I asked her if she knew anything about a club her husband had belonged to. She said, "What club? He was in the men's club at the temple but he wasn't very active. His work took too much of his time. He joined Rotary but that was at least ten years ago and I don't think he maintained his membership. That can't be what you're referring to."

"This was a club of fellows who had dinner once a year," I said. "In the spring, at a restaurant in Manhattan."

"Oh, that," she said. "What threw me off was your using the word 'club.' I don't think it was that formal, just a bunch of fellows who were friends in college and wanted to stay in touch over the years."

"Is that how he described the group?"

"I don't know that he ever 'described' it as such. That was certainly the impression I had. Why?"

"I understand it was a little more formal than that."

"It's possible. I know he never missed a dinner. One year we had tickets donated at the school, the Manhattan Light Opera, and Fred told me I'd have to find someone else to go with me. And he loved Gilbert and Sullivan, but he regarded his annual dinner as sacrosanct. What does the dinner have to do with his death? He died in December. The dinner was always sometime in April or May."

"The first Thursday in May."

"That's right, it was a set day every year. I'd forgotten. So?"

Was there any reason not to tell her? I said, "There have been a lot of deaths in the group over the years, more than you'd expect. Several of them were suicides."

"How many?"

"Three or four."

"Well, which is it? Three or four?"

"Three definite, one possible."

"I see. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to snap. Do you want more coffee?" I said I was fine. "Three or four suicides out of how many members?"

"Thirty-one."

"There's a suicide virus, I've heard it called. There'll be some perfectly nice middle-class high school in Ohio or Wisconsin, and they'll have an absolute rash of suicides. But that's teenagers, not middle-aged men. Were these suicides all grouped together?"