Rex Stout - Champange for One

“I’ll ask him.” I put a hand on her desk. “And now for the main point, what I was mostly counting on if you felt like helping me. It’s very likely that the event or the situation, whatever it was, that led to Faith Usher’s death dated from before she came here. It could have happened after she left, but you wouldn’t know about that anyway. She was here nearly five months. You said you ask the girls as few questions as possible about their pasts, but they must tell you a lot, don’t they?”

“Some of them do.”

“Of course. And of course you keep it in confidence. But Faith is dead, and you said you’d help me if you could. She must have told you things. She may even have told you the name of the man who was responsible for her being here. Did she?”

I asked that because I had to. Mrs Irwin was much too smart not to realize that that was the first and foremost question a detective would want answered about Faith Usher’s past, and if I hadn’t asked it she would have wondered why and might even have been bright enough to suspect that I already knew. There wasn’t much chance that she had the answer, in view of her tone and manner when she said that she had never heard of Edwin Laidlaw.

“No,” she said.” She never said a word about him to me, and I doubt if she did to any of the girls.”

“But she did tell you things?”

“Not very much. If you mean facts, people she had known and things she had done, really nothing. But she talked with me a good deal, and I formed two conclusions about her—I mean about her history. No, three. One was that she had had only one sexual relationship with a man, and a brief one. Another was that she had never known her father and probably didn’t know who he was. The third was that her mother was still alive and that she hated her—no, hate is too strong a word. Faith was not a girl for hating. Perhaps the word is repugnance. I made those three conclusions, but she never stated any of them explicitly. Beyond that I know nothing about her past.”

“Do you know her mother’s name?”

“No. As I said, I have no facts.”

“How did she get to Grantham House?”

“She came here one day in March, just a year ago. She was in her seventh month. No letter or phone call, she just came. She said she had once read about Grantham House in a magazine and she remembered it. Her baby was born on May eighteenth.” She smiled. “I don’t have on my tongue the dates of all the births here, but I looked it up for the police.”

“Is there any possibility that the baby is involved? I mean in her death? Anything or anyone connected with it or its adoption?”

“Not the slightest. Absolutely none. I handle that. You may take my word for it.”

“Did she ever have any visitors here?”

“No. Not one.”

“You say she was here five months, so she left in August. Did someone come for her?”

“No. Usually the girls don’t stay so long after the baby comes, but Faith had rather a bad time and had to get her strength back. Actually someone did come for her—Mrs James Robbins, one of our directors, drove her to New York . Mrs Robbins had got a job for her at Berwick’s, the furniture store, and had arranged for her to share a room with another girl, Helen Yarmis. As you know, Helen was there Tuesday evening. Helen might know if anything—Yes, Dora?”

I turned my head. The woman who had opened the door—middle-aged and a little too plump for her blue uniform—stood holding the knob. She spoke. “I’m sorry to interrupt, Doctor, but Katherine may be going to rush things a bit. Four times since nine o’clock, and the last one was only twenty minutes.”

Mrs Irwin was out of her chair and moving. By the time she reached me I was up too, to take the hand she offered.

“It may be only a prelude,” she said, “but I’d better go and see. I repeat, Mr Goodwin, I wish you success, in spite of what success would mean. I don’t envy you your job, but I wish you success. You’ll forgive me for rushing off.”

I told her I would, and I could have added that I’d rather have my job than hers, or Katherine’s either. As I got my coat from a chair and put it on I figured that if she had been there fifteen years and had averaged one a week Katherine’s would be the 34-th, or even at two a month it would be the 36-th… On my way out to the car I had a worry. If I met the girls on their way back the manoeuvre would have to be repeated with me headed downhill and them up, and I didn’t like the idea of them rubbing their fronts along the side of the car again, with the door handles. But luckily, as I started the engine, here they came, straggling from the tunnel of the driveway into the cleared space. Their faces were even pinker and they were puffing. One of them sang out, “Oh, are you going?” and another one called, “Why don’t you stay for lunch?” I told them some other time. I was glad I had turned the car around on arrival. I had an impulse to tell them Katherine was tuning up for her big act to see how they would take it, but decided it wouldn’t be tactful, and when they had cleared the way I fed gas and rolled. The only one who didn’t tell me good-bye was out of breath.

When we have company in the office I like to be there when they arrive, even if the matter being discussed isn’t very important or lucrative, but that time I missed it by five minutes. When I got there at five past six that afternoon Wolfe was behind his desk, Orrie Gather was in my chair, and Helen Yarmis, Ethel Varr, and Rose Turtle were there in three of the yellow chairs facing Wolfe. As I entered, Orrie got up and moved to the couch. He has not entirely given up the idea that some day my desk and chair will be his for good, and he liked to practise sitting there when I am not present.

Not that it had taken me six hours to drive back from Grantham House. I had got back in time to eat my share of lunch, kept warm by Fritz, and then had given Wolfe a verbatim report of my talk with Mrs Irwin. He was sceptical of my opinion that her mind was sound and her heart was pure, since he is convinced that every woman alive has a screw loose somewhere, but he had to agree that she had talked to the point, she had furnished a few hints that might be useful about some of our cast of characters, and she had fed the possibility that Austin Byne might not be guileless. Further discourse with Dinky was plainly indicated. I dialled his number and got no answer, and, since he might be giving his phone a recess, I took a walk through the sunshine, first to the bank to deposit Laidlaw’s cheque and then down to 87 Bowdoin Street.

Pushing Byne’s button in the vestibule got no response. I had suggested to Wolfe that I might take along an assortment of keys so that if Byne wasn’t home I could go on in and pass the time by looking around, but Wolfe had vetoed it, saying that Byne had not yet aroused our interest quite to that point. So I spent a long hour and a quarter in a doorway across the street. That’s one of the most tiresome chores in the business, waiting for someone to show when you have no idea how long it will be and you haven’t much more idea whether he has anything that will help.

It was twelve minutes past five when a taxi rolled to a stop at the curb in front of 87 and Byne climbed out. When he turned after paying the hackie, I was there.

“We must share a beam,” I told him. “I feel a desire to see you, and come, and here you are.”

Something had happened to the brotherhood of man. His eye was cold. “What the hell—” he began, and stopped. “Not here,” he said. ”Come on up.”

Even his manners were affected. He entered the elevator ahead of me, and upstairs, though he let me precede him into the apartment, I had to deal with my coat and hat unaided. Inside, in the room that would require only minor changes, my fanny was barely touching the chair seat when he demanded, “What’s this crap about murder?”