Death of a Demon was first serialized in three issues of The Saturday Evening Post and later published in book form as part of Homicide Trinity. Death of a Demon starts with Lucy Hazen, the wife of a public relations counselor named Barry Hazen, visiting the brownstone because she despises her husband and has been plagued with thoughts of shooting him. She comes to Wolfe to disclose these thoughts and bring her husband's gun that she would leave with him so that she would not be able to kill him and will stop dreaming about it. Having unburdened herself, she asks to see the orchids, which Wolfe loves to show off, and they go to the plant rooms for a tour. While they are there, Archie hears on the radio that the body of Barry Hazen has been found in an alley, dead for several hours, shot in the back with a gun that was found in Hazen's abandoned car and that Hazens' maid saw in Hazen's bedroom the morning of the murder. So the gun that Lucy brought with her didn't kill Hazen, and Archie and Wolfe are left to wonder where it came from.