Murder Is No Joke

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I was a little disappointed in Flora Gallant when she arrived that Tuesday morning for her eleven-o’clock appointment with Nero Wolfe. Her getup was a letdown. One of my functions as Wolfe’s factotum is checking on people who phone for an appointment with him, and when I learned that Flora Gallant was one of the staff of her brother Alec’s establishment on East Fifty-fourth Street, and remembered remarks a friend of mine named Lily Rowan had made about Alex Gallant, I had phoned Lily for particulars.

And got them. Gallant was crowding two others for top ranking in the world of high fashion. He thumbed his nose at Paris and sneered at Rome, and was getting away with it. He had refused to finish three dresses for the Duchess of Harwynd because she postponed flying over from London for fittings. He declined to make anything whatever for a certain famous movie actress because he didn’t like the way she handled her hips when she walked. He had been known to charge as little as eight hundred dollars for an afternoon frock, but it had been for a favorite customer so he practically gave it away.

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