McNALLY'S TRIAL

Why have the receipts of Whitcomb's Funeral Homes gone through the roof, even though deaths in Palm Beach have followed a flat curve? Chief financial officer Sunny Fogarty wants Whitcomb's lawyer, Prescott McNally, to answer that question, and McNally naturally passes the ball to his layabout son, Archy (McNally's Caper, not reviewed, etc.). Before he can down so much as a fuzzy navel, brainy Archy's already realized that an awful lot of Whitcomb's business involves sending coffins out of state, and Sunny, who owns a body as solid as the figurehead of a Yankee clipper, takes time out from their bed chat to confirm that Whitcomb's shipments to Boston, New York, and Chicago have all been on the rise. A child of ten could see where this is all going, and eventually so does Archy — but not before he and Binky Watrous, who plays Dr. Watson to Archy's Bertie Wooster, get caught in the cross fire between ailing majority stockholder Sarah Whitcomb's husband, Horace, and their franchise-minded son, Oliver, for control of the company, and Archy, whose prose style (Yikes! but Connie looked super) continues in the great tradition of the Class Notes column of a 1955 prep school, has time for coy descriptions of some terrific meals and some great-looking women, in and out of clothes. Chocolate-covered helium — another circus of airheads.