Rex Stout - Champagne for One

When I got there he was trying to hold her up. I said to let her down, took her shoulders, and called out to get a doctor. As I eased her to the floor she went into convulsion, her head jerking and her legs thrashing, and when Cecil tried to catch her ankles I told him that was no good and asked if someone was getting a doctor, and someone behind me said yes. I was on my knees, trying to keep her from banging her head on the floor, but managed a glance up and around, and saw that Robilotti and Kent and the band leader were keeping the crowd back. Pretty soon the convulsions eased up, and then stopped. She had been breathing fast in heavy gasps, and when they slowed down and weakened, and I felt her neck getting stiff, I knew the paralysis was starting, and no doctor would make it in time to help.

Cecil was yapping at me, and there were other voices, and I lifted my head to snap, "Will everybody please shut up? There’s nothing I can do or anyone else." I saw Rose Tuttle. "Rose, go and guard that bag. Don’t touch it. Stick there and don’t take your eyes off it." Rose moved.

Mrs Robilotti took a step towards me and spoke. "You are in my house, Mr Goodwin. These people are my guests. What’s the matter with her?"

Having smelled the breath of her gasps, I could have been specific, but that could wait until she was dead, not long, so I skipped it and asked, "Who’s getting a doctor?"

"Celia’s phoning," someone said.

Staying on my knees, I turned back to her. A glance at my wristwatch showed me five past eleven. She had been on the floor six minutes. There was foam on her mouth, her eyes were glassy, and her neck was rigid. I stayed put for two minutes, looking at her, ignoring the audience participation, then reached for her hand and pressed hard on the nail of the middle finger. When I removed my fingers the nail stayed white; in thirty seconds there was no sign of returning pink.

I stood up and addressed Robilotti. "Do I phone the police or do you?"

"The police?" He had trouble getting it out.

"Yes. She’s dead. I’d rather stick here, but you must phone at once."

"No," Mrs Robilotti said. "We have sent for a doctor. I give the orders here. I’ll phone the police myself when I decide it is necessary."

I was sore. Of course that was bad; it’s always a mistake to get sore in a tough situation, especially at yourself; but I couldn’t help it. Not more than half an hour ago I had told Rose to leave it to me, I would see that nothing awful happened, and look. I glanced around. Not a single face, male or female, looked promising. The husband and the son, the two guests of honour, the butler, the three chevaliers-none of them was going to walk over Mrs Robilotti. Celia wasn’t there. Rose was guarding the bag. Then I saw the band leader, a guy with broad shoulders and a square jaw, standing at the entrance to the alcove with his back to it, surveying the tableau calmly, and called to him.

"My name’s Goodwin. What’s yours?"

"Johnson."

"Do you want to stay here all night, Mr Johnson?"

"No."

"Neither do I. I think this woman was murdered, and if the police do too you know what that means, so the sooner they get here the better. I’m a licensed private detective and I ought to stay with the body. There’s a phone on a stand in the reception hall. The number is Spring seven-three-one-hundred."

"Right." He headed for the arch. When Mrs Robilotti commanded him to halt and moved to head him off he just side-stepped her and went on, not bothering to argue, and she called to her men, "Robbie! Cecil! Stop him!"

When they failed to react she wheeled to me. "Leave my house!"

"I would love to," I told her. "If I did, the cops would soon bring me back. Nobody is going to leave your house for a while."

Robilotti was there, taking her arm. "It’s no use, Louise. It’s horrible, but it’s no use. Come and sit down." He looked at me. "Why do you think she was murdered? Why do you say that?"

Paul Schuster, the promising young lawyer, spoke up. "I was going to ask that, Goodwin. She had a bottle of poison in her bag."

"How do you know she did?"

"One of the guests told me. Miss Varr."

"One of them told me too. That’s why I asked Miss Tuttle to guard the bag. I still think she was murdered, but I’ll save my reason for the police. You people might-"

Celia Grantham came running in, calling, "How is she?" and came on, stopping beside me, looking down at Faith Usher. "My God," she said, whispered, and seized my arm and demanded, "Why don’t you do something?" She looked down again, her mouth hanging open, and I put my hands on her shoulders and turned her around. "Thanks," she said. "My God, she was so pretty. Is she dead?"

"Yes. Did you get a doctor?"

"Yes, he’s coming. I couldn’t get ours. I got- What good is a doctor if she’s dead?"

"Nobody is dead until a doctor says so. It’s a law." Some of the others were jabbering, and I turned and raised my voice. "You people might as well rest your legs and there are plenty of chairs, but stay away from the one the bag is on. If you want to leave the room I can’t stop you, but I advise you not to. The police might misunderstand it, and you’d only have more questions to answer." A buzzer sounded and Hackett was going, but I stopped him. "No, Hackett, you’d better stay, you’re one of us now. Mr Johnson will let them in."

He was doing so. There was no sound of the door opening because doors on mansions do not make noises, but there were voices in the reception hall, and everybody turned to face the arch. In they came, a pair, two precinct men in uniform. They marched in and stopped, and one of them asked, "Mr Robert Robilotti?"

"I’m Robert Robilotti," he said.

"This your house? We got-"

"No," Mrs Robilotti said. "It’s my house."

Chapter Four

When I mounted the seven steps of the stoop of the old brownstone at twelve minutes after seven Wednesday morning and let myself in, I was so pooped that I was going to drop my topcoat and hat on the hall bench, but breeding told, and I put the coat on a hanger and the hat on a shelf and went to the kitchen.

Fritz, at the refrigerator, turned and actually left the refrigerator door open to stare at me.

"Behold!" he said. He had told me once that he had got that out of his French-English dictionary, many years ago, as a translation of voila.

"I want," I said, "a quart of orange juice, a pound of sausage, six eggs, twenty griddle cakes, and a gallon of coffee."

"No doughnuts with honey?"

"Yes. I forgot to mention them." I dropped on to the chair I occupy at breakfast, groaning. "Speaking of honey, if you want to make a friend who will never fail you, you might employ the eggs in a hedgehog omelet, with plenty- No. It would take too long. Just fry ’em."

"I never fry eggs." He was stirring a bowl of batter. "You have had a night?"

"I have. A murder with all the trimmings."

"Ah! Terrible! A client, then?"

I do not pretend to understand Fritz’s attitude towards murder. He deplores it. To him the idea of one human being killing another is insupportable; he has told me so, and he meant it. But he never has the slightest interest in the details, not even who the victim was, or the murderer, and if I try to tell him about any of the fine points it just bores him. Beyond the bare fact that again a human being has done something insupportable, the only question he wants answered is whether we have a client.