised my voice. “You people might as well rest your legs and there are plenty of chairs, but stay away from the one the bag is on. If you want to leave the room I can’t stop you, but I advise you not to. The police might misunderstand it
, and you’d only have more questions to answer.” A buzzer sounded and Hackett was going, but I stopped him. “No, Hackett, you’d better stay, you’re one of us now. Mr. Johnson will let them in.”

  He was doing so. There was no sound of the door opening because doors on mansions do not make noises, but there were voices in the reception hall, and everybody turned to face the arch. In they came, a pair, two precinct men in uniform. They marched in and stopped, and one of them asked, “Mr. Robert Robilotti?”

  “I’m Robert Robilotti,” he said.

  “This your house? We got—”

  “No,” Mrs. Robilotti said. “It’s my house.”

  Chapter 4

  When I mounted the seven steps of the stoop of the old brownstone at twelve minutes after seven Wednesday morning and let myself in, I was so pooped that I was going to drop my topcoat and hat on the hall bench, but breeding told, and I put the coat on a hanger and the hat on a shelf and went to the kitchen.

  Fritz, at the refrigerator, turned and actually left the refrigerator door open to stare at me.

  “Behold!” he said. He had told me once that he had got that out of his French-English dictionary, many years ago, as a translation of voilà.

  “I want,” I said, “a quart of orange juice, a pound of sausage, six eggs, twenty griddle cakes, and a gallon of coffee.”

  “No doughnuts with honey?”

  “Yes. I forgot to mention them.” I dropped on to the chair I occupy at breakfast, groaning. “Speaking of honey, if you want to make a friend who will never fail you, you might employ the eggs in a hedgehog omelet, with plenty—No. It would take too long. Just fry ’em.”

  “I never fry eggs.” He was stirring a bowl of batter. “You have had a night?”

  “I have. A murder with all the trimmings.”

  “Ah! Terrible! A client, then?”

  I do not pretend to understand Fritz’s attitude toward murder. He deplores it. To him the idea of one human being killing another is insupportable; he has told me so, and he meant it. But he never has the slightest interest in the details, not even who the victim was, or the murderer, and if I try to tell him about any of the fine points it just bores him. Beyond the bare fact that again a human being has done something insupportable, the only question he wants answered is whether we have a client.

  “No client,” I told him.

  “There may be one, if you were there. Have you had nothing to eat?”

  “No. Three hours ago they offered to get me a sandwich at the District Attorney’s office, but my stomach said no. It preferred to wait for something that would stay down.” He handed me a glass of orange juice. “Many, many thanks. That sausage smells marvelous.”

  He didn’t like to talk or listen when he was actually cooking, even something as simple as broiling sausage, so I picked up the Times, there on my table as usual, and gave it a look. A murder has to be more than run-of-the-mill to make the front page of the Times, but this one certainly qualified, having occurred at the famous unmarried-mothers party at the home of Mrs. Robert Robilotti, and it was there, with a three-column lead on the bottom half of the page, carried over. But the account didn’t amount to much, since it had happened so late, and there were no pictures, not even of me. That settled, I propped the paper on the reading rack and tackled a sausage and griddle cake.

  I was arranging two poached eggs on the fourth cake when the house phone buzzed, and I reached for it and said good morning and had Wolfe’s voice.

  “So you’re here. When did you get home?”

  “Half an hour ago. I’m eating breakfast. I suppose it was on the seven-thirty newscast.”

  “Yes. I just heard it. As you know, I dislike the word ‘newscast.’ Must you use it?”

  “Correction. Make it the seven-thirty radio news broadcast. I don’t feel like arguing, and my cake is getting cold.”

  “You will come up when you have finished.”

  I said I would. When I had cradled the phone Fritz asked if he was in humor, and I said I didn’t know and didn’t give a damn. I was still sore at myself.

  I took my time with the meal, treating myself to three cups of coffee instead of the usual two, and was taking the last swallow when Fritz returned from taking up the breakfast tray. I put the cup down, got up, had a stretch and a yawn, went to the hall, mounted the flight of stairs in no hurry, turned left, tapped on a door, and was told to come in.

  Entering, I blinked. The morning sun was streaking in and glancing off the vast expanse of Wolfe’s yellow pajamas. He was seated at a table by a window, barefooted, working on a bowl of fresh figs with cream. When I was listing the cash requirements of the establishment I might have mentioned that fresh figs in March, by air from Chile, are not hay.

  He gave me a look. “You are disheveled,” he stated.

  “Yes, sir. Also disgruntled. Also disslumbered. Did the broadcast say she was murdered?”

  “No. That she died of poison and the police are investigating. Your name was not mentioned. Are you involved?”

  “Up to my chin. I had been told by a friend of hers that she had a bottle of cyanide in her bag, and I was keeping an eye on her. We were together in the drawing room, dancing, all twelve of us, not counting the butler and the band, when a man brought her a glass of champagne, and she took a gulp, and in eight minutes she was dead. It was cyanide, that’s established, and the way it works it had to be in the champagne, but she didn’t put it there. I was watching her, and I’m the one that says she didn’t. Most of the others, maybe all of them, would like to have it that she did. Mrs. Robilotti would like to choke me, and some of the others would be glad to lend a hand. A suicide at her party would be bad enough, but a homicide is murder. So I’m involved.”

  He swallowed a bite of fig. “You are indeed. I suppose you considered whether it would be well to reserve your conclusion.”

  I appreciated that—his not questioning my eyesight or my faculty of attention. It was a real tribute, and the way I felt, I needed one. I said, “Sure I considered it. But I had to include that I had been told she had cyanide in her bag, since the girl who told me would certainly include it, and Cramer and Stebbins and Rowcliff would know damn well that in that case I would have had my eyes open, so I had no choice. I couldn’t tell them yes, I was watching her and the bag, and yes, I was looking at her when Grantham took her the champagne and she drank it, and yes, she might have put something in the champagne before she drank when I was absolutely certain she hadn’t.”

  “No,” he agreed. He had finished the figs and taken one of the ramekins of shirred eggs with sausage from the warmer. “Then you’re in for it. I take it that we expect no profitable engagement.”

  “We do not. God knows, not from Mrs. Robilotti.”

  “Very well.” He put a muffin in the toaster. “You may remember my remarks yesterday.”

  “I do. You said I would demean myself. You did not say I would get involved in an unprofitable homicide. I’ll deposit the checks this morning.”

  He said I should go to bed, and I said if I did it would take a guided missile to get me up again.

  After a shower and shave and tooth brush, and clean shirt and socks, and a walk to the bank and back, I began to think I might last the day out. I had three reasons for making the trip to the bank: first, people die, and if the signer of a check dies before the check reaches his bank the bank won’t pay it; second, I wanted air; and third, I had been told at the District Attorney’s office to keep myself constantly available, and I wanted to uphold my constitutional freedom of movement. However, the issue wasn’t raised, for when I returned Fritz told me that the only phone call had been from Lon Cohen of the Gazette.

  Lon has done us various favors over the years, and besides, I like him, so I gave him a ring. What he wanted was an eye-witness story of the last hours of Faith Usher, and I told him I’d think it over and let him know. His offer was five hundred bucks, which would have been not for Nero Wolfe but for me, since my presenc
e at the party had been strictly personal, and of course he pressed—journalists always press—but I stalled him. The bait was attractive, five C’s and my picture in the paper, but I would have to include the climax, and if I reported that exactly as it happened, letting the world know that I was the one obstacle to calling it suicide, I would have everybody on my neck from the District Attorney to the butler. I was regretfully deciding that I would have to pass when the phone rang, and I answered it and had Celia Grantham’s voice. She wanted to know if I was alone. I told her yes but I wouldn’t be in six minutes, when Wolfe would descend from the plant rooms.

  “It won’t take that long.” Her voice was croaky, but not necessarily from drink. Like all the rest of them, including me, she had done a lot of talking in the past twelve hours. “Not if you’ll answer a question. Will you?”

  “Ask it.”

  “Something you said last night when I wasn’t there—when I was phoning for a doctor. My mother says that you said you thought Faith Usher was murdered. Did you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you say it? That’s the question.”

  “Because I thought it.”

  “Please don’t be smart, Archie. Why did you think it?”

  “Because I had to. I was forced to by circumstances. If you think I’m dodging, I am. I would like to oblige a girl who dances as well as you do, but I’m not going to answer your question—not now. I’m sorry, but nothing doing.”

  “Do you still think she was murdered?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why?”

  I don’t hang up on people. I thought I might have to that time, but she finally gave up, just as Wolfe’s elevator jolted to a stop at the bottom. He entered, crossed to his chair behind his desk, got his bulk arranged in it to his satisfaction, glanced through the mail, looked at his calendar, and leaned back to read a three-page letter from an orchid-hunter in New Guinea. He was on the third page when the doorbell rang. I got up and stepped to the hall, saw, through the one-way glass panel of the front door, a burly frame and a round red face, and went and opened the door.