Death of a Doxy (Crime Line)

So that's why, at one o'clock Friday afternoon, I was settled in a comfortable chair in a bedroom on the ninth floor of the Maidstone Hotel, on Central Park West in the Seventies. Julie Jaquette, in the bed, was not stretched out; she was propped up against three pillows, drinking her third cup of coffee, having cleaned up the toast and bacon and eggs and muffins and strawberry jam, while I explained about the blackmailing caper, including Tha-lez of Miletus, but not including Ballou's name. It was a nice big room, made even nicer by the clusters of Vanda rogersi which I had brought, in a vase on the over-the-bed table. She had stuck one of the flowers in the front V of what she had on, a light blue thing with sleeves and no frills. She had said she was no treat in bed in the morning, but actually she wasn't at all hard to look at. Clear-eyed and fresh and kind of hard-boiled wholesome.

"Poor Isabel," she said. "You can't beat that for lousy breaks, a blackmailer for a brother-in-law and a murderer for a pet. My God."

"And a heehaw for a friend," I said.

"She only had one real friend. Me."

"Right. I call you a mule only professionally. If I was being personal I would call you kitten or snuggle bunny or lamb. Profess -"

"Do you realize this is a bed? That I could reach out and grab you?"

"Yeah, I'm watching every move. I call you a mule professionally because the minute you heard that your friend Isabel had been murdered you decided Orrie Cather had done it and you won't budge, not even when the third smartest detective in New York gives you ten to one. It would -"

"Who are the two smartest?"

"Nero Wolfe and me, but don't quote me. It would take an hour to explain why all three of us have crossed Orrie off, and even then you might not budge. But now we think we know who did kill her. The blackmailer. Barry Fleming. Her sister's husband."

She put the coffee cup down. "Huh. You got reasons?"

"If you mean evidence, no. But if there's any other good candidate we can't find him or her, and we have tried hard. Barry Fleming is perfect. Obviously Isabel told Stella who was keeping her – X, to you – and Stella had told Barry, since he couldn't blackmail him unless -"

"I may be a mule, but I can count up to two and I can say the alphabet backward."