Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 43

  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 he 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 and worked as a sight-seeing guide and an itinerant bookkeeper. Later he devised and implemented a school banking system that 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 from 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 Erle 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 as a 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-eight. 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

  Some years ago I read an introduction to something or other by somebody or other, in which the introducer presented the idea—as fact—that all writers of fiction have completed their significant work by the age of forty-five. I was, I think, still in my early thirties at the time and so remained calm at this news. Somewhat later the suggestion did return to my mind, however, this time with teeth in it; and I admit I fretted, to the extent that I finally mentioned the gloomy fact to a friend who, taking pity on me, said, “Let me mention just two novelists who began to write at age forty-five. They are Joseph Conrad and Rex Stout.” After which I stopped worrying about introductions.

  Rex Stout may have started late, after several other successful careers, but he hit the ground running. Nero Wolfe sprang full-grown from Stout’s forehead in that first book, and though in later years he would write non-Wolfe novels and even try his hand at another series character—from Wolfe to Fox should have been easy, after all—his doom was sealed (a melodramatic phrase Mr. Stout would never have employed) right from Fer-de-Lance.

  Nero Wolfe has become one of those rare creations—like Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Horatio Hornblower, and Jeeves—who both overshadow and outlive their authors; and I remember when I first met Mr. Stout, around 1965, being disappointed that he wasn’t Wolfe. (He was, instead, charming, open, witty, and wonderfully generous to a young writer.) Had Stout ever chosen to terminate one of Wolfe’s rare journeys to the outside world in the trusty old Heron by dropping him off at (or in) the Reichenbach Falls, no one could have blamed him, but I believe Stout submitted with good grace (a cliché he would never have employed) to Wolfe’s dominance, and they lived comfortably together for forty-three years.

  That would be a long time for any association to last, and is even more remarkable since one of the associates was forty-five years old at its beginning; but what’s more interesting, at least to me, is that Nero Wolfe is not a very nice person. He’s self-absorbed, selfish, and self-satisfied. He’s arrogant and uncivil and socially a fright. He’s prissy and misogynistic. He orders people around and gets away with it; in one book he even orders J. Edgar Hoover around and gets away with it. How on earth did Rex Stout put up with the fellow all that time?

  Maybe more important, why do we put up with him? Why did all of the Nero Wolfe novels sell so very well, and go on selling in edition after edition? Why, seventeen years after Rex Stout’s death, is his creation still alive in this freshly printed book you hold in your hands? Are we wrong to enjoy Nero Wolfe so much?

  No. We are right to enjoy Rex Stout’s presentation of Nero Wolfe so much, through the brilliant prism of Archie Goodwin. Archie is ingratiation itself, an easy raconteur, an amiable chap who is bright without arrogance, knowledgeable without pretension, and quick-witted without brusqueness. If Nero Wolfe is the pill—and he is—Archie Goodwin is the sugar coating.

  What makes Wolfe palatable is that Archie finds him palatable. What makes him a monster we can enjoy rather than flee from is that Archie stands between us and him. We like Archie, and Archie likes (tolerates, is amused by, is ironic toward, but serves) Nero Wolfe. It’s a wonderful conception, strong enough to build a massive readership upon, yet flexible enough for Rex Stout to use over and over for decades, in story after story.

  Not that story is the primary issue here. One doesn’t drop in at the house on Thirty-fifth Street for the plot line but for the house itself and its denizens—lovingly described, familiar, comfortable, though with Nero Wolfe in charge and Archie Goodwin as Virgil never so comfortable as to bore.

  That Wolfe really isn’t that clever a detective hardly matters. (In the present book Archie even has fun over the fact that he and Wolfe can’t tell one cigar ash from another; a nicely ironic reference to Sherlock Holmes, another infuriating madman made palatable by his ingratiating interpreter.) That most Nero Wolfe novels—not including The Father Hunt, be assured—depend on at least one thundering coincidence matters not at all. Even the occasional minor glitch, as though Stout had an affinity with those Indian tribes who deliberately include a flaw in their designs so as not to compete with the perfection of the gods, doesn’t matter. (This time the glitch is extremely unimportant and occurs in Chapter 12, where Archie assures a young lady that
a certain man’s name would mean nothing to her even though Archie and the young lady had met the man together in Chapter 8; no matter, no matter.)

  Stout had fun with Nero Wolfe. Well, he had fun with life. Having some years earlier written a Wolfe novel called The Mother Hunt, it was probably more than he could resist not to write one called The Father Hunt. It was written when he was seventy-nine, and it all still works. As time goes by, I increasingly find that another comforting thought.

  —Donald E. Westlake

  Chapter 1

  It happens once or twice a week. Lily Rowan and I, returning from a show or party or hockey game, leave the elevator and approach the door of her penthouse on top of the apartment building on Sixty-third Street between Madison and Park, and there is the key question. Mine is, Do I stay back and let her do it? Hers is, Does she stay back and let me do it? We have never discussed it, and it is always handled the same way. When she gets out her key as we leave the elevator she gives me a smile which means, “Yes, you have one, but it’s my door,” and I smile back and follow her to it. It is understood that mine is for situations that seldom arise.

  That Thursday afternoon in August we had been to Shea Stadium to watch the Mets clobber the Giants, which they had done, 8 to 3, and it was only twenty past five when she used her key. Inside, she called out to Mimi, the maid, that she was home, and went to the bathroom, and I went to the bar in a corner of the oversized living room, with its 19-by-34 Kashan rug, for gin and ice and tonic and glasses. By the time I got out to the terrace with the tray she was there, at a table under the awning, studying the scorecard I had kept.

  “Yes, sir,” she said as I put the tray down, “Harrelson got three hits and batted in two runs. If he was here I’d hug him. Good.”

  “Then I’m glad he’s not here.” I gave her her drink and sat. “If you hugged that kid good you’d crack a rib.”

  A voice came. “I’m going, Miss Rowan.”

  Our heads turned. The young woman in the doorway to the living room was a newcomer to the penthouse. I had seen her only twice, and she was easy to look at, with just enough round places, just round enough, properly spotted on her five-foot-four getup, and her warm dark skin just right for her quick brown eyes. Her dark-brown hair was bunched at the back. Her name was Amy Denovo and she had got a diploma from Smith in June. Lily had hired her ten days ago, at a hundred a week, to help her find and arrange material for a book a man was going to write about Lily’s father, who had made a pile building sewers and other items and had left her enough boodle to keep a dozen penthouses.

  She answered a couple of questions Lily asked, and left, and we talked baseball, concentrating on what the Mets had, if anything, besides Tommy Davis and Bud Harrelson and Tom Seaver, and what they might have if we lived long enough. We dawdled with the drinks, and at six o’clock I got up to go, leaving Lily plenty of time to change for a dinner she had been hooked for, where people were going to abolish ghettos by making speeches. I had a date, later, where I intended to abolish the welfare of some friends of mine by drawing another ace or maybe jack.

  But down in the lobby I was intercepted. Albert, the doorman, was moving to open the door for me when a voice spoke my name and I turned, and Amy Denovo left a chair and was coming. She gave me a nice little smile and said, “Could you give me a few minutes to ask you something?”

  I said, “Sure, shoot,” and she glanced at Albert, and he took the hint and went outside. I said we might as well sit and we went to a bench at the wall, but the door opened again and a man and woman entered, crossed to the elevator, and stood.

  Amy Denovo said, “It is rather public, isn’t it? I said a few minutes, but I suppose … it might be more than just a few. If you could? And I … it’s very personal .… I mean personal to me.”

  I hadn’t noticed the dimples before. They are always more taking on a dark skin than on a light skin. “You’re twenty-two,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “Then maybe one minute will do it. Don’t marry him now, you’re too young to know. Wait a year at least, and—”

  “Oh, it isn’t that! It’s very personal.”

  “Don’t think marriage isn’t personal. It’s too damn personal, that’s the trouble. If you mean a few hours, not a few minutes, I’m sorry; I have an eight o’clock date, but there’s a place around the corner that sells drinks and makes good egg-and-anchovy sandwiches. If you like anchovies.”

  “I do.”

  The door opened and two women entered and headed for the elevator. That was not the place to discuss very personal matters.

  She was all right to walk with, no leading or lagging and no silly step-stretching. At that time of day in August there was plenty of room in the back at The Cooler, and we got the corner table where Lily and I had often had a snack. When the waitress had taken our order and left, I asked if she wanted to put off being personal until we had something inside.

  She shook her head. “I might as well …” She let it hang ten seconds and then blurted, “I want you to find my father.”

  I raised a brow. “Have you lost him?”

  “No. I haven’t lost him … because I never had him.” She said it fast, as if someone was trying to stop her. “I decided I had to tell somebody—that was a month ago—and then I got this job with Miss Rowan and I found out that she knows you, and I met you, and of course I know about you and Nero Wolfe. But I don’t want Nero Wolfe to do it, I want you to.”

  There were no dimples, and the quick brown eyes were fastened on me.

  “That won’t work,” I told her. “I’m on full time with Mr. Wolfe, twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week when they’re needed, and I don’t take jobs on my own. But I have a loose hour”—I looked at my watch—“and twenty minutes, and if you want a suggestion I might possibly have one. No charge.”

  “But I need more than a suggestion.”

  “You’re not in a position to judge. You’re too involved.”

  “I’m involved all right.” The eyes stayed at me. “I couldn’t tell this to anybody but you. Not anybody. When I met you last week, the first time, I felt it then, I knew it, that you were the one man in the world that I could trust to do it. I never had that feeling about a man before—or woman either.”

  “That’s just dandy,” I said, “but save the soap. Did you say you never had your father?”

  Her eyes darted away as the waitress came with the drinks and sandwiches. When we had been served and were alone again she tried to smile. “That wasn’t just figurative.” She kept her voice low and I needed my good ears. “I meant that literally. I never had a father. I don’t know who he was. Is. I don’t know what my name is, what it should be. Nobody knows about it—nobody. Now you know. I don’t think Denovo was my mother’s real name. I don’t think she was ever married. Do you know what Denovo means? Two Latin words, de novo?”

  “Something about new. A nova is a new star.”

  “It means ‘anew.’ ‘Afresh.’ She started anew, afresh, she started over, and she took the name Denovo. I wish I knew for sure.”

  “Have you asked her?”

  “No. I wanted to, I was going to, and now I can’t. She’s dead.”

  “When did she die?”

  “In May. Just two weeks before I graduated. By a car. A hit-and-run driver.”

  “Did they get him?”

  “No. They haven’t found him. They are still looking; they say they are.”

  “What about relatives? A sister, a brother …”

  “There aren’t any.”

  “There must be. Everyone has relatives.”

  “No. None. Of course there might be some under her real name.”

  “Have you got any? Cousins, uncles, aunts …”

  “No.”

  It was getting messy. Or rather, it was getting too damn pure and simple. I knew people who liked to think of themselves as loners, but Amy Denovo really was one; with her it wasn’t just thinking. I suggested that we might tr
y the sandwiches, and she agreed and took one, and took a bite. Naturally, when I am eating with someone, male or female, for the first time, I notice the details of his or her performance, since it tells a lot about the person, but that time I didn’t because the way she took a bite, or chewed, or swallowed, or licked her lips, had no bearing on the fix she was in. I did observe that there was nothing wrong with her appetite, and she proved that she liked the egg-and-anchovy combo by taking her full share. She asked if it was on Nero Wolfe’s list of favorites, and I said no, he would probably sneer at it. When the platter was empty she said she hadn’t thought it would make her hungry, telling someone the secret she had kept bottled up so long, but it had. She gave me a little smile, the dimples coming, and said, “We don’t really know ourselves, do we?”

  “It depends,” I said. “Some of us know too much, and some not enough. I don’t want to know why I get out of bed mornings in a fog, I might never sleep again. To hell with it, I always find my way out. As for you, you’re not in a fog, you’re under a spotlight that you turned on yourself. Why don’t you just turn it off?”

  “I did not turn it on myself. Other people did it, especially my mother. I can’t turn it off.”

  “Well, then. What’s your biggest question? Your mother’s real name and so on, or your father?”

  “My father, of course. After all, I have lived with my mother all my life, and I suppose my wanting to know her real name and things about her is just … well, curiosity. But I must know about my father. Is he alive? Who is he? What is he? His genes made me!”

  I nodded. “Yeah, you went to Smith. You learned too much about genes. Mr. Wolfe said once that scientists should keep their findings strictly to themselves; by spilling it they just complicate things for other people. Would you like some coffee?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “They have good sweet things.”

  She shook her head. “I admit I could eat anything, it’s really amazing, my being so hungry, but I’d rather not. What do you …? You said you might have a suggestion.”