Murder by the Book

"Well, what he told me, just a few weeks ago, was that he had heard that it was the jury foreman's wife who had written the anonymous letter to the judge telling about the bribing. It isn't likely that I was wearing pajamas, because I don't wear them in the office, and it was in the office that he told me-of course he's no longer connected with the firm, but he comes there once in a while. The talk that O'Malley killed 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 warn-ingly, "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."