Champagne for One

She danced cheerfully, and of course that was no good. You can't dance cheerfully. Dancing is too important. It can be wild or solemn or gay or lewd or art for art's sake, but it can't be cheerful. For one thing, if you're cheerful you talk too much.

— Archie, missing a dancing partner as good as Celia Grantham, in Champagne for One, chapter 3.

Archie Goodwin sits in for a friend at a charity dinner dance for unwed mothers, and one of the guests drops dead on the dance floor.

Archie Goodwin receives a phone call from an acquaintance, Austin “Dinky” Byne, asking for a favour. Byne routinely acts as a chaperone for an annual dinner hosted by his aunt, Louise Grantham Robilotti, which is given in honour of four young unwed mothers living at Grantham House, a charity supported by her late husband. Byne claims to have a cold and is unable to attend; although skeptical, Archie agrees to stand in for him, despite Mrs. Robilotti being a former client of Nero Wolfe’s who bears him a personal dislike. During the dinner, Archie learns from one of the unwed mothers that another, Faith Usher, has a bottle of cyanide in her purse; Faith has been suffering from depression, and her friend fears that she might attempt suicide. Archie promises to watch over her, but towards the end of the evening Faith collapses and dies from cyanide poisoning after drinking a glass of champagne.

Alone of the guests, Archie maintains that Faith Usher did not commit suicide, claiming that he observed her constantly throughout the evening and that she never had an opportunity to pour the cyanide from her bottle into her glass. Although the authorities and the other guests pressure Archie into changing his story, Nero Wolfe believes him and decides to settle the matter by solving the case himself. He is given further incentive to do so when Edwin Laidlaw, another of the chaperones, approaches him to hire his services; Laidlaw is the father of Faith Usher’s child after a brief affair they had the previous year and, ashamed of his conduct, is desperate that his secret is not revealed.

Although Wolfe’s investigation begins unpromisingly, he becomes convinced that his suspicions are correct when the police receive an anonymous tip revealing Laidlaw’s secret. Although the police are skeptical due to the anonymous nature, it suggests to Wolfe that someone else knew Laidlaw’s secret and has become agitated by the ongoing investigation. His investigations begin to focus on both Faith Usher’s estranged mother Elaine, herself an unwed mother, and Dinky Byne, whose false reasons for canceling on the party look increasingly suspect given the events. He assigns Saul Panzer and Archie to investigate the two respectively, leading to a break in the case when both Archie and Saul tail their respective targets to the same location: a nightclub where Elaine Usher and Dinky Byne are meeting with each other.

When confronted by Wolfe, both Byne and Elaine Usher attempt to lie their way out of the situation, but their stories do not corroborate. Byne admits that he knew that Laidlaw was the father of Faith Usher’s child, and claims that he had them both invited to the dinner without their knowledge as a spiteful prank. During their conversation, however, Orrie Cather infiltrates Byne’s apartment and discovered a letter revealing that Mrs. Robilotti’s deceased first husband, Albert Grantham, was the father of Faith Usher. This, coupled with some unwittingly suggestive comments from Byne, leads Wolfe to identify the murderer.

Summoning the guests to his office, he has them reenact the circumstances under which Faith Usher received the poisoned champagne multiple times. This demonstrates that Mrs. Robilotti's son Cecil, who gave Faith the poisoned champagne, had a routine way of handing over a glass that someone who knew his habits would be able to predict. He accuses Mrs. Robilotti of poisoning Faith Usher; Byne was blackmailing her with the knowledge that her former husband was Faith’s father and invited Faith to the dinner as a threat. Mrs. Robilotti murdered Faith to conceal the secret and out of resentment over her husband’s affair and, learning that she was in the habit of carrying cyanide, acquired some from another source to make it look like a suicide. Archie is vindicated, and Mrs. Robilotti is taken into custody.

In most Nero Wolfe novels and novellas, there is at least one unfamiliar word, usually spoken by Wolfe. Champagne for One contains but one example, apart from the legalese respondeat superior found in Chapter 9. (In Chapter 2 the reader is also treated to a discussion of the derivation of protocol from the Greek proto, "first," and kollon, "glue".)

On page 202 of the 1996 Bantam edition, in Chapter 16, Wolfe says, "You have trimmed long enough." The word "trimmed" is not itself unfamiliar, but the usage may be.

• Nero Wolfe — The private investigator.
• Archie Goodwin — Wolfe's assistant (and the narrator of all Wolfe stories).
• Mr. and Mrs. Robert Robilotti — Louise Grantham Robilotti is a wealthy heiress who inherited the fortune of her first husband, Mr. Grantham, and later married Mr. Robilotti.
• Faith Usher, Helen Yarmis, Rose Tuttle and Ethel Varr — Four honored guests at a dinner party given by Mrs. Robilotti.
• Elaine Usher — Faith's estranged mother.
• Austin "Dinky" Byne — Mrs. Robilotti's nephew.
• Edwin Laidlaw — A publisher who is terrified that his prior relationship with Miss Usher will be exposed by the investigation into her death.
• Cecil and Celia Grantham — Mrs. Robilotti's twin son and daughter from her first marriage.
• Paul Schuster and Beverly Kent — Along with Edwin Laidlaw and Archie Goodwin, dinner partners for the young women at the party.
• Inspector Cramer and Sergeant Purley Stebbins—Manhattan Homicide
• Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin, and Orrie Cather—Wolfe's preferred free-lance detectives

• Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor, A Catalogue of Crime — Archie and Nero shine, once again, on the question: Who slipped the cyanide into the glass of the girl attending the unwed mothers' annual party at the house of their benefactress? Two small queries: would the dead philanthropist write the odd letter of gift that provides no better control of large funds than someone's probity? And how was the poison actually administered? One can't buy ready-mixed KCN.[1]
• Nancy Pearl, Book Lust — When Stout is on top of his game, which is most of the time, his diabolically clever plotting and his storytelling ability exceed that of any other mystery writer you can name, including Agatha Christie, who invented her own eccentric genius detective Hercule Poirot. Although in the years since Stout's death I find myself going back and rereading his entire oeuvre every year or two, I return with particular pleasure to these five novels: The Doorbell Rang; Plot It Yourself; Murder by the Book; Champagne for One; and Gambit.[2]

• 1958, New York: The Viking Press, November 24, 1958, hardcover[10]

In his limited-edition pamphlet, Collecting Mystery Fiction #10, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe Part II, Otto Penzler describes the first edition of Champagne for One: "Black cloth, front cover and spine printed with purple; rear cover blank. Issued in a mainly black dust wrapper."[11]

In April 2006, Firsts: The Book Collector's Magazine estimated that the first edition of Champagne for One had a value of between $200 and $350. The estimate is for a copy in very good to fine condition in a like dustjacket.[12]

• 1958, London, Ontario: Macmillan, 1958
• 1959, New York: Viking (Mystery Guild), January 1959, hardcover

The far less valuable Viking book club edition may be distinguished from the first edition in three ways:

• The dust jacket has "Book Club Edition" printed on the inside front flap, and the price is absent (first editions may be price clipped if they were given as gifts).
• Book club editions are sometimes thinner and always taller (usually a quarter of an inch) than first editions.
• Book club editions are bound in cardboard, and first editions are bound in cloth (or have at least a cloth spine).[13]

• 1959, London: Collins Crime Club, September 7, 1959, hardcover
• 1960, New York: Bantam #A2023, April 1960, paperback
• 1961, London: Fontana, 1961, paperback
• 1978, London: Penguin, 1978, paperback
• 1992, London: Scribners ISBN 0-356-20108-2, 1992, hardcover
• 1996, New York: Bantam Crimeline ISBN 0-553-24438-8, 1996, paperback, Rex Stout Library edition with introduction by Lena Horne
• 1998, Canada, Durkin Hayes Publishing, DH Audio ISBN 0-88646-456-0 January 1998, audio cassette (unabridged, read by Saul Rubinek)
• 2006, Auburn, California: The Audio Partners Publishing Corp., Mystery Masters ISBN 1-57270-520-5 March 28, 2006, audio CD (unabridged, read by Michael Prichard)
• 2009, New York: Bantam Dell Publishing Group (with Too Many Cooks) ISBN 978-0-553-38629-5 April 28, 2009, trade paperback
• 2010, New York: Bantam Crimeline ISBN 978-0-307-75576-6 July 21, 2010, e-book

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Champagne for One

• A Nero Wolfe Mystery — "Champagne for One" at IMDb
• A Nero Wolfe Mystery — "Champagne for One" at The Wolfe Pack, official site of the Nero Wolfe Society
• Script (PDF) for "Champagne for One," written by Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin, at the official site of Lee Goldberg
• Nero Wolfe — "Champagne per uno" at IMDb