The Bloodied Ivy (The Nero Wolfe Mysteries Book 3)

by Robert Goldsborough

  The Bloodied Ivy

  A Nero Wolfe Mystery

  Robert Goldsborough

  For Suzy, Bob, Colleen, and Bonnie

  Contents

  Introduction

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  INTRODUCTION

  RECENTLY, SOMEONE ASKED ME what it was like to be Rex Stout’s daughter. I’ve learned to interpret the familiar gleam I noticed in the eye of the questioner. She was really saying, “Come on, tell me the real story, the juicy stuff.” I was sorry to disappoint her, and I finally had to admit that the Stout family has no closetful of titillating secrets. In fact, the world as I knew it when I was growing up was satisfying, interesting—and most remarkable for its ordinariness.

  My family lived in Manhattan for a few years, but most of my childhood was spent at High Meadow, my parents’ sprawling haven on the New York-Connecticut border, about fifty miles north of New York City. The U-shaped house, designed and built by my father, the gardens, the orchards, and the acres of rolling hills provided the setting for our daily lives. The High Meadow years were quiet, happy, and filled with experiences that countless other American children would recognize.

  I enjoyed school, although, like any child, I looked forward to the end of day so that I could run down the street to find my father and his car. Since we lived too far from Danbury for me to walk to school as most of the other children did, Dad would come many afternoons to pick me up in the chocolate-colored Cadillac that would be the family automobile for nearly twenty years. One blustery autumn day, a third-grade friend caught up with me as I was running down the street toward the Cadillac. She tugged at my sleeve and whispered in my ear, “What’s it like to have him for a father?”

  Well, that stopped me for a moment; I thought about her question. My first notion was that I liked it when Dad helped me with my homework. He checked on my progress and encouraged me, but he never gave me the answers, making sure, instead, that I knew how to arrive at the solutions myself. Then I thought about bedtime, when he’d come upstairs, grab my sister Barbara and me in his arms, and sing “Good Night, Ladies” and then toss us gleefully onto our beds.

  Still, at age eight, I wasn’t quite sure what there was about my father that would be quite so impressive to a classmate. I smiled and told her that having him for a father was fine.

  “Only fine?” she asked, her face scrunching into a skeptical frown as she eyed the white beard resting on his chest. “Don’t you think it’s terrific to have Santa Claus for a father?”

  That was my first inkling that Dad was notable.

  It was about that time in my life that I began to wonder what my father did for a living. It wasn’t a worry—just a curiosity that came and went at idle moments. After all, other fathers went off with briefcases on the commuter trains, or worked at farms or stores. What I did know was that several times a year a scenario was repeated that started with my father moving through the house and puttering in the gardens without really hearing what anyone said to him. He’d become vague and distracted, and Barbara and I soon learned to talk to him only when it was necessary during those periods. As I grew older, I realized that he was working—getting to know his characters, setting out the story—before he moved into his writing routine.

  Then, when he began the actual writing, Dad would disappear into his study precisely at noon and reappear for dinner promptly at six-thirty. Even when we couldn’t hear the old manual typewriter clattering away, my sister and I weren’t allowed to play in the court beneath his window during those hours. In fact, loud conversation in the kitchen would evoke admonitions from above to be quiet. This would go on for a couple of weeks, occasionally for as long as two months, and then, his book or story complete, he’d be done for a while.

  Later in my life, when I learned that my father never rewrote anything and that his books were published exactly as he first set the words down, I was more than a little amazed—but for years I assumed that everyone else who wrote fiction worked in the same way.

  He brought the same high standards to other tasks. In addition to his writing, Dad was an avid gardener and an enthusiastic carpenter. He spent long hours making furniture that he designed himself, using old-fashioned doweled construction to build pieces that are marvels of craftsmanship. His dresser drawers still, after thirty years, slide without sticking on the runners; whatever he made seems to stand up to the test of time.

  His shop was always filled with boxes of fragrant scrap wood, which delighted me when I was a child. Under his tutelage, I began my carpentry lessons by learning to wield a hammer, and eventually graduated to the use of his electric saw—the same machine that claimed a part of one of his fingers when he became distracted while using it.

  For all his involvement with writing, gardening, and carpentry, Dad thrived on contact with people. Even when he was working on a book, he had regular conferences with Harold Salmon, who worked at High Meadow taking care of the grounds and generally seeing to maintenance. As a young child, I thought of Harold more as a part of the family than as an employee. Then, after World War II, my parents sponsored the Yasamotos, a Japanese-American family who came to stay with us at High Meadow after they’d lived in the internment camps. They became an integral part of our household, sharing dinner, joining in the nightly game of Twenty Questions, and enlarging our family once again.

  My mother, during this period, made a name for herself in a separate arena. She designed and eventually manufactured her own fabrics; Dad encouraged her enterprising independence. For a time my mother even endured the long commute from Brewster, New York, to Philadelphia, to her mill. She, too, was nourished by her creativity and was particularly proud of her wools. When the Philadelphia Museum announced that Mother would be given an award to honor her textile designs, Dad decided that we should all attend in clothing made of her fabrics. I can still remember the beautiful green wool dress I wore; Dad, too, stood up proudly in his wool suit. The fact that the ceremony was held on a sweltering, humid midsummer Philadelphia day was of little consequence in Dad’s choice of wardrobe—he was determined that we would all show off Mother’s handiwork!

  When he wasn’t planning or writing his next tale, the house was often filled with visitors. Marian Anderson, Mark Van Doren, Kip Fadiman, my aunt Ruth Stout, and countless others would come to High Meadow to share the conversation, laughter, food, and drink. Barbara and I, indeed, any children who happened to be around, were always treated as social equals in a group. We listened, we joined the discussions, and we had a grand time.

  Dad particularly loved barbecues, and a series of traditional gatherings at High Meadow, starting with the blooming of the first iris each spring, would find him at the huge stone fireplace under the trees. He presided like a monarch over the wood fire, anointing the chickens with his homemade sauce dripping from his special baster: a long dowel to which he’d attached chicken feathers at one end. Memorial Day, Fourth of July (my sister and I were always decked out in red, white, and blue), and Labor Day, whatever the progress of his latest book or story, Rex Stout became chef for the occasion and grilled
chickens, two-inch-thick steaks, corn, and potatoes: a feast to feed his hungry friends.

  Despite—or perhaps because of—the comings and goings of such famous people in my life, it wasn’t until I was a high school sophomore at Oakwood, a Quaker prep school in Poughkeepsie, New York, that I really became aware of my father’s celebrity status. I was on my own, and for the first time I sensed the ways in which my childhood truly was different from many of my classmates. I developed a friendship with Gail Jones, Lena Horne’s daughter. Without understanding the initial reasons for our unspoken bond, we later recognized the common experiences we shared as the offspring of famous parents.

  Never at a loss for something to say about the world in which he lived, it’s not surprising that my father had strong opinions about education. He felt that everyone should be well grounded in the basics of reading, writing, and mathematics, but he didn’t place special value on higher education, although he never discouraged my sister and me from attending college. Dad never went to college himself, but he didn’t consider that a disadvantage. An educated person, he liked to say, is one who has the capacity to distinguish the important from the unimportant, has the ability to recognize good literature, has acquired sufficient knowledge of history to make connections between the past and the present, and can sustain a curiosity about the world and a desire to continue learning. Certainly, by those criteria, he was summa cum laude.

  I can hardly remember an instance when my father raised his voice in anger or to make a point. Instead, an eyebrow would shoot up and he’d say very evenly, “Do you think that’s a good idea?” The message was unmistakable—he didn’t think it was good idea. But part of the lesson was to figure out just why he didn’t like the idea and then come up with an acceptable alternative. He seldom told my sister and me what to do; in fact, he rarely even gave advice. We learned early on that if we wanted his opinion, we’d have to ask, “What would you do, Dad?” When we did, his responses very often centered around the concepts of fairness, reasonableness, and consistency.

  If I was confused about what I saw in the world, he’d wait until I expressed a specific concern, giving me the opportunity to work things out without intervention if I could. I recall wrestling during my adolescence with the feeling that it wasn’t fair for some people to have great material comforts when others didn’t. When I finally told him what was bothering me, my father counseled, “There’s no need to feel guilty about what you have as long as you’ve worked for it and you share it with others. Everyone has different opportunities; it’s what you do with the opportunities you have that counts.”

  Out of such moments, I began to understand what was important to my father. As an adult, I realize that most of what I’ve learned from him was communicated not so much in his words as through the example of his life.

  He placed enormous value on honesty. (I never even considered lying to him. Whatever the consequences of telling the truth, they were easier to live with than his reactions to a lie.) Organization and responsibility were traits high on his list. (He never complained about paying taxes and always paid all his bills as soon as they arrived. This habit has been so persistent with me that I’ve managed to pass it on to my own children without even once telling them that it was something they should do.) He taught me about generosity by demonstrating how much joy comes to the giver. He never attached strings to his gifts—even though the recipient might want to imagine some. He never held a grudge. He hated phonies utterly. He believed that the writer’s job is to tell a good story and to comment on human behavior, because above all, Dad valued people.

  Of the qualities that made my father unique, the most memorable was the quiet intensity he brought to everything he did. He worked, played, and fought for what he believed with a passion. He loved writing; the zest he brought to that task enlivens the pages of his books. I have the feeling that Robert Goldsborough probably has experienced some of the same delight that showed on Dad’s face when, after his allotted six and a half hours at the typewriter, he emerged from his upstairs study, slid into his chair at the dinner table, and announced with a twinkle, “You won’t believe what Archie just said to Wolfe!”

  Rebecca Stout Bradbury

  La Jolla, California

  February, 1988

  ONE

  HALE MARKHAM’S DEATH HAD BEEN big news, of course. It was even the subject of a brief conversation I had with Nero Wolfe. We were sitting in the office, he with beer and I with a Scotch-and-water, going through our copies of the Gazette before dinner.

  “See where this guy up at Prescott U. fell into a ravine on the campus and got himself killed?” I asked, to be chatty. Wolfe only grunted, but I’ve never been one to let a low-grade grunt stop me. “Wasn’t he the one whose book—they mention it here in the story: Bleeding Hearts Can Kill—got you so worked up a couple of years back?”

  Wolfe lowered his paper, sighed, and glared at a spot on the wall six inches above my head. “The man was a political Neanderthal,” he rumbled. “He would have been supremely happy in the court of Louis XIV. And the book to which you refer is a monumental exercise in fatuity.” I sensed the subject was closed, so I grunted myself and turned to the sports pages.

  I probably wouldn’t have thought any more about that scrap of dialogue except now, three weeks later, a small, balding, fiftyish specimen with brown-rimmed glasses and a sportcoat that could have won a blue ribbon in a quilting contest perched on the red leather chair in the office and stubbornly repeated the statement that had persuaded me to see him in the first place.

  “Hale Markham was murdered,” he said. “I’m unswerving in this conviction.”

  Let me back up a bit. The man before me had a name: Walter Willis Cortland. He had called the day before, Monday, introducing himself as a political science professor at Prescott University and a colleague of the late Hale Markham’s. He then dropped the bombshell that Markham’s death had not been a mishap.

  I had asked Cortland over the phone if he’d passed his contention along to the local cops. “It’s no contention, Mr. Goodwin, it’s a fact,” he’d snapped, adding that he had indeed visited the town police in Prescott, but they hadn’t seemed much interested in what he had to say. I could see why: Based on what little he told me over the phone, Cortland didn’t have a scrap of evidence to prove Markham’s tumble was murder, nor did he seem inclined, in his zeal for truth, to nominate a culprit. So why, you ask, had I agreed to see him? Good question. I must admit it was at least partly vanity.

  When he phoned at ten-twenty that morning and I answered “Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking,” Cortland had cleared his throat twice, paused, and said, “Ah, yes, Mr. Archie Goodwin. You’re really the one with whom I wish to converse. I’ve read about your employer, Nero Wolfe, and how he devotes four hours every day, nine to eleven before lunch and four to six in the afternoon, to the sumptuous blooms on the roof of your brownstone. That’s why I chose this time to call. I also know how difficult it is to galvanize Mr. Wolfe to undertake a case, but that you have a reputation for being a bit more, er…open-minded.”

  “If you’re saying I’m easy, forget it,” I said. “Somebody has to screen Mr. Wolfe’s calls, or who knows what he’d be having to turn down himself—requests to find missing wives, missing parakeets, and even missing gerbils. And believe me when I tell you that Mr. Wolfe hates gerbils.”

  Cortland let loose with a tinny chuckle that probably was supposed to show he appreciated my wry brand of humor, then cleared his throat, which probably was supposed to show that now he was all business. “Oh, no, no, I didn’t mean that you were…uh, to use your term, easy,” he stumbled, trying valiantly to recover.

  “No, I, uh…” He seemed to lose his way and cleared his throat several times before his mental processes kicked in again. “It’s just that from what I’ve heard and read, anybody who has any, uh, hope of enticing Nero Wolfe to undertake a case has to approach you first. And that I am most willing to do. Most willin
g, Mr., er…Goodwin.” I braced for another throat-clearing interlude, and sure enough, it arrived on schedule. If this was his average conversational speed, the phone company must love this guy.

  “I will lay my jeremiad before you and you alone, and trust you to relay it accurately to Mr. Wolfe. You have a reputation, if I am not mistaken, for reporting verbatim conversations of considerable duration.”

  Okay, so he was working on me. I knew it—after all, he had the subtlety of a jackhammer, but maybe that was part of his charm, if you could use that term on such a guy. And I was curious as to just what “information” he had about the late Hale Markham’s death. Also, the word “jeremiad” always gets my attention.

  “All right,” I told him, “I’ll see you tomorrow. What about ten in the morning?” He said that was fine, and I gave him the address of Wolfe’s brownstone on West Thirty-fifth Street near the Hudson.

  The next day he rang our doorbell at precisely ten by my watch, which was one point in his favor. I’ve already described his appearance, which didn’t surprise me at all when I saw him through the one-way glass in our front door. His looks matched his phone voice, which at least gave him another point for consistency. I let him in, shook a small but moderately firm paw, and ushered him to the red leather chair at the end of Wolfe’s desk. So now you’re up to speed, and we can go on.

  “Okay, Mr. Cortland,” I said, seated at my desk and turning to face him, “you’ve told me twice, on the phone and just now, that your colleague Hale Markham did not accidentally stumble down that ravine. Tell me more.” I flipped open my notebook and poised a pen.

  Cortland gave a tug at the knot of his blue wool tie and nudged his glasses up on his nose by pushing on one lens with his thumb, which probably explained why the glass was so smeared. “Yes. Well, perhaps I should discourse in commencement about Hale, although I’m sure you know something of him.”