Champagne for One

by Rex Stout

  I wanted to go and give her a hug and a kiss, and then go and shoot Cramer and a few assistant district attorneys. Cramer hadn’t seen fit to mention that my statement had had corroboration; in fact, he had said that if it wasn’t for me suicide would be a reasonable assumption. The damn liar. After I shot him I would sue him for damages.

  “Of course not,” I told her. “If I may make a personal remark, you told me at the dinner table that you were only nineteen years old and hadn’t learned how to take things, but you have certainly learned how to observe things, and how to take your ground and stand on it.” I turned to Wolfe. “It wouldn’t hurt any to tell her it’s satisfactory.”

  “It is,” he acknowledged. “Indeed, Miss Varr, quite satisfactory.” That, if she had only known it, was a triumph. He gave me a satisfactory only when I hatched a masterpiece. His eyes moved. “Miss Yarmis?”

  Helen Yarmis still had her dignity, but the corners of her wide, curved mouth were apparently down for good, and since that was her best feature she looked pretty hopeless. “All I can do,” she said stiffly, “is say what I think. I think Faith killed herself. I told her it was dumb to take that poison along to a party where we were supposed to have a good time, but I saw it there in her bag. Why would she take it along to a party like that if she wasn’t going to use it?”

  Wolfe’s understanding of women has some big gaps, but at least he knows enough not to try using logic on them. He merely ignored her appeal to unreason. “When,” he asked, “did you tell her not to take the poison along?”

  “When we were dressing to go to the party. We lived in an apartment together. Just a big bedroom with a kitchenette, and the bathroom down the hall, but I guess that’s an apartment.”

  “How long had you and she been living together?”

  “Seven months. Since August, when she left Grantham House. I can tell you anything you want to ask, after the way I’ve been over it the last two days. Mrs Robbins brought her from Grantham House on a Friday so she could get settled to go to work at Barwick’s on Monday. She didn’t have many clothes-”

  “If you please, Miss Yarmis. We must respect the convenience of Miss Varr and Miss Tuttle. During those seven months did Miss Usher have many callers?”

  “She never had any.”

  “Neither men nor women?”

  “No. Except once a month when Mrs Robbins came to see how we were getting along, that was all.”

  “How did she spend her evenings?”

  “She went to school four nights a week to learn typing and shorthand. She was going to be a secretary. I never saw how she could if she was as tired as I was. Fridays we often went to the movies. Sundays she would go for walks, that’s what she said. I was too tired. Anyway, sometimes I had a date, and-”

  “If you please. Did Miss Usher have no friends at all? Men or women?”

  “I never saw any. She never had a date. I often told her that was no way to live, just crawl along like a worm-”

  “Did she get any mail?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t think so. The mail was downstairs on a table in the hall. I never saw her write any letters.”

  “Did she get any telephone calls?”

  “The phone was downstairs in the hall, but of course I would have known if she got a call when I was there. I don’t remember she ever got one. This is kinda funny, Mr Wolfe. I can answer your questions without even thinking because they’re all the same questions the police have been asking, even the same words, so I don’t have to stop to think.”

  I could have given her a hug and kiss too, though not in the same spirit as with Ethel Varr. Anyone who takes Wolfe down a peg renders a service to the balance of nature, and to tell him to his face that he was merely a carbon copy of the cops was enough to spoil his appetite for dinner.

  He grunted. “Every investigator follows a routine up to a point. Miss Yarmis. Beyond that point comes the opportunity for talent if any is at hand. I find it a little difficult to accept your portfolio of negatives.” Another grunt. “It may not be outside my capacity to contrive a question that will not parrot the police. I’ll try. Do you mean to tell me that during the seven months you lived with Miss Usher you had no inkling of her having any social or personal contact-excluding her job and night school and the visits of Mrs Robbins-with any of her fellow beings?”

  Helen was frowning. The frown deepened. “Say it again,” she commanded.

  He did so, slower.

  “They didn’t ask that,” she declared. “What’s an inkling?”

  “An intimation. A hint.”

  She still frowned. She shook her head. “I don’t remember any hints.”

  “Did she never tell you that she had met a man that day that she used totoiow? Or a woman? Or that someone, perhaps a customer at Barwick’s, had annoyed her? Or that she had been accosted on the street? Did she never account for a headache or a fit of ill humour by telling of an encounter she had had? An encounter is a meeting face to face. Did she never mention a single name in connection with some experience, either pleasant or disagreeable? In all your hours together, did nothing ever remind her-What is it?”

  Helen’s frown had gone suddenly, and the corners of her mouth had lifted a little. “Headache,” she said. “Faith never had headaches, except only once, one day when she came home from work. She wouldn’t eat anything and she didn’t go to school that night, and I wanted her to take some aspirin but she said it wouldn’t help any. Then she asked me if I had a mother, and I said my mother was dead and she said she wished hers was. That didn’t sound like her and I said that was an awful thing to say, and she said she knew it was but I might say it too if I had a mother like hers, and she said she had met her on the street when she was out for lunch and there had been a scene, and she had to run to get away from her.” Helen was looking pleased. “So that was a contact, wasn’t it?”

  “It was. What else did she say about it?”

  “That was all. The next day-no, the day after-she said she was sorry she had said it and she hadn’t really meant it, about wishing her mother was dead. I told her if all the people died that I had wished they were dead there wouldn’t be room in the cemeteries. Of course that was exaggerated, but I thought it would do her good to know that people were wishing people were dead all the time.”

  “Did she ever mention her mother again?”

  “No, just that once.”

  “Well. We have recalled one contact, perhaps we can recall another.”

  But they couldn’t. He contrived other questions that didn’t parrot the police, but all he got was a collection of blanks, and finally he gave it up.

  He moved his eyes to include the others. “Perhaps I should have explained,” he said, “exactly why I wanted to talk with you. First, since you had been in close association with Miss Usher, I wanted to know your attitude towards Mr Goodwin’s opinion that she did not kill herself. On the whole you have supported it. Miss Varr has upheld it on valid grounds, Miss Yarmis has opposed it on ambiguous grounds, and Miss Tuttle is uncertain.”

  That was foxy and unfair. He knew damn well Helen Yarmis wouldn’t know what “ambiguous” meant, and that was why he used it.

  He was going on. “Second, since I am assuming that Mr Goodwin is right, that Miss Usher did not poison her champagne and that therefore someone else did, I wanted to look at you and hear you talk. You are three of the eleven people who were there and are suspect; I exclude Mr Goodwin. One of you might have taken that opportunity to use a lump of the poison that you all knew-”

  “But we couldn’t!” Rose Tuttle blurted. “Ethel was with Archie Goodwin. Helen was with that publisher, what’s-his-name, Laidlaw, and I was with the one with big ears-Kent. So we couldn’t!”

  Wolfe nodded. “I know, Miss Tuttle. Evidentially, nobody could, so I must approach from another direction, and all eleven of you are suspect. I don’t intend to harass you ladies in an effort to trick you into betraying some guarded secret of your relationship w
ith Miss Usher; that’s an interminable and laborious process and all night would only start it; and besides, it would probably be futile. If one of you has such a secret it will have to be exposed by other means. But I did want to look at you and hear you talk.”

  “I haven’t talked much,” Ethel Varr said.

  “No,” Wolfe agreed, “but you supported Mr Goodwin, and that alone is suggestive. Third-and this was the main point-I wanted your help. I am assuming that if Miss Usher was murdered you would wish the culprit to be disclosed. I am also assuming that none of you has so deep an interest in any of the other eight people there that you would want to shield him from exposure if he is guilty.”

  “I certainly haven’t,” Ethel Varr declared. “Like I told you, I’m sure Faith didn’t put anything in her champagne, and if she didn’t, who did? I’ve been thinking about it. I know it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t Mr Goodwin, and I’m sure it wasn’t Helen or Rose. How many does that leave?”

  “Eight. The three male guests, Laidlaw, Schuster, and Kent. The butler. Mr Grantham and Miss Grantham. Mr and Mrs Robilotti.”

  “Well, I certainly don’t want to shield any of them.”

  “Neither do I,” Rose Tuttle asserted, “if one of them did it.”

  “You couldn’t shield them,” Helen Yarmis told them, “if they didn’t do it. There wouldn’t be anything to shield them from.”

  “You don’t understand, Helen,” Rose told her. “He wants to find out who it was. Now, for instance, what if it was Cecil Grantham, and what if you saw him take the bottle out of Faith’s bag and put it back, or something like that, would you want to shield him? That’s what he wants to know.”

  “But that’s just it,” Helen objected. “If Faith did it herself, why would I want to shield him?”

  “But Faith didn’t do it. Ethel and Mr Goodwin were both looking at her.”

  “Then why,” Helen demanded, “did she take the bottle to the party when I told her not to?”

  Rose shook her head, wiggling the pony tail. “You’d better explain it,” she told Wolfe.

  “I fear,” he said, “that it’s beyond my powers. It may clear the air a little if I say that a suspicious word or action at the party, like Mr Grantham’s taking the bottle from the bag, was not what I had in mind. I meant, rather, to ask if you know anything about any of those eight people that might suggest the possibility of a reason. why one of them might have wanted Miss Usher to die. Do you know of any connection between one of them and Miss Usher-either her or someone associated with her?”

  “I don’t,” Rose said positively.

  “Neither do I,” Ethel declared.

  “There’s so many of them,” Helen complained. “Who are they again?”

  Wolfe, patient under stress, pronounced the eight names.

  Helen was frowning again. “The only connection I know about,” she said, “is Mrs Robilotti. When she came to Grantham House to see us. Faith didn’t like her.”

  Rose snorted. “Who did?”

  Wolfe asked. “Was there something definite, Miss Yarmis? Something between Miss Usher and Mrs Robilotti?”

  “I guess not,” Helen conceded. “I guess it wasn’t any more definite with Faith than it was with the rest of us.”

  “Did you have in mind something in particular that Miss Usher and Mrs Robilotti said to each other?”

  “Oh, no. I never heard Faith say anything to her at all. Neither did I. She thought we were harlots.”

  “Did she use that word? Did she call you harlots?”

  “Of course not. She tried to be nice but didn’t know how. One of the girls said that one day when she had been there, she said that she thought we were harlots.”

  “Well.” Wolfe took in air, in and clear down to his middle, and let it out again. “I thank you again, ladies, for coming.” He pushed his chair back and rose. “We seem to have made little progress, but at least I have seen and talked with you, and I know where to reach you if the occasion arises.”

  “One thing I don’t see,” Rose Tuttle said as she left her chair. “Mr Goodwin said he wasn’t there as a detective, but he is a detective, and I had told him about Faith having the poison, and I should think he ought to know exactly what happened. I didn’t think anyone could commit a murder with a detective right there.”

  A very superficial and half-baked way to look at it, I thought, as I got up to escort the ladies out.

  Chapter Nine

  Paul Schuster, the promising young corporation lawyer with the thin nose and quick dark eyes, sat in the red leather chair at a quarter past eleven Friday morning, with the eyes focused on Wolfe. “We do not claim,” he said, “to have evidence that you have done anything that is actionable. It should be clearly understood that we are not presenting a threat. But it is a fact that we are being injured, and if you are responsible for the injury it may become a question of law.”

  Wolfe moved his head to take the others in-Cecil Grantham, Beverly Kent, and Edwin Laidlaw, lined up on yellow chairs-and to include them. “I am not aware,” he said dryly, “of having inflicted an injury on anyone.”

  Of course that wasn’t true. What he meant was that he hadn’t inflicted the injury he was trying to inflict. Forty-eight hours had passed since Laidlaw had written his cheque for twenty thousand dollars and put it on Wolfe’s desk, and we hadn’t earned a dime of it, and the prospect of ever earning it didn’t look a bit brighter. Dinky Byne’s cover, if he had anything to cover, was intact. The three unmarried mothers had supplied no crack to start a wedge. Orrie Gather, having delivered them at the office for consultation, had been given another assignment, and had come Thursday evening after dinner, with Saul Panzer and Fred Durkin, to report; and all it had added up to was an assortment of blanks. If anyone had had any kind of connection with Faith Usher, it had been buried good and deep, and the trio had been told to keep digging.

  When, a little after ten Friday morning, Paul Schuster had phoned to say that he and Grantham and Laidlaw and Kent wanted to see Wolfe, and the sooner the better, I had broken two of the standing rules: that I make no appointments without checking with Wolfe, and that I disturb him in the plant rooms only for emergencies. I had told Schuster to be there at eleven, and I had buzzed the plant rooms on the house phone to tell Wolfe that company was coming. When he growled I told him that I had looked up “emergency” in the dictionary, and it meant an unforeseen combination of circumstances which calls for immediate action, and if he wanted to argue either with the dictionary or with me I was willing to go upstairs and have it out. He had hung up on me.

  And was now telling Schuster that he was not aware of having inflicted an injury on anyone.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Cecil Grantham said.

  “Facts are facts,” Beverly Kent muttered. Unquestionably a diplomatic way of putting it, suitable for a diplomat. When he got a little higher up the ladder he might refine it by making it “A fact is a fact is a fact.”

  “Do you deny,” Schuster demanded, “that we owe it to Goodwin that we are being embarrassed and harassed by a homicide investigation? And he is your agent, employed by you. No doubt you know the legal axiom, respondeat superior. Isn’t that an injury?”

  “Not only that,” Cecil charged, “but he goes up to Grantham House, sticking his nose in. And yesterday a man tried to pump my mother’s butler, and he had no credentials, and I want to know if you sent him. And another man with no credentials is asking questions about me among my friends, and I want to know if you sent him.”

  “To me,” Beverly Kent stated, “the most serious aspect is the scope of the police inquiry. My work on our Mission to the United Nations is in a sensitive field, very sensitive, and already I have been definitely injured. Merely to have been present when a sensational event occurred, the suicide of that young woman, would have been unfortunate. To be involved in an extended police inquiry, a murder investigation, could be disastrous for me. If in addition to that you are sending your private agents among m
y friends and associates to inquire about me, that is adding insult to injury. I have no information of that, as yet. But you have, Cece?”

  Cecil nodded. “I sure have.”

  “So have I,” Schuster said.

  “Have you, Ed?”

  Laidlaw cleared his throat. “No direct information, no. Nothing explicit. But I have reason to suspect it.”

  He handled it pretty well, I thought. Naturally he had to be with them, since if he had refused to join in the attack they would have wondered why, but he wanted Wolfe to understand that he was still his client.

  “You haven’t answered my question,” Schuster told Wolfe. “Do you deny that we owe this harassment to Goodwin, and therefore to you, since he is your agent?”

  “No,” Wolfe said. “But you owe it to me, through Mr Goodwin, only secondarily. Primarily you owe it to the man or woman who murdered Faith Usher. So it’s quite possible that one of you owes it to himself.”

  “I knew it,” Cecil declared. “I told you, Paul.”

  Schuster ignored him. “As I said,” he told Wolfe, “this may become a question of law.”

  “I expect it to, Mr Schuster. A murder trial is commonly regarded as a matter of law.” Wolfe leaned forward, flattened his palms on the desk, and sharpened his tone. “Gentlemen. Let’s get to the point, if there is one. What are you here for? Not, I suppose, merely to grumble at me. To buy me off? To bully me? To dispute my ground? What are you after?”

  “Goddammit,” Cecil demanded, “what are you after? That’s the point! What are you trying to pull? Why did you send-”