Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 31 by Champagne for One Page A

me.
    “Look, Goodwin. You admit there are no holes in the set-up for suicide; how about the set-up for murder? The bag was there on the chair in full view. Did someone walk over and pick it up and open it and take out the bottle and unscrew the cap and shake out a lump and screw the cap back on and put the bottle back in the bag and drop it on the chair and walk away? That must have taken nerve.”
    “Nuts. You’re stacking the deck. All someone had to do was get the bag—of course I started watching it—and take it to a room that could be locked on the inside—there was one handy—and get a lump and conceal it in his or her handkerchief—thank you forsuggesting the handkerchief—and return the bag to the chair. That would take care, but no great nerve, since if he had any reason to think he had been seen taking the bag or returning it he wouldn’t use the lump. He might or might not have a chance to use it, anyway.” A yawn got me.
    He pointed the cigar again. “And that’s the next point, the chance to use it. The two glasses of champagne that Grantham took were poured by the butler, Hackett; he did all the pouring. One of them had been sitting on the bar for four or five minutes, and Hackett poured the other one just before Grantham came. Who was there, at the bar, during those four or five minutes? We haven’t got that completely straight yet, but apparently everybody was, or nearly everybody. You were. By your statement, and Ethel Varr agrees, you and she went there and took two glasses of champagne of the five or six that were there waiting, and then moved off and stood talking, and soon after—you say three minutes—you saw Grantham bring the two glasses to Faith Usher. So you were there. So you might have dropped cyanide in one of the glasses? No. Even granting that you are capable of poisoning somebody’s champagne, you would certainly make sure that the right one got it. You wouldn’t just drop it in one of the glasses on the bar and walk away, and that applies to all the others, except Edwin Laidlaw, Helen Yarmis, and Mr. and Mrs. Robilotti. They hadn’t walked away. They were there at the bar when Grantham came and got the two glasses. But he took
two
glasses. If one of those four people saw him coming and dropped the cyanide in one of the glasses, you’ve got to assume that he or she didn’t give a damn whether Grantham got it or Faith Usher got it, whichis too much for me. But not for you?” He clamped his teeth on the cigar. He never lit one.
    “As you tell it,” I conceded, “I wouldn’t buy it. But I have two comments. The first one is that there is one person who did know which glass Faith Usher would get. He handed it to her.”
    “Oh? You put it on Grantham?”
    “I don’t put it on anybody. I merely say that you omitted a detail.”
    “Not an important one. If Grantham dropped the poison in at the bar before he picked up the glasses, there were five people right there, and that
did
take nerve. If he dropped it in while he was crossing to Faith Usher it was quite a trick, with a glass in each hand. If he dropped it in after he handed her the glass you would have seen him. What’s your second comment?”
    “That I have not implied, in my sessions with you and the others, that I have the slightest notion who did it, or how or why. What you have just told me was mostly news to me. My attention was divided between my companion, Ethel Varr, and the bag, and Faith Usher. I didn’t know who was at the bar when Grantham came and got the champagne, or who had been there since Hackett poured the glasses that Grantham took. And I still have no notion who did it, or why or how. I only know that Faith Usher put nothing whatever in the champagne before she drank it, and therefore if it was poison in the champagne that killed her she did not commit suicide. That’s the one thing I know.”
    “And you won’t discuss it.”
    “I won’t? What are we doing?”
    “I mean you won’t