There were cries of dissent. Claire Burkhardt, at Helen Troy's left, got her elbow and pulled her back onto her chair. Nominations were made. Someone suggested they should draw lots. Half an hour earlier I would have let it slide, on the chance that Sue or Eleanor would get eleeted, which would have been a pleasant experience, but at this stage I didn't want to risk having a tone set that it might be hard to jostle them out of. So I spoke up.
'Don't you think you ought to consult me?'
'Don't butt in,' Blanche Duke said rudely.
'I'm sorry, but I have to. This is dangerous. If a certain
one of you came close to me right now and put her arms around me and kissed me, I might be able to remember I'm your host and I might not. Whereas-'
'Which one?' voices demanded.
I ignored them. 'Whereas if any other one did it, I couldn't keep from showing my disappointment. You can't expect me to tell you her name. We'll forget it. Anyhow, nobody seconded the motion, so it would be illegal.'
I pulled at my right ear. 'Another thing, the motion was put wrong. Doing it that way, who would it please most? Not me. You. I would much rather kiss than be kissed. But don't misunderstand me, you're my guests, and I would be happy to do something to please you. I'd love to please you. If you have a suggestion?'
Sue Dondero came through fine. 'I have two.'
'Good. One at a time.'
'First, let all of us call you Archie.'
'Easy. If I may call you Charlotte and Blanche and Dolly and Mabel and Portia and Eleanor and Claire and Nina and Helen and Sue.'
'Of course. Second, you're a detective. Tell us something about being a detective-something exciting.'
'Well.' I hesitated and looked around, left and right. 'Maybe I should treat it like the salad. Yes or no?'
I wasn't sure all of them said yes, but plenty of them did. Fritz had the coffee cups in place and was pouring. I edged my chair back a little, crossed my legs, and worked my lips, considering.
'I'll tell you,' I said finally, 'what I think I'll do. I could tell you about some old case that was finished long ago, but it might be more interesting if I pick one that we're working on right now. I can skip the parts that we're keeping to ourselves, if any. Do you like that idea?'
They said they did. Except Mrs. Adams, whose lips had suddenly become a thin line, and Dolly Harriton, whose smart gray eyes might have been a little disconcerting if she had been closer.
I made it casual. 'I'll have to hit only the high spots or it will take all night. It's a murder case. Three people have been murdered: a man named Leonard Dykes, who worked in the office where you are, a girl named Joan Wellman, an editor in a publishing firm, and a girl named Rachel Abrams, a public stenographer and typist.'
There were murmurings, and looks were exchanged. Nina Perlman said emphatically, in a soft satin voice that five or six Manhattans had had no effect on, 'I didn't do it.'
'Three murders by one person?' Eleanor Gruber asked.
'I'll come to that. Our first connection with it, not much of one, a cop came and showed us a list of fifteen men's names which had been written on a piece of paper by Leonard Dykes. They had found it between the pages of a book in Dykes's room. Mr. Wolfe and I weren't much interested and barely glanced at it. Then-'
'Why did the cop show you the list?' Dolly Harriton put in.
'Because they hadn't found any men to fit any of the names, and he thought we might have a suggestion. We didn't. Then, six weeks later, a man named John R. Wellman called and wanted us to investigate the death of bis daughter, whose body had been found in Van Cortlandt Park-run over by a car. He thought she had been murdered, not killed by accident. He told us all about it, and showed us a copy of a letter Joan, his daughter, had written home. In it she said she had had a phone call from a man who gave his name as Baird Archer, author of a novel which he had submitted to Joan's firm some months back.'
'Oh, my God,' Blanche Duke said morosely. 'Baird Archer again.'
'I don't want to bore you,' I declared.
Most of them said I wasn't.
'Okay. Joan had read Archer's novel and rejected it with a letter signed by her. On the phone he offered to pay her twenty dollars an hour to discuss his novel with him and tell him how to improve it, and she made a date to meet him the next day after office hours. So she said in her letter home. It was the evening of the next day that she was killed.'
I reached for my coffee cup, drank some, and leaned back. 'Now hold on to your hats. It had been six weeks since the cop had shown us that list of names, and we had just glanced at it. But when Mr. Wolfe and I saw Joan's letter home we immediately recognized the name of Baird Archer as one of those on Dykes's list. That proved there was some kind of connection between Leonard Dykes and Joan Wellman, and since they had both died suddenly and violently, and Joan had a date with Archer the day she died, it made it likely that their deaths were connected too, and connected with Archer. When you asked for something exciting about being a detective, if you meant something like tailing a murderer in Central Park and getting shot at, okay, that has its attractions, but it's not half as exciting as our spotting that name. If we hadn't, there would be one cop working on Dykes's death in his spare time, and another one in the Bronx likewise on Joan Well-man, instead of the way it is, which you know something about. That's what I call exciting.'
It didn't seem essential to give the precise circumstances of the recognition of Baird Archer's name. If Wolfe had been there he would have told it his way, but he wasn't, and I was. Glancing around to see that
