Rex Stout - Champange for One

“Miss Varr?”

You may remember my remark that I would have picked Ethel Varr if I had been shopping. Since she was facing Wolfe and I had her in profile, and she was in daylight from the windows, her face wasn’t ringing any of the changes in its repertory, but that was a good angle for it, and the way she carried her head would never change. Her lips parted and closed again before she answered.

“I don’t think,” she said in a voice that wanted to tremble but she wouldn’t let it, “that Faith killed herself.”

“You don’t, Miss Varr? Why?”

“Because I was looking at her. When she took the champagne and drank it. I was standing talking with Mr Goodwin, only just then we weren’t saying anything because Rose had told me that she had told him about Faith having the poison, and he was watching Faith so I was watching her too, and I’m sure she didn’t put anything in the champagne because I would have seen her. The police have been trying to get me to say that Mr Goodwin told me to say that, but I keep telling them that he couldn’t because he hasn’t said anything to me at all. He hasn’t had a chance to.” Her head turned, changing her face, of course, as I had it straight on. “Have you, Mr Goodwin?”

I wanted to go and give her a hug and a kiss, and then go and shoot Cramer and a few assistant district attorneys. Cramer hadn’t seen fit to mention that my statement had had corroboration; in fact, he had said that if it wasn’t for me suicide would be a reasonable assumption. The damn liar. After I shot him I would sue him for damages.

“Of course not,” I told her. “If I may make a personal remark, you told me at the dinner table that you were only nineteen years old and hadn’t learned how to take things, but you have certainly learned how to observe things, and how to take your ground and stand on it.” I turned to Wolfe.” It wouldn’t hurt any to tell her it’s satisfactory.”

“It is,” he acknowledged. “Indeed, Miss Varr, quite satisfactory.” That, if she had only known it, was a triumph. He gave me a satisfactory only when I hatched a masterpiece. His eyes moved. “Miss Yarmis?”

Helen Yarmis still had her dignity, but the corners of her wide, curved mouth were apparently down for good, and since that was her best feature she looked pretty hopeless. “All I can do,” she said stiffly, “is say what I think. I think Faith killed herself. I told her it was dumb to take that poison along to a party where we were supposed to have a good time, but I saw it there in her bag. Why would she take it along to a party like that if she wasn’t going to use it?”

Wolfe’s understanding of women has some big gaps, but at least he knows enough not to try using logic on them. He merely ignored her appeal to unreason. “When,” he asked, “did you tell her not to take the poison along?”

“When we were dressing to go to the party. We lived in an apartment together. Just a big bedroom with a kitchenette, and the bathroom down the hall, but I guess that’s an apartment.”

“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 funny, Mr Wolfe. I can answer your questions without even thinking because they’re all the same questions the police have been asking, even the same words, so I don’t have to stop to think.”

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 dinner.

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 annoyed her? Or that she had been accosted on the street? Did she never account for a headache or a fit of ill humour by telling of an encounter she had had? An encounter is a meeting face to face. Did she never mention a single name in connection with some experience, either pleasant or disagreeable? In all your hours together, did nothing ever remind her—What is it?”

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?”