Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 19 by Murder by the Book

Dykes is simply ridiculous.”
    “Why don’t you say what you think?” Helen Troy demanded. “You think Uncle Fred killed Dykes. Why don’t you say so?”
    “I’ve never said I think that, Helen.”
    “But you do.”
    “I do,” Blanche Duke stated, still ready to tangle.
    “Who is Uncle Fred?” I asked.
    Helen answered. “He’s my uncle, Frederick Briggs. They don’t like him. They think he informed on O’Malley because he wouldn’t make him a partner, and Dykes found out about it and threatened to tell O’Malley, and Uncle Fred killed Dykes to keep him from telling. You know perfectly well you think that, Eleanor.”
    “I do,” Blanche repeated.
    “You girls work in a law office,” Dolly Harriton said warningly, “and you should realize that gabbing in the women’s room is one thing, and talking like this to Mr.Goodwin is quite another. Didn’t you ever hear of slander?”
    “I’m not slandering anyone,” Eleanor declared, and she wasn’t. She looked at me. “The reason I tell you all this, I think you’ve wasted a lot of orchids and food and drink. Your client is Mr. Wellman, and you’re investigating the death of his daughter, and you went to all this trouble and expense because you think there was a connection between her and Leonard Dykes. That list of names he wrote that was found in his room—what if some friend was there one evening and said he was trying to choose a name to use on something he had written, and Dykes and the friend made up some names and Dykes wrote them down? There are a dozen ways it could have happened. And from what you say, that name Baird Archer is absolutely the only thing that connects Dykes with Joan Wellman and Rachel Abrams.”
    “No,” I contradicted her. “There’s another. They were all three murdered.”
    “There are three hundred homicides in New York every year.” Eleanor shook her head. “I’m just trying to put you straight. You got us all worked up, or Mrs. Abrams and Mr. Wellman did, and from that row we had you might think you have started something, but you haven’t. That’s why I told you all that. We all hope you find the man that killed those girls, I know I do, but I don’t think you’ll ever do it this way.”
    “Look,” Nina Perlman said, “I’ve got an idea. Let’s all chip in and hire him to find out who informed on O’Malley and who killed Dykes. Then we’d know.”
    “Nonsense!” Mrs. Adams snapped.
    Portia Liss objected. “I’d rather hire him to catch the man that killed the girls.”
    “That’s no good,” Blanche told her. “Wellman has already hired him for that.”
    “How much do you charge?” Nina asked.
    She got no reply, not that I resented it, but because I was busy. I had left my chair and gone to the side table, where there was a large celadon bowl, and, getting a couple of sheets from my pocket notebook and tearing them into pieces, was writing on the pieces. Blanche, asking what I was doing, got no reply either until I had finished writing, put the pieces of paper in the bowl, and, carrying the bowl, returned to the table and stood behind Mrs. Adams.
    “Speech,” I announced. Helen Troy did not say oyez.
    “I admit,” I said, “that I have ruined the party, and I offer my regrets. If you think that I am rudely sending you home I regret that too, but it must be faced that I have doused all hope of continued revelry. I do offer a little consolation, with the permission of Mr. Wolfe. For a period of one year from date each of you will be sent upon request three orchids each month. You may request three at one time or separately, as you prefer. Specifications of color will be met as far as possible.”
    There were appropriate noises and expressions. Claire Burkhardt wanted to know, “Can we come and pick them out?”
    I said that might be arranged, by appointment only. “Earlier,” I went on, “it was suggested that one of you be chosen to demonstrate on my person your appreciation for this