Murder by the Book

So the Bronx had done the boy friends up brown, especially an advertising copywriter named Atchison, apparently because his name began with "A" and had a "c" and an "h" in it, and it had dawned upon some eagle eye that Archer did too, and what more do you want?" Luckily for Atchison, he had taken a four-thirty train Friday afternoon, February second, to spend the weekend with friends at Westport. Two dicks had worked like dogs trying to pry that alibi loose, with no success.

As far as I could tell from the file, it looked as if Joan had had not only beauty and intelligence but also good old-fashioned virtue. The three boy friends who had been flushed were unanimous on that They had admired and respected her. One of them had been after her for a year to marry him and had had hopes. If any of them had had reason to prefer her dead, the Bronx had failed to dig up a hint of it.

I went back home and typed it all up for Wolfe, and got reports on the phone from Saul and Fred and Orrie.

I spent most of Wednesday at the office of Scholl and Hanna on Forty-fifth Street. What I got out of it was a respectful appreciation of the book-publishing business as a means of corralling jack. The office took up two whole floors, with nothing spared anywhere in the way of rugs and furniMURDER BY THE BOOK 17

tare. Scholl was in Florida, I was told, and Hanna never got in until ten-thirty. I was escorted down a hall to the room of a junior executive who needed a haircut and was chewing gum, and when I showed him the note I had from our client he said they would be glad to cooperate with the bereaved father of their late employee, and I could ask questions of any of the staff I cared to see, starting with him if I wanted to. But would I please tell him, had something new turned up? City detectives, three of them, had been there again yesterday, for hours, and now here was Nero Wolfe's Archie Goodwin. What was stirring? I told him something harmless and began on him.