Which left the reasonable alternative of removing all traces of his presence and stealing away as if he had never come. It was unlikely that anyone had seen him entering; if he was careful his departure would be unobserved as well. And even if someone did happen to notice him in a casual way, he was not known in this neighborhood and there was nothing about his physical appearance that would remain fixed in a person’s memory. An added point in his favor was that Hume had few friends and by self-admission preferred his own company. The body, therefore, might well go undiscovered for several days.
Norman used the towel to wipe the unbloodied surfaces of the Margaux bottle — a distasteful but necessary task — and left the bottle where it lay beside the body. Had he touched anything in the house that might also retain a fingerprint? He was certain he had not. He had pressed the doorbell button on the porch outside, but it would be simple enough to brush that clean before leaving. Was there anything else, anything he might have overlooked? He concluded that there wasn’t.
With the towel folded inside his coat pocket, he went down the hallway to the front door. There was a magnifying-glass peephole in the center of it; he put his eye to the glass and peered out. Damn. Two women were standing on the street in front, conversing in the amiable and animated fashion of neighbors. They might decide to part company in ten seconds, but they might also decide to remain there for ten minutes.
Norman debated the advisability of exiting through the rear. But a man slipping out the back door of someone’s house was much more likely to be seen and remembered than a man who departed the front. And there was still the matter of the doorbell button to be dealt with. His only intelligent choice was to wait for the street in front to become clear.
As he stood there he found himself thinking again of the tragedy of the Margaux 1900 (a far greater tragedy to his connoisseur’s mind than the unlamented death of Roger Hume). It was considered by many experts to be one of the most superlative vintages in history; and the fact remained that he had yet to taste it. To have come so close and then to be denied as he had was intolerable.
It occurred to him again that perhaps Hume did have another bottle on the premises. While presenting the first bottle last month Hume had boasted that he maintained a “pretty well-stocked” wine cellar, though he confided that he had never had “much of a taste for the grape” and seldom availed himself of its contents. Neanderthal, indeed. But a Neanderthal with a good deal of money who had managed, through luck or wise advice, to obtain at least one bottle of an uncommon and classic wine—
Was there another Margaux 1900 in his blasted cellar?
Norman debated a second time. On the one hand it would behoove him to make as rapid an escape as possible from the scene of his impulsive crime; but on the other hand the 1900 Margaux was virtually impossible to find today, and if he passed up this opportunity to secure a bottle for himself he might never taste it. It would be a decision he might well rue for the rest of his days.
He looked once more through the peephole; the two women were still talking together outside. Which only served to cement a decision already made. He was, first and foremost, a connoisseur: he simply bad to know if Hume had another bottle of the Margaux.
Norman located the wine cellar without difficulty. It was off the kitchen, with access through a door and down a short flight of steps. It was also adequate, he noticed in a distracted way as he descended — a smallish single room, walled and floored in concrete, containing several storage bins filled with at least two hundred bottles of wine.
But no, not just wine; remarkably fine wine. Reds from Châteaux Lafite, Haut-Brion, Lascombes, Cos D’Estournel, Mouton-D’Armailhacq, La Tâche, Romanée Saint-Vivant; whites from the Bommes and Barsac communes of France, from the Rhine Hessen of Germany, from Alsace and Italy and the Napa Valley of California. Norman resisted the impulse to stop and more closely examine each of the labels. He had no time to search out anything except the Margaux 1900.
He found two different Château Margaux clarets in the last row of bins, but neither of them was the 1900 vintage. Then, when he was about to abandon hope, he knelt in front of the final section of bins and there they were, a pair of dusty bottles whose labels matched that on the spoiled bottle upstairs.
Norman expelled a breath and removed one of them with care. Should he take the second as well? Yes: if he left it here there was no telling into whose unappreciative hands it might fall. There would doubtless be a paper sack in the kitchen in which to carry both. He withdrew the second bottle, straightened, and started to the stairs.
The door at the top was closed. Blinking, Norman paused. He could not recall having shut the door; in fact he was quite certain he had left it standing wide open. He frowned, went up the steps, set the two living Margaux 1900s down carefully at his feet, and rotated the knob.
It was locked.
It took a moment of futile shaking and rattling before he realized that the top of the door was outfitted with one of those silent pneumatic door closers. He stared at it in disbelief. Only an idiot would put such a device on the door to a wine cellar! But that was, of course, what Hume had been. For whatever incredible reason he had had the thing installed — and it seemed obvious now that he carried on his person the key to the door latch.
There was no other way out of the cellar, no second door and no window; Norman determined that with a single sweep of his gaze. And the door looked to be fashioned of heavy solid wood, which made the task of forcing it or battering it down an insurmountable one.
He was trapped.
The irony was as bitter as the taste of the dead Margaux: trapped in Roger Hume’s wine cellar with the man’s murdered corpse in the living room upstairs. He had been a fool to come down here, a fool to have listened to the connoisseur in him. He could have been on his way home to his penthouse by now. Instead, here he was, locked away awaiting the eventual arrival of the police...
As he had done earlier, Norman made an effort to gather his wits. Perhaps all was not lost, despite the circumstances. He could claim to have been visiting Hume when two burly masked men entered the house; and he could claim that these men had locked him in the cellar and taken Hume away to an unknown fate. Yes, that was plausible. After all, he was a respected and influential man. Why shouldn’t he be believed?
Norman began to feel a bit better. There remained the problem of survival until Hume’s body was found; but as long as that did not take more than a week — an unlikely prospect — the problem was not really a serious one. He was surrounded by scores of bottles of vintage wine, and there was a certain amount of nourishment to be had from the product of the vintner’s art. At least enough to keep him alive and in passable health.
Meanwhile, he would have to find ways to keep himself and his mind occupied. He could begin, he thought, by examining and making a mental catalogue of Hume’s collection of vintages and varieties.
He turned from the door and surveyed the cellar again. And for the first time, something struck him as vaguely odd about it. He had not noticed it before in his haste and purpose, but now that he was locked in here with nothing to distract him—
A faint sound reached his ears and made him scowl. He could not quite identify it or its source at first; he descended the stairs again and stood at the bottom, listening. It seemed to be coming from both sides of the cellar. Norman moved to his left — and when the sound became clear the hackles rose on the back of his neck.