Champagne for One

"I’m desperate, Wolfe," Laidlaw said. He pushed his hair back, but it needed more than a push. "I admit it. I’m desperate. You’ll accept the job because there’s no reason why you shouldn’t. What I’m going to tell you is known to no one on earth but me, I’m pretty sure of that, but not absolutely sure, and that’s the devil of it."

He pushed at his hair again. "I’m not proud of this, what I’m telling you. I’m thirty-one years old. In August, nineteen fifty-six, a year and a half ago, I went into Cordoni’s on Madison Avenue to buy some flowers, and the girl who waited on me was attractive, and that evening I drove her to a place in the country for dinner. Her name was Faith Usher. Her vacation was to start in ten days, and by the time it started I had persuaded her to spend it in Canada with me. I didn’t use my own name; I’m almost certain she never knew what it was. She only had a week, and when we got back she went back to work at Cordoni’s, and I went to Europe and was gone two months. When I returned I had no idea of resuming any relations with her, but I had no reason to avoid her, and I stopped in at Cordoni’s one day. She was there, but she would barely speak to me. She asked me, if I came to Cordoni’s again, to get someone else to wait on me."

"I suggest," Wolfe put in, "that you confine this to the essentials."

"I am. I want you to know just how it was. I don’t like to feel that I owe anyone anything, especially a woman, and I phoned her twice to get her to meet me and have a talk, but she wouldn’t. So I dropped it. I also stopped buying flowers at Cordoni’s, but some months later, one rainy day in April, I went there because it was convenient, and she wasn’t there. I didn’t ask about her. I include these details because you ought to know what the chances are that the police are going to dig this up."

"First the essentials," Wolfe muttered.

"All right, but you ought to know how I found out that she was at Grantham House. Grantham House is an institution started by-"

"I know what it is."