Rex Stout - Champange for One

“Maybe it’s our fault too/ Saul suggested. “We had an order and we didn’t fill it.”

“No,” Wolfe said emphatically.” I can’t grab for the straw of your charity. I am an ass. If any share of the fault is yours it lies in this, that when I explained the situation to you Wednesday evening and gave you your assignments none of you reminded me of my maxim that nothing is to be expected of tagging the footsteps of the police. That’s what you’ve been doing, at my direction, and it was folly. There are scores of them, and only three of you. You have been merely looking under stones that they have already turned. I am an ass.”

“Maybe there’s no other stones to try,” Orrie observed.

“Of course there are. There always are.” Wolfe took time to breathe. More oxygen was always needed after a meal unless he relaxed with a book.” I have an excuse, naturally, that one approach was closed to my ingenuity. By Mr Cramer’s account, and Archie didn’t challenge it, no one could possibly have poisoned that glass of champagne with any assurance that it would get to Miss Usher. I could have tackled that problem only by a minute examination of everyone who was there, and most of them were not available to me. Sooner or later it must be solved, but only after disclosure of a motive. That was the only feasible approach open to me, to find the motive, and you know what I did. I sent you men to flounder around on ground that the police had already covered, or were covering. Pfui.”

“I saw four people,” Fred protested, “that the cops hadn’t got to.”

“And learned?”

“Well—nothing.”

Wolfe nodded.” So. The quarry, as I told you Wednesday evening, was evidence of some significant association of one of those people with Miss Usher. That was a legitimate line of inquiry, but it was precisely the one the police were following, and I offer my apologies. We shall now try another line, where you will at least be on fresh ground. I want to see Faith Usher’s mother. You are to find her and bring her.”

Fred and Orrie pulled out their notebooks. Saul had one but rarely used it. The one inside his skull was usually all he needed.

“You won’t need notes,” Wolfe said. “There is nothing to note except the bare fact that Miss Usher’s mother is alive and must be somewhere. This may lead nowhere, but it is not a resort to desperation. Whatever circumstance in Miss Usher’s life resulted in her death, she must have been emotionally involved, and I have been apprised of only two phenomena which importantly engaged her emotions. One was her experience with the man who begot her infant. A talk with him might be fruitful, but if he can be found the police will find him; of course they’re trying to. The other was her relationship with her mother. Mrs Irwin, of Grantham House, told Archie that she had formed the conclusion, from talking with Miss Usher, that her mother was alive and that she hated her. And yesterday Miss Helen Yarmis, with whom Miss Usher shared an apartment the last seven months of her life, told me that Miss Usher had come home from work one day with a headache and had said that she had encountered her mother on the street and there had been a scene, and she had had to run to get away from her; and that she wished her mother was dead. Miss Yannis’s choice of words.”

Fred, writing in his notebook, looked up. “Does she spell Irwin with an E or an I?”

Wolfe always tried to be patient with Fred, but there was a limit. “As you prefer,” he said. “Why spell it at all? I’ve told you all she said that is relevant, and all that I know. I will add that I doubt if either Mrs Irwin or Miss Yarmis mentioned Miss Usher’s mother to the police, so in looking for her you shouldn’t be jostled.”

“Is her name Usher?” Orrie asked. Of course Saul wouldn’t have asked it, and neither would Fred.

“You should learn to listen, Orrie,” Wolfe told him.” I said that’s all I know. And no more is to be expected from either Mrs Irwin or Miss Yarmis. They know no more.” His eyes went to Saul. “You will direct the search, using Fred and Orrie as occasions arise.”

“Do we keep covered?” Saul asked.

“Preferably, yes. But don’t preserve your cover at the cost of missing your mark.”

“I took a look,” I said, “at the Manhattan phone book when I got back from Grantham House yesterday. A dozen Ushers are listed. Of course she doesn’t have to be named Usher, and she doesn’t have to live in Manhattan , and she doesn’t have to have a phone. It wouldn’t take Fred and Orrie long to check the dozen. I can call Lon Cohen at the Gazette . He might have gone after the mother for an exclusive and a picture.”

“Sure,” Saul agreed.” If it weren’t for cover my first stop would be the morgue. Even if her daughter hated her, the mother may have claimed the body. But they know me there, and Fred and Orrie too, and of course they know Archie.”

It was decided, by Wolfe naturally, that that risk should be taken only after other tries had failed, and that calling Lon Cohen should obviously come first, and I dialled and got him. It was a little complicated. He had rung me a couple of times to try to talk me into the eye-witness story, and now my calling to ask if he had dug up Faith Usher’s mother aroused all his professional instincts. Was Wolfe working on the case, and if so, on behalf of whom? Had someone made me a better offer for a story, and did I want the mother so I could put her in, and who had offered me how much? I had to spread the salve thick, and assure him that I wouldn’t dream of letting anyone but the Gazette get my by-line, and promise that if and when we had anything fit for publication he would get it, before he would answer my simple question.

I hung up and swivelled to report. “You can skip the morgue. A woman went there Wednesday afternoon to claim the body. Name, Marjorie Betz. B-E-T-Z. Address, Eight-twelve West Eighty-seventh Street , Manhattan . She had a letter signed by Elaine Usher, mother of Faith Usher, same address. By her instructions the body was delivered this morning to the Metropolitan Crematory on Thirty-ninth Street . A Gazette man has seen Marjorie Betz, but she clammed up and is staying clammed. She says Elaine Usher went somewhere Wednesday night and she doesn’t know where she is. The Gazette hasn’t been able to find her, and Lon thinks nobody else has. End of chapter.”

“Fine,” Saul said. “Nobody skips for nothing.”

“Find her,” Wolfe ordered. “Bring her. Use any inducement that seems likely to—”

The phone rang, and I swivelled and got it.

“Nero Wolfe’s office, Arch—”

“Goodwin?”

“Yes.”

“This is Laidlaw. I’ve got to see Wolfe. Quick.”

“He’s here. Come ahead.”

“I’m afraid to. I just left the District Attorney’s office and got a taxi, and I’m being followed. I was on my way to see Wolfe about what happened at the District Attorney’s office but now I can’t because they mustn’t know I’m running to Wolfe. What do I do?”

“Any one of a dozen things. Shaking a tail is a cinch, but of course you haven’t had any practice. Where are you?”

“In a booth in a drugstore on Seventh Avenue near Sixteenth Street .”

“Have you dismissed your taxi?”

“Yes. I thought that was better.”

“It was. How many men are in the taxi tailing you?”

“Two.”

“Then they mean it. Okay, so do we. First, have a Coke or something to give me time to get a car—say, six or seven minutes. Then take a taxi to Two-fourteen East Twenty-eighth Street . The Perlman Paper Company is there on the ground floor.” I spelled Perlman.”Got that?”

“Yes.”

“Go in and ask for Abe and say to him, ‘Archie wants some more candy.’ What are you going to say to him?”