Daumery and Nieder," Cynthia said, "is as good a name as there is on Seventh Avenue, including Fifty-seventh Street, but of course if you're not in the garment trade and know nothing about it--I imagine your wives would know the name all right."
Wolfe shuddered.
"No wife," I stated. "Neither of us. That's why we caterwaul."
"Well, if you had one she would know about Daumery and Nieder. We make top-quality coats, suits, and dresses, and we confine our line, even here in New York. The business was started twenty years ago by two men, Jean Daumery and Paul Nieder--my Uncle Paul--my father's brother. It's--"
"Excuse me," Wolfe put in. "Will it save time to tell you that I don't do industrial surveillance?"
"No, that's not it," she said, waving it away. "I know you don't. It's about him, my uncle. Uncle Paul."
She frowned, and was looking at the window beyond Wolfe's desk as if she were seeing something. Then her shoulders lifted and dropped again, and she went back to Wolfe.
"You need some background," she told him. "At least I think it would be better. Daumery was the business head of the firm, the organizer and manager and salesman, and Uncle Paul was the designer, the creator. If it hadn't been for him Daumery wouldn't have had anything to manage and sell. They owned it together--a fifty-fifty partnership. It was my uncle's half that I inherited when my uncle killed himself--anyway, that's how it was announced, that he committed suicide--a little over a year ago."
That gave me two thoughts: one, that I had been right so about her having the price of a fee; and two, that we were probably in for another job of translating a suicide into a murder