At three o’clock Norman drew his study drapes against the afternoon sun and placed one of Chopin’s nocturnes on his quadraphonic record changer. Then, with a keen sense of anticipation, he carefully removed the Margaux’s cork and prepared to decant the wine so that it could breathe. It was his considered judgment that an aged claret should be allowed no less than five hours of contact with new air and no more than six. A healthy, living wine must be given time to breathe in order for it to express its character, release its bouquet, become more alive; but too much breathing causes a dulling of its subtle edge.
He lighted the candle that he had set on the Duncan Phyfe table, waited until the flame was steady, then began to slowly pour the Margaux, holding the shoulder of the bottle just above the light so that he could observe the flow of the wine as it passed through the neck. There was very little age-crust or sediment. The color, however, did not look quite right; it had a faint cloudiness, a pale brown twinge, as wine does when it has grown old too quickly.
Norman felt a sharp twinge of apprehension. He raised the decanter and sniffed the bouquet. Not good, not good at all. He swirled the wine lightly to let air mix with it and sniffed again. Oh Lord — a definite taint of sourness.
He poured a small amount into a crystal glass, prepared himself, and took a sip. Let the wine flood over and under his tongue, around his gums.
And then spat the mouthful back into the glass.
The Margaux was dead.
Sour, unpalatable — dead.
White-faced, Norman sank onto a chair. His first feelings were of sorrow and despair, but these soon gave way to a sense of outrage focused on Roger Hume. It was Hume who had given him not a living, breathing 1900 Margaux but a desiccated corpse; it was Hume who had tantalized him and then left him unfulfilled, Hume who had caused him this pain and anguish, Hume who might even have been responsible for the death of the Margaux through careless mishandling. Damn the man. Damn him!
The more Norman thought about Roger Hume, the more enraged he became. Heat rose in his cheeks until they flamed scarlet. Minutes passed before he remembered his high blood pressure and his doctor’s warning about undue stress; he made a conscious effort to calm himself.
When he had his emotions under control he stood, went to the telephone, found a listing for Hume in the Manhattan directory, and dialed the number. Hume’s loud coarse voice answered on the third ring.
“This is Norman Tolliver, Hume,” Norman said.
“Well, Norm, it’s been awhile. What’s the good word?”
Norm. A muscle fluttered on Norman’s cheek. “If you plan to be in this afternoon, I would like a word with you.”
“Oh? Something up?”
“I prefer not to discuss it on the telephone.”
“Suit yourself,” Hume said. “Sure, come on over. Give me a chance to show off my digs to you.” He paused. “You shoot pool, by any chance?”
“No, I do not ‘shoot pool.’”
“Too bad. Got a new table and I’ve been practicing. Hell of a good game, Norm, you should try it.”
The man was a bloody Philistine. Norman said, “I’ll be by directly,” and cradled the handset with considerable force.
He recorked the bottle of dead Margaux and wrapped it in a towel. After which he blew out the candle, switched off his quadraphonic unit, and took the penthouse elevator to the street. Fifteen minutes later a taxi delivered him to the East Side block on which Hume’s town house was situated.
Hume admitted him, allowed as how it was good to see him again, swatted him on the back (Norman shuddered and ground his teeth), and ushered him into a spacious living room. There were shelves filled with rare first editions, walls adorned with originals by Degas and Monet and Sisley, fine Kerman orientals on the floor. But all of these works of art, Norman thought, could mean nothing to Hume; they would merely be possessions, visible evidence of his wealth. He had certainly never read any of the books or spent a moment appreciating any of the paintings. And there were cigarette burns (Norman ground his teeth again) in one of the Kerman carpets.
Hume himself was fifty pounds overweight and such a plebeian type that he looked out of place in these genteel surroundings. He wore expensive but ill-fitting clothes, much too heavy for the season because of a professed hypersensitivity to cold; his glasses were rimmed in gold-and-onyx and quite thick because of a professed astigmatism in one eye; he carried an English walking stick because of a slight limp that was the professed result of a sports car accident. He pretended to be an eccentric, but did not have the breeding, intelligence, or flair to manage even the pose of eccentricity. Looking at him now, Norman revised his previous estimate: The man was not a Philistine; he was a Neanderthal.
“How about a drink, Norman?”
“This is not a social call,” Norman said.
“No?” Hume peered at him. “So what can I do for you?”
Norman unwrapped the bottle of Margaux and extended it accusingly. “This is what you can do for me, as you put it.”
“I don’t get it,” Hume said.
“You gave me this Margaux last month. I trust you remember the occasion.”
“Sure, I remember. But I still don’t see the point—”
“The point, Hume, is that it’s dead.”
“Huh?”
“The wine is undrinkable. It’s dead, Hume.”
Hume threw back his head and made a sound like the braying of a jackass. “You hand me a laugh sometimes, Norm,” he said, “you really do. The way you talk about wine, like it was alive or human or something.”
Norman’s hands had begun to tremble. “The Margaux was alive. Now it is nothing but 79-year-old vinegar!”
“So what?” Hume said.
“So what?” A reddish haze seemed to be forming behind Norman’s eyes. “So what! You insensitive idiot, don’t you have any conception of what tragedy this is?”
“Hey,” Hume said, “who you calling an idiot?”
“You, you idiot. If you have another Margaux 1900, I demand it in replacement. I demand a living wine.”
“I don’t give a damn what you demand,” Hume said. He was miffed too, now. “You got no right to call me an idiot, Norm; I won’t stand for it. Suppose you just get on out of my house. And take your lousy bottle of wine with you.”
“My lousy bottle of wine?” Norman said through the reddish haze. “Oh no, Hume, it’s your lousy bottle of wine and I’m going to let you have it!”
Then he did exactly that: he let Hume have it. On top of the head with all his strength.
There were several confused moments that Norman could not recall afterward. When the reddish haze dissipated he discovered that all of his anger had drained away, leaving him flushed and shaken. He also discovered Hume lying quite messily dead on the cigarette-scarred Kerman, the unbroken bottle of Margaux beside him.
It was not in Norman’s nature to panic in a crisis. He marshaled his emotions instead and forced himself to approach the problem at hand with cold logic.
Hume was as dead as the Margaux; there was nothing to be done about that. He could, of course, telephone the police and claim self-defense. But there was no guarantee that he would be believed, considering that this was Hume’s house, and in any case he had an old-fashioned gentleman’s abhorrence of adverse and sensational publicity. No, reporting Hume’s demise was out of the question.