Champange for One

“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 co

“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 co

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 Turtle 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 9

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 di

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, respondent 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 my 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?”