“On William Fraser.”
He studied her a moment and said, “That’s the weirdest request I’ve had all week.
Has your boss been bothering you, or something?”
“No,” she said disarmingly. “I’m planning to write an exposé on him.”
Five minutes later, a clerk was showing her into the morgue. He pulled out the file on
William Fraser, and Catherine began to read.
One hour later Catherine was one of the world’s foremost authorities on William
Fraser. He was forty-five years old, had been graduated from Princeton summa cum laude,
had started an advertising agency, Fraser Associates, which had become one of the most
successful agencies in the business, and had taken a leave of absence a year ago at the
request of the President, to work for the government. He had been married to Lydia
Campion, a wealthy socialite. They had been divorced for four years. There were no
children. Fraser was a millionaire and had a home in Georgetown and a summer place at
Bar Harbor, Maine. His hobbies were tennis, boating and polo. Several of the news stories
referred to him as “one of America’s most eligible bachelors.”
When Catherine arrived home and told Susie her good news, Susie insisted that they
go out to celebrate. Two rich Annapolis cadets were in town.
Catherine’s date turned out to be a pleasant enough boy, but all evening she kept
mentally comparing him to William Fraser, and compared to Fraser the boy seemed callow
and dull. Catherine wondered whether she was going to fall in love with her new boss. She
had not felt any girlish tingly feeling when she had been with him, but there was
something else, a liking for him as a person and a feeling of respect. She decided that the
tingly feeling probably existed only in French sex novels.
The cadets took the girls to a small Italian restaurant on the outskirts of Washington
where they had an excellent dinner, then went to see Arsenic and Old Lace, which
Catherine enjoyed tremendously. At the end of the evening the boys brought them home,
and Susie invited them in for a nightcap. When it appeared to Catherine that they were
starting to settle down for the night, she excused herself and said she had to go to bed.
Her date protested. “We haven’t even gotten started yet,” he said. “Look at them.”
Susie and her escort were on the couch, locked in a passionate embrace.
Catherine’s escort clutched her arm. “There could be a war soon,” he said earnestly.
Before Catherine could stop him, he took her hand and placed it against the hardness
between his legs. “You wouldn’t send a man into battle in this condition, would you?”
Catherine withdrew her hand, fighting not to be angry. “I’ve given it a lot of thought,” she
said evenly, “and I’ve decided to sleep only with the walking wounded.” She turned and
went into her bedroom, locking the door behind her. She found it difficult to go to sleep.
She lay in bed thinking about William Fraser, her new job and the male hardness of the
boy from Annapolis. An hour after she had gone to bed, she heard Susie’s bedsprings
creaking wildly. From then on sleep was impossible.
At eight-thirty the next morning Catherine arrived at her new office. The door was