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 ofWoIfe, a world I've visited for
more than thirty years, I found myself listing the as-
pects 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 refine-
ment 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
VI
Introduction
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 confi-
dence Stout demonstrated in launching such an exper-
iment 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 pub-
lisher; Stout's career is a template of encouragement,
albeit in reverse.
As the months of labor on my current novel accumu-
late 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 modem 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 Mar-
shall Tanner frequently dines on Campbell's soup and
Oreo cookies and can label virtually nothing in his en-
vironment 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
Introduction
Vll
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 un-
timely 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 ge-
nius.)
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 Holly-
wood should build a film around that metamorphosis.
Hardly a brilliant insight, but that was only a subordi-
nate 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,
viii Introduction
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 1
DEATH OF A DEMON 69
COUNTERFEIT FOR MURDER 139
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 t
he 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 the
effort to go up to his room for another one, since no
callers were expected, and when four o'clock came and
he left for his afternoon session with the orchids in the
plant rooms on the roof, his shirt was still unbuttoned at
the neck and the tie was still on his desk.
It annoyed me. It annoyed Fritz too when, shortly
after four, he came to say he was going shopping and
4 Rex Stout The Homicide Trinity 5
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 some-
where. 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 detec-
tive 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 appoint-
ment. 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 ofWolfe'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
6 Rex Stout
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 pos-
sibly 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."
The Homicide Trinity 7
"S
ure. 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 acciden-
tal. 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
Homicide Trinity Page 1
