Champagne for One

"The phone was downstairs in the hall, but of course I would have known if she got a call when I was there. I don’t remember she ever got one. This is kinda funny, Mr Wolfe. I can answer your questions without even thinking because they’re all the same questions the police have been asking, even the same words, so I don’t have to stop to think."

I could have given her a hug and kiss too, though not in the same spirit as with Ethel Varr. Anyone who takes Wolfe down a peg renders a service to the balance of nature, and to tell him to his face that he was merely a carbon copy of the cops was enough to spoil his appetite for dinner.

He grunted. "Every investigator follows a routine up to a point. Miss Yarmis. Beyond that point comes the opportunity for talent if any is at hand. I find it a little difficult to accept your portfolio of negatives." Another grunt. "It may not be outside my capacity to contrive a question that will not parrot the police. I’ll try. Do you mean to tell me that during the seven months you lived with Miss Usher you had no inkling of her having any social or personal contact-excluding her job and night school and the visits of Mrs Robbins-with any of her fellow beings?"

Helen was frowning. The frown deepened. "Say it again," she commanded.

He did so, slower.

"They didn’t ask that," she declared. "What’s an inkling?"

"An intimation. A hint."

She still frowned. She shook her head. "I don’t remember any hints."

"Did she never tell you that she had met a man that day that she used totoiow? Or a woman? Or that someone, perhaps a customer at Barwick’s, had annoyed her? Or that she had been accosted on the street? Did she never account for a headache or a fit of ill humour by telling of an encounter she had had? An encounter is a meeting face to face. Did she never mention a single name in connection with some experience, either pleasant or disagreeable? In all your hours together, did nothing ever remind her- What is it?"