Rex stout nero wolfe 3.., p.1
Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 37 - Homicide Trinity, page 1
part #37 of Nero Wolfe Series
Rex Stout
REX STOUT, the creator of Nero Wolfe, was born in Noblesville, Indiana, in 1886, the sixth of nine children of John and Lucetta Todhunter Stout, both Quakers. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Wakarusa, Kansas. He was educated in a country school, but, by the age of nine, was recognized throughout the state as a prodigy in arithmetic. Mr. Stout briefly attended the University of Kansas, but left to enlist in the Navy, and spent the next two years as a warrant officer on board President Theodore Roosevelt’s yacht. When he left the Navy in 1908, Rex Stout began to write free-lance articles, worked as a sightseeing guide and an itinerant bookkeeper. Later he devised and implemented a school banking system which was installed in four hundred cities and towns throughout the country. In 1927 Mr. Stout retired from the world of finance and, with the proceeds of his banking scheme, left for Paris to write serious fiction. He wrote three novels that received favorable reviews before turning to detective fiction. His first Nero Wolfe novel, Fer-de-Lance, appeared in 1934. It was followed by many others, among them, Too Many Cooks, The Silent Speaker, If Death Ever Slept, The Doorbell Rang, and Please Pass the Guilt, which established Nero Wolfe as a leading character on a par with Erie Stanley Gardner’s famous protagonist, Perry Mason. During World War II Rex Stout waged a personal campaign against Nazism as chairman of the War Writers’ Board, master of ceremonies of the radio program “Speaking of Liberty,” and member of several national committees. After the war he turned his attention to mobilizing public opinion against the wartime use of thermonuclear devices, was an active leader in the Authors’ Guild, and resumed writing his Nero Wolfe novels. Rex Stout died in 1975 at the age of eighty-nine. A month before his death he published his seventy-second Nero Wolfe mystery, A Family Affair. Ten years later, a seventy-third Nero Wolfe mystery was discovered and published in Death Times Three.
The Rex Stout Library
Fer-de-Lance
The League of Frightened Men
The Rubber Band
The Red Box
Too Many Cooks
Some Buried Caesar
Over My Dead Body
Where There’s a Will
Black Orchids
Not Quite Dead Enough
The Silent Speaker
Too Many Women
And Be a Villain
The Second Confession
Trouble in Triplicate
In the Best Families
Three Doors to Death
Murder by the Book
Curtains for Three
Prisoner’s Base
Triple Jeopardy
The Golden Spiders
The Black Mountain
Three Men Out
Before Midnight
Might As Well Be Dead
Three Witnesses
If Death Ever Slept
Three for the Chair
Champagne for One
And Four to Go
Plot It Yourself
Too Many Clients
Three at Wolfe’s Door
The Final Deduction
Gambit
Homicide Trinity
The Mother Hunt
A Right to Die
Trio for Blunt Instruments
The Doorbell Rang
Death of a Doxy
The Father Hunt
Death of a Dude
Please Pass the Guilt
A Family Affair
Death Times Three
Introduction
When asked for my thoughts on Rex Stout on the welcome occasion of Bantam’s reissue of his work, I wondered what I could possibly add to the existing hagiography. As my mind began to drift toward the world of Wolfe, a world I’ve visited for more than thirty years, I found myself listing the aspects of Stout’s work and person that I envy, not as a reader any longer, but as a laborer in the same field (or at least the same section).
To begin with a minor example, I envy the New York City of the Wolfe novels. Not the imperiled and pitiable cauldron of today, but the mecca of reason and refinement that Stout portrayed so invitingly. That this oasis was occupied in part by men of diabolical design and by Runyonesque rapscallions seemed to add rather than detract from its sheen. That city, so titanic compared to the hinterland I inhabited when I first encountered it, may never have existed outside Stout’s novels—I am in no position to say whether it did or didn’t—but it was and is a place I would have liked to inhabit.
As for the author himself, I believe I am correct in saying that Nero Wolfe first appeared when his creator was nearly fifty years old. As I approach that decade of my own life, with major upheavals in the recent past and more likely to come, I envy the vigor and confidence Stout demonstrated in launching such an experiment at that age, particularly one so unlikely and problematic as writing mystery novels. It is essential to survival at any age to believe most things are possible. As with other laudable traits—the devotion of copious time and energy to major issues of the day, for example—Rex Stout was an exemplar. I frequently wonder what would happen if suddenly I had no publisher; Stout’s career is a template of encouragement, albeit in reverse.
As the months of labor on my current novel accumulate to inevitably total twelve by the time I yield my sovereignty, no matter how ardently I have tried to make gestation briefer, I am reminded that Stout’s productivity would shame even a modern Moto. He wrote one of the Wolfe novels in three weeks; the average over the entire oeuvre was not much longer. Envy again, times two to the third power.
So much for the man (space is limited); now for the fiction.
Others have envied Nero Wolfe his passions—the orchids and the cuisine. As my own detective’s tastes reflect, I am in large part immune to the charms of nature and the subtleties of gastronomy. (John Marshall Tanner frequently dines on Campbell’s soup and Oreo cookies and can label virtually nothing in his environment that isn’t man-made). What I coveted was Wolfe’s vocabulary. Did I resort to the dictionary in midnovel? Many times, though not as often as I should have. Do I insert words in my protagonist’s mouth that would issue more appropriately from Wolfe’s? Indeed. A multiple offender.
Wolfe never leaves the brownstone. (Well, hardly ever; his sojourn to Montenegro is an outing of special interest these days, given geopolitical developments. Were he still with us, I’m certain he would go again.) Although my home is not nearly the biosphere that Wolfe created for himself (or rather that Stout created for Wolfe), I leave it infrequently as well. The solitude that Wolfe demanded is handmaiden to the writing profession, of course, and is a major reason I wanted to become a writer and why I still pursue the art. Initially, writing let me escape the cacophony of litigation. In a more defining sense, it has provided a means to avoid, in large part, the whir of commercial society and the values it suggests.
A word about Archie. Then as now I lacked the chutzpah to identify with Wolfe, so Archie was my alter ego. What I coveted was his savoir faire—always a step ahead, always with the coup de grace for the repartee, always managing the unmanageable: Archie was who I aspired to be. But at best I performed such feats only after the fact, in daydreams and psychodramas and hours of rueful reverie. Which suggests another reason I became a writer, I suppose: the sense that my untimely talents were more suited to the world of fiction, where I, or at least my hero, could deliver on demand. Luckily, demand for Mr. Tanner’s savoir faire, such as it is, comes only once a year.
(Addendum: Although Archie was my favorite, he did not suggest the form my own detective would later take. That distinction belongs to Saul Panzer, who for me remains Stout’s best creation. Amazingly, our knowledge of Saul is largely once removed—we know him best through Archie’s deft descriptions of his genius.)
A final note. Several years ago, when Orson Welles was appearing with disappointing frequency on The Tonight Show, it occurred to me (as no doubt to others) that Welles had actually become Nero Wolfe, in both physical and intellectual dimensions, and that Hollywood should build a film around that metamorphosis. Hardly a brilliant insight, but that was only a subordinate impulse. The capper was, Why not Carson as Archie? Johnny as Goodwin? Indeed.
Sadly, the two stars had a falling out, for reasons unknown to me; Welles became a butt of Carson’s jibes and the film remains unmade. But the books survive, and thrive, and another generation has the pleasure of meeting Nero and Archie and Fritz and Theodore (and Saul and Orrie and Fred and Doll).
What could be more satisfactory?
—Stephen Greenleaf
Contents
EENY MEENY MURDER MO
DEATH OF A DEMON
COUNTERFEIT FOR MURDER
EENY MEENY MURDER MO
Chapter 1
I was standing there in the office with my hands in my pockets, glaring down at the necktie on Nero Wolfe’s desk, when the doorbell rang.
Since it would be a different story, and possibly no story at all, if the necktie hadn’t been there, I had better explain about it. It was the one Wolfe had worn that morning—brown silk with little yellow curlicues, A Christmas gift from a former client. At lunch Fritz, coming to remove the leavings of the spareribs and bring the salad and cheese, had told Wolfe there was a drop of sauce on his tie, and Wolfe had dabbed at it with his napkin; and later, when we had left the dining room to cross the hall to the office, he had removed the tie and put it on his desk. He can’t stand a spot on his clothes, even in private. But he hadn’t thought it worth t
It annoyed me. It annoyed Fritz too when, shortly after four, he came to say he was going shopping and would be gone two hours. His eye caught the tie and fastened on it. His brows went up.
“Schlampick,” I said.
He nodded. “You know my respect and esteem for him. He has great spirit and character, and of course he is a great detective, but there is a limit to the duties of a chef and housekeeper. One must draw the line somewhere. Besides, there is my arthritis. You haven’t got arthritis, Archie.”
“Maybe not,” I conceded, “but if you rate a limit so do I. My list of functions from confidential assistant detective down to errand boy is a mile long, but it does not include valeting. Arthritis is beside the point. Consider the dignity of man. He could have taken it on his way up to the plant rooms.”
“You could put it in a drawer.”
“That would be evading the issue.”
“I suppose so.” He nodded. “I agree. It is a delicate affair. I must be going.” He went.
So, having finished the office chores at 5:20, including a couple of personal phone calls, I had left my desk and was standing to glare down at the necktie when the doorbell rang. That made the affair even more delicate. A necktie with a greasy spot should not be on the desk of a man of great spirit and character when a visitor enters. But by then I had got stubborn about it as a matter of principle, and anyway it might be merely someone with a parcel. Going to the hall for a look, I saw through the one-way glass panel of the front door that it was a stranger, a middle-aged female with a pointed nose and a round chin, not a good design, in a sensible gray coat and a black turban. She had no parcel. I went and opened the door and told her good afternoon. She said she wanted to see Nero Wolfe. I said Mr. Wolfe was engaged, and besides, he saw people only by appointment. She said she knew that, but this was urgent. She had to see him and would wait till he was free.
There were several factors: that we had nothing on the fire at the moment; that the year was only five days old and therefore the income-tax bracket didn’t enter into it; that I wanted something to do besides recording the vital statistics of orchids; that I was annoyed at him for leaving the tie on his desk; and that she didn’t try to push but kept her distance, with her dark eyes, good eyes, straight at me.
“Okay,” I told her, “I’ll see what I can do,” and stepped aside for her to enter. After taking her coat and hanging it on the rack and escorting her to the office, I gave her one of the yellow chairs near me instead of the red leather one at the end of Wolfe’s desk. She sat with her back straight and her feet together—nice little feet in fairly sensible gray shoes. I told her that Wolfe wouldn’t be available until six o’clock.
“It will be better,” I said, “if I see him first and tell him about you. In fact, it will be essential. My name is Archie Goodwin. What is yours?”
“I know about you,” she said. “Of course. If I didn’t I wouldn’t be here.”
“Many thanks. Some people who know about me have a different reaction. And your name?”
She was eyeing me. “I’d rather not,” she said, “until I know if Mr. Wolfe will take my case. It’s private. It’s very confidential.”
I shook my head. “No go. You’ll have to tell him what your case is before he decides if he’ll take it, and I’ll be sitting here listening. So? Also I’ll have to tell him more about you than you’re thirty-five years old, weigh a hundred and twenty pounds, and wear no earrings, before he decides if he’ll even see you.”
She almost smiled. “I’m forty-two.”
I grinned. “See? I need facts. Who you are and what you want.”
Her mouth worked. “It’s very confidential.” Her mouth worked some more. “But there was no sense in coming unless I tell you.”
“Right.”
She laced her fingers. “All right. My name is Bertha Aaron. It is spelled with two A’s. I am the private secretary of Mr. Lamont Otis, senior partner in the law firm of Otis, Edey, Heydecker, and Jett. Their office is on Madison Avenue at Fifty-first Street. I’m worried about something that happened recently and I want Mr. Wolfe to investigate it. I can pay him a reasonable fee, but it might develop that he will be paid by the firm. It might.”
“Were you sent here by someone in the firm?”
“No. Nobody sent me. Nobody knows I’m here.”
“What happened?”
Her fingers laced tighter. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come,” she said. “I didn’t realize … maybe I’d better not.”
“Suit yourself, Miss Aaron, Miss Aaron?”
“Yes. I am not married.” Her fingers flew apart to make fists and her lips tightened. “This is silly. I’ve got to. I owe it to Mr. Otis. I’ve been with him for twenty years and he has been wonderful to me. I couldn’t go to him about this because he’s seventy-five years old and he has a bad heart and it might kill him. He comes to the office every day, but it’s a strain and he doesn’t do much, only he knows more than all the rest of them put together.” Her fists opened. “What happened was that I saw a member of the firm with our opponent in a very important case, one of the biggest cases we’ve ever had, at a place where they wouldn’t have met if they hadn’t wanted to keep it secret.”
“You mean with the opposing counsel?”
“No. The client. With opposing counsel it might possibly have been all right.”
“Which member of the firm?”
“I’m not going to say. I’m not going to tell Mr. Wolfe his name until he agrees to take the case. He doesn’t have to know that in order to decide. If you wonder why I came, I’ve already said why I can’t tell Mr. Otis about it, and I was afraid to go to any of the others because if one of them was a traitor another one might be in it with him, or even more than one. How could I be sure? There are only four members of the firm, but of course there are others associated—nineteen altogether. I wouldn’t trust any of them, not on a thing like this.” She made fists again. “You can understand that. You see what a hole I’m in.”
“Sure. But you could be wrong. Of course that’s unethical, a lawyer meeting with an enemy client, but there could be exceptions. It might have been accidental. When and where did you see them?”
“Last Monday, a week ago today. In the evening. They were together in a booth in a cheap restaurant—more of a lunchroom. The kind of place she would never go to, never. She would never go to that part of town. Neither would I, ordinarily, but I was on a personal errand and I went in there to use the phone. They didn’t see me.”
“Then one of the members of the firm is a woman?”
Her eyes widened. “Oh. I said ‘she.’ I meant the opposing client. We have a woman lawyer as one of the associates, just an employee really, but no woman firm member.” She laced her fingers. “It couldn’t possibly have been accidental. But of course it was conceivable, just barely conceivable, that he wasn’t a traitor, that there was some explanation, and that made it even harder for me to decide what to do. But now I know. After worrying about it for a whole week I couldn’t stand it any longer, and this afternoon I decided the only thing I could do was tell him and see what he said. If he had a good explanation, all right. But he didn’t. The way he took it, the way it hit him, there isn’t any question about it. He’s a traitor.”
“What did he say?”
“It wasn’t so much what he said as how he looked. He said he had a satisfactory explanation, that he was acting in the interest of our client, but that he couldn’t tell me more than that until the matter had developed further. Certainly within a week, he said, and possibly tomorrow. So I knew I had to do something, and I was afraid to go to Mr. Otis because his heart has been worse lately, and I wouldn’t go to another firm member. I even thought of going to the opposing counsel, but of course that wouldn’t do. Then I thought of Nero Wolfe, and I put on my hat and coat and came. Now it’s urgent. You can see it’s urgent?”
I nodded. “It could be. Depending on the kind of case involved. Mr. Wolfe might agree to take the job before you name the alleged traitor, but he would have to know first what the case is about—your firm’s case. There are some kinds he won’t touch, even indirectly. What is it?”
