An employee of a very large corporation dies in a hit-and-run accident. Rumors abound that it was murder, disrupting morale. Nero and Archie are hired to either scotch the rumors or find the truth re: the mysterious death. These circumstances put Archie smack dab in the middle of hundreds of young working women -- many of them suspects, most of them of interest to Archie on other levels.
When a powerful government official scheduled to speak to a group of millionaires turns up dead, the business world clamors for a solution, and Nero Wolfe takes the case.
"Not Quite Dead Enough" - March 1942. Archie's now Major Goodwin - very good, since he's been in the Army for only 2 months, and the idea of Army discipline...well, Archie refers to snapping to one's feet and so forth in the presence of a general as 'Rocketteing'. After clearing up 'that mess down in Georgia' (an unrecorded case of his own for Army Intelligence), his superior calls him in to ask why Wolfe hasn't cooperated when asked to work for Army Intelligence. Archie confidently assumes that the Army just mishandled Wolfe, and that he's sunk deep in his normal rut.
A remarkably rare black orchid at a flower show lures Nero Wolfe from his comfortable brownstone. But before the detective and his sidekick, Archie Goodwin, can stop and smell the roses, a diabolically daring murder puts a blight on the proceedings. The murderer to be weeded out is definitely not a garden-variety killer. Wolfe must also throw his considerable weight into another thorny case, this one involving a rich society widow bedeviled by poison-pen letters -- and a poisonous plot as black as Wolfe's orchids with roots even more twisted.
Millionaire Noel Hawthorne has just died in a hunting accident. In his will, he leaves his sisters (named April, May, and June) a peach, a pear, and an apple, respectively. But, to a young woman who was _not_ his wife, he leaves a huge chunk of his fortune. The sisters come to Wolfe to find out what's behind this wacky will. But Wolfe suspects that maybe the hunting accident was no accident...
