Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 34, No. 13 & 14, Winter 1989

“I am not familiar with the tribal beliefs of celebrities, Mr. Ruker. If all these questions are to establish that Mr. Kelly was with the woman who was killed, I am of no help to you at all. The first time I noticed him was when he came up to me. I don’t know if that helps or hurts his case, but it is the truth.”

“You can include me in that, too,” Buzz Tierney chimed in. “Kelly was with By... Mrs. Pemberton when I came into the lobby, so I couldn’t know where he was sitting.”

“If that’s why you got me down here,” it was Phil Dunn the sportswriter’s turn, “I arrived late and was taken immediately upstairs to the Bottle Room.”

“Well, that seems to settle that,” Dinsmore said with a sigh of relief. “I can appreciate the district attorney’s office wanting to be thorough, but since we can be of no assistance...”

“Mrs. Pemberton,” Ruker played right through the exit speech, “when you were going upstairs, you said to Mr. Tierney, ‘You promised it would work,’ and then you added, ‘Suppose Jay Porter finds out.’ ”

They couldn’t help it. Byerle and Buzz exchanged furtive glances, which we all caught, no one more acutely than Jay Porter.

“I don’t remember making any such statement,” Byerle said gamely.

Ruker gave her a sharp jab to set her up for a one-two combination. “Others do remember, and will swear to it. Your statement was remembered verbatim. So what was it that your husband wasn’t supposed to know, or find out?”

“Don’t answer that, Byerle,” Dinsmore was on his feet and angry as hell. “And I want you to listen to me, Jay Porter and Buzz Tierney as well. It’s preposterous, but there’s the thread of an implication here that Mrs. Pemberton is somehow involved in the death of Gina Velker. All this jabberwocky about being invited here for a chat about meeting Kelly was a ruse, and believe you me, Mr. Ruker, the D.A. will rue this action, if indeed it had his sanction at all.”

I wasn’t listening to Dinsmore’s harangue. I was looking at Jay Porter’s face. He stared fixedly at the wall behind Ruker’s desk, and I could sense the thought pattern emerging from his brain the same way it had in mine, which went like this:

Tierney and Byerle would like to make permanent whoopee, and they concoct the criminal conversation plot. Byerle would then have grounds for a beautiful divorce settlement plus a cut of Gina’s take. Poor Jay Porter’s brain was putting together the pieces, and his ever-tightening mouth showed he didn’t like it.

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?”