Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 31

by Champagne for One

  “Good Lord,” I said, “don’t you ever sleep?”

  “Not much,” he said, crossing the sill.

  I got the collar of his coat as he shed it. “This is an honor, since you must be calling on me. Why not invite me down—Cramer!”

  He had headed for the office. My calling him “Cramer” instead of “Inspector” was so unexpected that he stopped and about-faced. “Why,” I demanded, “don’t you ever learn? You know damn well he hates to have anyone march in on him, even you, or especially you, and you only make it harder. Isn’t it me you want?”

  “Yes, but I want him to hear it.”

  “That’s obvious, or you would have sent for me instead of coming. If you will kindly—”

  Wolfe’s bellow came out to us. “Confound it, come in here!”

  Cramer wheeled and went, and I followed. Wolfe’s only greeting was a scowl. “I cannot,” he said coldly, “read my mail in an uproar.”

  Cramer took his usual seat, the red leather chair near the end of Wolfe’s desk. “I came,” he said, “to see Goodwin, but I—”

  “I heard you in the hall. You would enlighten me? That’s why you want me present?”

  Cramer took a breath. “The day I try to enlighten you they can send me to the loony house. It’s just that I know Goodwin is your man and I want you to understand the situation. I thought the best way would be to discuss it with him with you present. Is that sensible?”

  “It may be. I’ll know when I hear the discussion.”

  Cramer aimed his sharp gray eyes at me. “I don’t intend to go all over it again, Goodwin. I’ve questioned you twice myself, and I’ve read your statement. I’m only after one point, the big point. To begin with, I’ll tell you something that is not to be repeated. There is not a thing, not a word, in what any of the others have said that rules out suicide. Not a single damn thing. And there’s a lot that makes suicide plausible, even probable. I’m saying that if it wasn’t for you suicide would be a reasonable assumption, and it seems likely, I only say likely, that that would be the final verdict. You see what that means.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I’m the fly in the soup. I don’t like it any better than you do. Flies don’t like being swamped in soup, especially when it’s hot.”

  He got a cigar from a pocket, rolled it in his palms, put it between his teeth, which were white and even, and removed it. “I’ll start at the beginning,” he said. “Your being there when it happened. I know what you say, and it’s in your statement—the phone call from Austin Byne and the one from Mrs. Robilotti. Of course that happened. When you say anything that can be checked it will always check. But did you or Wolfe help it to happen? Knowing Wolfe, and knowing you, I have got to consider the possibility that you wanted to be there, or Wolfe wanted you to, and you made arrangements. Did you?”

  I was yawning and had to finish it. “I beg your pardon. I could just say no, but let’s cover it. How and why I was there is fully explained in my statement. Nothing related to it was omitted. Mr. Wolfe thought I shouldn’t go because I would demean myself.”

  “None of the people who were there was or is Wolfe’s client?”

  “Mrs. Robilotti was a couple of years ago. The job was finished in nine days. Except for that, no.”

  His eyes went to Wolfe. “You confirm that?”

  “Yes. This is gratuitous, Mr. Cramer.”

  “With you and Goodwin it’s hard to tell what is and what isn’t.” He came back to me. “I’m going to tell you how it stands up to now. First, it was cyanide. That’s settled. Second, it was in the champagne. It was in what spilled on the floor when she dropped the glass, and anyway it acts so fast it must have been. Third, a two-ounce plastic bottle in her bag was half full of lumps of sodium cyanide. The laboratory calls them amorphous fragments; I call them lumps. Fourth, she had shown that bottle to various people and told them she wanted to kill herself; she had been doing that for more than a year.”

  He shifted in the chair. He always sat so as to have Wolfe head-on, but now he was at me. “Since the bag was on a chair fifteen feet away from her, and the bottle was in it, she couldn’t have taken a lump from it when Grantham brought her the champagne, or just before, but she could have taken it any time during the preceding hour or so and had it concealed in her handkerchief. Testing the handkerchief for traces is out because she dropped it and it fell in the spilled champagne—or rather, it’s not out but it’s no help. So that’s the set-up for suicide. Do you see holes in it?”

  I killed a yawn. “Certainly not. It’s perfect. I don’t say she mightn’t have committed suicide, I only say she didn’t. As you know, I have good eyes, and she was only twenty feet from me. When she took the champagne from Grantham with her right hand her left hand was on her lap, and she didn’t lift it. She took the glass by the stem, and when Grantham raised his glass and said something she raised hers a little higher than her mouth and then lowered it and drank. Are you by any chance hiding an ace? Does Grantham say that when he handed her the glass she dropped something in it before she took hold of it?”

  “No. He only says she might have put something in it before she drank; he doesn’t know.”

  “Well, I do. She didn’t.”

  “Yeah. You signed your statement.” He pointed the cigar at me.

  “Look, Goodwin. You admit there are no holes in the set-up for suicide; how about the set-up for murder? The bag was there on the chair in full view. Did someone walk over and pick it up and open it and take out the bottle and unscrew the cap and shake out a lump and screw the cap back on and put the bottle back in the bag and drop it on the chair and walk away? That must have taken nerve.”

  “Nuts. You’re stacking the deck. All someone had to do was get the bag—of course I started watching it—and take it to a room that could be locked on the inside—there was one handy—and get a lump and conceal it in his or her handkerchief—thank you for suggesting the handkerchief—and return the bag to the chair. That would take care, but no great nerve, since if he had any reason to think he had been seen taking the bag or returning it he wouldn’t use the lump. He might or might not have a chance to use it, anyway.” A yawn got me.

  He pointed the cigar again. “And that’s the next point, the chance to use it. The two glasses of champagne that Grantham took were poured by the butler, Hackett; he did all the pouring. One of them had been sitting on the bar for four or five minutes, and Hackett poured the other one just before Grantham came. Who was there, at the bar, during those four or five minutes? We haven’t got that completely straight yet, but apparently everybody was, or nearly everybody. You were. By your statement, and Ethel Varr agrees, you and she went there and took two glasses of champagne of the five or six that were there waiting, and then moved off and stood talking, and soon after—you say three minutes—you saw Grantham bring the two glasses to Faith Usher. So you were there. So you might have dropped cyanide in one of the glasses? No. Even granting that you are capable of poisoning somebody’s champagne, you would certainly make sure that the right one got it. You wouldn’t just drop it in one of the glasses on the bar and walk away, and that applies to all the others, except Edwin Laidlaw, Helen Yarmis, and Mr. and Mrs. Robilotti. They hadn’t walked away. They were there at the bar when Grantham came and got the two glasses. But he took two glasses. If one of those four people saw him coming and dropped the cyanide in one of the glasses, you’ve got to assume that he or she didn’t give a damn whether Grantham got it or Faith Usher got it, which is too much for me. But not for you?” He clamped his teeth on the cigar. He never lit one.

  “As you tell it,” I conceded, “I wouldn’t buy it. But I have two comments. The first one is that there is one person who did know which glass Faith Usher would get. He handed it to her.”

  “Oh? You put it on Grantham?”

  “I don’t put it on anybody. I merely say that you omitted a detail.”

  “Not an important one. If Grantham dropped the poison in at the bar before he picked
up the glasses, there were five people right there, and that did take nerve. If he dropped it in while he was crossing to Faith Usher it was quite a trick, with a glass in each hand. If he dropped it in after he handed her the glass you would have seen him. What’s your second comment?”

  “That I have not implied, in my sessions with you and the others, that I have the slightest notion who did it, or how or why. What you have just told me was mostly news to me. My attention was divided between my companion, Ethel Varr, and the bag, and Faith Usher. I didn’t know who was at the bar when Grantham came and got the champagne, or who had been there since Hackett poured the glasses that Grantham took. And I still have no notion who did it, or why or how. I only know that Faith Usher put nothing whatever in the champagne before she drank it, and therefore if it was poison in the champagne that killed her she did not commit suicide. That’s the one thing I know.”

  “And you won’t discuss it.”

  “I won’t? What are we doing?”

  “I mean you won’t discuss the possibility that you’re wrong.”

  “That, no. You wouldn’t expect me to discuss the possibility that I’m wrong in thinking you’re Inspector Cramer, you’re Willie Mays.”

  He regarded me a long moment with narrowed eyes, then moved to his normal position in the red leather chair, confronting Wolfe. “I’m going to tell you,” he said, “exactly what I think.”

  Wolfe grunted. “You often have.”

  “I know I have, but I hoped it wouldn’t come to this. I hoped Goodwin had realized that it wouldn’t do. I think I know what happened. Rose Tuttle told him that Faith Usher had a bottle of cyanide in her bag, and that she was afraid she might use it right there, and Goodwin told her to forget it, that he would see that nothing happened, and from then on he kept surveillance on both Faith Usher and the bag. That is admitted.”

  “It is stated.”

  “Okay, stated. When he sees her drink champagne and collapse and die, and smells the cyanide, what would his reaction be? You know him and so do I. You know how much he likes himself. He would be hit where it hurts. He would hate it. So, without stopping to consider, he tells them that he thinks she was murdered. When the police come, he knows that what he said will be reported, so he repeats it to them, and then he’s committed, and when Sergeant Stebbins and I arrive he repeats it to us. But to us he has to give a reason, so he has one, and a damn good one, and as long as there was a decent possibility that she was murdered we gave it full weight. But now—You heard me explain how it is. I was hoping that when he heard me and realized the situation he would see that his best course is to say that maybe he has been a little too positive. That he can’t absolutely swear that she didn’t put something in the champagne. He has had time to think it over, and he is too intelligent not to see that. That’s what I think. I hope you will agree.”

  “It’s not a question of agreement, it’s a question of fact.” Wolfe turned to me. “Archie?”

  “No, sir. Nobody likes me better than I do, but I’m not that far gone.”

  “You maintain your position?”

  “Yes. He contradicts himself. First he says I acted like a double-breasted sap and then he says I’m intelligent. He can’t have his suicide and eat me too. I stand pat.”

  Wolfe lifted his shoulders an eighth of an inch, lowered them, and turned to Cramer. “I’m afraid you’re wasting your time, Mr. Cramer. And mine.”

  I was yawning.

  Cramer’s red face was getting redder, a sure sign that he had reached the limit of something and was about to cut loose, but a miracle happened: he put on the brake in time. It’s a pleasure to see self-control win a tussle. He moved his eyes to me.

  “I’m not taking this as final, Goodwin. Think it over. Of course, we’re going on with the investigation. If we find anything at all that points to homicide we’ll follow it up. You know that. But it’s only fair to warn you. If our final definite opinion is that it was suicide, and we say so, and you give your friend Lon Cohen of the Gazette a statement for publication saying that you know it was murder, you’ll regret it. That, or anything like it. Why in hell it had to be that you were there, God only knows. Such a statement from you, as an eye-witness—”

  The doorbell rang. I arose, asked Cramer politely to excuse me, stepped to the hall, and through the one-way glass saw a recent social acquaintance, though it took me a second to recognize him because his forty-dollar fedora covered the uncombed hair. I went and opened the door, confronted him, said, “Ssshhh,” patted my lips with a forefinger, backed up, and beckoned him in. He hesitated, looking slightly startled, then crossed the threshold. I shut the door and, without stopping to relieve him of his hat and coat, opened the door to the front room, which is on the same side of the hall as the office, motioned him in, followed him, and shut the door.

  “It’s all right here,” I told him. “Soundproofed, doors and all.”

  “All right for what?” Edwin Laidlaw asked.

  “For privacy. Unless you came to see Inspector Cramer of Homicide?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I came to see you.”

  “I thought you might have, and I also thought you might prefer not to collide with Cramer. He’s in the office chatting with Mr. Wolfe, and is about ready to go, so I shunted you in here.”

  “I’m glad you did. I’ve seen all I want of policemen for a while.” He glanced around. “Can we talk here?”

  “Yes, but I must go and see Cramer off. I’ll be back soon. Have a chair.”

  I went to the door to the hall and opened it, and there was Cramer heading for the front. He didn’t even look at me, let alone speak. I thought if he could be rude I could too, so I let him get his own hat and coat and let himself out. When the door had closed behind him I went to the office and crossed to Wolfe’s desk. He spoke.

  “I will make one remark, Archie. To bedevil Mr. Cramer for a purpose is one thing; to do so merely for pastime is another.”

  “Yes, sir. I wouldn’t dream of it. You’re asking me if my position with you, privately, is the same as it was with him. The answer is yes.”

  “Very well. Then he’s in a pickle.”

  “That’s too bad. Someone else is too, apparently. Yesterday when I was invited to the party and given the names of the male guests, I wanted to know who they were and phoned Lon Cohen. One of them, Edwin Laidlaw, is a fairly important citizen for a man his age. He used to be pretty loose around town, but three years ago his father died and he inherited ten million dollars, and recently he bought a controlling interest in the Malvin Press, book publishers, and apparently he intends to settle down and—”

  “Is this of interest?”

  “It may be. He’s in the front room. He came to see me, and since my only contact with him was last night it could be of interest. I can talk with him there, but I thought I should tell you because you might possibly want to sit in—or stand in. At the hole. In case I need a witness.”

  “Pfui.”

  “Yeah, I know. I don’t want to shove, but we haven’t had a case for two weeks.”

  He was scowling at me. It wasn’t so much that he would have to leave his chair and walk to the hall and on to the alcove, and stand at the hole—after all, that amount of exercise would be good for his appetite—as it was that the very best that could come of it, getting a client, would also be the worst, since he would have to work. He heaved a sigh, not letting it interfere with the scowl, muttered, “Confound it,” put his palms on the desk rim to push his chair back, and got up and went.

  The hole was in the wall, at eye level, eight feet to the right of Wolfe’s desk. On the office side it was covered by a picture of a pretty waterfall. On the other side, in a wing of the hall across from the kitchen, it was covered by nothing, and you could not only see through but also hear through. I had once stood there for four solid hours, waiting for someone to appear from the front room to snitch something from my desk. I allowed Wolfe a minute to get himself posted
and then went and opened the door to the front room and spoke.

  “In here, Laidlaw. It’s more comfortable.” I moved one of the yellow chairs around to face my desk.

  Chapter 5

  Laidlaw sat and looked at me. Three seconds. Six seconds. Evidently he needed priming, so I obliged.

  “I thought it was a nice party up to a point, didn’t you? Even with the protocol.”

  “I can’t remember that far back.” He leaned forward. His hair was still perfectly uncombed. “Look, Goodwin. I want to ask you a straight question, and I hope you’ll answer it. I don’t see why you shouldn’t.”

  “I may not either. What?”

  “About what you said last night, that you thought that girl was murdered. You said it not only to us, but to the police and the District Attorney. I can tell you confidentially that I have a friend, it doesn’t matter who or where, who has given me a little information. I understand that they would be about ready to call it suicide and close the investigation if it weren’t for you, so your reason for thinking it was murder must be a pretty good one. That’s my question. What is it?”

  “Your friend didn’t tell you that?”

  “No. Either he wouldn’t, or he couldn’t because he doesn’t know. He says he doesn’t know.”

  I crossed my legs. “Well, I can’t very well say that. So I’ll say that I have told only the police and the D.A.’s office and Mr. Wolfe, and for the present that’s enough.”

  “You won’t tell me?”

  “At the moment, no. Rules of etiquette.”

  “Don’t you think the people who are involved just because they were there—don’t you think they have a right to know?”