“Or what?”
He coughed delicately. “Since the deceased had no family, a few of his intimate friends are gathering in the private parlor...”
“Oh. I represent the executor of the estate. I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I should think, sir, in that case, perhaps the parlor...”
“Okay. Where?”
“This way.” He turned to his left, opened a door, and bowed me through.
I stepped into thick soft carpet. The room was elegant, with subdued lights, upholstered divans and chairs, and a smell similar to a high-class barber shop. On a chair over in a corner was Helen Frost, looking pale and concentrated and beautiful in a dark gray dress and a little black hat. Standing protectively in front of her was Llewellyn. Perren Gebert was seated on a divan at the right. Two women, one of whom I recognized as having been at the candy-sampling session, were on chairs across the room. I nodded at the ortho-cousins and they nodded back, and aimed one at Gebert and got his, and picked a chair at the left. There was a murmur coming from where Llewellyn bent over Helen. Gebert’s clothes looked neater than his face, with its swollen eyes and its general air of having been exposed to a bad spell of weather.
I sat and considered Wolfe’s phrase: dreary and hushed obeisance to the grisly terror. The door opened and Dudley Frost came in. I was closest to the door. He looked around, passing me by without any pretense of recognition, saw the two women and called to them “How do you do?” so loud that they jumped, sent a curt nod in Gebert’s direction and crossed toward the corner where the cousins were:
“Ahead of time, by Gad I am! Almost never happens! Helen, my dear, where the deuce is your mother? I phoned three times — good God! I forgot the flowers after all! When I thought of it, it was too late to send them, so I decided to bring them with me—”
“All right, Dad. It’s all right. There’s plenty of flowers...”