Byerle had known he was going to Newport the evening of the storm. She knew he was too much the gentleman to turn Gina out. His own weekend conversations with Gina had told him she wasn’t smart enough to dream up the caper, but Byerle and Buzz were. Oh yes, I thought, you’re getting the message, Mr. Millionaire.
“You promised me it would work,” she had said, and when she saw Gina with me, a pal of her husband, she knew it was trouble. Then, when it started to fall apart, the publicity had turned Gina into a romantic rebel and Gina’s husband into bitterness and vengeance, both too dangerous to be alive.
While I’m watching Jay Porter, Ruker had somehow quieted Dinsmore down with a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo and the attorney was saying, “Of course we will answer any question that’s germane to the case. Ask if you’ve got one.”
“Mr. Pemberton, you keep a supply of a champagne labeled ‘Chateau La Codar 1958’ stored at Mr. Kelly’s nightclub.”
“Yes, I do. It’s a private label bottled for me exclusively at my place in France.”
“Is your entire stock kept at Mr. Kelly’s?”
“Oh no, I keep some at 21, a few down at Burning Tree, and of course, a case or so at our various pieds-à-terre.”
“Which do you consider your residence of record, sir?”
“Legally, I suppose it’s split between the apartment on Fifth Avenue and the house in Little Neck on the Island. Summers, of course, at Newport, and sometimes the Palm Beach place in winter.”
“And you keep La Codar at all these homes?”
“Yes, I don’t drink much, but when I do, it’s always La Codar so I like to have it available. Oh yes, if it’s pertinent, there are always a few bottles on my jet.”
“Thank you, sir. And are these bottles numbered sequentially?”
“No. There’s no need. I don’t inventory it, although Mike at 21 keeps meticulous records, as does Jack McCarthy at Chick Kelly’s.”
“You understand, Mr. Pemberton,” Ruker said, “that a bottle of La Codar carried the poison that killed the Velkers?”
“So I am told. I guess that’s why Mr. Kelly is suspect. Something about fingerprints?”
“Yes, that’s correct. On the bottle’s cardboard sleeve and the wrapping paper, but not on the bottle itself. On the night of the Velker deaths, you were having a Sea Dart party, as I understand it. Is it possible that one of your guests could have taken a bottle of La Codar with him when he left?”
“I should say quite impossible, Mr. Ruker, because no one left. If you recall, that was the night of the second blizzard, and nothing was moving on Long Island. We simply put everyone up for the night: Mr. Tierney, the boat crew, and a few fellows from the press, like Mr. Dunn here.”
“You know, Mr. Ruker,” Dinsmore was at it again, “it seems to me that, as a prosecutor, your approach is a bit confused. Mr. Kelly is in custody because of his liaison with the deceased woman, and a bottle of poisoned champagne taken from his own cellar is the vessel of death. Why, then, are we dwelling on a party of people who had no connection with the case, and who, even if they had, could not possibly have gotten to the scene of the crime unless they had wings? I believe that even the gulls were walking that night.”
Well, folks, there you have it, and if you missed the essential element that’s going to hang Lady Byerle and Buzz Tierney, it will be clear when you hear what my surprise guy waiting outside has to say. Oh, why make you wait. The surprise guy is Lieutenant Commander Paul Dirinkus of the U.S. Coast Guard, and he is prepared to show on a map that, on the night of the Velker deaths, you could get a bottle of poisoned Chateau La Codar from Little Neck, Long Island, on Long Island Sound to 89th Street on the East River by the smoothest, fastest means on earth, a hydroplane. His map shows that the East River is actually a tidal basin for Long Island Sound, on which Little Neck is located.
So, as they say in the detective stories, Tierney had the means, a spare bottle of exclusive champagne, which he or Byerle poisoned; motive, millions in a divorce settlement; and opportunity, a lightning-speed boat piloted by a pro. He docks the Sea Dart at the foot of 89th Street, and goes to the meeting with the Velkers, and gets them to drink the wine he brought with him. Then, to his surprise, he finds my bottle unopened. Byerle probably told him her husband kept Codar ’58 at my joint, so he’s got one beauty way to hang it on me. Wearing gloves, he just switches the cardboard sleeve, leaves my wrapping paper behind, and takes the unopened bottle with him, either dumping it on the return trip to Little Neck or putting it into the manse’s cellar stock.
Great plan, Byerle! Slick work, Tierney! Too bad you had to bump into Chick Kelly. Ruker was preparing for the coup de grace and I was savoring it.
“I know it’s a touchy subject, Mr. Dinsmore, but I would still like to know from Mrs. Pemberton what she meant when she said, ‘You said it would work... Suppose Jay Porter finds out.’ I believe Mr. Summers is prepared to ask her under oath in an open courtroom unless we can find out here and now.”
“For God’s sake, Buzz,” Phil Dunn said, shaking his head, “why don’t you put Mr. Pemberton out of his misery. It will be public knowledge when next week’s edition comes out. I went down to the Sea Dart hangar at Little Neck that night of the blizzard and saw for myself.”
Ah, glory. Ah, sweet corroboration. An eyewitness to Tierney’s death mission departure. ‘Tis the luck of the Kellys.
“What is going to be public knowledge?” Jay Porter is incensed. “Buzz, what is this man talking about?”
Buzz looked for help from Byerle and got none. Then he looked at Dunn, and got more than he asked for.
“Mr. Pemberton,” Dunn said, “the big secret these two have kept from the hydroplane racing world is that the Sea Dart, into which you have poured a fortune, is a lemon.”
“That’s a lie,” Byerle screeched. “Daddy’s designs will work if we can get the engineering right...”
“Mrs. Pemberton, no one had more respect for Skip Dorian as a racer than I did,” Dunn said sincerely, “but as a designer, he was out of his depth. Hell, Buzz, your uncle was killed in a death trap of his own design, and here you two cousins are trying to make a shrine out of a concept that doesn’t, and never can, work.
“After the party broke up that night, I went down to the Sea Dart hangar and tried to turn the motors over. You’ve been taking the boat to all the races and then bowing out with breakdown excuses when all the time the dumb thing doesn’t work.”
Byerle started to sob and her husband went to comfort her. Inside, I am also sobbing, and not a comforting hand in sight. What is this? Cousins! Well, goodbye, love affair, and my motive theory. A boat that doesn’t work! Goodbye, opportunity. Now, if I only had a bottle of the means, I could take a slug and be out of my misery. Ted was squirming in his seat, saying nothing.
From the look I’m getting from Ruker, I can see it’s manacle time again, but suddenly there is a commotion at the door and who is it but Tall Tommy. He is accompanied by a dapper dude with a bandit mustache and another guy in a kind of Forest Ranger outfit. Attached to the ranger is a chunky, darkhaired girl who obviously doesn’t like handcuffs any more than I did.
Ted was on his feet and so was Ruker, who said, “What’s the meaning of all this?” and Ted is saying, “Attorney Procutto?” and Dinsmore is saying, “What kind of a circus is going on here?”