This is a short story, no more than 36 pages in my edition. It's an ok story, and I hope I can use my headache as an excuse for not arriving sooner at the truth. When I read the solution it was so natural I felt bad for not seeing it. I really do have a bad headache today, so I'll stand by this excuse.
The story is simple: Peggy Mion's husband has been dead for four months, but she can't marry her Fred because there's a suspicion between them, and they can't go on with it. She knows he could not have killed himself, so it was a murder. A shot in the mouth and the gun on the floor near the body had been enough for the police to call it a suicide, but Peggy and Fred know the gun was not on the floor when they both found him. Wolfe knows that a gun has no wings so it could not have gone up and down by itself, so he has to work out who moved it first, but a collective interview with the six people involved (aside his clients) is enough to give him a certainty on the identity of the murderer. The dead man recently had an operation after a punch to the throat, and he thought he was going to recover in a few months, and wanted another doctor's opinion, as it often happens. Shortly after that: his death. Now, in which occasions a man opens his mouth in front of someone else with no suspicion whatsoever? When his doctor is visiting him. Doctor Lloyd had done something wrong during the operation, and things were not so good as he kept saying, and of course the famous doctor Mr Mion wanted to consult would have realized that, so Doctor Lloyd killed Mr Mion to cover it up.
A simple story, as always narrated by Archie Goodwin, nice and lovely as always. The story ends with Floyd in the police's hands and the other people involved were busy shouting, crying or whatnot, so Archie, seeing that he was not needed, went in the kitchen to get himself a glass of milk :-)
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