Champagne for One

by Rex Stout

  “Not much.” Schuster was sipping coffee. “Not much about it, but I know what it is, and you used it wrong. And you’re wrong about me being a promising young corporation lawyer. Lawyers never promise anything. That’s about as far as I’ve got, but I’m a year younger than you, so there’s hope.”

  “Hope for who?” Cecil Grantham demanded. “You or the corporations?”

  “About that word ‘protocol’,” Edwin Laidlaw said, “I can settle that for you. Now that I’m a publisher I’m the last word on words. It comes from two Greek words, prхtos, meaning ‘first’, and kolla, meaning ‘glue’. Now why glue? Because in ancient Greece a prхtokollon was the first leaf, containing an account of the manuscript, glued to a roll of papyrus. Today a protocol may be any one of various kinds of documents-an original draft of something, or an account of some proceeding, or a record of an agreement. That seems to support you, Paul, but Bev has a point, because a protocol can also be a set of rules of etiquette. So you’re both right. This affair this evening does require a special etiquette.”

  “I’m for Paul,” Cecil Grantham declared. “Locking up the booze doesn’t come under etiquette. It comes under tyranny.”

  Kent turned to me. “What about you, Goodwin? I understand you’re a detective, so maybe you can detect the answer.”

  I put my coffee cup down. “I’m a little hazy,” I said, “as to what you’re after. If you just want to decide whether you used the word ‘protocol’ right, the best plan would be to get the dictionary. There’s one upstairs in the library. But if what you want is brandy, and the cabinet is locked, the best plan would be for one of us to go to a liquor store. There’s one at the corner of Eighty-second and Madison. We could toss up.”

  “The practical man,” Laidlaw said. “The man of action.”

  “You notice,” Cecil told them, “that he knows where the dictionary is and where the liquor store is. Detectives know everything.” He turned to me. “By the way, speaking of detectives, are you here professionally?”

  Not caring much for his tone, I raised my brows. “If I were, what would I say?”

  “Why-I suppose you’d say you weren’t.”

  “And if I weren’t what would I say?”

  Robert Robilotti let out a snort. “Touchй, Cece. Try another one.” He pronounced it “Seese”. Cecil’s mother called him “Sessel”, and his sister called him “Sesse”.

  Cecil ignored his father-in-law. “I was just asking,” he told me. “I shouldn’t ask?”

  “Sure, why not? I was just answering.” I moved my head right and left. “Since the question has been asked, it may be in all your minds. If I were here professionally I would let it stand on my answer to Grantham, but since I’m not, you might as well know it. Austin Byne phoned this morning and asked me to take his place. If any of you are bothered enough you can check with him.”

  “I think,” Robilotti said, “that it is none of our business. I know it is none of my business.”

  “Nor mine,” Schuster agreed.

  “Oh, forget it,” Cecil snapped. “What the hell, I was just curious. Shall we join the mothers?”

  Robilotti darted a glance at him, not friendly. After all, who was the host? “I was about to ask,” he said, “if anyone wants more coffee. No?” He left his chair. “We will join them in the music room and escort them downstairs and it is understood that each of us will dance first with his dinner partner. If you please, gentlemen?”

  I got up and shook my pants legs down.

  Chapter Three

  I’ll be darned if there wasn’t a live band in the alcove-piano, sax, two violins, clarinet, and traps. A record player and speaker might have been expected, but for the mothers, spare no expense. Of course, in the matter of expense, the fee for the band was about balanced by the saving on liquids-the soda water in the cocktails, the pink stuff passing for wine at the dinner table, and the brandy ban-so it wasn’t too extravagant. The one all-out splurge on liquids came after we had been dancing an hour or so, when Hackett appeared at the bar and began opening champagne, Cordon Rouge, and poured it straight, no dilution or adulteration. With only an hour to go, apparently Mrs Robilotti had decided to take a calculated risk.

  As a dancing partner Rose Tuttle was not a bargain. She was equipped for it physically and she had some idea of rhythm, that wasn’t it; it was her basic attitude. She danced cheerfully, and of course that was no good. You can’t dance cheerfully. Dancing is too important. It can be wild or solemn or gay or lewd or art for art’s sake, but it can’t be cheerful. For one thing, if you’re cheerful you talk too much. Helen Yarmis was better, or would have been if she hadn’t been too damn solemn. We would work into the rhythm together and get going fine, when all of a sudden she would stiffen up and was just a dummy making motions. She was a good size for me, too, with the top of her head level with my nose, and the closer you get to her wide, curved mouth the better you liked it-when the corners were up.

  Robilotti took her for the next one, and a look around showed me that all the guests of honour were taken, and Celia Grantham was heading for me. I stayed put and let her come, and she stopped at arm’s length and tilted her head back.

  “Well?” she said.

  The tact, I figured, was for the mothers, and there was no point in wasting it on the daughter. So I said, “But is it any better?”

  “No,” she said, “and it never will be. But how are you going to avoid dancing with me?”

  “Easy. Say my feet hurt, and take my shoes off.”

  She nodded. “You would, wouldn’t you?”

  “I could.”

  “You really would. Just let me suffer. Will I never be in your arms again? Must I carry my heartache to the grave?”

  But I am probably giving a false impression, though I am reporting accurately. I had seen the girl-I say “girl” in spite of the fact that she was perhaps a couple of years older than Rose Tuttle, who was twice a mother-I had seen her just four times. Three of them had been in that house during the jewellery hunt, and on the third occasion, when I had been alone with her briefly, the conversation had somehow resulted in our making a date to dine and dance at the Flamingo, and we had kept it. It had not turned out well. She was a good dancer, very good, but she was also a good drinker, and along towards midnight she had raised an issue with another lady, and had developed it to a point where we got tossed out. In the next few months she had phoned me off and on, say twenty times, to suggest a rerun, and I had been too busy. For me the Flamingo has the best band in town and I didn’t want to get the cold stare for good. As for her persisting, I would like to think that, once she had tasted me, no other flavour would do, but I’m afraid she was just too pigheaded to drop it. I had supposed that she had long since forgotten all about it but here she was again.

  “It’s not your heart,” I said. “It’s your head. You’re too loyal to yourself. We’re having a clash of wills, that’s all. Besides, I have a hunch that if I took you in my arms and started off with you, after one or two turns you would break loose and take a swing at me and make remarks, and that would spoil the party. I see the look in your eye.”

  “The look in my eye is passion. If you don’t know passion when you see it you ought to get around more. Have you got a Bible?”

  “No, I forgot to bring it. There’s one in the library.” From my inside breast pocket I produced my notebook, which is always with me. “Will this do?”

  “Fine. Hold it flat.” I did so and she put her palm on it. “I swear on my honour that if you dance with me I will be your kitten for better or for worse and will do nothing that will make you wish you hadn’t.”

  Anyway, Mrs Robilotti, who was dancing with Paul Schuster, was looking at us. Returning the notebook to my pocket, I closed with her daughter, and in three minutes had decided that every allowance should be made for a girl who could dance like that.

  The band had stopped for breath, and I had taken Celia to a chair, and was considering whether it would be
tactful to have another round with her, when Rose Tuttle approached, unaccompanied, and was at my elbow. Celia spoke to her, woman to woman.

  “If you’re after Mr Goodwin I don’t blame you. He’s the only one here that can dance.”

  “I’m not after him to dance,” Rose said. “Anyway I wouldn’t have the nerve because I’m no good at it. I just want to tell him something.”

  “Go ahead,” I told her.

  “It’s private.”

  Celia laughed. “That’s the way to do it.” She stood up. “That would have taken me at least a hundred words, and you do it in two.” She moved off towards the bar, where Hackett had appeared and was opening champagne.

  “Sit down,” I told Rose.

  “Oh, it won’t take long.” She stood. “It’s just something I thought you ought to know because you’re a detective. I know Mrs Robilotti wouldn’t want any trouble, and I was going to tell her, but I thought it might be better to tell you.”

  “I’m not here as a detective, Miss Tuttle. As I told you. I’m just here to enjoy myself.”

  “I know that; but you are a detective, and you can tell Mrs Robilotti if you think you ought to. I don’t want to tell her because I know how she is, but if something awful happened and I hadn’t told anybody I would think maybe I was to blame.”

  “Why should something awful happen?”

  She had a hand on my arm. “I don’t say it should, but it might. Faith Usher still carries that poison around, and she has it with her. It’s in her bag. But of course you don’t know about it.”

  “No, I don’t. What poison?”

  “Her private poison. She told us girls at Grantham House it was cyanide, and she showed it to some of us, in a little bottle. She always had it, in a little pocket she made in her skirt, and she made pockets in her dresses. She said she hadn’t made up her mind to kill herself, but she might, and if she did she wanted to have that poison. Some of the girls thought she was just putting on, and one or two of them used to kid her, but I never did. I thought she might really do it, and if she did and I had kidded her I would be to blame. Now she’s away from there and she’s got a job, and I thought maybe she had got over it, but upstairs a while ago Helen Yarmis was with her in the powder room, and Helen saw the bottle in her bag and asked her if the poison was still in it, and she said yes.”

  She stopped. “And?” I asked.

  “And what?” she asked.

  “Is that all?”

  “I think it’s enough. If you knew Faith like I do. Here in this grand house, and the butler, and the men dressed up, and that powder room, and the champagne-this is where she might do it if she ever does.” All of a sudden she was cheerful again. “So would I,” she declared. “I would drop the poison in my champagne and get up on a chair with it and hold it high, and call out ‘Here goes to all our woes’-that’s what one of the girls used to say when she drank a Coke-and drink it down, and throw the glass away and get off the chair, and start to sink down to the floor, and the men would rush to catch me-how long would it take me to die?”

  “A couple of minutes, or even less if you put enough in.” Her hand was still on my arm and I patted it. “Okay, you’ve told me. I’d forget it if I were you. Did you ever see the bottle?”

  “Yes, she showed it to me.”

  “Did you smell the stuff in it?”

  “No, she didn’t open it. It had a screw top.”

  “Was it glass? Could you see the stuff?”

  “No, I think it was some kind of plastic.”

  “You say Helen Yarmis saw it in her bag. What kind of a bag?”

  “Black leather.” She turned for a look around. “It’s there on a chair. I don’t want to point-”

  “You’ve already pointed with your eyes. I see it. Just forget it. I’ll see that nothing awful happens. Will you dance?”

  She would, and we joined the merry whirl, and when the band paused we went to the bar for champagne. Next I took Faith Usher.

  Since Faith Usher had been making her play for a year or more, and the stuff in the plastic bottle might be aspirin or salted peanuts, and even if it were cyanide I didn’t agree with Rose Tuttle’s notion of the ideal spot for suicide, the chance of anything happening was about one in ten million, but even so, I had had a responsibility wished on me, and I kept an eye both on the bag and on Faith Usher. That was simple when I was dancing with her, since I could forget the bag.

  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 honoured.”

  “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 towards 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 honour, 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.