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, Norm?”
“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 a 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.
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.