Rex Stout: Champagne for One

"Yeah, I know."

"Miss Helen Yarmis. Miss Ethel Varr. Miss Faith Usher. Am I going too fast?"

I told her no.

"Miss Rose Tuttle. Mr Paul Schuster. Mr Beverly Kent. Mr Edwin Laidlaw. Yourself. That makes twelve. Miss Varr will be on your right and Miss Tuttle will be on your left."

I thanked her and hung up. Now that I was booked, I wasn’t so sure I liked it. It would be interesting, but it might also be a strain on the nerves. However, I was booked, and I rang Byne at the number he had given me and told him he could stay home and gargle. Then I went to Wolfe’s desk and wrote on his calendar Mrs Robilotti’s name and phone number. He wants to know where to reach me when I’m out, even when we have nothing important on, in case someone yells for help and will pay for it. Then I went to the hall, turned left, and pushed through the swinging door to the kitchen. Fritz was at the big table, spreading anchovy butter on shad roes.

"Cross me off for dinner," I told him. "I’m doing my good deed for the year and getting it over with."

He stopped spreading to look at me. "That’s too bad. Veal birds in casserole. You know, with mushrooms and white wine."

"I'll miss it. But there may be something edible where I’m going."

"Perhaps a client?"

He was not being nosy. Fritz Brenner does not pry into other people’s private affairs, not even mine. But he has a legitimate interest in the welfare of that establishment, of the people who live in that old brownstone on West Thirty-fifth Street, and he merely wanted to know if my dinner engagement was likely to promote it. It took a lot of cash. I had to be paid. He had to be paid. Theodore Horstmann, who spent all his days and sometimes part of his nights with the ten thousand orchids up in the plant rooms, had to be paid. We all had to be fed, and with the kind of grub that Wolfe preferred and provided and Fritz prepared. Not only did the orchids have to be fed, but only that week Wolfe had bought a Coelogyne from Burma for eight hundred bucks, and that was just routine. And so on and on and on, and the only source of current income was people with problems who were able and willing to pay a detective to handle them. Fritz knew we had no case going at the moment, and he was only asking if my dinner date might lead to one.

I shook my head. "Nope not a client." I got on a stool. "A former client, Mrs Robert Robilotti-someone swiped a million dollars’ worth of rings and bracelets from her a couple of years ago and we got them back-and I need some advice. You may not be as great an expert on women as you are on food, but you have had your dealings, as I well know, and I would appreciate some suggestions on how I act this evening."

He snorted. "Act with women? You? Ha! With your thousand triumphs! Advice from me? Archie, that is upside down!"

"Thanks for the plug, but these women are special." With a fingertip I wiped up a speck of anchovy butter that had dropped on the table and licked it off. "Here’s the problem. This Mrs Robilotti’s first husband was Albert Grantham, who spent the last ten years of his life doing things with part of the three or four hundred million dollars he had inherited-things to improve the world, including the people in it. I assume you will admit that a girl who has a baby but no husband needs improving."

Fritz pursed his lips. "First I would have to see the girl and the baby. They might be charming."

"It’s not a question of charm, or at least it wasn’t with Grantham. His dealing with the problem of unmarried mothers wasn’t one of his really big operations, but he took a personal interest in it. He would rarely let his name be attached to any of his projects, but he did with that one. The place he built for it up in Dutchess County was called Grantham House and still is. What’s that you’re putting in?"

"Marjoram. I’m trying it."

"Don’t tell him and see if he spots it. When the improved mothers were graduated from Grantham House they were financed until they got jobs or husbands, and even then they were not forgotten. One way of keeping in touch was started by Grantham himself a few years before he died. Each year on his birthday he had his wife invite four of them to dinner at his home on Fifth Avenue, and also invite, for their dinner partners, four young men. Since his death, five years ago, his wife has kept it up. She says she owes it to his memory-though she is now married to a specimen named Robert Robilotti who has never been in the improving business. Today is Grantham’s birthday, and that’s where I’m going for dinner. I am one of the four young men."

"No!" Fritz said.

"Why no?"

"You, Archie?"

"Why not me?"

"It will ruin everything. They will all be back at Grantham House in less than a year."

"No," I said sternly. "I appreciate the compliment, but this is a serious matter and I need advice. Consider: these girls are mothers, but they are improved mothers. They are supposed to be trying to get a toehold on life. Say they are. Inviting them to dinner at that goddam palace, with four young men from the circle that woman moves in as table partners, whom they have never seen before and don’t expect ever to see again, is one hell of a note. Okay, I can’t help that; I can’t improve Grantham, since he’s dead, and I would hate to undertake to improve Mrs Robilotti, dead or alive, but I have my personal problem: how do I act? I would welcome suggestions."

Fritz cocked his head. "Why do you go?"

"Because a man I know asked me to. That’s another question, why he picked me, but skip it. I guess I agreed to go because I thought it would be fun to watch, but now I realize it may be pretty damn grim. However, I’m stuck, and what’s my programme? I can try to make it gay, or clown it, or get one of them talking about the baby, or get lit and the hell with it, or shall I stand up and make a speech about famous mothers like Venus and Mrs Shakespeare and that Roman woman who had twins?"

"Not that. No."

"Then what?"

"I don’t know. Anyway, you are just talking."

"All right, you talk a while."

He aimed a knife at me. "I know you so well, Archie. As well as you know me, maybe. This is just talk and I enjoy it. You need no suggestions. Programme?" He slashed at it with the knife. "Ha! You will go there and look at them and see, and act as you feel. You always do. If it is too painful you will leave. If one of the girls is enchanting and the men surround her, you will get her aside and tomorrow you will take her to lunch. If you are bored you will eat too much, no matter what the food is like. If you are offended- There’s the elevator!" He looked at the clock. "My God, it’s eleven! The larding!" He headed for the refrigerator.

I didn’t jump. Wolfe likes to find me in the office when he comes down, and if I’m not there it stirs his blood a little, which is good for him, so I waited until the elevator door opened and his footsteps came down the hall and on in. I have never understood why he doesn’t make more noise walking. You would think that his feet, which are no bigger than mine, would make quite a business of getting along under his seventh of a ton, but they don’t. It might be someone half his weight. I gave him enough time to cross to his desk and get himself settled in his custom-built oversize chair, and then went. As I entered he grunted a good morning at me and I returned it. Our good mornings usually come then, since Fritz takes his breakfast to his room on a tray, and he spends the two hours from nine to eleven, every day including Sunday, up in the plant rooms with Theodore and the orchids.