Champange for One

“No,” he agreed. He had finished the figs and taken one of the ramekins of shirred eggs with sausage from the warmer. “Then

35

you’re in for it. I take it that we expect no profitable engagement.”

“We do not. God knows, not from Mrs Robilotti.”

“Very well.” He put a muffin in the toaster. “You may remember my remarks yesterday.”

“I do. You said I would demean myself. You did not say I would get involved in an unprofitable homicide. I’ll deposit the cheques this morning.”

He said I should go to bed, and I said if I did it would take a guided missile to get me up again.

After a shower and shave and tooth brush, and clean shirt and socks, and a walk to the bank and back, I began to think I might last the day out. I had three reasons for making the trip to the bank: first, people die, and if the signer of a cheque dies before the cheque reaches his bank the bank won’t pay it; second, I wanted air; and third, I had been told at the District Attorney’s office to keep myself constantly available, and I wanted to uphold my constitutional freedom of movement. However, the issue wasn’t raised, for when I returned Fritz told me that the only phone call had been from Lon Cohen of the Gazette.

Lon has done us various favours over the years, and besides, I like him, so I gave him a ring. What he wanted was an eye-witness story of the last hours of Faith Usher, and I told him I’d think it over and let him know. His offer was five hundred bucks, which would have been not for Nero Wolfe but for me, since my presence at the party had been strictly personal, and of course he pressed—journalists always press—but I stalled him. The bait was attractive, five C’s and my picture in the paper, but I would have to include the climax, and if I reported that exactly as it happened, letting the world know that I was the one obstacle to calling it suicide, I would have everybody on my neck from the District Attorney to the butler. I was regretfully deciding that I would have to pass when the phone rang, and I answered it and had Celia Grantham’s voice. She wanted to know if I was alone. I told her yes but I wouldn’t be in six minutes, when Wolfe would descend from the plant rooms.

“It won’t take that long.” Her voice was croaky, but not necessarily from drink. Like all the rest of them, including me, she had done a lot of talking in the past twelve hours. “Not if you’ll answer a question. Will you?”

“Ask it.”

“Something you said last night when I wasn’t there—when I was phoning for a doctor. My mother says that you said you thought Faith Usher was murdered. Did you?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you say it? That’s the question.”

“Because I thought it.”

“Please don’t be smart, Archie. Why did you think it?”

“Because I had to. I was forced to by circumstances. If you think I’m dodging, I am. I would like to oblige a girl who dances as well as you do, but I’m not going to answer your question—not now. I’m sorry, but nothing doing.”

“Do you still think she was murdered?”

“Yes.”

“But why ?”

I don’t hang up on people. I thought I might have to that time, but she finally gave up, just as Wolfe’s elevator jolted to a stop at the bottom. He entered, crossed to his chair behind his desk, got his bulk arranged in it to his satisfaction, glanced through the mail, looked at his calendar, and leaned back to read a three-page letter from an orchid-hunter in New Guinea. He was on the third page when the doorbell rang. I got up and stepped to the hall, saw, through the one-way glass panel of the front door, a burly frame and a round red face, and went and opened the door.

“Good Lord,” I said,” don’t you ever sleep?”

“Not much,” he said, crossing the sill.

I got the collar of his coat as he shed it. “This is an honour, since you must be calling on me. Why not invite me down—Cramer!”

He had headed for the office. My calling him “Cramer“ instead of “Inspector“ was so unexpected that he stopped and about-faced. “Why,” I demanded, “don’t you ever learn? You know damn well he hates to have anyone march in on him, even you, or especially you, and you only make it harder. Isn’t it me you want?”

“Yes, but I want him to hear it.”

“That’s obvious, or you would have sent for me instead of coming. If you will kindly—”

Wolfe’s bellow came out to us.” Confound it, come in here!”

Cramer wheeled and went, and I followed. Wolfe’s only greeting was a scowl. “I ca

Cramer took his usual seat, the red leather chair near the end of Wolfe’s desk.” I came,” he said, “to see Goodwin, but I—”

“I heard you in the hall. You would enlighten me? That’s why you want me present?”

Cramer took a breath. “The day I try to enlighten you they can send me to the loony house. It’s just that I know Goodwin is your man and I want you to understand the situation. I thought the best way would be to discuss it with him with you present. Is that sensible?”

“It may be. I’ll know when I hear the discussion.”

Cramer aimed his sharp grey eyes at me. “I don’t intend to go all over it again, Goodwin. I’ve questioned you twice myself, and I’ve read your statement. I’m only after one point, the big point. To begin with, I’ll tell you something that is not to be repeated. There is not a thing, not a word, in what any of the others have said that rules out suicide. Not a single damn thing. And there’s a lot that makes suicide plausible, even probable. I’m saying that if it wasn’t for you suicide would be a reasonable assumption, and it seems likely, I only say likely, that that would be the final verdict. You see what that means.”

I nodded. “Yeah. I’m the fly in the soup. I don’t like it any better than you do. Flies don’t like being swamped in soup, especially when it’s hot.”

He got a cigar from a pocket, rolled it in his palms, put it between his teeth, which were white and even, and removed it. “I’ll start at the begi

I was yawning and had to finish it. “I beg your pardon. I could just say no, but let’s cover it. How and why I was there is fully explained in my statement. Nothing related to it was omitted. Mr Wolfe thought I shouldn’t go because I would demean myself.”

38

“None of the people who were there was or is Wolfe’s client?”

“Mrs Robilotti was a couple of years ago. The job was finished in nine days. Except for that, no.”

His eyes went to Wolfe. “You confirm that?”

“Yes. This is gratuitous, Mr Cramer.”

“With you and Goodwin it’s hard to tell what is and what isn’t.” He came back to me. “I’m going to tell you how it stands up to now. First, it was cyanide. That’s settled. Second, it was in the champagne. It was in what spilled on the floor when she dropped the glass, and anyway it acts so fast it must have been. Third, a two-ounce plastic bottle in her bag was half full of lumps of sodium cyanide. The laboratory calls them amorphous fragments; I call them lumps. Fourth, she had shown that bottle to various people and told them she wanted to kill herself; she had been doing that for more than a year.”

He shifted in the chair. He always sat so as to have Wolfe head on, but now he was at me.” Since the bag was on a chair fifteen feet away from her, and the bottle was in it, she couldn’t have taken a lump from it when Grantham brought her the champagne, or just before, but she could have taken it any time during the preceding hour or so and had it concealed in her handkerchief. Testing the handkerchief for traces is out because she dropped it and it fell in the spilled champagne—or rather, it’s not out but it’s no help. So that’s the set-up for suicide. Do you see holes in it?”