Champange for One

“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 fu

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 di

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 tomorrow? Or a woman? Or that someone, perhaps a customer at Barwick’s, had a

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 Turtle 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 Turtle 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 Turtle. 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 with 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 Turtle 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.”