Flora Gallent hires Wolfe to help get rid of a certain Bianca Foss. Bianca runs the tailor shop of her brother, the fashionable couturier Alec Gallent, as if it were her own home. She interferes in the business, fires the cutters, launches crazy—and clearly doomed—projects, and so on. Wolfe talks to Bianca by phone, but hears her cries and moans. It seems possible to record the exact time of the crime… but Wolfe thinks it’s too simple—and therefore suspicious.