The Misadventures of Nero Wolfe

by Josh Pachter

  “You took it to a jeweler. What were you planning to do with it?”

  “I left it to be cleaned,” she said. “I was going to return it.”

  Dingo turned. “Mook?”

  Mook took the Rolex from his pocket and handed it over. “That’s where I found it.”

  Dingo examined the watch for a moment, and then handed it to Elizabeth. “This is rightfully yours,” he said. “I’ve cared for it long enough.”

  After my employer sent my daughter back to the brownstone with Mook, Dr. Oswald gave Dingo a once-over to ensure the evening’s events hadn’t been too strenuous.

  When the two of us were alone in the room, Dingo looked at me.

  “I am not pleased to learn, Jughead, that you turned my home into a setting for one of your trysts,” Dingo scowled. “Have you anything to say for yourself?”

  “It’ll never happen again, boss,” I told him.

  And, given my age, I meant every word of it.

  PART III

  POTPOURRI

  The Woman Who Read Rex Stout

  by William Brittain

  EDITOR’S NOTE: After “The Man Who Read John Dickson Carr” and “The Man Who Read Ellery Queen” appeared back-to-back in the December 1965 EQMM, junior high school English teacher William Brittain contributed nine additional “Man Who Read” stories to the magazine, along with thirty-two tales featuring high school science teacher Leonard Strang. In the early 1980s, Brittain turned his attention from crime stories to novels for young readers; his The Wish Giver was a Newbery Honor Award recipient in 1983. Our children’s gain was our loss—but there’s good news for mystery readers: all eleven of the “Man Who Read” stories and seven of the Mr. Strangs have been collected as The Man Who Read Mysteries: The Short Fiction of William Brittain (Crippen and Landru, 2018).

  The first time I saw Gertrude Jellison reading a Rex Stout detective novel, I laughed so hard it made me weak inside. She didn’t pay any attention to me, though. She just sat there on the platform with her nose buried in that book. It was called Over My Dead Body, and the jacket had a picture of this big fat guy, Nero Wolfe, scowling as if he had stomach trouble. I’d look at Gert, then I’d look at the book jacket again. That combination would break anybody up.

  You see, Gert Jellison weighs over five hundred pounds.

  Gert and I both work in a Ten-in-One, a carnival sideshow. My name’s Robert Kirby. I’m Gert’s partner, which means I stand beside her on the platform during the shows. A pretty easy way to make a living, but I’m not strong enough to do much else. I got the job because, although I’m as tall as Gert, I only tip the scales at seventy-five pounds. Fat lady, thin man. Get it?

  To return to the Nero Wolfe books, it was Mel Bentner got up the idea. Mel owns the show, and he’s our magician and spieler. He stands out in front and tells everybody about the wonderful sights inside the tent. Then, when he’s turned the tip and everybody is inside, he comes in and does his act. Mel saw the Nero Wolfe book with the picture on the jacket in a store and thought it would be a good gimmick to have Gert reading it during the show.

  After Gert finished that first book, she read her way right through all of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels, starting with the earliest one, Fer-de-Lance. And pretty soon she began to act like Nero Wolfe. Wolfe liked beer, so Gert developed a yen for pink lemonade. Wolfe raised orchids, and Gert got her tent so full of carnations she hardly had room to sit down. She took those mysteries seriously, all right. It didn’t surprise me much. Gert’s serious about her reading. For all her weight, she’s got a really sharp mind. She told me she was once up for a job teaching psychology at a college, but the first time those profs got a look at her, they started laughing so much she ran away and joined the carny the same day.

  As I say, we all thought it was pretty funny to see Gert reading those books about that fat detective. But then Lili was murdered. I didn’t laugh at Gert after that.

  We should have known something was going to happen. First, one of our trucks broke down, so the Ten-in-One had to stay behind while the rest of the carnival headed for the next set-up. While Mel was trying to fix the truck, he burned his hand on a soldering iron and had to put salve and a big bandage on it. That meant his magic act was out of the show for at least a week.

  Well, they say misfortune comes in threes. The third thing was what happened to Lili.

  Lili was our snake charmer. She came on the lot one day last season and asked for a job. Just for a joke, Mel told her to feel the snakes our last charmer had left behind when she took off with a whole night’s receipts. We all waited for Lili to start screaming, but she handled those snakes like so much garden hose. Within two weeks, she had her act ready, Gert had made her a costume, and Ferdinand Hanig, our strongman, was in love with her. Ferdie had competition, though. Zeno the sword swallower thought Lili was pretty nice, too.

  But Gert kept both men at a distance. She mothered Lili, sewed clothes for her, and made sure she got to bed on time. She even let Lili water her carnations, when nobody else in the carny was even allowed to sniff them. And both Ferdie and Zeno knew that, if they tried any hanky-panky, Gert would clobber them. I guess Lili became the daughter Gert would never have.

  Mel was the one who found Lili’s body, but I guess we all got to her trailer pretty fast when he started yelling. All but Gert, that is. Gert was just too heavy to walk that far. It’s all she can do to waddle from her living tent up onto the bally platform. So I knew it was up to me to tell her what had happened. That’s another thing about Gert: she gets me to do her errands for her. She says she got that idea from Nero Wolfe, too—something about a guy named Archie.

  I went into her tent while the rest were still over by the trailer. She looked up at me slowly and poured herself a glass of lemonade. “What’s all the caterwauling outside?” she grumbled. “It spoiled my beauty sleep.”

  I knew how she felt about Lili, but I didn’t see any way to break the news gently. “It’s Lili,” I said. “She’s dead.”

  “Dead? Pfui. I just saw her an hour or so ago. She was waving to the rest of the carny when it departed.”

  “Gert, she’s been—somebody killed her.”

  She just sat there staring at me with her mouth open. Then it hit her. I hope I never see anything ever again like that great fat woman in a big lacy pink dress sitting there and crying. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed, shaking all over.

  At last she looked up at me. Her expression wasn’t sad anymore; it was angry. It was the same look Nero Wolfe had on the cover of that book.

  “How was she killed, Bob?” she finally asked.

  “Strangled. Somebody took a scarf—one of hers, probably—and tied it around her neck. Then he put a tent stake through the loop of the scarf and twisted. I’m glad you didn’t have to see her face, Gert. It was terrible.”

  “Garroted,” she said. “What kind of person would choose that way to kill?”

  “Whoever it was must have knocked her out first,” I continued. “Mel says her head was bruised, and there was blood in her hair.”

  “Does anyone have any idea who did it?”

  “Mel’s still over at the trailer, looking around. He told me to come and tell you. I don’t know if he found anything.”

  “I did.” The tent flap behind me opened, and Mel came in. “This was under Lili’s body.” He held out his hand.

  Gert and I both looked at the object on Mel’s palm. It was a flat piece of metal about two inches long. It was almost semicircular in shape, except that the edge that normally would have been straight had a series of notches in it.

  “It looks like a piece of that slum jewelry the old man with the ring-toss concession used for prizes last year,” said Gert. “He gave me one before he left the carny.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but that doesn’t prove anything. I used to have one, too. He g
ave ’em to just about everybody who was working with the show then.”

  “I don’t remember seeing one before,” said Mel.

  “This is just half of it,” said Gert. “When both halves are fitted together, it forms a complete circle. He engraved a name on each half, and the boy got one and gave the other to his girl.”

  Mel smiled wryly. I figured he was just trying to take Gert’s mind off Lili. “Whose name did you have put on the other half of yours?” he asked her.

  “Don’t be facetious at a time like this, Mel,” she said. “He put my name right across both halves, if you must know. Is there anything special about this medallion?”

  “Just proves that whoever killed Lili must have been nuts. Look.”

  He flipped the metal plate over in his hand. On the polished surface were engraved four letters, two above and two below:

  BY

  BY

  “What kind of a screwball would murder a girl like Lili and leave a message like that?” I asked.

  Gert took the medallion into that huge palm of hers and looked at it for quite a while. “Whatever happened to that ring-toss man, Mel?” she asked. “Is he still around?”

  “No, he’s with an outfit down south somewhere. I hear from him occasionally.”

  Gert dropped the medallion onto her dressing table among some of the carnation pots and slid farther down into her reinforced chair. She closed her eyes, and pretty soon her lips started working—pushing out, drawing back, pushing out again. We knew her brain was busy, and finally she turned her head slowly to look at us.

  “Mel, have you called the police?” she asked.

  “No, but I’m on my way right now.”

  “I don’t want you to tell them yet.”

  “I’ve got to, Gert,” Mel said. “This is murder.”

  “No! Trust me, Mel, I want to see the murderer apprehended probably more than anyone else on this lot. But he’s mine, Mel. I want the person who did this to know that I caught him.”

  “Oh, Gert, you’ve been reading too many of those Nero Wolfe stories.”

  “I’ve never been one to ask a favor,” said Gert. “But now I ask this. Just have everybody here in an hour. At that time, I will prove to your satisfaction who murdered Lili.”

  Mel thought about it. Then he scratched his head. “I believe you will, Gert,” he said. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

  He turned to me. “Come on, Skinny, let’s round up the others.” He walked out of the tent.

  I watched him go and then banged my fist on the table, nearly mashing one of Gert’s flowers. “Why does he keep calling me that, Gert?” I scowled. “He knows I can’t stand that nickname!”

  She laid her heavy hand on my arm. “Easy, Bobby,” she said. “He’s just jumpy, like the rest of us. He probably forgot.”

  “He didn’t forget. He knows I hate people calling me that.” I took a few deep breaths to calm down and then went outside, leaving Gert sipping at her everlasting pink lemonade.

  It took us a little more than an hour to get everybody in the show together. Cal Lynn, our Flatbush-born swami, had taken his car into town to get a part for the truck, and Sammy Marsh had gone with him to buy some cotton wads for his fire-eating act. Finally, though, we got everyone crowded inside Gert’s tent. Nobody thought she’d really be able to figure out who had killed Lili, but we thought she deserved the chance.

  She looked up at us from her chair with that angry, grouchy expression still on her face. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, “a member of our company has been murdered. I ask you to indulge me for a few moments, during which time I will attempt to ascertain the identity of the murderer.

  “I am going on the assumption,” she continued, “that the murderer is one of us. Lili was alive early this morning, when the rest of the carny left. Since that time, nobody has been on this lot with the exception of ourselves. Ergo, one of us killed Lili.”

  We all turned to look at Ferdie and Zeno, who were standing off to one side. Gert held up her hand.

  “Suspicion without proof is pointless,” she said. “But I intend to provide that proof. First, consider the method of murder: a scarf, twisted tightly with a tent stake. But, we must ask ourselves, why was a stake used as a lever? Surely this would indicate that, for some reason, the murderer—unlike most of us here—was incapable of strangling Lili without mechanical help.”

  Now there was an eye opener. Maybe Gert was getting something out of those Nero Wolfe books, after all! There was a murmuring of voices, and everyone turned to Mel Bentner, who was trying to hide his bandaged hand behind him.

  “Wait just a minute!” said Mel. “Maybe the murderer used the lever in order to kill Lili more slowly and make her suffer more.”

  “I must reject your hypothesis, Mel,” said Gert. “You said that Lili was struck on the head before being strangled. Therefore, the killer was strangling an unconscious girl.”

  “But what about that medallion?” someone demanded. “Why would anybody leave a crazy thing like that near the body?”

  “Leave it? Pfui! Are you asking me to believe that the killer had jewelry especially engraved for the occasion?”

  It did sound ridiculous, the way Gert put it.

  “Well, then how did it get there?” Mel asked.

  “The murderer dropped it accidentally, of course.”

  “Accidentally? You mean the murderer just happened to be carrying a piece of jewelry that said ‘BY BY’ on it?”

  “I think so, yes. Have you stopped to consider what was written on the other half of that medallion?”

  Mel looked puzzled, but Gert went on. “It is my belief that the triangle of Lili, Ferdinand, and Zeno recently became a quadrangle. This morning, the fourth person had a rendezvous with Lili and offered her his love—and Lili rejected him. She probably did so in such a way that he became furious and hit her, perhaps with the same stake he used to tighten the scarf. Then, fearing Lili would tell what he had done, he killed her to keep her quiet.”

  Ferdie Hanig lumbered up in front of Gert. “Who did it?” he asked menacingly.

  “Who is the person in this show who would find it impossible to use a scarf as a strangling cord without increasing his strength through leverage?” Gert asked. “Who takes umbrage at a simple remark that others would consider a joke? And, finally, who has a name that, in its diminutive form, could be written across both halves of a piece of jewelry in such a way that the right half would contain only the letters ‘BY BY’?”

  So that’s it. It all happened just the way Gert said. Everything would have been okay if only Lili hadn’t of called me “Skinny.” Or if Gert hadn’t of spent so much time reading those Rex Stout mysteries.

  Just for the record, the policeman in charge of the case has asked me to put my name at the bottom of this page in a special kind of way. He says it’ll help them, and that it’s better for me to cooperate.

  I hereby acknowledge that the above confession was freely given, without coercion, and that I have been offered no promise or inducement of any kind in order to make it.

  (signed)

  BOB-BY

  KIR-BY

  Sam Buried Caesar

  by Josh Pachter

  AUTHOR’S NOTE: My first published short story, “E. Q. Griffen Earns His Name,” was about a family of eleven kids, all named after famous fictional detectives by their father, an inspector with the Tyson County Police Department. I was sixteen years old when I wrote it, seventeen by the time it appeared in the “Department of First Stories” in the December 1968 EQMM. After a second E. Q. Griffen story in the May 1970 issue of the magazine, I decided to turn my attention to one of young Ellery’s siblings—and picked ten-year-old Nero. As my wife, Laurie, will tell you, I love a good pun, and the title “Sam Buried Caesar” is, I think, a good one—but the last line of the story is a real groan
er.

  For the fifty-millionth time, my name is not Archie Goodwin! It’s Artie, Artie Goodman—Arthur Eliot Goodman, Junior, to be exact. But ever since we moved in next door to Inspector Ross Griffen and his brood about a year ago and ten-year-old Nero Wolfe and I became best friends, I’ve been Archie Goodwin to everyone in town.

  Not that I mind the comparison, you understand. Nero got me interested in the Wolfe stories, and I’ve read most of them by now; Archie’s pretty cool and everything, even though he keeps talking about these dumb girls all the time, but it’s just that I don’t want to be typed as Nero Griffen’s legman for the rest of my life.

  I mean, I’m pretty smart myself, you know. I was the one who found Lou Kramer’s missing bicycle, not Nero, and if it wasn’t for me asking the right question at the right time, we would never have discovered who was shoplifting from Mr. Tierney’s five and dime.

  And even though Wolfe beat me to it, without so much as getting out of his chair, I did solve the mystery of Sam Cabot’s dog Caesar all on my own.

  It was the end of June, about a week after Wolfe had gotten out of fourth grade and I’d escaped from third, when we decided to form our own detective agency. I kind of liked “Griffen and Goodman, Private Investigators,” myself, but Nero insisted on “The Nero Wolfe Detective Service” and I didn’t make a fuss—I’d gone along with the idea for the fun of it, anyway, not for the glory.

  Our first couple of days were pretty slow, but soon the word got around and cases started leaking in—mostly lost toys and things, nothing really interesting at first. Nero proved pretty good at tracking down that kind of stuff and we began to build up a reputation of sorts. After three weeks we risked raising our retainer from a dime to fifteen cents, and nobody seemed to mind.

  Somewhere along the line, Nero’s brother Sherlock got into the act. He wasn’t much good, but he didn’t bother anyone, so we let him hang around until the day he deduced, from a rip in my shirt and the dirt under my fingernails, that I was the one who’d been swiping apples from the tree in Jerry Tieger’s back yard. At that point we decided that Sherlock had to go—actually, I decided that either he went or I did, and Wolfe agreed that my detective abilities were more important than mere family ties.