Champagne for One

Byne did have to squeeze it out. His lips didn’t want to part. "Because," he finally managed, "they were going on with the investigation and there was no telling what they might dig up. They might find out that I knew Faith’s mother, and about my-about the arrangement. I still thought Faith had killed herself, and I still do, but if she had been murdered I thought Laidlaw must have done it and I wanted them to know about him and Faith."

"Why must he have done it? You invented that, didn’t you? About him and Miss Usher?"

"I did not. I sort of kept an eye on Faith, naturally. I don’t mean I was with her, I just kept an eye on her. I saw her with Laidlaw twice, and the day he left for Canada I saw her in his car. I knew he went to Canada because a friend got a card from him. I didn’t have to invent it."

Wolfe grunted. "You realize, Mr Byne, that everything you say is now suspect. Assuming that you knew that Laidlaw and Miss Usher had in fact been intimate, why did you surmise that he had killed her? Was she menacing him?"

"Not that I know of. If he had a reason for killing her I didn’t know what it was. But he was the only one of the people there that night who had had anything to do with her."

"No. You had."

"Damn it, I wasn’t there!"

"That’s true, but those who were there can also plead lack of opportunity. In the circumstances as I have heard them described, no one could have poisoned Miss Usher’s champagne with any assurance that it would get to her. And you alone, of all those involved, had a motive, and not a puny one. An increase in annual income of 127,000 or more, tax exempt, is an alluring prospect. If I were you I would accept almost any alternative to a disclosure of that agreement to the District Attorney."

"I am. I’m sitting here while you pile it on."

"So you are." Wolfe looked at his palms and put them on the chair arms. "Now. Did you know that Miss Usher kept a bottle of poison on her person?"

No hesitation. "I knew that she said she did. I never saw it. Her mother told me, and Mrs Irwin at Grantham House mentioned it to me once."

"Did you know what kind of poison it was?"

"No."

"Was it Mrs Usher’s own idea to seclude herself in a hotel under another name, or did you suggest it?"

"Neither one. I mean I don’t remember. She phoned me Thursday-no, Wednesday-and we decided she ought to do that. I don’t remember who suggested it."

"Who suggested your meeting this evening?"

"She did. She phoned me this morning. I told you that,"

"What did she want?"