Champagne for One was published by Viking Press in 1958. Archie attends a charity dinner organized by a wealthy woman for unmarried mothers — a formal annual event. One of the guests, Faith Usher, dies during the dinner from cyanide in her champagne glass. The police, the host, and the other guests all assume suicide: Faith had a known history of depression and had threatened to kill herself.
But Archie knows it was murder, because he was watching Faith when she drank. He saw no hesitation, no farewell gesture, no sign that she knew what was in her glass. More importantly, he noticed the dynamics around the table — who was positioned where, who poured the champagne, whose hand was close to Faith’s glass. Archie’s eyewitness certainty puts him in conflict with everyone, including Inspector Cramer, who would prefer a tidy suicide ruling.
The novel is one of the most elegant in the series — a variation on the “impossible crime” story where the impossibility is social rather than physical: how do you poison someone’s champagne at a formal dinner without any of twelve witnesses seeing you do it? The solution depends on understanding social conventions — what people look at and what they don’t — and Stout constructs it with characteristic precision.
Collecting Champagne for One
First edition (Viking Press, New York, 1958): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $150–$400
- Very good: $50–$150