Champagne for One

"Facts are facts," Beverly Kent muttered. Unquestionably a diplomatic way of putting it, suitable for a diplomat. When he got a little higher up the ladder he might refine it by making it "A fact is a fact is a fact."

"Do you deny," Schuster demanded, "that we owe it to Goodwin that we are being embarrassed and harassed by a homicide investigation? And he is your agent, employed by you. No doubt you know the legal axiom, respondeat superior. Isn’t that an injury?"

"Not only that," Cecil charged, "but he goes up to Grantham House, sticking his nose in. And yesterday a man tried to pump my mother’s butler, and he had no credentials, and I want to know if you sent him. And another man with no credentials is asking questions about me among my friends, and I want to know if you sent him."

"To me," Beverly Kent stated, "the most serious aspect is the scope of the police inquiry. My work on our Mission to the United Nations is in a sensitive field, very sensitive, and already I have been definitely injured. Merely to have been present when a sensational event occurred, the suicide of that young woman, would have been unfortunate. To be involved in an extended police inquiry, a murder investigation, could be disastrous for me. If in addition to that you are sending your private agents among my friends and associates to inquire about me, that is adding insult to injury. I have no information of that, as yet. But you have, Cece?"

Cecil nodded. "I sure have."

"So have I," Schuster said.

"Have you, Ed?"

Laidlaw cleared his throat. "No direct information, no. Nothing explicit. But I have reason to suspect it."

He handled it pretty well, I thought. Naturally he had to be with them, since if he had refused to join in the attack they would have wondered why, but he wanted Wolfe to understand that he was still his client.

"You haven’t answered my question," Schuster told Wolfe. "Do you deny that we owe this harassment to Goodwin, and therefore to you, since he is your agent?"

"No," Wolfe said. "But you owe it to me, through Mr Goodwin, only secondarily. Primarily you owe it to the man or woman who murdered Faith Usher. So it’s quite possible that one of you owes it to himself."

"I knew it," Cecil declared. "I told you, Paul."

Schuster ignored him. "As I said," he told Wolfe, "this may become a question of law."