Champange for One

Chapter 3

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 di

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?”