The Brownstone House of Nero Wolfe

In India, while the Maharajah of Cooch Behar was in the jungle hunting Bengal tigers, I once bribed his caretaker to sh...

Author: Darby Ken

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In India, while the Maharajah of Cooch Behar was in the jungle hunting Bengal tigers, I once bribed his caretaker to show me through his highness's royal Himalayan retreat. I thought the thrill never could be repeated. Ken Darby has done that and more. From Fritz's basement suite to the rooftop orchid rooms, we experience anew, in one glorious, panoramic sweep of memory, Nero Wolfe's wonderful brownstone fastness and the adventures that have made that house, for half a century, a seat of kingship to perspicacious readers, and a source of excitement that makes the Bengali jungles seem, by contrast, as safe as tea time at Aunt Minerva's. —John McAleer

ISBN

0-316-17280-4

The biography of a house? Keep in mind that this is the brownstone house of Nero Wolfe, the elephantine sleuth, gourmand, genius, and master of seven languages. His attitude toward physical activity (he hates it) and in fact his aversion to any form of work has endeared him to his countless fans, but it also confined him primarily to his brownstone. He accepted cases only in order to maintain his elegant brownstone, and he solved them in his brownstone. Ken Darby, one of Wolfe's most avid fans, became quite attached to the brownstone house, as any loyal fan would. As a last tribute to the house, no longer home to Nero Wolfe, Darby set out to tell its full story. He tracked down Archie Goodwin, Wolfe's confidential assistant, who also, you will recall, recorded the myriad cases solved by Nero Wolfe. Archie enthusiastically contributed copious notes, which Darby now presents to us. These notes, of course, quote generously from the Wolfe Canon, providing a wonderful journey through corridors and favorite cases. If description of architectural details and interior design is not enough, the plans of each floor, from Fritz s basement to the elaborate orchid rooms on the roof, will fill in the spaces. You will relive past cases with a new eye to the placement of a vase (remember Help Wanted, Male?) or the placement of a

bedroom closet (remember A Family Affair?). And any of the little discrepancies that may have nagged you in the past will be resolved. Why, for instance, did three different pictures camouflage the peephole into Nero Wolfe's office? We promise you that in this book, the brownstone house of Nero Wolfe, perhaps the most important character in his mysteries, will come to life.

Ken Darby is a renowned Hollywood musical director, composer, and lyricist, whose best known credit is The Wizard of Oz.

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COPYRIGHT © 1983 BY KEN DARBY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY ELECTRONIC OR MECHANICAL MEANS INCLUDING INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER, EXCEPT BY A REVIEWER WHO MAY QUOTE BRIEF PASSAGES IN A REVIEW. FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Darby, Ken. The brownstone house of Nero Wolfe. I. Stout, Rex, 1886–1975—Characters—Nero Wolfe. 2. Detectives in literature. 3. Dwellings in literature. I. Title. PS3537.T733Z63 1982 813'.52 82-22845 ISBN 0-316-17280-4

Published by arrangement with the Estate of Rex Stout and Viking Penguin Inc. All quotations from the works of Rex Stout are reprinted with the permission of Viking Penguin Inc. Copyright 1934 and each year thereafter through 1973 by Rex Stout. Copyrights renewed 1962 through 1973 by Rex Stout, and 1977 through 1982 by Pola Stout, Barbara Selleck and Rebecca Bradbury. All Rights Reserved. The map of the ground floor of Nero Wolfe's house appearing on page 71 is from Nero Wolfe of West Thirty-fifth Street by William S. Baring-Gould. Copyright © 1969 by Lucille M. BaringGould. Reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin Inc.

MV

Designed by Dale Cotton

Published simultaneously in Canada by Little, Brown & Company (Canada) Limited

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

3 December 1980 To the Editor — or the Publisher — who believes, as I do, that Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin are as indestructible and immortal as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, and that they have already won their places in Criminology's Hall oi Fame — GREETINGS: The script accompanying this letter was edited from documentary material delivered to my door on 2 September 1979, by United Parcel Service. The first page contained the following communication from Archie Goodwin: August 26, 1979 Dear Mr. Darby: I am sending these notes, in answer to your extraordinary letter, because of my great admiration for the ingenuity by which you ferreted out the number of my Post Office Box here in Big Timber, Montana. Your knowledge of my long and busy association with Nero Wolfe

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE is astonishing. I am highly complimented, and I know that Wolfe will be pleased when I convey to him your expressions of esteem. I hope my sketches and explanations will be adequate to satisfy the many questions you posed. I am happy to have them answered, myself — and I thank you for prodding me. Lily and I wish you all the best. Sincerely,

It took me almost a year to organize Mr. Goodwin's notes to my satisfaction. Once done, I stored the completed script among other valuables in my library. Then one day, about two weeks ago, a friend of mine saw it, looked it over with growing excitement, and exploded incredulously, "You mean to tell me you're keeping this treasure all to yourself? Why you old bastard, this belongs to everybody!" He thumbed over a page, examined one of Archie's floor plans, and added savagely, "It would be damned selfish of you to hoard it. Every reader who knows and loves Rex Stout, and Wolfe, and Archie, and the old brownstone house should have access to it." So, Dear Editor, here it is. I hope you agree with him. Respectfully,

Kenneth-Lorin (Ken) Darby

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE P.S. Several times during the year, the Goodwins and I corresponded. The latest letter from Montana was dated October 12, 1980. I include it because it contains a message from Wolfe postmarked in Alexandria. Dear Ken: Thanks for the glowing screed, the beautiful hi-fi albums, and the manuscript. We are enchanted with your music, and with your presentation of my "Apologia." We hope the publisher will be as pleased as we are. Another letter has arrived from Wolfe. He had read in the Los Angeles Times that a TV series is planned based on his life and work. His reaction (all the way from Egypt) is best stated in his own words.

"As you know, Archie, I am not impressed with Hollywood. You must surely recall my outrage when Columbia Pictures miscast Lionel Stander as you in their embarrassing, gelatinous filmic monstrosity of Fer-de-Lance. If they must concoct a video series about us, please do what you can to make them take greater care in casting actors. It would be presumptuous of me to recommend anyone for my role (and futile), but I could accept Raymond Burr, just for his intellect alone, but he is too tall and too well established as Ironside. Orson Welles is about my height, and heaven knows he is big enough, but he is narcissistically bemused by his own suavity; his mind is constantly preoccupied by new flights of prestidigitation (not to mention the wines of Paul Masson), and he would assuredly inject into the role great flanks of corn-fed ham, which, you allege, I sometimes did myself. "The enclosed picture, taken a day or two ago at our embassy by a rather good photographer, should cause you to notice (I hope) that I have lost some width, and have cultivated

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE a beard. I find that the latter tends to keep all predatory widows at bay." He could have added that the "width" would do the same thing. There was more he had to say, but it was of a personal nature and I won't bore you with it. You wanted to know what bcecame of the sliding panel and the picture of the waterfall that once covered the alcove peephole. Well, I took them with me when we left the old browns tone house. Wolfe didn't want them, and I did. Lily has them hanging together on the wall of our bedroom. Again, thanks for the music. It made us nostalgic for the magic islands' ports of paradise. Yours,

FOREWORD

due respect to the late William S. Baring-Gould, the late Bernard DeVoto, the late professor Jacques Barzun, and my esteemed literary agent, the late Rex Stout, I still feel obligated to go on record with this book of modifications, corrections, and criticisms. Their errors — and mine — need correcting. I don't know that any of them have misquoted me, but I've been unquoted, overquoted, and outquoted. Nor have they (as far as I know) attacked the probity of Nero Wolfe, although they have analyzed, dissected, examined, and explored his genealogy, his philosophy, his personality, his every action, speech, appetite, idiosyncrasy, and avocation to the point of nitpicking. One gross error (and a pet peeve of mine) was made by the Viking Press which printed, on page 192 on Mr. BaringGould's 1969 book, Nero Wolfe of West Thirty-fifth Street, a spurious map of the ground floor of the old brownstone house. I don't know who drew it, but he had no sense of proportion, WITH

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE

and he was ignorant of the fact that brownstones are packed together side by side with no space in between. He stuck windows in walls that were common to both houses; great for peeping Toms! Some say Rex drew the map, and stated that the house was on a corner lot. Not so at all. Here's proof: . . . I climbed out of the taxi at the corner and thanked Parker for the lift and told him I'd call him if and when, and walked the block and a half on 35th Street to the old brownstone. . . . ("Murder is Corny" [1964] chapter 2, in Trio for Blunt Instruments [1964]; italics added)

That solidly places the house in the middle of the block! And there are more errors, but for now — and notwithstanding all my peeves and gripes, I salute the above-named gentlemen for being assiduous, if not always 100 percent correct. Who is? I also take my hat off to the following good people, dedicating to them this book of apologies and emendations. To Rex Stout, the best agent any writer could have. I miss him and his guiding counsel. The efficacy of his management is evidenced by the fact that no book of mine has been published since his death. Hail and farewell, dear friend. To John D. Clark, a man of enormous perspicacity who, by brilliant deduction and unwavering research, has propounded an hypothesis about Wolfe and his antecedents that is so near the truth as to be uncanny. Those readers who are unfamiliar with his work can look that one up for themselves in the Baker Street Irregulars' Archives.

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE To John McAleer, who put it all together in his admirable biography Rex Stout. He was accurate down to everything but one small detail, and I'll forgive him that. The world owes him a great debt for a warm and scholarly portrait of this rare and significant life. To Lily Rowan Goodwin, my lady on a pedestal, who — as I predicted* — frequently falls off or climbs down, but never loses her balance, much to my continuing joy and delight. Thank you, Rex, for nurturing me through the years. And you, Dr. Clark, for solving the genealogical mystery. And you, Mr. McAleer, for perpetuating the Stout image. And you, Lily, for making each today more beautiful than yesterday. (And for helping me with all Wolfe's big words.)

• A Family Affair (1975), chapter 10.

I HAVE been called a lot of uncomplimentary (even dirty) names in years past, accused of perfidious acts, petty misdemeanors, and a number of grand felonies — like murder. I have been insulted by expert insulters of all descriptions, some of them smart, some barely able to pick their noses, some outside the law, and some who were uniformed minions of the law itself. But the past master of the elegant verbal harpoon was Nero Wolfe. He asked me once why the devil I ever pretended to read a book, and I told him for cultural reasons, and he said I might as well forgo the pains, that culture was like money — it comes easiest to those who need it least.* Now, if you put a little reverse English on that you'll see why I still get red in the neck whenever I think about it. He knew damned well that what I lacked in literary input was more than balanced by the output. I ask you. Who would * The League of Frightened Men (1935), chapter 1.

[3]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE ever remember that mountain of egocentricity, or what a genius he was, if I hadn't reported those sixty-odd cases he and I worked on together in that old brownstone house? Nobody! (Actually, there were seventy.) Well, it's been four years since he left for Egypt and a lot of those old houses are gone — whole blocks of brownstone houses wiped out — replaced by new high-rise housing developments for lower-income families, which is all okay by me, but it destroys some of New York's grand and glorious heritage. What's eating on the planners of our big cities? They can't stand it if anything gets to be over a hundred years old. Tear it down! Replace it! Dig a hole under it! Build something new, fancier, add more glass, destroy your grandfather! Horse apples! But there, I didn't start out to deliver a noisy diatribe. I'm writing this to make a confession. I confess to having created a lot of confusion. And because so many authors, critics, and legitimate well-wishers have laid the onus for this confusion at my door (which at the moment is attached to a handsome, sunlit room of a Montana ranch house), and because I receive letters all the time pointing out the many discrepancies found in my case records, and because people keep asking me why I never included any drawings or photographs of the old brownstone house and its occupants (Fritz Brenner, Nero Wolfe, Theodore Horstmann, and me), Lily says I owe everybody — if not an apology — certainly an explanation and a clarification. So, since I'm biding my time anyway, waiting for Wolfe to get tired of living in his gift-house in Alexan-


dria,* and to weary of the pyramids, and the palm trees, and 350,000 square miles of sand, I'll try to oblige all those I have perplexed and irritated by writing this expiatory propitiation. Those last two words aren't mine. Lily says they mean I want to atone in order to conciliate people I have offended or confused. I like what they mean better than the way they look. But they are true and to the point. One of the biggest confusions came about at the very beginning — in my first book, Fer-de-Lance, back in 1934. I had received the galley proof from Farrar and Rinehart, accompanied by a curt note asking me to make adjustments and corrections in the text immediately because American Magazine would be printing it in the next issue just prior to the publication of the book. I had barely started proofing when a telegram arrived announcing the death of my aunt Anna in Chillicothe, Ohio.** Wolfe was up in the plant rooms. I got him on the house phone, told him what had happened, and his answer was prompt. "Go at once, by all means. She was your mother's sister and you should be with the family." I said, "There's only one hitch. I have to proofread the * "Archie, do you know what I thought in bed this morning? I thought how horrible and how amusing it would be to send Theodore away and let all those living and breathing plants, all that arrogant and pampered loveliness, thirst and gasp and wither away. . . . Just an early morning fantasy; I haven't the will for such a gesture. I would be more likely to offer them at auction — should I decide to withdraw from responsibilities — and take passage for Egypt. You know of course that I own a house in Egypt which I have never seen. The man who gave it to me, a little more than ten years ago. . . . " (Fer-de-Lance [1934}, chapter 6) ** The Final Deduction (1961), chapter 4.

[5]


galleys on Fer-de-Lance because it goes to press next Tuesday, and that's only four days off. What do I do about that?" There was a moment of silence, then a grunt. "Leave them on my desk with a copy of the publisher's contract. I'll proofread it while you're gone. Have a safe trip, and don't fly! Go by train." I typed a note of thanks, did as directed, and went. Wolfe apparently had one of his conniption fits before he had read twenty galleys. He never mentioned it to me then, or later, but John Farrar took special delight in reporting the incident, over lunch at Rusterman's, when I returned to New York after a ten-day absence. "Wolfe telephoned my office on Monday," John said, "and he was dripping acid. I can quote him verbatim. 'Mr. Farrar, I will not insult Mr. Goodwin by acknowledging his flattery on galley six, since if it is sincere, he is a fool, and if it is calculated, he is a knave, but I am indefatigably opposed to his divulgence in print of my street address, in which he includes a complete and accurate description of its location, on galley fifteen. My home will be descended upon by insurance salesmen, curiosity crackpots, and sciolists. I will be deluged with junk mail, lottery inducements, and charity circulars. It is not to be permitted; I must demand that all references to my address be eliminated or you must be prepared to answer for a deliberate invasion of my privacy.' "I reminded him that all he had to do was etch his instructions on the galley proofs by three P.M. of the following day and I would send a special messenger to his house to pick them up. When he made no reply, I decided to force one. I told him he need not plan any legal action, since his request [6]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE was quite easily satisfied, and remarked that lawsuits were a necessary evil in the life of a publisher anyway, as common as eating. "That drew a response. He snorted! I waited. Then he took an audible breath, and in a mild tone of voice confessed, 'I have never corrected a galley proof before, Mr. Farrar. Can you send a trusted stenographer to assist me?' I told him certainly. At once. Then I offered him a special deal. I said, 'Perhaps you would like to send a couple of hundred copies of the book as Christmas gifts. They would be no more expensive, for you, than a fine Christmas card.' Now get this answer, Archie: 'Thank you, Mr. Farrar. Let me finish the book before I decide. Some of my friends have very discriminating taste in literature, and Christmas is no time to alienate friendships. I will let you know. Goodbye, sir.' 'Well," Rinehart continued, "I sent over our junior editor, he spent the day, was invited to stay for the evening meal, dined sumptuously, and returned to the office before midnight with all the pages corrected and initialed 'N.W. for A.G.' The ball is in your court now, Archie. If you ever write any more case histories involving Nero Wolfe, be sure you let him have the final word. "My junior editor says he'd never want Wolfe as a critic because he's too damned smart. And he'd never want him for an adversary because he's too damned big to push around. But he absolutely loves the man — as a host! Anyway, the job's done. American Magazine will be on the stands tomorrow. The book will come out the day after that. Hollywood is already interested. Columbia Pictures has made us an offer. We'll ask for more and get it. You and Wolfe look like sure [7]


winners . . . no, no, Archie, this is my check . . . and, by the way, Brentano's wants you on Saturday for two hours in the afternoon to autograph some copies of the first edition." The basic changes Wolfe made in that galley proof were to remain fixed through all the rest of the books — with one exception — for forty-one years! First he changed the street address and camouflaged our neighborhood. Then he deleted the house number entirely. I don't want to shatter any illusions, and you can go on thinking of the old brownstone as being on West 35th Street if you want to, but, for the record, the actual location was on East 22nd Street in the Gramercy Park District. I'm forced to be deliberately vague about the exact address because the house is presently leased by someone who would render me into fat if his/her seclusion became disrupted by rubbernecking sightseers. Whether you want to visualize the house on 22nd, or on 35th Street, let me at once assure you that the descriptions of the house and its environs which follow are exact and authentic in every detail. Wolfe merely moved us, fictionally, from one place to the other in order to preserve his particular brand of privacy. As far as / can discover, there never were brownstone houses on West 35th Street. Macy's was nearby, and there were office buildings, apartments, and a few other types of commercial setups, but no elegant brownstones. And Wolfe's was elegant! In 1937, when my story required that I give it a house number, an exceedingly bright editor suggested that I use one high enough to move the location completely off the island of Manhattan, right out into the middle of the Hudson River. Try looking for 918 West 35th, but take along a [8]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE rowboat or a life preserver — it's wet out there. In 1940, 1960, and again in 1964, I carelessly moved us back onto dry land. An outcry by the citizenry of the West Side, caused by fans and tourists looking for Wolfe's by-then-famous abode, created sufficient flak to bring Wolfe, Farrar, and Rinehart down on my neck again. So, thereafter, to circumvent any more complaints, I kept moving the address farther and farther offshore. All in all, there were nine different addresses in the Wolfe cases, as follows: ADDRESS 506 618 902 909 914

BOOK TITLE AND YEAR PUBLISHED

'

918

919 and 922 924 938 Death

of

Over My Dead Body (1940) Too Many Clients (1960); Blood Will Tell (1964) Murder by the Book (1951) Before I Die (1949) Too Many Women (1947); Prisoner's Base (1952); The Doorbell Rang (1965) The Red Box (1937); And Be a Villain (1948); The Next Witness (1956); Method Three for Murder (1960) The Silent Speaker (1946) (in the same book!) Man Alive (1950) a Doxy (1966)

Three times I gave out fictitious telephone numbers: BRyant 9-2828 (Fer-de-Lance, 1934), PRoctor 5-5000 (The Silent Speaker, 1946), and, in Murder by the Book (1951), I reported it as being PEnnsylvania 3-1212, which turned out to be the phone number of a Manhattan police station. The captain of the precinct told me that their switchboard was so lit up it had to be given a sobriety test. After that, I never again alluded to Wolfe's telephone number in print. [9]

IN 1975, Wolfe leased his home for enough monthly income to sustain his one-third interest in a very swanky midtown hotel. One corner suite on the top floor of that hotel now contains his library, the big Gouchard globe, and all of his old office furniture. His bedroom furniture is also there — in the bedroom, naturally — but the rest of the furnishings remain with the tenant in the old brownstone house. I have a key to that lofty suite, and whenever Lily and I go to the Big Apple we check in there for a day or so to see that everything is okay. It's a bit weird being elevated skyward for thirty-five stories and then stepping into that room, like being shot backward in a time machine. Everything is in its customary place, the Keraghan rug is on the floor, and his desk is in position with the big red leather chair nearby. But the place doesn't smell the same. There are no cooking odors, no orchids in the vases, no faint aromatic halo of Pilsen in the air — and no doorbell. In the basement garage, blocked off the floor and tarp[10

]


covered, is the old Heron sedan, awaiting Wolfe's return. Personally, I hope he comes back before it turns into a fossil or a classic. But I've gotten off the track. I promised clarification, facts, figures and diagrams concerning that old brownstone, so here goes . . . the exterior first, before going inside. There were seven steps from the sidewalk up to the stoop ("Murder Is Corny" [1964], chapter 2, in Trio for Blunt Instruments [1964]). Stoop is a silly word to call an elevated landing connected to a stair, but what else would you call it? Actually, a stoop is the last step (or stop) at the top of a flight of stairs, like a small porch, usually covered by an overhang or an awning, and customarily bounded by a waist-high wrought-iron railing supported by the metal tendrils and ivy leaves of some craftsman's imagination. Eventually, "step" became "stop" and "stop" became "stoop" and we had one, right at the front door, which had a one-way glass for seeing out, not in. The ornate button imbedded in the stone beside the door operated the doorbell that rang in four places: the kitchen, the office, down in Fritz's room, and up in my room (A Family Affair [1975], chapter 1). The "front room" was to the left of the stoop, with two big windows, eight feet above the areaway, facing the street ("Eeny Meeny Murder Mo" [1962], chapter 2, in Homicide Trinity [1962]). Next floor up were the windows of my room, when I wasn't on the floor above that, and whichever one I wasn't in was a guest room. On the roof were the plant rooms, covered in greenhouse style by ten thousand square feet of very special glass ("The Zero Clue" [1952], in Three Men Out [1954]). [11]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE That was our facade, and the shiny dome was the only aspect that differentiated us from all the other brownstones on the block. In the rear we were different. The back door leads to the small yard where Fritz grows herbs, or tries to, and at the far end there is a bolted door in the eight-foot fence. . . . A narrow passage between two buildings takes you to Thirty-Fourth Street. {Gambit [1962}, chapter 13)

That passage was the scene of many a vanishing act, and I have given up trying to figure out why Inspector Cramer never tumbled to it. I recall one time when I had Carla Lovchen in the roadster and needed to stash her someplace in a hurry before the police got to her. It was only a matter of three minutes across to Ninth, down to 34th, and west to the middle of the block. The day was gone and I stopped at a distance from a street light, shut off the engine, and told her: "There's an assortment of cops in front of Wolfe's house, so we're going in the back way. Follow me and don't say anything after we get inside the house. Just stay behind me." . . . . . . I led her down the sidewalk to the entrance to the passageway between a warehouse building and a garage, and along the dark passage until we came to the door in the board fence. . . . I had to use my key. I guided her across the court and up the steps to the little [12]


porch, and used another key, and entered the kitchen ahead of her. No one was there but Fritz. He stared at me. "Now, Archie, you ought to tap —" "Okay. I forgot. No cause for alarm. Keep Miss Lovchen here on the quiet for about four minutes till I get back." He stared again, at her. "Miss Lovchen?" "Right. You'd better hide her in the pantry." I . . . went out the way I had come, through the door in the fence and along the passage to 34th Street, got in the roadster and drove around two corners into 35 th Street and rolled to the curb in front of the house. (Over My Dead Body [1940], chapter 17)

Cops were all over the place: two out in front, one in the office with Fred Durkin, guarding some questionable guests, and Cramer with Wolfe up in the plant rooms. With a little help from Durkin, I sneaked Carla out of the pantry, down the hall, up the stairs and into Wolfe's bedroom without a hitch. But if Cramer had had those blue boys watching our back door, as well as our front — well, there wouldn't have been any story to write about. On another occasion, I described that back entry this way: Entering the old brownstone by the back door is a little more complicated than by the front door, but not much. You come in from 34th Street through a narrow passage between two buildings and end up at a solid wooden gate seven feet high. There is no knob or latch [13]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE or button to push, and if you have no key for the Hotchkiss lock and haven't been invited you'll need a tool, say a heavy ax. But if you are expected and you knock on the gate it will open, as it did for Lucy Valdon at ten minutes past six that Monday afternoon, and you will be led along a brick walk between rows of herbs, down four steps and on in, and up a stair with twelve steps. At the top, you turn right for the kitchen or left for the office or the front. (The Mother Hunt [1963], chapter 8)

Yeah, I know. You caught the two discrepancies. Well the gate was a foot lower than the rest of the fence, and we had remodeled the back entry that year to eliminate the little porch and let us into the house on the basement level. Satisfied? Here, verbatim, are directions I gave Beulah Page over the telephone. I told her: "The sidewalk in front of our house is the scene of two murders and therefore temporarily conspicuous. Get this. From Thirty-fourth Street and Eleventh Avenue go east on Thirty-fourth Street. It's ninety-two paces for me, so it will be about a hundred and twenty for you. At that point there is a narrow passage between two buildings — a loading platform on the left of it and a wholesale paper products place on the right. Go in along the passageway and I'll meet you at the far end of it and let you in at our back door. Have you got it?" [14]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE She said she had it, so after spending twenty minutes in the office with Wolfe: I left by way of the kitchen and the back stairs, emerging into our little private yard where Fritz grows chives and tarragon and other vegetation. Leaving the door through the solid board fence unlocked, since it wouldn't be out of my sight, I skirted piles of rubbish on the premises south of us, and another twenty steps got me to the entrance of the passage. There was no one there. But I didn't wait long. Within a couple of minutes a figure appeared at the other end of the passage, looked in, and started toward me. Only it wasn't Beulah. It was the law student. She was right behind him. . . . "Watch your step," I told them and led the way back around the rubbish piles, through the door in the fence, which I locked, into the basement, up to the kitchen, and on up two more flights to the south room, which was on the same floor as mine [at the time], at the other end of the hall. ("Before I Die" [1947], chapter 10, in Trouble in Triplicate [1949])

There was one scene involving that passageway and the fire escape that hurts me every time I remember it. Nobody likes to be made a jackass, and my ears were long that morning. We had put Madame Zorka to bed the night before in the south room because she was beat and confused and in a state of shock. [15]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE At eight o'clock in the morning, . . . I took a pot of coffee up to her. When my third and loudest knock got no response, I used my key and went in. She wasn't there. The bed was just as Fritz had turned it down. The window on the left, the one that opened onto the fire escape, was standing wide open. I descended a flight to Wolfe's room, tapped on the door, and entered. He was in bed, propped up against three pillows, just ready to attack the provender on the breakfast table which straddled his mountainous ridge under the black silk coverlet. There was orange juice, eggs au beurre noir, two slices of broiled Georgia ham, hashed brown potatoes, hot blueberry muffins, and a pot of steaming cocoa. He snapped at me, "I haven't eaten!" "Neither have I," I said bitterly. "I'm in no better humor than you are, so let's call it a tie. I just went up to take our guest some coffee —" "How is she?" "I don't know." "Is she asleep?" "I don't know." "What the devil —" "I was starting to tell you and you interrupted me. Please don't interrupt. She's gone. She didn't even lie down. She went by way of the window and the fire escape, and presumably found her way to 34th Street by the passage we use sometimes. Since she descended by the fire escape, she went right past that window" — I [16]


pointed — "facing you, and it must have been daylight." "I was asleep." "So it seems. I thought maybe with a woman in the house, and possibly a murderess, you might have been on the qui vive —" "Shut up." (Over My Dead Body [1940], chapters 11 and 12)

An awful lot of my conversations with Wolfe ended up like that. When he was mad enough to yell "shut up" at me, I had him hooked good. But there was one night when I had put Pierre Ducos in the south room (to protect him from an assassin) when it was me that was hooked! It was the only time I ever used the fire escape. I had got my pajamas from the closet, set the alarm, put things from my pockets on the dresser, turned the bedcovers down, turned the telephone and the other two switches on, hung up my jacket and necktie, taken my shoes and socks off, and was unbuckling my belt, when the earthquake came and the house shook. Including the floor I was standing on. . . . I jumped to the door and opened it and turned the hall light on. The door to the South Room was shut. I ran to it and turned the knob. . . . [Pierre] had bolted it. I ran down one flight,* saw that the door to Wolfe's room was intact, and went and knocked on it. My usual three, a little spaced. . . . and his voice came. "Archie?" * Before 1950 I was on the same floor with Wolfe.

[17]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE I opened the door and entered and flipped the light switch. . . . He had pushed back the yellow electric blanket and black sheet and was sitting up. "Well?" he demanded. "I don't know," I said, and I hoped my voice didn't squeak from the pleasure of seeing him. "I put a man in the South Room. The door's bolted. I'm going to see." Of the three windows in the south wall, the two end ones are always open at night about five inches, and the middle one is shut and locked and draped. I went and pulled the drape, slid the catch, opened it, and climbed through. The fire escape is only a foot wider than the window. I have tried to remember if my bare feet felt the cold of the iron grating as I went up but can't. Of course they didn't when I got high enough to see that most of the glass in the window was gone. I put my hand in between the jagged edges and slipped the catch and pushed the window up, what was left of it, and stuck my head in. He was on his back with his head toward me and his feet toward the closet in the right wall. I shoved some glass slivers off the windowsill, climbed through, saw no pieces of glass on the rug, and crossed to him. He had no face left. (A Family Affair [1975], chapter 1)

Looking back on that episode, it gives me this big pain to realize that Pierre wasn't the only one who lost face. I did coo! But Pierre had no pain — he was dead. The only remaining exterior feature of the old house which [18]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE I haven't described is the areaway beside the front stoop, and since it was the scene of considerable excitement and tragedy, I'd better give you a picture of it. Wolfe had an audience of thirteen in his office. Phoebe Gunther, the fourteenth guest, hadn't shown. Included in the group were Purley Stebbins, Inspector Cramer, and an FBI agent named G. G. Spero. Wolfe was going full throttle in one of his perorations. I hated to disturb his flow. . . . A movement out in the hall had caught my eye, and Fritz was standing there, . . . staring wide-eyed at me. When he saw I was looking at him he beckoned me to come, and the thought popped into my mind that, with guests present and Wolfe making an oration, that was precisely how Fritz would act if the house was on fire. The whole throng was between him and me, and I circled around behind them for my exit. Wolfe kept on talking. As soon as I made the hall I closed the door behind me and asked Fritz: "Something biting you?" "It's — it's —" He stopped and set his teeth on his lip. Wolfe had been trying to train Fritz for twenty years not to get excited. He tried again: "Come and I'll show you." He dived for the kitchen and I followed, thinking it was some culinary calamity that he couldn't bear up under alone, but he went to the door to the back stairs, the steps that led down to what we called the basement, though it was only three feet below the street level. Fritz slept down there in a room that faced the street. There [19]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE was an exit through a little hall to the front; first a heavy door out to a tiny vestibule which was underneath the stoop, and then an iron gate, a grill, leading to a paved areaway from which five steps mounted to the sidewalk. It was in the tiny vestibule that Fritz stopped and I bumped into him. He pointed down. "Look." He put his hand on the gate and gave it a little shake. "I came to see if the gate was locked, the way I always do." There was an object huddled on the concrete of the areaway, up against the gate, so that the gate couldn't be opened without pushing the object aside. I squatted to peer. The light there was dim, since the nearest street lamp was on the other side of the stoop, thirty paces away, but I could see well enough to tell what the object was, though not for certain who it was. "What the hell did you bring me here for?" I demanded, pushing past Fritz to re-enter the basement. "Come with me." He was at my heels as I mounted the stairs. In the kitchen I detoured to jerk open a drawer and get a flashlight, and then went down the main hall to the front door, out to the stoop and down to the sidewalk, and down the five steps to the areaway. There, on the same side of the gate as the object, I squatted again and switched on the flashlight. Fritz was beside me, bending over. "Shall I —" His voice was shaking and he had to start again. "Shall I hold the light?" [20]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE And then I said something, blurted it right out, something I've regretted ever since because it hurt Fritz's feelings, and he was moody with me for a week. I told him gruffly, "Shut up, goddam it!" After half a minute I straightened up, told him, "You stay right here," and headed for the stoop. Fritz had pulled the front door shut, and when I found myself fumbling to get the key in the hole I stood erect to take a deep breath and that stopped the fumbling. I went down the hall to the kitchen, to the phone there, and dialed the number of Dr. Vollmer, who lived down the street only half a block away. There were six buzzes before he answered. "Doc? Archie Goodwin. Got your clothes on? Good. Get here as fast as you can. There's a woman lying in Our areaway, by the gate to the basement, been hit on the head, and I think she's dead. There'll be cops on it, so don't shift her more than you have to. Right now? Okay!" I took another breath, filling my chest, then took Fritz's pad and pencil and wrote: Phoebe Gunther is in our areaway dead. Hit on the head. Have phoned Vollmer. I tore off the sheet and went to the office. I suppose I had been gone six minutes, not more, and Wolfe was still doing a monologue, with thirteen pairs of eyes riveted on him. I sidled around to the right, got to his [21]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE desk, and handed him the note. He got it at a glance. . . . (The Silent Speaker [1946}, chapter 18) What happened after that I remember only too vividly. Before midnight, our areaway had been floodlit, photographed by forensics and all the newspapers, dusted for prints, and cordoned off by the police to hold back the biggest mob we ever drew and there was a dick, or an FBI man, or an assistant district attorney, one each, for everybody in the house, including Fritz, who, still shuddering occasionally, was valiantly doing his thing in the kitchen, making sandwiches and coffee for all the living, while seeing in his mind's eye the victim of violent death he had discovered in our areaway. That about covers it from the outside, but for those of you who think I'm a lousy describer I've drawn up a plot plan of the house and environs that may present a better picture. Next page, please.

[22]

I SUPPOSE the logical place to start describing the inside of a building would be the basement, but since I'm not going to construct an edifice, and don't feel particularly logical anyway, I'll start with the top and hop around from there. The plant rooms were, in their prime, the most spectacular and breathtaking display of wanton self-indulgence and willful extravagance south of the Radio City Music Hall! The roof rooms comprised a near-inviolable sanctuary for Wolfe, and he bitterly opposed any unwarranted invasion of the hours from 9 to 11 A.M. and from 4 to 6 P.M., when he and Theodore Horstmann gave themselves over to the pampering of his expensive hobby. Theodore was the perfect nursery man; he lived up there with the plants! Horstmann didn't think any more of those plants than I do of my right eye. He slept in a little room partitioned off of a corner, and I wouldn't have been surprised if he walked the floor with them at night. (Fer-de-Lance [1934], chapter 3) [24]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE This description was of the early arrangement; later (of necessity) Theodore's quarters were expanded. I have described those rooms on the roof many times, but I don't think I ever pictured the approach to them (from the main floor) as well as I did in The Second Confession: One flight up was Wolfe's bedroom and a spare. Two flights up was my bedroom and another spare. The third flight put me on the roof. There was no dazzling blaze of light, as in winter, since this was June and the shade slats were all rolled down, but there was a blaze of color from the summer bloomers, especially in the middle room. Of course I saw it every day, and I had business on my mind, but even so I slowed up as I passed a bench of white and yellow Dendrobium bensoniae that were just at their peak. (The Second Confession [1949], chapter 2)

Another time: . . . I stopped only once, where a group of Miltonia roezlis were sporting more than fifty racemes on four feet of bench. It was the best crop of Miltonias Wolfe (and Theodore) had ever had. The display is always harder to believe when snow is dancing on the sloping glass overhead. ("Counterfeit for Murder" [1961], chapter 5, in Homicide Trinity [1962])

Whenever some urgency demanded that 1 invade the plant rooms during sanctuary hours I always asked myself, "Is this [25]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE trip necessary?" Or I flipped a coin. Such a condition existed one day when both my premonitory sense and the flipped coin coincided. I went to the stairs and mounted the three flights . . . and entered. At that point there were ten thousand orchid plants between me and my goal, many of them in full bloom, and the dazzle was enough to stop anyone, even one who had seen it as often as I had, but I kept on going — through the first room, the moderate, then the tropical, and then the cool — on into the potting room. Theodore was at the sink, washing pots. Wolfe was at the big bench, putting peat mixture into flasks. When he heard my step and turned, his lips tightened and his chin went up. He knew I wouldn't mount three flights and bust in there for anything trivial. (Plot It Yourself [1959], chapter 14; italics added)

One day, just for the hell of it, I went up to the plant rooms on a triviality just to see what would happen. (Again, note the relationship of the three rooms.) June is not the best show-off month for a collection of orchids, especially not for one like Wolfe's, with more than two hundred varieties. The first room, the tropical, had only a few splotches of color; the next one, the intermediate, was more flashy but nothing like March; the third one, the cool, had more flowers but they're not so gaudy. In the last one, the potting room, Wolfe was at the [ 26 ]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE bench with Theodore Horstmann, inspecting the nodes on a pseudo-bulb. As I approached he turned his head and growled, "Well?" . . . "Nothing urgent," I said. "Just to tell you that I'm taking a Cypripedium lawrenceanum hyeanum — one flower. To wear. A woman phoned . . . and when I meet her at twelve-thirty it will mark me." (The Mother Hunt [1963], chapter 4; italics added)

Wolfe was frosty enough to freeze ice cubes that day, but not nearly as annoyed and outraged as when Inspector Cramer and Purley Stebbins of Homicide busted in on him. It was my fault that they even got their big feet past the front door. (Again, note the room arrangement.) To go through those three rooms, the cool, the moderate and the warm, down the aisles between the benches, without being stopped by a color or a shape that you didn't know existed, your mind must be fully occupied with something else. That time mine was. In the middle room I could already hear a voice, and when I opened the door to the warm room I could name it. Cramer. I walked the aisle and opened the door to the potting room, and there they were. Wolfe, in a yellow smock, was on his stool at the big bench. Theodore was standing over by the pot racks. Stebbins was off to the right. Cramer, in the center of the room, had his felt hat off and in his hand, I don't know why. Facing Wolfe, he was telling him, louder than necessary, " . . . and hold [27]


you as material witnesses until we get warrants and then, by God, you go to a cell. All right, talk or move." Wolfe stayed on the stool. His eyes came to me. "Any complaint, Archie?" "Only their bad manners. Next time they'll talk through a crack." (The Father Hunt [1968], chapter 14)

There's a story behind the three variations in the positions of the plant rooms. It started before I came to work for Wolfe so I'll have to go back a bit. The most knowledgeable, practical, and successful growers of orchids in New York were Lewis Hewitt and G. M. Hoag. They were to the Eastern Seaboard what Arthur Freed & Company and the big Stewart Nurseries were to the West Coast. When Wolfe decided to build the plant rooms on the roof, he called on Lewis Hewitt for technical advice, and Mr. Hewitt laid them out so the first room you entered when coming from the stairs or the elevator would be the tropical room, and had the thermostats, humidifiers, and ventilators regulated accordingly. Thus: (1) tropical, (2) moderate or intermediate, (3) cool. Beyond the cool room was the potting room and the caretaker's bedroom and bath. A Frenchman named Armand Crouseau, touted by Hewitt as an extraordinary horticulturist, moved in to tend the orchids. He was a bachelor with a roving eye and a Montmartre technique. It was about this time that I came to work for Wolfe, and it was I who caught Armand sneaking a chick into his aerie on the roof in the middle of [ 2 8 ]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE the night, which may have been bienheureux* for him but was a Dieu ne plaif** as far as Wolfe was concerned. Armand resigned his job the next morning — to get married, he said — and Wolfe's attitude toward women, always astringent at best, deteriorated rapidly. Hadn't a female robbed him of a good nurseryman? Yes! Ergo, ALL females were larcenous at heart, to be regarded with extreme caution if not antipathy. An emergency existed; Wolfe needed a quick replacement, so he telephoned Mr. Hewitt again, but when Mrs. Hewitt answered, he made me hang up. Very petty. Next, he had me call G. M. Hoag, and that gentleman made the trip over from Long Island to examine the rooftop layout and discuss a replacement for Crouseau. Hoag took one look at the rooms, said they were all wrong, insisted that the moderate room should get the north light, and brought with him a sad-faced man named Theodore Horstmann. The story we got from Hoag was that Horstmann, who was the best orchid man around, had just lost his wife — and most of his interest in living. Would Wolfe like to try his hand at a bit of psychological rehabilitation? Wolfe would — and did, and although it took several months of dining on Fritz's great food, and quite a bit of moving and replacing of furniture and other appurtenances in the rooftop bedroom, Theodore finally was won over, not by any of these mundane things, but by the fine, rare quality of Wolfe's plant collection and its great variety. *Blissful ** God forbid


In the course of the next couple of years, he grew to regard the plant rooms as his personal domain, and one morning, when Wolfe went up there, he found five men moving all the plants around to suit Hoag's original recommendation: (1) moderate, (2) tropical, and (3) cool. So it was that Theodore became part of our family. He and Wolfe yelled at each other, sometimes so loud I could hear them down in my room while I was taking a shower. Wolfe seemed to have the same effect on Horstmann that an umpire had on John J. McGraw. Not that the old man really disliked Wolfe, I'm sure he didn't; I wouldn't wonder if he was worried for fear Wolfe's poundage, having at least reached the limit of equilibrium, would topple over and make hash of the orchids. (Fer-de-Lance [1934], chapter 3)

Then Theodore developed a pet peeve. Every winter he complained that he couldn't get the potting room and his bedroom warm enough for comfort. He tried area heaters, both gas and electric, but the heat loss was too great. Then he got the idea that if the tropical room was next to the potting room, some extra insulation and the additional warmth would combine to bring the temperature up to comfort levels. Every winter, for I don't know how many, he would yell at Wolfe about it and Wolfe would yell back. "We can't move the plants in the wintertime," Wolfe kept telling him. "I'll buy you a heavier coat and some more blankets." The matter generated some first-class attritional hostilities [30]


and the plant rooms sometimes sounded like a combat zone. Wolfe wasn't about to change those rooms around again, and to soothe Theodore's more violent attacks, he would give him a pay hike, or a gift to show his gratitude. Consequently, Horstmann put up with the unpleasant winters for several years. Then, one blizzardy day, he rebelled! We heard him clumping down the stairs, muttering epithets to himself, and not under his breath, and when he marched into the office he had his overcoat and hat on, and carried a beat-up old suitcase in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other. Without a word, he slapped the paper down on the desk, whirled around, and marched out. Wolfe gave me a quick glance. "Stop him if you can, Archie." I caught a glimpse of the two big words printed on the paper as I left my chair: I QUIT. Theodore had the front door open when I caught up with him and we both walked out together into the coldest January wind that ever frostbit a nose! "If you're leaving, so am I," I said. Theodore stopped. "Not without your overcoat and hat." "To hell with that. What's a little pneumonia between pals?" "But, Archie, what'll he do without you?" "Probably the same thing he'll do without you. Are you just mad, or have you got a legitimate beef?" My lips were turning blue, and "beef" came out "bff!" He pushed me up the steps, and I pulled him up after me. "Come into the front room. There's a f-f-fire in there and we can g-g-get warm before we d-d-d-decide . . . " and we were [31]


inside. I opened the door to the front room and hugged the fireplace. Theodore set down his suitcase. "I've told Mr. Wolfe a hundred times that I'm not happy or comfortable up there in that icebox on the roof. I haven't been happy and I haven't been comfortable for a long time, and life's just too damn long when you spend it being unhappy and uncomfortable. When you get to be my age you want things to be . . ." He stopped because Wolfe had entered through the little bathroom that serves both the front room and the office. They stood looking at each other for a full half-minute, then Wolfe cleared his throat. "Theodore, tomorrow please call the necessary technicians to rearrange the plant rooms and your bedroom exactly as you wish them to be. Please accept my apology for not grasping the true significance of your problem, and for any unwitting discomfort or distress my" — he shot me a defiant look — "my obduracy* may have caused you. I want you to remain, if you will." And that's how the rooms reached their final positions. But in getting that way they went through three stages of evolution: I. 2.

TROPICAL MODERATE

MODERATE TROPICAL

COOL COOL

3.

COOL

MODERATE

TROPICAL

After that last "rearrangement" the rooms were never again changed — except in quite a different way. * He knew my word for obduracy was "pigheadedness."

[32]


Orchids inhabited them, normally, and these Theodore understood, but when I threw a cocktail party for a dozen women up there he came close to quitting again, and might have, but I let him in on the plot. Wolfe was after a murderer, and suspected that one of those women might be a vicious killer, and I told Theodore to keep his eye peeled. There were sixteen female names on my list. . . . {I] typed a label for each of them. I also typed, on plain pieces of paper, sixteen times so as not to use carbons: These orchids are so rare that they cannot be bought. I picked them for you. If you care to know why, phone me at PE 3-1212. Archie Goodwin With the labels and the typed notes . . . , I ascended to the plant rooms, got a basket and knife, went to the warm room, and started cutting. I needed forty-eight, three apiece, but took a few extra because some were not perfect. . . . It was quite a collection. In the potting room we got out boxes and tissue and ribbon, and Theodore packed them expertly and inserted the typed notes while I pasted on the labels and fought with the ribbon. (Murder by the Book [1951], chapter 7)

I didn't know how many of the sixteen would be curious, or guilty enough to show up, but I made a fair catch: ten came. [33]


That was the first time in history that a bunch of outsiders had been let into the plant rooms with Wolfe not there. The awful responsibility damn near got Theodore down. Not only did he regard it as up to him to see that none of them toppled a bench over or snitched a blossom from one of the rare hybrids, but also I had arranged a fancy assortment of liquids on a table in the potting room, which was being freely patronized by some of the guests, and he was afraid one of them would spill a glass of 8o-proof into a pot that he had been nursing for ten years. I was sorry to give him that added anxiety, but I wanted them relaxed. (Murder by the Book [1951], chapter 8)*

The most drastic and overwhelming change came to the plant rooms by special messenger from the late unlamented Arnold Zeck. Wolfe and I were in the office, simmering over an ultimatum Zeck had given us, when the first message arrived: a barrage of sound! To reproduce it you could take a hundred cops, scatter them along the block you live in, and have them start unanimously shooting windows with forty-fives. . . . I grabbed a gun from a drawer, ran to the hall, flipped the switch for the stoop light, removed the chain bolt, opened the door, and stepped out. . . . [T]he street was deserted. Then I saw that I wasn't standing on the stone of the stoop but on a piece of glass, and if I didn't like that piece there were plenty of others. They were all over * For the rest of that party, see the chapter on the dining room. [34]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE the stoop, the steps, the areaway, and the sidewalk. I backed across the sill, shut the door, and turned to face Wolfe, who was standing in the hall looking bewildered. "He took it out on the orchids," I stated. "You stay here. I'll go up and look." As I went up the stairs three at a time I heard the sound of the elevator. He must have moved fast. Fritz was behind me but couldn't keep up. The top landing, which was walled with concrete tile and plastered, was intact. I flipped the light switch and opened the door to the first plant room . . . but I stopped after one step in because there was no light. I stood for five seconds, waiting for my eyes to adjust, and by then Wolfe and Fritz were behind me. "Let me by," Wolfe growled like a dog ready to spring. "No." I pushed back against him. "You'll scalp yourself or cut your throat. Wait here till I get a light." He bellowed past my shoulder. "Theodore! Theodore!" A voice came from the dim starlit ruins. "Yes, sir! What happened?" . . . I saw a movement in the direction of the corner where Theodore's room was, and a sound came of glass falling and breaking. "You got a light?" I called. "No. The doggone lights are all —" "Then stay still, damn it, while I get a light." "Stand still!" Wolfe roared. . . . Of a thousand panes of glass and ten thousand orchid plants some were in fact still whole, as we learned [35]


later, but it certainly didn't look like it that first survey. Even with the lights, moving around through that jungle of jagged glass hanging down and protruding from plants and benches and underfoot wasn't really fun, but Wolfe had to see and so did Theodore, who was okay physically but got so damn mad I thought he was going to choke. Finally, Wolfe . . . turned, and said quietly, "We might as well go downstairs." "The sun will be up in two hours," Theodore said through his teeth. "I know. We need men." When we got to the office we phoned Lewis Hewitt and G. M. Hoag for help before we called the police. . . . [Six hours later a] gang of fourteen men, not counting Theodore, was up on the roof cleaning up and salvaging, and an army of glaziers was due at noon. . . . The cops were still nosing around out in front. . . . They knew all about it, back to a certain point. The people who lived in the house directly across the street were away for the summer. On its roof they had found a hundred and ninety-two shells from an SM and a tommy gun, and they still had scientists up there collecting clues to support the theory that that was where the assault had come from. . . . {The Second Confession [1949], chapters 5 and 6)

Wolfe and I estimated the cost of repairs and replacements to be around forty thousand dollars . . . and some of the damaged or destroyed plants were irreplaceable. [36]


We hadn't got back to normal, since there was still a small army busy up in the plant rooms, but in many respects things had settled down. Wolfe had on a clean shirt and socks, meals were regular and up to standard, the street was cleared of broken glass, and we had caught up on sleep. (Ibid., chapter 14)

Then the second message came: not so noisy as the first one but certainly with as much impact. When I went to the front door to answer the bell, and a boy handed me a package about the size of a small suitcase and a receipt to sign . . . it struck me as queer that there was no shipper's name on it. . . . There was no mark of any kind on the heavy wrapping paper but Wolfe's name and address. . . . I lifted it and guessed six pounds. I pressed it against my ear and held ray breath for thirty seconds, and heard nothing. Nuts, I thought, and cut the cord with my knife and slashed the paper. Inside was a fiber carton with the flaps taped down. I got cautious again and severed the flaps from the sides by cutting all the way around, and lifted one corner for a peek. All I saw was newspaper. I inserted the knife point and tore a piece of it off, and what I saw then made me raise my brows. . . . I got the carton up under my arm, marched into the office with it, and asked Wolfe, "Do you mind if I unpack this on your desk? I don't want to make a mess in the hall?" Ignoring his protest, I put the package down on his [37]


desk and started taking out stacks of twenty-dollar bills . . . banded in bundles of fifty, which meant a thousand bucks to a bundle. "What the devil is this?" Wolfe demanded. "Money," I told him. "Don't touch it, it may be a trap. It may be covered with germs. . . ." [I counted out the bundles — there were fifty.] " . . . The only clue is the newspaper the carton was lined with — from the second section of the New York Times. Who do we know that reads the Times and has fifty thousand bucks for a practical joke?" I gestured. "Answer that and we've got him." Wolfe was glowering, but at the pile of dough, not at me. . . . "Put it in the safe. The package too." *** The phone ringing stopped him. I reached for my instrument and told the transmitter, "Nero Wolfe's office." "May I speak to Mr. Wolfe, please?" . . . I covered the transmitter with a palm and told Wolfe, "X!" . . . He reached for his phone. Getting no sign to do otherwise, I stayed on. "Nero Wolfe speaking." "How do you do, Mr. Wolfe. Goodwin told you who I am? Or my voice does?" "I know the voice." " . . . You ignored the advice I gave you Saturday night. . . . May I say that that didn't surprise me?" [38]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE "You may say anything." "It didn't. I hope there will never be occasion for a more pointed demonstration. It's a more interesting world with you in it. Have you opened the package you received a little while ago?" "Yes." . . . " . . . If the amount you received exceeds the damage, no matter. I intended that it should! . . . Rony was an able young man with a future, and he deserves to have his death investigated by the best brain in New York. Yours. I don't live in New York, as you know. Goodbye and good luck." The connection went. Wolfe cradled his receiver. I did likewise. "Jesus," I said softly. "Now there's a client for you. Money by messenger, snappy phone calls, hopes he'll never have to demonstrate by croaking you, keep the change, best brain in New York, go to it, click. As I think I said once before, he's an abrupt bastard." Wolfe was sitting with his eyes closed to slits. I asked him, "How shall I enter it? Under X, or Z for Zeck?" "Archie." "Yes, sir." "I told you once to forget that you know that man's name, and I meant it." (Ibid., chapter 14)

So there it was. Zeck had not only wrecked the plant rooms, he had now forked over fifty grand to pay for the damage, with enough left over for a retainer, when he had found out [39]


Wolfe was looking into the death of one of his prize henchmen. Oh, yes, Wolfe kept the money . . . paid the taxes on it and stashed four-fifths of it in a secret account, and used it later to get Zeck! Wolfe hatched some very crafty tricks up there in the plant rooms. One of them twisted the nose of Inspector Cramer and his Number Three man, Lieutenant Rowcliff, hard enough to hurt. Cramer deserved to have his nose twisted because he had pulled a dumb stunt. He sent a quartet of cops, headed by Rowcliff (who was always a pain in Wolfe's fundament) with a search warrant. They were to locate, seize by force and remove from the premises a lady named Clara Fox who was Wolfe's guest and client. They ransacked the house from basement to roof, and the last scene took place in the potting room. Wolfe was spraying thirty-five or forty pots of Laeliocattleya lustre with a high-pressure hose. The pots were on boards bridging the top of a low wooden trough filled with osmundine. It was pretty wet around there. Wolfe turned off the spray long enough to tell Rowcliff: " . . . Will you take a message for me to Mr. Cramer? Tell him that Nero Wolfe pronounces him to be a prince of witlings and an unspeakable ass! Pfui!" He turned on the spray, directed it at the orchids. . . . (The Rubber Band [1936], chapter 11)

And where was Clara Fox? In the trough! After the cops had left the house, I came back up and helped Horstmann and Wolfe fish her out. [40]


The mossy fiber, dripping with water, raised itself up out of the box, fell all around us, and spattered our pants. We began picking off patches of it that were clinging to [her] soaked dress, and she brushed back her hair and blurted, "Thank God I wasn't born a mermaid!" (Ibid.)

You can see that the plant rooms were not merely a horticultural showplace. Wolfe used those four hours up there — every day except Sunday — to keep his agile fingers nimble, and to put his head in order. The most frightening plot he ever concocted took place in the fumigation room. Even / was not privy to his caper, and when you're locked inside a sealed room with seven* other people — and a murderer has just bolted the door from outside — there's only one conclusion you can arrive at, and Fred Updegraff arrived at it first: "Ciphogene! For God's sake —" "Stop it," Wolfe commanded. "I know what I'm doing! There is no occasion for panic. Mr. Cramer, there is an excellent reason why this door must not be opened. If Archie releases you, will you listen to it? No? Then, Archie, hold him. This is a fumigating room where we use ciphogene, a gas which will kill a man by asphyxiation in two minutes. The pipe runs from a tank in the potting room and the valve is in there. This morning I closed the outlet of the pipe in this room, and removed * Wolfe, Theodore, Hewitt, Updegraff, Cramer, and two females.

[41]


the plug from an outlet in the potting room. So if [he] has opened that valve in the potting room, he is dead, or soon will be. And if you batter a hole in that door I won't answer for the consequences. . . . " "You goddam balloon," Cramer sputtered helplessly. . . . I unwrapped myself from around him and stepped back. (Black Orchids [1942], chapter 10)

Wolfe banged on the floor with the handle of his osmundine fork — a prearranged signal for Fritz to turn on the exhaust fans in the potting room from a switch outside — and we all got out fast after he had turned off the valve and opened the door. Our world-be octet-murderer was gassed — completely! In the scene that followed, Cramer got red in the face, yelled at Wolfe, called him a murderer, asked him, "Why don't you send a bill to the State of New York for the execution of a murderer f.o.b. your potting room? That's the only thing you've left out. Why don't you?" And Wolfe did something he seldom did: he chuckled. "I wonder if I could collect. It's worth trying." (Ibid.) There is a limit to all things. This is it. I have related these activities on the roof to picture for you in detail the size, location, furnishings, and configuration of our top floor, which is what this rambling account is supposed to accomplish. The previous two pages show the roof at different times. They're pretty accurate, but you'll just have to use your imagination to visualize the orchids. [44]

in the dark ages of the threadbare thirties, Fritz Brennerr, Wolfe's superchef, had a room and bath upstairs on the roof, across the hall from the plant rooms (Fer-de-Lance [1934], chapter 3). When the plant rooms were remodeled, that bedroom and bath were redesigned, enlarged, and redecorated, and Fritz moved down to the basement. The change was most satisfactory to both men: Horstmann enjoyed the comforts provided by more spacious and luxurious quarters, and Fritz was pleased to be closer to his kitchen, the precious herb garden, and the morning papers. A big chunk of the basement was occupied by the game room. It contained a beautiful old pool-snooker-billiard table, racks for the cues, a target board with fletched darts, and closets crammed with recreational equipment ("Christmas Party" [1956], chapter 1; "Easter Parade" [1957], chapter 3, in And Four to Go [1958]). I've already reported on the weekday schedule of Wolfe's activities in the plant rooms, but it was different on Sundays. BACK

[45]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE . . . Marko Vukcic, his closest friend and the owner of Rusterman's Restaurant, had talked him into installing a pool table in the basement. It was now routine for Wolfe to spend Sunday morning in the kitchen with Fritz, preparing something special. At one-thirty Marko would arrive to help appreciate it, after which they would go to the basement for a five-hour session with the cues. I rarely took part, even when I was around, because it made Wolfe grumpy when I got lucky and piled up a big run. That Sunday I fully expected to upset the schedule when Wolfe, having breakfasted in his room, entered the kitchen and I told him, "That notation on that letter is in the handwriting of James A. Corrigan, the senior partner." He scowled at me a moment, then turned to Fritz. "I have decided," he said aggressively, "not to use the goose fat." I raised my voice. "That notation on that let------" "I heard you! Take the letter to Mr. Cramer and tell him about it." . . . "Nuts. If you insist on playing pool instead of working on Sunday, wait till tomorrow. Why hand it to Cramer?" "Because, for its one purpose he is as good as I am — even better. . . . Take it to Mr. Cramer and don't bother me. You know quite well that for me pool is not play; it is exercise." (Murder by the Book [1951), chapter 13)

[46]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE In 1965, we got into a mess with the FBI, and I suspected that Wolfe's office had been bugged. I couldn't just come right out and tell him, or whoever was listening in would know that we knew they were . . . so I waited till lunchtime, when Wolfe never permits any talk of business at table. Going to the dining room and taking my place across from him, I made a remark about the weather. He grunted and swallowed a bit of braised sweetbread. Fritz came with the dish, and I took some . . . there wasn't much conversation. As we pushed our chairs back I told him I wanted to show him something in the basement, and I led the way to the hall, then to the right, and down the steps. The basement has Fritz's room and bath, a storeroom, and a large room with a pool table. In the last is not only the usual raised bench, but also a big comfortable chair on a platform, for Wolfe when he feels like watching Saul Panzer and me use our cues, which happens about once a year. I led him to that room, flipped the wall switch for light, and spoke. "Your new office. I hope you like it. There may be only one chance in a million that they can bug a room without getting inside, but that's one too many. Be seated." I lifted my rump onto the rim of the pool table, facing the big chair. He glared. "Are you badgering me or is it possible?" "It's conceivable. . . . " He stepped onto the platform and sat. "Report," he growled

(The

Doorbell

Rang [47]

[1965],

chapter

5)

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE Fritz could have had a room upstairs, but he prefers the basement. His den is as big as the office and front room combined, but over the years it has got pretty cluttered — tables with stacks of magazines, busts of Escoffier and Brillat-Savarin on stands, framed menus on the walls, a king-size bed, five chairs, shelves of books (he has 289 cookbooks), a head of a wild boar he shot in the Vosges, a TV and stereo cabinet, two large cases of ancient cooking vessels, one of which he thinks was used by Julius Caesar's chef, and so on. Wolfe was in the biggest chair by a table, with a bottle of beer and a glass. Fritz, seated across from him, got up as I entered, but I moved another chair up. "It's too bad," I said, "that the elevator doesn't come down. Maybe we can have it done." Wolfe drank beer, put the glass down, and licked his lips. "I want to know," he said, "about those electronic abominations. Could we be heard here?" "I don't know." . . . "Could whispers be heard?" "No. A billion to one. To nothing." "Then we'll whisper." "That would cramp your style. If Fritz turns the television on, fairly loud, and we sit close and don't yell, that will do it." . . . He turned. "If you please, Fritz. It doesn't matter what." Fritz went to the cabinet and turned a knob, and soon a woman was telling a man she was sorry she had ever met him. He asked (not the man, Fritz) if it was loud [48]


enough, and I said a little louder and moved my chair nearer Wolfe. He leaned forward and growled, eighteen inches from my ear, "We'll prepare a contingency." (Ibid., chapter 7)

Lily just looked over my shoulder and said, "That's all very well, Escamillo,* but don't forget to tell about the time you took that Julie Jaquette down to the game room to play games!" (Time out, please, while I bite Lily on the ear.) Now, in defense of myself, and Julie Jaquette — and to refute Lily's innuendo — here's what really happened. Wolfe, Saul Panzer, and I had set a trap for a murderer and we used Julie for bait. But when the risk to her safety became hazardous, we stowed her upstairs in the South Room to keep an eye on her. This, of course, meant that she was a guest, and a guest in Wolfe's house "is a jewel on a cushion of hospitality." He insisted she take her meals with us in the dining room, but after a few prandial episodes, both pre and post: It was obvious that they had had enough of each other for a while, and when we had finished with coffee I took her down to the basement. The basement has . . . a pool table. I had mentioned it to her, and she had said she would like to learn how to use a cue. . . . But she didn't get her pool lesson. I had taken the cover off, and picked a cue for her, and racked the balls, when the doorbell rang. If I hadn't caught her arm she would have beaten * If you don't know why Lily calls me "Escamillo," you haven't read Some Buried Caesar (1939). I recommend it.

[49]


me to the stairs, and she was right at my heels when I reached the hall and took a look at the front. . . . I stepped to the office door and told Wolfe, "Cramer." He looked up from his book and tightened his lips. I told Julie, "Go to the kitchen and stay there." (Death of a Doxy [1966], chapter 16)

So, you see, we didn't have time even to get acquainted, let alone make any moves, not that I would have objected. Most basements harbor a pile of old newspapers, and ours was no exception. The Odell case made me realize how valuable those outdated papers can be. They prodded Wolfe into action. We keep both the Times and the Gazette for three weeks, sometimes longer, and even if the bank balance had been at a record high I would probably have had another go at the accounts of the Odell murder just for curiosity. . . . But we needed a job. In the past five months, the first five of 1969, we had had only six cases, and the fee had gone to five figures in only one of them. . . . So, the checking account balance had lost a lot of weight, and to meet the upkeep of the old brownstone, including the weekly payroll for Theodore and Fritz and me, by about the middle of July Wolfe would have to turn some documents into cash, and that should be prevented if possible. So it wasn't just curiosity that sent me to the basement Thursday morning for old newspapers. (Please Pass the Guilt [1973], chapter 3)

[50]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE They were stacked in the front storeroom on a bench, and I had no trouble finding the write-ups of the explosion that had taken Odell's life when he opened the bottom drawer of his desk. The bomb had shredded him. By a lot of nefarious manipulation I was able to induce Wolfe to undertake the case, which ended right back in the basement, in the back storeroom where I keep some old mattresses rolled up for target practice and ballistics tests. It went something like this — only I won't name the killer, it might spoil the story for those who'd like to read it. At 3:37 a taxi rolled up in front and stopped alongside the parked cars, and the door opened, and he climbed out, and he had a brief case. I called through the open door to the front room, "Okay, he has it!" and they Came. Orrie went down the hall to the door to the office and stood. Fred stood at my left by the rack; he would be behind the door when I opened it. Saul stood in the doorway to the front room. . . . [Our suspect] pushed the button, and I counted a slow ten and opened the door, and he stepped in. With the brief case under his arm, that hand was pressed against his left hip, and his right hand was hanging loose. I don't think I have ever made a faster or surer move. Facing him, I got his two wrists, and I got them good, and Saul, from behind him, got the brief case. [The suspect's] mouth popped open but no sound came, and he went stiff top to bottom, absolutely stiff. Then he tried to turn around, but I had his wrists, and only his head could turn. Saul had backed away, holding the brief case against his belly with both [51]

THE BROWWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE hands. I said, "Go ahead and don't drop it," and he started down the hall to the rear, where the stair to the basement was, and at the door to the office Orrie joined him. (Ibid., chapter 19)

Remembering things like that puts me in a homesick mood, and memory is a fink. Lily just caught me looking out of the window, read my face (and my mind), and said, "Come on, chum, I'll shoot you a game of pool." Interesting woman, Lily. She not only dances like Fred Astaire, she handles a cue like he does, and I have a helluva time beating her. So, while I go take on the champ, you can examine my drawing of the basement. It's on the next page.

[52]

IF all of the world's women were as gifted, as determined, as wise, and as sexy as Lily Rowan, the E.R.A. would have been attached to the Constitution by Thomas Jefferson's mistress! But unfair as it is to the rest of the male population, there is only one Lily Rowan, and I'm the only one who knows just what the rest are missing, a circumstance which is of inestimable satisfaction to my ego. She let me win the first game; we both won the second. Now it is another day and I still have three more stories to go. Since the most interesting features of the brownstone house were on the main floor, I'll save that till last, and give you a quick look at the second- and third-floor sleeping arrangements. They were ample, and comfortable, and often very, very welcome. Back in 1934: . . . my room was on the second floor, the same floor as Wolfe's, a fair-sized room in front with its own bath and [54]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE a pair of windows. I had lived there seven years and it certainly was home; and seemed likely to remain so for another seven, or even twenty-seven, for the only girl I had ever been really soft on had found another bargain she liked better. That was how I happened to meet Wolfe but that story isn't for me to tell, at least not yet. There are one or two little points about it that will need clearing up some day. But that room was certainly home. The bed was big and good, there was a desk with plenty of drawer-space and three chairs all roomy and comfortable, and a real carpet all over, no damn little rugs to slide you around like a piece of butter on a hot cake. The pictures on the wall were my own, and I think they were a good selection; one of Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington, a colored one of a lion's head, another colored one of woods with grass and flowers, and a big framed photograph of my mother and father, who both died when I was just a kid. Also there was a colored one called September Morn, of a young woman apparently with no clothes on and her hair hanging down in front, but that was in the bathroom. There was nothing unusual about the room, it was just a good room to live in, except the big gong on the wall under the bed, and that was out of sight. It was connected up so that when Wolfe turned on a switch in his room, which he did every night, the gong would sound if anyone stepped in the hall within five feet of his door or if any of his windows was disturbed, and also it connected with all entrances to the plant-rooms. (Fer-de-Lance [1934], chapter 3)

[55]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE In those early days, my writing about Wolfe's cases inflamed one indefatigable critic who was, I swear, a fiery-eyed zealot. After the second book was published in 1935, this guy stopped me on the street — began hammering on my shirt front with his pointing finger and taking me to task for what he called a discrepancy of thirty-six inches! Notice above that the gong under my bed went off if anyone stepped within five feet of Wolfe's door. Well, in 1935, I described that gong like this: The office was dark; Wolfe had gone to bed. There was no note for me on my desk, so nothing startling had happened. I got a pitcher of milk from the refrigerator and went upstairs. I thought possibly Wolfe was still awake and would like to hear the joyous news, so I went toward the back of the hall to see if there was a light under his door — not going close, for when he went to bed there was a switch he turned on, and if anyone stepped within eight feet of his door or touched any of his windows a gong went off in my room that was enough to paralyze you. (The League of Frightened Men [1935], chapter 14; italics added)

Well, I grabbed this fellow's jabbing finger, bent it a bit backward, until he stopped yammering, then carefully explained to him that just before Christmas of 1934 Wolfe had me move the gong's triggering mechanism three feet farther from his door. He didn't think that five feet would give me enough time to grab my gun and rush to his rescue. So, you [56]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE see, there was no discrepancy; I just didn't report the change, as I likewise didn't report when any of us went to the bathroom or changed our underwear. I thought I had got rid of this nosy little character, but he kept turning up like the flu. He was after me again in 1956 — with two telegrams and a letter — demanding to know when (and why) Wolfe had moved his bedroom up to the third floor. This time I couldn't get sore because I had reported the move but hadn't explained it. The report went thusly — verbatim: Wolfe was speaking [to Selma Molloy], inviting her to stay for not only dinner but also the night . . . telling her how pleasant our south room was, directly under his, with a good bed and morning sunshine, but no sale, not even for dinner. (Might As Well Be Dead [1956], chapter 11; italics added)

Selma Molloy did stay overnight later, after she had identified a body in the morgue, an experience that left her shaken and unable to refuse our invitation. All the way home in the car she was slumped against the cushion with her eyes closed: So when we arrived at the old brownstone I took her up the stoop and in, told her to follow me, and, with the suitcase, mounted one flight to the South Room. It was too late for sunshine, but it's a nice room even without it. (Ibid., chapter 15; italics added)

[57]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE From time immemorial (long before Fer-de-Lance in 1934) to my final effort in 1975 (A Family Affair), the South Room has been on the third floor, and Wolfe's bedroom has always been on the second floor. A switch took place in 1956, and here's the long-delayed elucidation: Things wear out. Drapes get dirty. Carpets begin to show traffic patterns. Bedsprings sag. And when you weigh two hundred and eighty-five pounds, those last two items take a beating. Interior paint begins to peel, and smudges appear around doorknobs and drawer pulls. Upholstery breaks down. Why did Wolfe move upstairs? He was having his bedroom on the second floor redone! He was camping out on the third floor. All of the redecorating had been completed, and the new furniture installed, two days before Selma Molloy accepted the invitation to stay with us. It was a beautiful room, but it still smelled faintly of paint and wallpaper paste, neither of which can be tolerated by Wolfe. When the female and the fumes had departed and dissipated, he moved back down to his refreshed and sumptuous lair with many a grunt of contentment. One of the renovated gadgets in that second-floor bedroom was invented in 1948 to satisfy his requirements for optimum comfort. It was a custom-built, Rube Goldberg arrangement combining levers and pulleys and electric motors connected to a timing device. I reported it like this: Since Wolfe likes plenty of air at night but a good warm room at breakfast time it had been necessary, long ago, to install a contraption that would automatically [58]


close his window at six A.M. As a result the eighto'clock temperature permits him to have his tray on a table near the window without bothering to put on a dressing gown. Seated there, his hair not combed, his feet bare, and all the yardage of his yellow pajamas dazzling in the morning sun, he is something to blink at, and it's too bad that Fritz and I are the only ones who ever have the privilege. (And Be a Villain [1948], chapter 21)

That was in 1948. In 1949, I was bounced around a bit, not by a critic but by Wolfe himself. Whether it was from a blossoming of bravery or from receding cowardice I never determined, but he suddenly decided that my propinquity on the same floor with him was less to be desired than having me upstairs on the third floor, both bedrooms of which stood idle, vacant — and unguarded. So I moved up one flight in February — moved back down to accommodate the presence of guests in June, and moved back up again in December. From 1950 on, I stayed put — guardian of the third floor. The record of my residence up there began when I ushered Miss Page and her stubborn lawstudent friend, Morton, into Wolfe's presence by way of the rear passageway to 34th Street: "Watch where you step," I told them and led the way back around the rubbish piles, through the door in the fence, which I locked, into the basement, up to the kitchen, and on up two more flights to the south room, which was on the same floor as mine, at the other end [59]


of the hall. It wasn't often used, but was by no means wasted space. On various occasions all kinds had slept in it, from a Secretary of State to a woman who had poisoned three husbands and was making a fourth one very sick. Wolfe was there, standing by a window. There was no chair in that room that would take him without complaints from both him and the chair. . . . ("Before I Die" [1947], chapter 10, in Trouble in Triplicate [1949])

In 1950, after I was permanently installed in the thirdfloor bedroom, Wolfe refurnished the South Room so he'd have a comfortable place to sit. He was so proud of this "sitting" room, with its coffee table and two lounge chairs and TV set, that he began using it as a sanctuary for widows, restaurateurs, victims — and even suspects. When Mrs. Whitten inquired if our "spare room" would do for two, I gave her the works. The fact is we have two spare rooms. Wolfe's room is at the rear of the house on the second floor, which he uses because its windows face south, and there is another bedroom on that floor in front, unoccupied. On the third floor my room is the one at the front, on the street, and there is another spare at the rear which we called the South Room. ("Omit Flowers" [1948], chapter 8, in Three Doors to Death [1950])

[60]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE We put Mrs. Whitten and Phoebe there because it is large, and has better furniture and rugs, its own bathroom, and twin beds. The South Room had another facet besides comfort: it was bugged! Anyone who stayed in that room could be eavesdropped upon with listening devices that terminated in two places: the office and the kitchen (Death of a Doxy [1966], chapter 13). In 1966 we put the bug to good use. Julie Jaquette had been shot at and I decided she'd be safer under our roof. I had her tucked away and all would have gone nicely, except for Cramer, who came bustling in demanding to know where she was. I had to tell him: " . . . She's up in the South Room. I was there chatting with her when you came." "Now I'll chat with her. I'll go up." He left the chair. "I know the way." "The door's bolted. . . . But you deserve a break. With a new Mayor and a new Commissioner, you probably need a break." I moved. In the hall he stopped at the elevator, but I kept on to the stairs and he came. Policemen should keep fit. By the time he got to the second landing I had called to her and she had opened the door. She had changed to the blue thing and put slippers on. I pronounced names and asked if she had enough coffee and left them. Taking it for granted that Wolfe had gone to the kitchen, I turned right at the bottom. He was there, in [61]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE the only chair Fritz allows in his kitchen, with a seat ample for me but not for him, and had opened a certain cupboard and flipped the switch. Fritz was on one of the stools at the big table, slicing a shallot, preparing for the poached eggs Burgundian, and I got the other stool. Cramer's voice was coming from the cupboard. . . . (Death of a Doxy [1966], chapter 13)

I have already reported the violence that took place in 1975 in the South Room the night Pierre Ducos was murdered by a bomb. * What I didn't tell you was that I received all manner of jibes from Fred Durkin and Saul Panzer about three errors I made in that book: 1. "When you took Pierre Ducos up to the South Room you said you turned left at the second landing. That's impossible! The South Room is to the right of the stairs!" 2. "When the explosion came, you rushed to see if Wolfe was okay. Why didn't the alarm go off? You never mentioned deactivating it!" 3. "And how could Pierre's feet be aimed at the closet door in the right wall of the room when, from the windows, the closet is on the left?" I had to plead guilty on two counts. I did neglect to state that I turned off the night alarm switches which were installed behind an innocent-looking panel at the end of my wardrobe closet. I should have mentioned it. Whenever I came in and found the red telltale lights lit up — indicating that Wolfe * A Family Affair [1975],

chapter 1. [62]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE had activated the system — then I left everything status quo. But if, when I was ready for bed, the lights behind that panel were dark, I always switched them on . . . and the secondary system guarding all exterior doors and windows as well. Mea culpa! I did deactivate them all! The "left turn" was a printer's mistake . . . but I should have caught it in the proof. Not so mea culpa! But the third accusative question is what I call quibbling. When you enter the South Room from the hall, the closet door is on the right. Anyway, that was a nightmare of a night . . . and I'll never forget the way Wolfe marched into the shambles, in nis bare feet, carrying his big cane of Montenegrin applewood like a club. He crossed to Pierre, bent over, and looked. Then he straightened up and looked around, at the closet door, which had been standing open and had hit the wall and was split, at the ceiling plaster on floor, at the table wrong side up and the pieces of the lamp that had been on it, at the chair that had been tossed clear across to the foot of the bed, and so on. (A Family Affair [1975], chapter 1)

If my description of the second- and third-floor bedrooms isn't exactly a series of Polaroid color pictures, be relieved to learn that on the next two pages you'll get at least a blackand-white layout of both floors. And while you're busy trying to find discrepancies between my drawings and my descriptions I'll start assembling the [63]


monumental data relating to the main floor: the entry, office, dining room, pantry and kitchen. There was a special sensory impact that emanated from the ambience of that floor: part aromatic, part tactile, part sinister, part illusory, and part wildly exciting . . . but the biggest part of all was Nero Wolfe.

{66}

(Friday), when I sat down at the typewriter to begin this chapter, I took one long look at my notes and got so homesick that I snapped the cover back on, pushed all the paper into a drawer, and stomped out into the Montana morning. I walked around the house, headed for the stable, thinking I'd throw a saddle on Dandy, then changed my mind and went around the stable, through the cattle gate, and off into pastureland.

YESTERDAY

I told myself, "This can't be the Archie Goodwin I knew; he would never go soft on something as transient as a 'place.' He would never have this big lump in his throat over the memory of seven steps leading up from a New York sidewalk to a brownstone stoop! He wouldn't? I guess he would. Time has made him older, maybe softer, probably a bit mellow, but I never expected it to turn him into a blubbering sentimental slob!" In the shade of aspens that line the banks of Little Misty Creek I sat on a rock and flipped pebbles into the water, each [67]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE one disappearing like the minutes on a clock. A Jersey heifer on the other bank raised her head and gave me a walleyed look, decided I was friendly and innocuous, and went on grazing. I stayed there, half mesmerized by the swarming recollections — and by the swift, silky movement of the water — until I became aware of the steady, rhythmic hoofbeats of Lily's pacer, Old Blue Eyes, and as I turned around she was dismounting and saying, "I've been looking for you everywhere. What gives, Escamillo?" Then, as she got a good look at my face, she murmured, "Ah," just as though she had read my mind. "Come on, Archie, no work today. We're going down to Billings, see a show, stay the night, and drive back on Sunday. I want to go shopping, and you, my man, need some new shirts and a change of menu!" It's nice to be able to tell you, three days later, that we spent as much time in each other's arms as we did shopping, and to report that the menu was varied, lovely, and perfection On the drive home she lectured me with comments like: "You are not a gooey sentimental slob! You spent years and years protecting, serving, running errands for, and nipping at the heels of Nero Wolfe. His house was your house. It's only natural and normal — and you are both of those, my love — that you should be emotionally involved with that segment of your life. Don't you see, Archie? All through those years you made like a cool, imperturbable, hard-shelled, un romantic, lady-killing, man-of-the-world lothario. If you had really been all of those things — and nothing else — ! wouldn't have given you a second look, let alone the time ol day — or night! You created images of yourself, in writing, [68]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE that were only half-truths, and you came to believe that you were the quick-shot, the cold-eye, the unbreakable heart, the legman, the inescapable pursuer, the sharp ear, the great love'em-and-leave-'em stud, the human file-cabinet-tape-recorder that could play back, verbatim, all the events, news items, and detailed conversations at the punch of a button. You dreamed up that sort of man. Now, all of a sudden, why should you be surprised to discover that you have other buttons which are activated by memory, experience, wisdom, love, warmth, tenderness . . . and — oh hell, Escamillo, pull off the road and kiss me!" She neglected to include that I am also the obliging sort. So now it's Monday. I am no longer in the doldrums, and I understand what was bugging me on Friday. Looking over my notes, and at the familiar floor plan I had drafted, recalling all the daily activity: the strange, the violent, the comfortable, the somnolent, the good eating, and the swarming montage of faces and bodies that peopled the rooms and hallways through my days and nights of living and working in that old brownstone house gives me no lump in the throat today. It gives me a pain! It's a pain that is not quite anger, but damned near, and it is directed at the joker who drew that abominable floor plan (and passed it off as genuine) that was included in Baring-Gould's book Nero Wolfe of West Thirtyfifth Street. And this damned-near anger is something I have to get off my chest, so before I start detailing the layout of Wolfe's main floor, which included his office and mine, do me a favor and take a look at that phony map on the next page. Then tell me if you could spend forty-plus years living in it. [69]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE I couldn't. Not me! This ridiculous and distorted "GROUND-FLOOR PLAN" alleged to be Nero Wolfe's brownstone house was actually published for distribution and sale to the public! It is totally false; it is a counterfeit, a fabrication, a make believe — a put on! You want proof that this map is a phony? I'll give it to you!

[70]

devoted an entire chapter (however short it's still a chapter) to a piece of erroneous mischief, I am mollified but not contrite. If Rex Stout drew that map, as some have suggested, I forgive him. If anybody else did, I don't. Now let me take you on a tour of the correct dimensions. The first floor above the basement was not on ground level; it was five feet ten inches above it. That's why I call it the Main Floor on my sketch. To make it easier, I have italicized the items in the text that are descriptive of the decor so you can identify them quickly on my floorplan. Have a good trip, and no snooping in the abditories. HAVING

When you mount the seven steps to the stoop and enter the hall of the old brownstone on West 35th Street, the first door on your left is to what we call the front room, with the office door farther along on that side. ("Death of a Demon" [1961], chapter 6, in Homicide Trinity [1962]) [72]


Both of those rooms are soundproofed, . . . including the doors. I took Julia McGee to the front room, had my offer to take her coat declined, and went through the connecting door to the office, closing it behind me. (Too Many Clients [1960], chapter 7)

There are four rooms on the ground floor of Wolfe's old brownstone house on West Thirty-fifth Street not far from the Hudson River. As you enter from the stoop, on your right are an enormous old oak clothes rack with a mirror, the elevator, the stairs, and the door to the dining room. On your left are the doors to the front room, which doesn't get used much, and to the office. The door to the kitchen is at the rear, the far end of the hall. (And Be a Villain [1948], chapter 5)

. . . Wolfe was standing scowling at the globe when the doorbell rang . . . and now here was Inspector Cramer with the carton. . . . Handing me his hat to put on the shelf, he tramped down the hall to the office. . . . ("Murder Is Corny" [1964], chapter 1, in Trio for Blunt Instruments [1964])

When {Stella Fleming] came, at twenty minutes past One, I started the attack in the hall. A chair and a bench were there, across from the rack, very handy, but she didn't put her handbag down when I was taking her coat, and I didn't like the way she was clutching it. [She had a gun in it. I took it!] (Death of a Doxy [1966], chapter 15)

[73]


I went to the kitchen and told Fritz [that I was going for a walk], and to the rack in the hall for my coat, and as I was reaching for it some object dimmed the light from the glass in the door, and I turned. The object was Inspector Cramer. . . . I opened the door as he started his hand for the button, and said, "Greetings. I was standing here waiting for you." No comment. . . . He took his coat off and put it on the bench, dropped his hat on it, marched to the office. . . . (A Right to Die [1964], chapter 12)

It should be obvious, from all the examples above, that our entry hall was commodious and well furnished. It had a long bench, a chair with a small side table for a lamp, a clothing armoire of antique quality with a mirrored front, a shelf for hats, an umbrella stand, and a tree-style coatrack. It was spacious enough to accommodate six easily, but . . . Eight people in the end of that hall disposing of coats are a crowd. . . . (A Right to Die [1964], chapter 13)

THE STAIRS The old brownstone had two sets of stairways (not counting the fire escape), one off the entry hall, and one off the kitchen. I ran up and down those stairs so often, from bottom to top and back again, that I knew by rote the depth of tread, the [74]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE height of rise, and even all the little nicks and scars on the banisters. Theodore Horstmann didn't use the stairs much; Wolfe not at all, except to go down to the pool room or in a dire emergency. Both he and Theodore preferred the elevator, though never simultaneously! Fritz kept fit on those stairs, his room being below and his duties as housekeeper-chef taking him to all floors at least once a day, and into Wolfe's bedroom with the breakfast tray twice every morning. Practically all of our descents into the basement were made by way of the back stairway. The elevator didn't go to the basement, and the downward flight of the front stairway was closed off by a pair of beautifully carved doors which were kept locked. Oh, yes, all the stairs were carpeted (Over My Dead Body [1940], chapter 1).

THE ELEVATORS There's a lot to say about Wolfe's elevator across the hall from the office. It was noisy; it clanked, and it clanged when it stopped at the main floor, and that's as far down as it went. I only used it a couple of times to hoist female guests up to see the orchids, or take them to the South Room. It had the capacity to lift 600 pounds — enough for two Nero Wolfes but no more (Please Pass the Guilt [1973], chapter 19) and it had cost $7,000 to install (Not Quite Dead Enough [1944], chapter 6). I remember being so sore at Wolfe one day that I wrote:

[75]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE . . . a three-by-four private elevator with Wolfe in it does not need me too, so I took the stairs. (The Second Confession [1949], chapter 2)

The only reason I reduced the size of his elevator is because I never could — by word or deed — diminish the size of him. So I verbally stuffed the pigheaded so-and-so into a tight cage. Actually, the interior dimensions were larger, but invariably: I made for the stairs, since the elevator is only four by six, and with all of Wolfe inside, it would already be cramped. ("Bullet for One" [1948], chapter 6, in Curtains for Three [1951]) There was a second lift in the house — a real blessing for Theodore — located in the backstairs hallway, and it ran from basement to roof. Supplies — pots, sand, sphagnum, leafmold, loam, osmundine, charcoal, crock — were kept in an unheated and unglazed room in the rear alongside the shaft where the outside elevator came up. (Fer-de-Lance [1934], chapter 7) In the book, I called it an elevator, but it was really an oversized dumbwaiter, two feet deep, three feet wide, and seven feet high — a very handy and useful gadget. It carried trunks, trash, and, of course, everything needed for orchids. [76]


THE DINING ROOM With the exception of the kitchen — where miracles were wrought, and where we frequently foraged a snack — the dining room was the sanctuary of sanctuaries. Had Wolfe been handing down the Ten Commandments, and if there had been space on the tablets of Moses for one more, it would have been engraved thus: T H O U SHALT N O T TALK OF BUSINESS MATTERS W H I L E DINING.

When we are at the table . . . for lunch or dinner, any mention of business is taboo. . . . Wolfe feels strongly that when a man is feeding nothing should interfere with his concentration on his palate. (Too Many Clients [1960), chapter 3)

To have that beautiful room turned into a madhouse by a bunch of homicide cops was an insupportable aggravation, not only to Wolfe, but to Fritz and me. Murder had been done in the office! Cramer sealed it shut, and about fifteen members of the Manhattan Flower Club — who had come to see orchids — were brought in, one at a time, from the front room, to be questioned. Wolfe already had a clue, but he wasn't giving it to Cramer, just for spite. And all this was happening right at dinner time: Wolfe, in his own chair at the end of the dining table, where ordinarily, at this hour, he sat for quite a different [77]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE purpose than the one at hand, heaved a big sigh and closed his eyes. ("Disguise for Murder" [1950], chapter 3, in Curtains for Three

Much later, after Cramer and his crew had finally moved out of the dining room, I shut the door, had a good stretch and yawn, crossed to open a window and stick my head out for a breath of air, closed the window and looked at my watch. "Twenty minutes to ten," I announced. (Ibid., chapter 7, italics added)

Wolfe had definite rules about who would dine at his table. One of them was that nobody, not invited by him, would be acceptable at any of Fritz's meals. I deliberately broke that rule the afternoon I persuaded the ten women to attend my cocktail party in the plant rooms on the roof. The finale of that party was held in the dining room; . . . which looked festive enough for anybody, with the gleaming white cloth and silver and glass and more orchids, and I told them to leave the head of the table for me but otherwise sit as they chose. . . . . . . I took the chair at the head, Wolfe's place, the first time I had ever sat there. Most of them lifted their glasses to welcome me. . . . I was touched and thought an acknowledgment was called for. As Fritz entered with the soup tureen, I pushed my chair back and stood. [78]


I spoke, "Ladies and no gentlemen thank God, I have a lot of speeches to make, and I might as well get one done. Thank you for coming to my party. There is only one thing I would rather look at than orchids, and you are it. [Applause.] In the absence of Mr. Wolfe I shall follow his custom and introduce to you the most important member of our household, Mr. Fritz Brenner, now dishing soup. Fritz, a bow, please." [Applause.] (Murder by the Book [1951], chapter 8)

Off the dining room at the north end was a full walk-in wet bar, well stocked with fine wines and hard liquor of all kinds. Nearby, against the north wall, was an eight-foot-high display cabinet with beveled glass doors, filled with rare crystal and silver pieces. On the south wall stood a utility china cupboard next to the door to the pantry, and on the other side of that door was the serving cart Fritz often used to supply our office guests with refreshment. The table was four feet wide by ten feet long and seated twelve in complete comfort. The east and west walls were adorned by fine prints and framed menus. On the chance that you are curious about Wolfe's modus operandi in the dining room, and would like to understand his philosophy of eating, I regret to inform you that the line forms right behind me. I have never completely understood Wolfe's attitude on food and eating and probably never will. In some ways it's strictly personal. If Fritz presents a platter of broiled squabs and one of them is a little plumper or a [79]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE more beautiful brown than the others, Wolfe cops it. If the supply of wild thyme honey from Greece is getting low, I am given to understand, through Fritz, that plain American honey on griddle cakes is quite acceptable. And so on. But it really pains him if I am out on a prolonged errand at mealtime because I may insult my palate with a drugstore sandwich, and, even worse, I may offend my stomach by leaving it empty. If there is reason to believe that a caller is hungry, even if it is someone whom he intends to take apart, he has Fritz bring a tray, and not scraps. As for interruptions at meals, for him there is absolutely nothing doing; when he is once in his chair at the table he leaves it only when the last bite of cheese or dessert is down. That's personal, but he has tried off and on to extend it to me, and he would if I would stand for it. The point is, does he hate to have my meal broken into because it interrupts his, or because it interrupts mine, or just on general principles? Search me. (The Final Deduction [1961], chapter 10)

For anyone who wants to follow this kind of subject into limbo, there's The Nero Wolfe Cookbook (1973). It's loaded.

THE KITCHEN If I ever missed mentioning the kitchen in any of Wolfe's case histories I haven't been able to locate the omission. It was the one room most likely to produce the maximum in human pleasure. Beautiful creations were wrought among the [ 80 ]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE pots, pans, ovens, and the griddles, and Fritz Brenner ruled over it by the divine right of excellence. He was a master chef and could have had his pick of the finest dining establishments anywhere in the world. There were several reasons why he chose to stay with us: 1. Nero Wolfe spoiled him rotten! 2. He had the biggest room in the house to live in. 3. He was paid as well as the chef at the Waldorf. 4. His concoctions, inventions, experiments, and culinary masterpieces were so admired, enjoyed, swooned over, meditated upon, and consumed with such religious fervor by both the common eater and the epicurean cognoscenti that his somewhat self-effacing ego was constantly stroked. 5. He had the most particular and the biggest appetite in New York to sate, and he took extraordinary joy in being able to satisfy it. Consistently! But that wasn't all. Fritz loved a mystery. In 1939 I reported the following proof: . . . I went to the kitchen. Fritz was there in his sock feet reading a newspaper, with his slippers beside him on another chair in case of a summons. He looked up and nodded. "Milk, Archie?" "No. . . . [I'm up to] tricks." "Ah!" His eyes gleamed. He loved conspiracies and sinister things. "Good case?" "Case hell. The second World War. It started this [81]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE afternoon up on 48th Street. We'd better not talk." [The peephole was open.] (Over My Dead Body [1940], chapter 6) That's all I ever had to do to make Fritz's day complete: tell him we had a murder on our hands. Then again . . . . . . I went to the kitchen. Fritz put down a pan he was stirring and came close to me and whispered, "[She's] in the pantry." I pushed the swinging door and there she was, on a chair he had put there for her, with the parcel at her feet. I got the parcel and told her to follow me and keep quiet. (Ibid., chapter 17)

The only thing that shakes Wolfe as profoundly as having a meal interrupted is a bawling woman. His reaction to the first is rage, to the second panic. I tried to reassure him. "She'll be all right. She just has to —" "Stop her," he muttered desperately. I crossed to her, yanked her hands away, using muscle, pulled her face up, and kissed her hard and good on the lips. She jerked her face aside, shoved at me and protested. "What the hell!" That sounded better, and I turned to Wolfe and told him reproachfully, "You can't blame her. I doubt if it's fear or despair or anything normal like that. It's probably hunger. I'll bet she hasn't had a bite since breakfast." [82]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE "Good heavens." His eyes popped wide open. "Is that true, Miss Nieder? Haven't you had lunch?" She shook her head. . . . Wolfe was pushing a button. Since it is only five steps from the office to the kitchen door, in seconds Fritz was there. ("Man Alive" [1947], chapter 6, in Three Doors to Death [1950])

That last sentence has caused me more grief. I have literally been clubbed over the head with it; in fact I have become so paranoid about it that I try to forget it. The trouble began when Saul Panzer brought the book to me, pointed to that last sentence and said, "From the office to the kitchen is five steps? Whose steps? I say it's nine steps, Fred Durkin says it's six. Cramer once made it from the office to the kitchen door in four, but he was leaping like a kangaroo!" I was chastised, criticized, analyzed, and damn near ostracized for using "five steps" as a measurement. I got hate mail! So all right; the distance from the kitchen door to Wolfe's office door was exactly twenty-three feet, three inches. If your stride is thirty inches long that's nine and one-third steps. I admit it, I was wrong; I apologize. Three items never allowed on Wolfe's table were rye bread, corned beef (The Doorbell Rang [1965], chapter 3), and baked beans (Please Pass the Guilt [1973], chapter 4)! Whenever I had a craving for one of them — or all three — I had to go to Sam's Diner on Tenth Avenue. Here's one of Fritz's prize menus. He served it to five of [83]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE us for lunch: Wolfe, Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin, Orrie Cather and me. I start to salivate just thinking about that meal. We were well-filled. Inside our bellies were three bottles of Dom Perignon champagne, braised sweetbreads with chicken quenelles, . . . crab meat omelets (added attraction), celery and mushroom salad, and four kinds of cheese. (Please Pass the Guilt [1973], chapter 19)

Fritz was not only king of the kitchen. He had an almost mystic ability (call it insight) to offer solace or encouragement at the precise moment when one needed it most. Once, when I had been thoroughly bested in a telephone debate with Helen Lugos, I needed it. I went to the kitchen, poured myself a glass of milk, and told Fritz, "I'm done. Washed up. I've lost my touch. I'm a has-been. You knew me when." He was at the big table doing something to a duckling. "Now, Archie," he said. . . . "What else has happened?" "Another woman. She spit at me just now. Spat. On the phone." "Then she is washed up, not you. You are looking at the wrong side. Just turn it over, that's all you ever have to do, just turn it over." "I'll be damned." I stared at him. "You sound like a guru." (Please Pass the Guilt [1973], chapter 11) [84]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE Fritz and Wolfe had few conflicts . . . but there was one that was constant. We had been in the office talking to Lucy Valdon for fifteen minutes and Wolfe reluctantly decided to take her case. (Somebody had left a baby in her vestibule and she wanted to find out who.) It was an hour till lunch, but Wolfe left it up to me to handle the retainer and get all the basic information, saying, "Mr. Goodwin will have many questions. You will excuse me." He crossed to the door and in the hall turned left, toward the kitchen. Lunch was to be shad roe in casserole, one of the few dishes on which he and Fritz had a difference of opinion that had never been settled. They were agreed on the larding, the anchovy butter, the chervil, shallot, parsley, bay leaf, pepper, marjoram, and cream, but the argument was the onion. Fritz was for it and Wolfe dead against. There was a chance that voices would be raised, and before I got my notebook and started in on the client I went and closed the door, which was soundproofed, and on my way back to my desk she [Mrs. Valdon] handed me a check for one thousand and 00/100 dollars. (The Mother Hunt [1963], chapter 1)

This "baby case" (which required Wolfe to examine all the clothes the kid had on when he was abandoned) led to another encounter with Fritz and his sly sense of humor. At ten o'clock I was in the kitchen at my breakfast table, sprinkling brown sugar on a buttered sour-milk [85]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE griddle cake, with the Times before me on the rack Fritz, standing by, asked, "No cinnamon?" "No," I said firmly. "I've decided it's an aphrodisiac." "Then for you it would be — how is it? Taking coal somewhere." "Coals to Newcastle. That's not the point, but you mean well and I thank you." "I always mean well." Seeing that I had taken the second bite, he stepped to the range to start the next cake. " . . . I saw the things on your desk that you brought in the suitcase. I have heard that the most dangerous kind of case for a detective is a kidnaping case." "Maybe and maybe not. It depends." "And in all the years I have been with him this is the first kidnaping case he has ever had." I sipped coffee. "There you go again, Fritz, circling around. You should just ask, is it a kidnaping case? and I would say no. Because it isn't. Of course the baby clothes gave you the idea. Just between you and me, in strict confidence, the baby clothes belong to him [Wolfe]. It isn't decided yet when the baby will move in here, and I doubt if the mother ever will, but I understand she's a good cook, and if you happen to take a long vacation . . . " He was there with the cake and I reached for the tomato and lime marmalade. With it no butter. "You are a true friend, Archie," he said. "They don't come any truer." [86]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE "Vraiment. I'm glad you told me so I can get things in. Is it a boy?" "Yes. It looks like him." "Good. Do you know what I will do?" He returned to the range and gestured with the cake turner. "I will put cinnamon in everything!" (Ibid., chapter 4) That was the fun of Fritz: you could kid him black and blue and he always came back with some little nifty like that. For a more intimate glimpse of Fritz, see "Poison a la Carte" ([1960], chapters 6 and 7, in Three at Wolfe's Door [1960]).

THE PEEPHOLE This little peekaboo-I-spy gadget evolved over the years into far more than a plaything. It also changed its location and appearance. I've already mentioned the listening-recording device in a cupboard over the refrigerator in the kitchen which allowed us to hear conversations that went on in the guest rooms and Wolfe's bedroom. This peephole gave us an eye-and-ear contact with all that went on in Wolfe's office. The first time I reported using it was back in 1939. There was a Rudolph Faber in the office who wanted me removed from it so he could divulge information to Wolfe in complete privacy. Such a request usually got a quick rebuff from Wolfe, but this time he surprised me by asking me to leave. Then, as I started out, Wolfe gave me the signal that I was to eavesdrop. [87]


I . . . went on out, closing the door behind me, and proceeded three paces towards the kitchen. Where I stopped there was hanging on the left wall, the one that separated the hall from the office, an old brown wood carving, a panel in three sections. The two side sections were hinged to the middle one. I swung the right section around, stooped a little — for it had been constructed at the level of Wolfe's eyes — and looked through the peephole, camouflaged on the other side by a painting with the two little apertures backed by gauze, into the office. I could see them both, Faber's profile and Wolfe's full, and I mean full, face. Also I could hear their words by straining a little. . . . (Over My Dead Body [1940], chapter 6)

You'll notice that I didn't describe the painting. (I can't even remember what it was!) Notice also that the peephole was only three paces toward the kitchen from the office door. Well, the whole setup was rearranged by 1944. From my seat in the office, when I was swiveled around facing Wolfe, it looked like this: Behind Wolfe and off to the right — my right as I sat — was a picture on the wall, a painting on glass of the Washington Monument. (The picture, incidentally, was camouflage; it was actually a specially constructed cover for a panel through which you could view the office, practically all of it, from an alcove at the end of the hall next to the kitchen.) Just beyond the picture was a tier [88]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE of shallow shelves holding various odds and ends, including mementos of cases we had worked on. ("Booby Trap" chapter 5, in Not Quite Dead Enough [1944])

In 1946 the physical aspects were the same, but this time Wolfe didn't ask me to leave. Mr. John Smith was in the red leather chair facing both of us. [He said,] "This is a confidential matter and I must speak with you privately." Wolfe shook his head. "Mr. Goodwin is my confidential assistant. His ears are mine. Go ahead." "No." Smith's tone implied, and that settles it. "I have to be alone with you." "Bah!" [Eventually, I wormed that word out of his vocabulary. It is totally phony!] Wolfe pointed to a picture of the Washington Monument, on the wall fifteen feet to his left. "Do you see that picture? It is actually a perforated panel. If Mr. Goodwin is sent from the room he will go to an alcove around a corner of the hall, open the panel on that side, invisible to us, and watch us and listen to us. The objection to that is that he would be standing up. He might as well stay here sitting down." (The Silent Speaker [1946], chapter 25)

Let me tell you about that alcove. All the corners in the office were originally 90-degree angles. We tried putting the peephole into the wall across the hall from the kitchen-bathroom door (see the floor plan on page 101), but all you could [89]


see was a limited view straight ahead, toward the door into the front room. The center of action (Wolfe's desk) was out of sight to the right. So we called in a crew of carpenters, They sawed off that corner of the office, making one 30-degree angle and one of 60 degrees, added several joists up above to carry the structural load, painted, papered, cut the peephole, built the panel, tidied up — and left. The bill came, marked paid. There was no signature! We spent a month trying to discover which grateful client had been so benificent, and so anonymous. We never found out. (Some detectives!) By 1955 we had improved on the Washington Monument, The hole, ten inches square, was at eye level in the wall twelve feet to the right of Wolfe's desk. On the office side it was covered by what appeared to be just a pretty picture of a waterfall. On the other side, in a wing of the hall across from the kitchen, it was covered by nothing, and you could not only see through but also hear through. (If Death Ever Slept [1957], chapter 7)

That ten-inch square, "covered by nothing," got to be an eyesore in the alcove. Wolfe decided it was also a dead give away to anybody who happened to go back there to use the bathroom, so in 1956 I reported it covered. On the wall of the office, at the right as you enter, is a picture of a waterfall, not large, 14 by 17. Its center is one inch below my eye level, but I'm just under six feet tall. The picture was made to order. On the wall of [90]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE the alcove at the end of the hall is a hinged wood panel. Swing it open, and there's the back of the picture, but your eyes go on through and you are looking into the office. (Too Many Clients [1960], chapter 16)

The wood panel that covered the hole in the hall wall was better than no cover at all, but it was awkward and the hinges were unreliable; they tended to squeak at the wrong moments. So, in 1960, we looked up an artist who put glazes on metal. Wolfe selected a dozen five-by-five-inch color prints depicting rural life in the fourteenth century: scenes of hunting, harvesting, alfresco picnicking, hound husbandry — stuff like that — and the artist plaqued them on a sheet of quarterinch-thick aluminum twenty inches high by twenty-seven inches wide. Then he overglazed and antiqued the whole works. This was mounted over the hole in the alcove on two horizontal rails, with nylon rollers top and bottom. It worked perfectly, added a very attractive touch to the decor, and completed the evolution of the peephole. . . . I stood in the alcove at the end of the hall next to the kitchen, observing, through the hole in the wall, the cast that had been assembled for what I consider one of the best charades Wolfe has ever staged. On the office side the hole is covered by a pretty picture of a waterfall . . . to the right of Wolfe's desk. On the alcove side it is covered by a metal panel at eye level which slides open without a hint of a noise, and, standing there, you find that the made-to-order waterfall [90]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE is no obstruction to your view of the office or to your hearing. It wasn't as clear for either my eyes or my ears as if I had been inside seated at my desk, but I couldn't very well be there since I had been fired in disgrace, and besides, that chair won't hold two and Saul Panzer was in it. (Gambit [1962], chapter 13)

In 1964 Wolfe and I had a session at that hole, not a one, but if you still have any questions about the peephole this should clear them up: I stood in the alcove at the rear end of the hall, looking, through the hole in the wall. On the alcove side it's just a hole, a rectangle with a sliding panel. On the office side it's covered by a picture of a waterfall which you can see through from the alcove. I was seeing through, for a preview of the two men and a woman whom Fritz had conducted to the office. . . . Wolfe, standing beside me, had already looked. . . . Wolfe and I had been there, looking and listening, for six or seven minutes, but the listening hadn't helped any. They were discussing a picture on the wall back of Wolfe's desk, not the waterfall. [They] thought it was an unsigned Van Gogh, which it wasn't. It had been painted by a man named Mclntyre whom Wolfe had once got out of a scrape. Wolfe wiggled a finger, and I slid the noiseless panel shut. He looked a question at me, had I ever seen any of them? I shook my head and he led the way to the office. (A Right to Die [ 1 9 6 4 ] , chapter 7)

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THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE The peephole was so functional, and so often put to good use, that I mentioned it in many other accounts of Wolfe's cases: The Doorbell Rang (1965), chapter 13 Death of a Doxy (1966), chapter 15 The Father Hunt (1968), chapter 16 But why go on? Come walk with me down the hall to the front room.

THE FRONT ROOM I have described where it was located but not what was in it. In the following references, take note of the furnishings, windows, and objects. They confirm my drawing at the end of this chapter. Originally, the two front-room windows had bars on them ("The Cop Killer" [1951], chapter 4, in Triple Jeopardy [ 9 5 2 ] ) . But time and the elements had rusted the bolts; one set fell off, and Wolfe had the other removed. In 1961, we regretted their loss. Ann Paige had been asked to wait in there while Wolfe and a client discussed matters that they didn't want her to hear. After half an hour, I was instructed to go in and bring her back into the office. She wasn't there. Through a wide-open window cold air was streaming in. As I went to it and stuck my head out . . . it was a relief to see that the areaway, eight feet down, was unoccupied. ("Eeny Meeny Murder Mo" [1962], chapter 2, in Homicide Trinity [1962]; italics added) [

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THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE Wolfe's views on women were so well congealed that cement would be Jell-O by comparison (A Right to Die [1964], chapter 1). Whenever he could, he pushed them into the front room just to get them out of the office. But, in 1962, he was the one in the front room, and a Miss Blount was in the office insisting on seeing him immediately. "I'd better explain," I told her. "Mr. Wolfe is in the middle of a fit. It's complicated. There's a fireplace in the front room, but it's never lit because he hates open fires. He says they stultify mental processes. But it's lit now because he's using it. He's seated in front of it, on a chair too small for him, tearing sheets out of a book and burning them. The book is . . . the third edition of Webster's New International Dictionary, Unabridged. . . . He considers it subversive because it threatens the integrity of the English language. In the past week he has given me a thousand examples of its crimes. . . . I describe the situation at length because he told me to bring you in there, and it will be bad. . . . Could you come back later? After lunch he may be human." She was staring at me. "He's burning up a dictionary?" "Right. . . . " . . . She stood up. "I want to see him now. . . . " . . . [I] stepped to the door to the front room, and opened it. She came. . . . I moved up chairs for us, but with Wolfe so close to the fireplace I couldn't put her directly facing him. . . . He dropped sheets on the fire, turned to look at her, [94]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE and inquired, "Do you use 'infer' and 'imply' interchangeably, Miss Blount?" (Gambit [1962], chapter 1)

Wolfe hired a double for himself in 1947, and the front room became the scene of an alleged crime. The double, whose name was Hackett, had none of the aplomb or gentility of Wolfe, but he was every bit as big and, in a peculiarly twisted way, he was a genius, or almost. Major Emil Jensen and Miss Geer were involved in the incident. They had permitted me to usher them into the front room and . . . I had got myself headed back for the hall before noticing an unfortunate fact: the door from the front room to the office was standing open. That was careless of me, but I hadn't expected complications. If they moved across, as they naturally would, Hackett sitting in the office would be in plain sight. But what the hell, that was what he was there for. So I kept going, down the hall to the turn into the alcove at the far end, found Wolfe there ready to take position at the peep-hole, and muttered to him: "She brought an outrider along. . . . I put them in the front room. The door into the office is open. Well?" He scowled at me. . . . "Confound it. Return to the front room by way of the office, closing that door as you go. Tell Major Jensen to wait, that I wish to speak with Miss Geer privately. Take her to the office by way of the hall, and when you —" Somebody fired a gun. ("Help Wanted, Male" [1945], chapter 6, in Trouble in Triplicate [1949])

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THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE Well, that gunshot opened up one of our biggest can of worms. The whole house reeked of burnt gunpowder, Hackett was bleeding from a notch in his ear; the bullet holes in Wolfe's chair, and in the wall behind it, indicated that the shot had come from the direction of the front room. I yelled for Fritz and he held my gun on Jensen and Miss Geer while I frisked them. They were indignant, but clean . . . so it was my guess that the gun was still in the front room. Hackett was whimpering . . . so leaving Fritz to guard the suspects I took him to the bathroom in the far corner and shut the door behind me. While I showed him the ear in the mirror . . . and taped on a bandage, I told him to stay in there until his nerves calmed down and then rejoin us. . . . (Ibid.) With a screwdriver and my knife, I dug the slug out of the wall and was examining it when Hackett emerged from the bathroom. I hustled him into the front room, made him sit in a chair against the wall, told him not to move or talk, and began to search for the gun. I tried under furniture and behind cushions, with no luck, but when I came to the big vase on the table between the windows and peeked into it and saw something white and stuck my hand in, I felt the gun. (Ibid.) When I marched Hackett back into the office, carrying the gun by the trigger guard, surrounded by the white handker[96]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE chief, they all went to pieces. Miss Geer made a rush for the door, but was halted abruptly by a massive object which advanced, halted, and used its mouth. "How do you do. I am Nero Wolfe." (Ibid.) He took complete charge from there on in, but he got himself called a fat coward by Jane Geer, replied that it was not cowardice but conceit (which it was), and asked her: " . . . Where were you and what were you doing when you heard the shot?" "I was standing by the piano. I had put my bag on the piano and was opening it." "Which way were you facing?" "Toward the window." "Were you looking at Mr. Jensen?" "Not at that moment, no." "Thank you." Wolfe's eyes moved. "Mr. Jensen." "I was in the doorway to the hall, looking down the hall and wondering where Goodwin had gone to. . . . I was not at that precise moment looking at Miss Geer. . . . " (Ibid., chapter 7) Wolfe had me phone Cramer then, to send men from the lab to check out the gun and the bullet. His next directions were crisp: [97]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE "Archie, take them to the front room and stay there till I send for you. Fritz will answer the bell. I am aware that it will be tiresome, but there's no help for it." (Ibid.) Yes, it got tiresome, lasting as it did a full two hours At first I got some diversion out of the fact that Jane and Jensen showed no inclination to sit side by side on the sofa and hold hands. God knows where Wolfe had ever found that sofa and the velvet cushions; it had been there when I had first arrived. One or the other of them did sit on it now and again during their restless moving around, but not the two together. . . . At seven-thirty we were all invited to the dining room, but they wouldn't go. . . . Fritz brought trays in to us . . . but Jane wouldn't even look at hers. . . . During the two hours I spoke to Jane three times, at well-spaced intervals, as follows: 1. "Do you want a drink of water or something?" 2. "There's a door to that bathroom from this room too. Over there. The one from the bathroom to the office is now locked." 3. "I beg your pardon." That was for a yawn. . . . a little before nine . . . Fritz came in. He shut the door behind him and spoke, not very loud. "Archie, Mr. Wolfe wants you in the office. Inspector Cramer is there with Sergeant Stebbins. I am to stay here." He held out his hand for the gun. I gave it to him and went. (Ibid., chapter 8) [98]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE Cramer hadn't brought just the lab men. He'd brought a search warrant! The ensuing insults were suitable, but he and Wolfe ended up by joining forces and going into the front room together, Cramer to ask questions, Wolfe to resent him. Stebbins tagged in after them, and I brought up the rear. Jane was seated on the piano bench. Jensen was on the sofa, but arose as we entered. Fritz was standing by a window, his hand with the gun coming up as Jensen moved. (Ibid.) Cramer . . . in the tone he thought was soothing . . . [said,] "We're going to talk this over, but wait till I look around a little." He proceeded to inspect things, and so did Sergeant Stebbins. They considered distances, and the positions of various objects. Then there was this detail: from what segment of that room could a gun send a bullet through the open door to the office and on through the hole in Wolfe's chair and the one in the wall? They were working on that together when Wolfe turned to Fritz and asked him, "What happened to the other cushion?" Fritz was taken aback. "Other cushion?" "There were six velvet cushions on that sofa. There are only five. Did you remove it?" "No, sir." Fritz gazed at the sofa and counted. "That's right. They've been rearranged to take up the space. I [99]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE don't understand it. They were all here yesterday when I cleaned in here." "Are you sure of that?" "Yes, sir. Positive." "Look for it. Archie, help him. I want to know if that cushion is in this room." (Ibid ) For the exciting conclusion to that "front room" episode, get a copy of "Help Wanted, Male." It's in a book entitled Trouble in Triplicate (1949). You'll be glad you did — and so will I. I still get the royalties. Better yet, buy two! In the plan of the main floor that follows, you'll see most of the furnishings penciled in, except for Wolfe's office. That requires a chapter all of its own.

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IN setting out to describe the office where Nero Wolfe and I spent so many years, I don't think I can improve on a couple of paragraphs I wrote about it in 1949: [Wolfe] was behind his desk, leaning back in his custom made chair, which was warranted safe for a quarter of a ton and which might some day be put to the test if its owner didn't level off. . . . Seated at my own desk, at a right angle to Wolfe and not far away, I allowed myself a mild private grin . . . Wolfe didn't like [the office], he loved it, and it was a good thing he did, since he was spending his life in it — except when he was in the kitchen with Fritz, or in the dining room across the hall at mealtime, or upstairs asleep, or in the plant rooms up on the roof, enjoying the orchids and pretending he was helping Theodore with the work. (The Second Confession [1949], chapter 1)

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Before I can start moving in the furniture and commenting on the decor of that beautiful old room (see how I've mellowed), there's a point of contention I want to clear up. Once I wrote that Saul Panzer avoided sitting in the red leather chair because he disliked facing the windows. There was a time when the red leather chair was located between my desk and Wolfe's where it did face the windows. It also partly blocked my view of whoever was sitting in it, so, to please Saul (and me) we moved it to the other end of Wolfe's desk, and there it remained. Point cleared. Now, immodestly, I'm going to quote myself. Each of the following refers directly to something in the office — its position, color, or shape. I'll start with generalities: The office is twice as big as any of the other rooms. It is actually our living room too, and since Wolfe spends most of his time there you have to allow him his rule regarding furniture and accessories: nothing enters it or stays in it that he doesn't enjoy looking at. He enjoys the contrast between the cherry of his desk and the cardato of his chair, by Meyer. The bright yellow couch has to be cleaned every two months, but he likes bright yellow. The three-foot globe over by the bookshelves is too big for a room that size, but he likes to look at it. He loves a comfortable chair so much that he won't have any other kind in the place, though he never sits in any but his own. [Unless he is forced to by circumstances.] . . . The best chair in the room, not counting Wolfe's, is one of red leather which is kept not far from one end of Wolfe's desk. (And Be a Villain [1948], chapter 5) [103]


Clivers did a slow motion circle. He turned all the way around, encompassing with his eyes the book shelves, the wall maps, the Holbein reproductions, more book shelves, the three-foot globe on its stand, the en graving of Brillat-Savarin, more book shelves, the picture of Sherlock Holmes above my desk. (The Rubber Band [1936], chapter 13)

Bruce said, "So this is Nero Wolfe's office," and looked around, at the leather chairs, the big globe, the shelves of books, the old-fashioned two-ton safe, the little bracket where he always had one orchid in bloom. ("Booby Trap" chapter 4, in Not Quite Dead Enough [1944])

THE LIGHTS . . . I attended to the lights before going to my desk. There are eight different lights — one in the ceiling above a big bowl of banded Oriental alabaster, which is on a wall switch, one on the wall behind Wolfe's chair, one on his desk, one on my desk, one flooding the big globe, and three for the book shelves. The one on Wolfe's desk is strictly for business, like crossword puzzles. The one on the wall behind him is for reading. He likes all the others turned on, and after making the rounds I sat, picked up my notebook. . . . (Before Midnight [1955], chapter 8)

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THE RUG Most of the people who enter that office for the first time have something eating them, but even so they often notice one or more of the objects in view — the fourteenby-twenty-six Keraghan rug or the three-foot globe or the floral display in the vase on Wolfe's desk. (Please Pass the Guilt [1973], chapter 5)

Comment: In the next reference you'll notice that the rug is spelled Feraghan. That was a printing error and I didn't catch.it in the galley proof. (As Nathan Detroit says, "So sue me!") Wolfe was standing over by the bookshelves, looking at the globe, which was even bigger around than he was, checking to make sure that Omaha, Nebraska, was where it always had been. That done, he crossed over to his desk, and around it, and lowered his colossal corpus into his custom-made chair. He cocked his head to survey the Feraghan, which covered all the central expanse, 14 X 26. "It's April," he said, "and that rug's dirty. I must remind Fritz to send it to be cleaned and put the others down." (Might As Well Be Dead [1956], chapter 1)

The "others," cleaned, moth-proofed, and wrapped, were kept in the front storeroom of the basement, awaiting their [105]


turn to replace those in the office and the dining room when the unavoidable attrition of time, soil, and spillage made the exchange necessary. Wolfe objected to bare floors — except in the plant rooms — so when carpets went out to the cleaners, the spares were brought up from the basement and put down at once to satisfy his fastidious (persnickety) nature. The daughter of one of our sophisticated clients was so impressed by the substitute that . . . when I took her to the office she stopped at the edge of the big rug, looked it over from side to side and end to end, and asked Wolfe, "Is that a Kazak?" "No," he said. "Shirvan." "You can't possibly appreciate it. Is it yours?" "I doubt it. It was given to me in nineteen thirtytwo, in Cairo, by a man to whom I had rendered a service, and I suspected he had stolen it in Kandahar. If it wasn't rightfully his, it isn't rightfully mine. But of course illegality of ownership does not extend indefinitely. . . . I'm pleased that you recognize the quality of the rug, though only an ignoramus could mistake it for a Kazak. Kazaks have a long pile. . . . " (The Final Deduction [1961], chapter 8)

Looking back from the towering inflated pinnacle of 1982, it seems downright profligate for Wolfe to have sported a half-dozen imported Oriental rugs, but he had earned them and he enjoyed them, and so did I. They were beauties. [106]


THE GLOBE "Look at that globe, the finest I ever saw, couldn't have cost less than a hundred pounds. Twice as big as the one in my library. . . . " [Lord Clivers speaking] "Indeed." Wolfe sighed. " . . . that globe was made by Gouchard and there aren't many like it." (The Rubber Band [1936], chapter 13)

I wrote a book in 1 9 7 3 entitled Please Pass the Guilt. In chapter 5, where I first described the Keraghan rug, I casually mentioned the "three-foot g l o b e . " Immediately I got tripped up by the persistence of Saul Panzer's uncanny memory and his fanatical dedication to accuracy of detail. At our next poker session following publication, Saul and Lon Cohen lit into me for having perpetrated a 27-year-old discrepancy. Saul said, "Back in 1946 you described it as being a 'two-foot globe' over by the bookshelves.* W h a t have you and Wolfe and Fritz been pouring into it all these years to make it p u t on so much extra girth? Beer or sweetbreads? Go home and measure it and stop guessing." I should have smelled a rat right then, because Lon said, "The five of us** are ready to bet you five bucks apiece that it's no more than thirty-four inches in diameter. H o w about it?" • The Silent Speaker (1946), chapter 5. ** Saul Panzer, Lon Cohen of the Gazette, operatives Fred Durkin, Orrie Cather, and the owner of his own agency, Larry Bascom.

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Cocky me, I took the bet. When I got back to the office it was two o'clock in the morning, but I went at it. I turned on the lights, got a piece of string, wrapped it around the equator of the globe, measured its length, did the necessary math (with the help of a book on spherical trigonometry), and came up with thirty-three inches, plus a very weirdlooking fraction. That seemed illogical as hell, until I remembered that the globe had been manufactured in France by Gouchard, and would have been constructed on the metric system. Sure enough, the 33.464567 inches converted exactly into eighty-five centimeters. Oh, well, Confucius (or somebody) say: "Man who make no mistake usually not make anything." It was an expensive mistake. I lost twenty-five bucks on that bet, not to mention what they took from me in the game. It just wasn't my night. Now, to give you the rest of the trimmings, note that there was a table and chair next to the globe, as follows: When [Cynthia] was through I put the tray on the table by the big globe, leaving her a glass full of her mixture, and then resumed my seat at my desk. ("Man Alive" [1947], chapter 6, in Three Doors to Death [1950])

Saul Panzer . . . had retired to a chair over in the corner behind the globe . . . . (The Silent Speaker [1946], chapter 34)

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THE OFFICE BATHROOM . . . she arose abruptly and asked, "May I have — a bathroom?" I told her certainly, and went and opened the door of the one partitioned off in the far corner, to the left of my desk, and she came and passed through, closing the door behind her. (Before Midnight [1955], chapter 5)

It may surprise you to learn that we had a murder right in the office one time. Doc Vollmer was called, and he pronounced the woman dead. Wolfe asked if he and I could have a word in private, and would Doc step into the front room. Vollmer hesitated, uncomfortable. "As a doctor called to a violent death I'd catch hell. . . . " "Then go to a corner and cover your ears." He did so. He went to the farthest corner, the angle made by the partition of the bathroom, pressed his palms to his ears, and stood facing us. ("Disguise for Murder" [1950], chapter 2, in Curtains for Three [1950])

Another murder was Pierre Ducos. I should have frisked him that night; I might have saved his life. He begged to sleep in the office, but I had reasons to demur. The couch, in the corner beyond my desk, was perfectly sleepable, as I knew from experience, . . . and on [109]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE the other side of the projecting wall that made the corner was an equipped bathroom. But leaving anyone loose all night in the office, with the ten thousand items in the files and drawers, many of them with no locks, was of course out of the question. (A Family Affair [1975], chapter 1)

REFRESHMENTS, ANYONE? When a flock of people were called in for one of Wolfe's charades, he provided a variety of wines, both red and white For the two-fisted guests there was rum, brandy, gin, vodka, rye, bourbon, tequila, aquavit, and applejack. We had a little hidy-hole for a dozen bottles, on built-in shelves next to the filing cabinet — but no ice. At such a convening of clients, suspects, police, villains, lawyers, and bystanders the serving cart (kept in the dining room next to the bar) was called into service. It was on an occasion like that when I went to glance in at the office door and saw that Fritz had things under control at the refreshment table. Evidently they had all been thirsty, or else they didn't want to talk and were drinking instead. Pleased that the party was starting well, I crossed to the dining room to tell Wolfe we had a full house and were set for his entrance. (Before Midnight [1955], chapter 18)

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WOLFE'S CHAIR AND DESK Wolfe was at his desk with a book, leaning back in the only chair in the world that he can sit down in without making a face, made to order by his design and under his supervision. The reading light in the wall above and behind his shoulder was the only one on in the room, and like that, with the light at that angle, he looks even bigger than he is. Like a mountain with the sun rising behind it. (Too Many Clients [1960], chapter 2)

He had turned in his chair for better light on his book, practically turning his back on me. (Prisoner's Base [1952], chapter 2)

There were other chairs in the house that had been made ro order, for width and depth, with a guaranty for up to five hundred pounds — one in his room, one in the kitchen, one in the dining room, one in the plant rooms on the roof where the orchids were kept . . . but it was the one at his desk that nearly always got it, night and day. (The Silent Speaker [1946], chapter 5)

That excerpt was written in 1946. In 1968 I recalled that Once in the past he [Wolfe] had bought a chair big enough for the back of his lap and had put it in the [111]


kitchen, but the next day it wasn't there. Fritz had taken it to the basement. As far as I know it has never been mentioned by either of them — not then, and not since. (The Father Hunt [1968], chapter 7)

And while I'm on the subject, it might be appropriate to note that Wolfe's desk chair had tapestry-upholstered arms, was made of Brazilian Mauro, and had cost $650; that my chair had cost a measly $139.95 (If Death Ever Slept [1957], chapter 1), and that the famed Red Leather Chair didn't arrive on the scene until 1942 (Black Orchids, [1942], chapter 6). It was always exciting to see Wolfe lean back in his chair, close his eyes, and begin pushing his lips out and pulling them in, back and forth, in and out. I knew then that his brain had shifted into high gear and he was really working, and I always timed him. Sometimes it lasted a few seconds, but the record for such sustained oblivious concentration was 21 minutes, 10 seconds (Gambit [1962], chapter 12). If Wolfe's chair was special his desk was even more so. It was made of arcwood (Murder by the Book [1951], chapter 3), was positioned in a corner near a window (In the Best Families [1950], chapter 1), and had many interesting gadgets in, on and under it. The most common was the buzzer button that summoned Fritz with beer: two short and one long. There was a radio on a bookshelf across the room,* and later a TV set ("Disguise for Murder" [1950], chapter 7, in Curtains for Three [1950]). When he got too lazy to get up and walk over there to turn them on, or off, he had a remote control hooked up to his desk (Before Midnight [1955], chapter 14). * The Red Box (1937), chapter 15.

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THE COUCH Heery was in the red leather chair. He measured up to it, both vertically and horizontally. . . . [He said,] "This is a very nice room. Very personal. You like yellow, don't you?" "Evidently," Wolfe muttered. Such remarks irritate him. Since the drapes and couch covers and cushions and live visible chairs were yellow, it did seem a little obvious. [There were actually eight yellow chairs in the room. Three were behind Heery.] (Before Midnight [1955], chapter 9)

Inspector Cramer and my favorite sergeant, Purley Stebbins, were seated side by side on the couch over in the far corner. ("Man Alive" [1947], chapter 13, in Three Doors to Death [1950])

I . . . resumed at the typewriter. When the bill was finished I read it over and checked the additions, folded it neatly and put it in an envelope, and filed the carbon in the cabinet over by the couch. (Too Many Women [1947], chapter 35)

Miss Frazee had copped the red leather chair, which is reserved for Inspector Cramer, and I had to talk her into moving. Buff and Hansen were in a huddle at the wall end of the couch, where Wolfe would have to look [113]


through me to see them, and I got them to transfer to chairs. (Before Midnight [1955], chapter 18)

THE RED LEATHER CHAIR The red leather chair was four feet away from the end of Nero Wolfe's desk, so when she got the gun from her handbag she had to get up and take a step to put it on the desk. Then she returned to the chair, closed the bag, and told Wolfe, "That's the gun I'm not going to shoot my husband with." Sitting facing her with my back to my desk, which is at right angles to Wolfe's, I raised my brows. ("Death of a Demon" [1961], chapter 1, in Homicide Trinity [1962])

A few feet from the end of Wolfe's desk is a roomy and comfortable red leather chair, and next to it on one side is a solid little table made of massaranduba, the primary function of which is as a resting place for checkbooks while clients write in them. Harold Anthony sat in the chair, with a bottle of bourbon at his elbow on the little table, while Wolfe kept at him for over an hour. (Too Many Women [1947], chapter 13)

Off the end of Wolfe's desk, facing it, the big red leather chair is the most convenient spot for a visitor, and when [114]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE there are two or more visitors that is obviously the seat for whoever has priority. (Murder by the Book [1951], chapter 17)

Weighing rather less than half as much as Nero Wolfe, [Mr. Herman Lewent] was lost in the red leather chair three steps from the end of Wolfe's desk. . . . ("Invitation to Murder" [1952], chapter 1, in Three Men Out [1954])

Another printer's error; three steps should have been three feet. Or it could have been me. I made two or three mistakes in 1954!

MY DESK, MY JOB . . . I sat at my desk, eight feet from his. (The Second Confession [1937], chapter 1)

I put the paper in the typewriter and hit the keys. On the wall back of my desk is a mirror four feet high and six feet wide, and in it I could see that Miss Haber was looking surprised. No female secretary thinks a man can use eight fingers and two thumbs on a typewriter. (Please Pass the Guilt [1973], chapter 5; italics added)

And then I wrote: . . . on the wall back of my desk is a mirror five feet wide and four feet high, for keeping an eye on people. (The Father Hunt [1968], chapter 13; italics added) [115]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE I do now formally apologize for the oversight of one lousy foot. Lily says, "Don't say lousy; call it one pediculous foot." "Pediculous? I never heard of it. What does it mean?" She looks at me for about three seconds and snaps, "It means lousy!" Case closed. The mirror was 4' x 6' , like I said, and it reflected many episodes, both sinister and humorous. [Wolfe] reached to put a finger on the button and pressed it, two short and one long, the beer signal. That was bad. He never rings for beer until an hour after lunch. . . . I went to my desk. Seated there, my back is to the door to the hall, but in the mirror . . . I saw Fritz enter with the beer and stop two paces in to aim his eyes at me with a question in them. One of my two million [or more] functions, as Fritz knows, is to keep Wolfe from breaking his beer rules. So I swiveled and said, "Okay. He's taking to a cave, and I'm going along. This is a farewell fling." . . . "I don't want the beer," Wolfe said. "Take it back." (Gambit [1962], chapter 2)

How far was it from my chair to the red leather chair? It was too far for comfort if I had to interview somebody when Wolfe wasn't there. One of the times he wasn't there, I wish he had been, because I came up with an epigram and he should have heard it. [William Magnus was on the stoop.] . . . When I took him to the office he flopped into the red leather chair as [116]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE if it belonged to him. That made it complicated, because at my desk I would be twelve feet away, so I went and took Wolfe's chair, and he grinned and said, "You don't belong there, do you?" I gave him the grin back. "I always belong wherever I am." He frowned. "Who said that?" "I did." "No, really. You read it somewhere." "Nope. You fed me a slider and I just happened to connect." He grinned. "Okay, you're on base. . . . " (A Right to Die [1964], chapter 11; italics added)

There were four areas in the office over which Wolfe, both tacitly and by repeated instruction, gave me almost complete jurisdiction: (1) the typewriter, to the right of my desk, (2) the filing cabinet, where the germination records were kept, (3) the closet, that had a good lock and a mirrored steel door,* where we put things that were too big to go in the safe, and (4) the safe, where we stored cash for business expenses and certain other valuables from time to time, like evidence. I'll spot them for you. 1. When Wolfe is facing the red leather chair he has to turn his head a quarter-circle to face me. He turned. "Your notebook, Archie." . . . "If you wish to comment, Mr. Coggin, you'll have to raise your voice. Mr. Goodwin will not use a noiseless typewriter." . . . * "The Squirt and the Monkey" (1951), chapter 1, in Triple Jeopardy (1952).

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THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE I swiveled and swung the machine around and got paper

and carbons. (A Family Affair [1975], chapter 5; italics added) 2. I, standing at the cabinet filing the germination records

that Theodore had brought down from the plant rooms, was compelled to admit that he had earned my admiration. (The Silent Speaker [1946], chapter 8; italics added)

3. The suitcase was still there on the chair. Instructed by Wolfe to put it in a safe place, I locked it in the closet, since it was too big for the safe. ("Booby Trap" [1944], chapter 5, in Not Quite Dead Enough [1944]; italics added)

4. I was in the office, having just got in from taking Lily Rowan home after a show and a snack at the Flamingo. I always look in at the office to see if Wolfe has written anything on the pad on my desk. That night he hadn't, and / was crossing to the safe to check that it was locked when the bell rang, and I went to the hall and through the one-way glass of the front door saw Pierre Ducos on the stoop. (A Family Affair [1975], chapter 1; italics added)

We once had a cleaning man named Charley (The Silent Speaker [1946], chapter 6), but he found our "medicinal" supply in the cabinets along the wall behind Wolfe's desk and we had to polish him off — as he had the brandy — and [118]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE put locks on the cabinets (Plot It Yourself [1959], chapter 3). From then on, Fritz and I tidied the office.

THE BOOKSHELVES . . . one of the bottom shelves had seven directories, not counting the telephone books for the five boroughs and Westchester and Washington. . . . (A Family Affair [1975], chapter 8) I rose and circled around [Wolfe's] desk to the stand that held the dictionary, opened it and found what I wanted, lind returned to my chair. (The Doorbell Rang [1965], chapter 4) "Archie. If you wouldn't mind, bring me that Spenser? The third shelf, at the right of the door. No, farther over — more yet — dark blue, tooled. That's it." (The League of Frightened Men [1935], chapter 3)

Theodore brought down a batch of statistics on germination and performance, and I entered them on the file cards. . . . Wolfe worked hard at comparing Fitzgerald's Iliad with the three other translations he brought over from the shelf. That was risky because they were on a high shelf and he had to use the stool [an unfolding step stool]. (A Family Affair [1975], chapter 8) [119]


Wolfe had a vast repertoire of tricks he used on people to ferret out usable information: cajolery, threats, sneaky innuendos, an earthshaking bellow, and — silence. Once he even used the melodramatic ritual of administering a sworn oath! "Do you go to church, Miss Haber?" "Yes, I do. Lutheran. Not every Sunday, but often." He turned to me. "Bring me a Bible." On the third shelf from the bottom, at the left of the globe, there were nine of them, four in different editions in English and five in foreign languages. I picked the one that looked the part best, in black leather, and crossed to the red leather chair. "Put your right hand on it," Wolfe told her, "and repeat after me: With my hand on the Holy Bible I swear." (Please Pass the Guilt [1973], chapter 7)

Wolfe was a voracious reader; his current book was always on his desk, at the right edge of the pad, in front of the vase of orchids (The Final Deduction [1961], chapter 2), and he never dog-eared a book he intended to keep in his library (The Mother Hunt [1963], chapter 3). He kept a few dozen books up in his bedroom (Before Midnight [1955], chapter 19), and there were twelve hundred or so in the office (Gambit [1962], chapter 6). On the wall, behind his desk, were three small pictures:

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THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE — one of Socrates, one of Shakespeare, and an unwashed coal miner in oil by Sepeshy. (According to Wolfe, man's three resources: intellect, imagination, and muscle.) (Please Pass the Guilt [1973], chapter 8)

(He forgot FAT.)

OFFICE PARTIES AND SEATING ARRANGEMENTS Whenever we have a flock of guests I handle the seating, and if there is one who seems worthy of study I put her in the chair nearest mine. ("Home to Roost" [1951], chapter 3, in Triple Jeopardy [1952])

Cass R. Abbott rated the red leather chair on two counts. . . . So I put him there. For the others I placed two rows of yellow chairs facing Wolfe's desk. . . . When there is company and one of them is, or is supposed to be, a murderer, the place for him or her is the front row nearest me. . . . (Please Pass the Guilt [1973], chapter 6)

I don't think I have ever seen the office more crowded, unless it was at the meeting of the League of Frightened Men. . . . I had let them choose seats as they pleased, and the three Sperling women — Mom, Madeline, and Gwenn — were on the big yellow couch in the corner, [121]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE which meant that my back was to them when I faced Wolfe. Paul and Connie Emerson were on chairs side by side over by the globe, and Jimmy Sperling was seated near them. Webster Kane and Sperling were closer to Wolfe's desk. District Attorney Archer was in the red leather chair; I had put him there because I thought he rated it. What made it thirteen was the fact that two dicks were present: Ben Dykes, brought by Archer, and Sergeant Purley Stebbins of Manhattan Homicide, . . . Purley, my old friend and even older enemy, sat over by the door. (The Second Confession [1949], chapter 22)

In The League of Frightened Men ([1935], chapter 21), there were fifteen to seat, plus Fritz, Wolfe, me, and our surprise guest, Andrew Hibbard, for a total of nineteen, but that house record was broken in 1951, as you can see by the following: We needed seventeen chairs if they all came, and a phone call from Stebbins around four o'clock informed me that they would. With four from the front room, one from the hall, two from my room, and two from Fritz's room, Fritz and I got them collected and arranged in the office. . . . At ten after nine they had all arrived, but Wolfe was still in the dining room, with the door closed. Leaving the front door and the hall to Saul, I had stayed in the office to supervise the seating. I kept the red leather chair for Cramer and put the lawyers in the front [122]


row. . . . Wellman was off in the corner near the globe. Sergeant Purley Stebbins was against the wall, back of Cramer. For Saul Panzer I had put a chair at the end of my desk. My intention had been to group the ten females at the rear of their employers, and I had so placed the chairs, but they had ideas of their own. . . . For about half a minute I stood talking to Cramer with my back to them, and, when I turned, four of them had moved to the couch. From my chair at my desk I couldn't take in the couch without swiveling or twisting my neck . . . but I decided to skip it. If Wolfe wanted his audience more compact, he could say so. (Murder by the Book [1951], chapter 22) LAWYERS

Phelps Kustin Briggs O'Malley

(4)

SECRETARIES

OUR GROUP

Sue Dondero Our client, Wellman Eleanor Gruber Inspector Cramer Helen Troy Purley Stebbins Blanche Duke Saul Panzer Charlotte Adams Wolfe (plus 5 staff personnel = 10) Me (10) (6)

Twenty wasn't the biggest crowd we ever accommodated, but it was close. The average number of bodies assembled for one of Wolfe's charades — or his wind-up of a case — was fifteen or sixteen, and I usually reported the seating arrangement. On the three previous occasions that Otis Jarrell had been in that office he had had the seat of honor, the red [123]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE leather chair, but this time Saul, following instructions, had kept it for Inspector Cramer, and [Jarrell] was in the front row of the audience with his wife, his son, and his daughter-in-law. Behind them were Lois, Nora Kent, Roger Foote, and Saul Panzer. On the couch . . . were Sally Colt, of Dol Bonner's staff, and Fred Durkin and Orrie Cather. Purley Stebbins' chair was where he always put it himself if we didn't, against the wall an arm's length from Cramer. Actually, for that particular party, the red leather chair was not the seat of honor. The seat of honor was one of the yellow chairs which had been placed at the other end of Wolfe's desk, on his right, and in it was Dol Bonner. (If Death Ever Slept [1957], chapter 17)

That made a total of sixteen, counting Wolfe and me, and that — as I said — was about average. Twenty-seven was the house record. Any more and we would have had to hire a hall. The office is a good-sized room, but there wasn't much unoccupied space left when that gathering was fully assembled. There were twenty-seven of us all told. The biggest assortment of Homicide employees I had ever gazed upon extended from wall to wall in the rear of the six subjects, with four of them filling the couch. Cramer was planted in the red leather chair, with Stebbins on his left and the stenographer was hanging on to the end of my desk. ("The Zero Clue" [1953], chapter 7, in Three Men Out [1954]) [124]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE The interior of that office was never photographed for Town and Country or Architectural Digest, so the only way I can convey to you the size and shape of the room is with word pictures. It was library-big, but it was comfortable. And it was home. Only once did I try making a sketch of a seating arrangement for a published book. The names of the people don't matter, but the seating was typical of a business meeting. . . . They all pronounced their names for Wolfe before they sat — [Urquhart in the red leather chair and] the other five on two rows of yellow chairs facing Wolfe's desk, three in front and two back. (A Family Affair [1975], chapter 9)

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There is only one other office experience I want to mention before this chapter ends. It happened on a Sunday morning, in preparation for one of Wolfe's most elaborate charades. . . . Fritz and I worked like beavers, setting the stage. The idea was — that is, Wolfe's idea — to reproduce as nearly as possible the scene of the crime, and it was a damn silly idea, since you could put seven or eight of that office [a gross exaggeration] into Mrs. Robilotti's drawing room [which was the scene of the crime]. Taking the globe and the couch and the television cabinet and a few other items to the dining room helped a little, but it was still hopeless. . . . To get fourteen chairs we had to bring some down from upstairs, and then it developed later that some of them weren't really necessary. The bar was a table in the far corner [from which the couch had been moved] but it couldn't be up against the wall because there had to be room for Hackett [who tended bar] behind it. One small satisfaction I got was that the red leather chair had been taken to the dining room with the other stuff, and Cramer wouldn't like that a bit. [and he didn't.] (Champagne for One [1958], chapter 15)

It would have been much easier to take the principals, all eighteen of us, back to Mrs. Robilotti's drawing room, but Wolfe absolutely refused to leave the house! Fritz and I had to put all the furniture back again on Monday. Wolfe helped. He carried a yellow couch cushion! You are now in possession of all the documented evidence [126]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE needed to support my drawing of the office on the preceding page. Looking at it again is an experience in nostalgia. There were many things in the office that are indicated only by abbreviations or symbols on the floorplan. To help you get a handle on them, here is a roadmap: YC MD OS TS DS B C

= YELLOW CHAIR. There were eight of them. = MIRROR DOOR. It added class to the closet. = OFFICE SUPPLIES. Paper, carbons, and junk. = TYPEWRITER STAND. I could hide it in the OS. = DICTIONARY STAND. Wolfe used it every day. = WASTE BASKET. Cramer threw his cigars at it and missed. = CUPBOARD. With shelves built around the safe, it was used as storage for big books, mementos, and a hand grenade! And a stack of Bibles. = VASE. On Wolfe's desk for daily display of orchids. Also a wall-bracket vase. = SAFE. It was an old one, but sometimes "old" is better. Shelves were all around and above it. = LAMPS. Wolfe had one on his desk, I had one on mine. = LIGHTS. Turned on by wall switches just inside the door to the hall. Doubled at the entrance to the front room.

Over the couch were hung the Holbein reproductions. Over my desk was a dignified picture of Sherlock Holmes. On the wall behind Wolfe's desk were four pictures and a wall clock, and hanging just to the left of the safe was an engraving of [128]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE Brillat-Savarin. The Peephole is labeled. On the office side was the waterfall picture, on the alcove side a sliding panel. On the wall behind the globe and the table were Gouchard maps. Over my typewriter stand, and extending over the cabinets behind Wolfe's desk, was the four-by-six-foot mirror. For further information take nearest detour to next page. That solid row of cabinets behind Wolfe's desk held encyclopedias in four languages, reference books pertaining to his latest interest, a dictophone and related paraphernalia, some rare first editions that he wanted to protect from light and dust, several bottles of quite choice brandy (sampled by our now departed Charley), and a collapsible stepstool for reaching tomes in high places. The windows were draped from floor to ceiling beneath an elegant valance. Yes, they were yellow. The bookshelves started at the door to the front room — also floor to ceiling — and ended at the door to the hall; then picked up again on the other side of the door for five and a half feet, continuing at the six-foot-eight height above the globe, table, and chair, making a nice reveal for the Gouchard maps. It was in those high shelves over the globe that we put the radio and early black-and-white television sets. When TV went to color, Wolfe had Fritz and me move the globe to the other side of the table and bought a twenty-seven-inch console with remote control. Anything to keep from getting out of his chair. That fuzzy circle you see in the middle of the floorplan symbolizes the handsome central light fixture that Wolfe liked so much. It is still in the house. [129]

I want to devote this chapter to recalling oddities and characteristics of several "family" members because, believe me, they had some. Inspector Cramer was in and out of the house so often that we considered giving him a key (which we never did), but the very fact that we even considered it for two seconds makes him eligible for family membership, if only by default. He was the only man I know who ever drove Wolfe to take Amphojel! Twice, after dinner. ("Cordially Invited to Meet Death" [1942], chapter 6, in Black Orchids [1942]). He fogged up his office — and ours — in the early days with both pipe and cigars (The League of Frightened Men [1935], chapters 12 and 18), but after inhaling himself sick on stogies in 1936, he gave up lighting anything except Wolfe's fuse (The Red Box [1937], chapters 5, 9, 14, and 17). Thereafter, he chewed on them, bit them in two, wadded them up in his fists, threw them at my waste basket, nearly always missed, and some[130]


times picked them up. When he didn't, I did, because they stank. Several times through the years (1940 to 1975) I made a flat statement: Cramer stopped chewing the cigar. He never lit one. ("The Gun with Wings" [1949], chapter 5, in Curtains for Three [1950])

When I wrote that line, Cramer had gone smokeless for almost fourteen years, and I had forgotten that he had ever smoked. You'll have to chalk up that mistake to my carelessness. Another peculiarity: Cramer wore a permanent chip on his shoulder where Wolfe was involved — like a blazing epaulet. The cop at the top of Homicide South could surely have had a bigger room and a bigger desk and better chairs for visitors than the setup on West Twentieth Street, but Cramer liked to stick to things he was used to, including that old felt hat, which was always there on a corner of his desk when it wasn't on his head, although there was a rack only a step away. I sat on the wooden chair at the end of his desk while he finished with a folder he was going through. When he closed it and turned to me, I said, "I bring hot news. We're working on that hit-and-run. Mr. Wolfe thought we should tell you because we said we weren't." He put on an act. He demanded, "What hit-andrun?" [131]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE "On May twenty-sixth, nineteen sixty-seven, a woman named Elinor Denova was crossing Eighty-second Street and —" "Oh, yes . So you're working on it. So Wolfe wants to know something, so he sends you. He can go to hell." (The Father Hunt [1968], chapter 10)

You see h o w it was? All you had to do was mention the magic word (Wolfe) and his truculence gained a couple of pounds. The tactical interplays between Cramer and Wolfe had many variations, from grunts to shouting matches, and even to tantrums. Some of the grunts began like this: The doorbell rang. I got up and stepped to the hall, switched on the stoop light, saw a familiar brawny figure through t h e one-way glass, and turned. "Cramer." "What does he want?" Wolfe growled. That meant let him in. When Inspector Cramer of Homicide South is not to be admitted, with or without reason, Wolfe merely snaps, "No!" When he is to be admitted but is first to be riled, again with or without reason, Wolfe says, "I'm "busy." As for Cramer, he has moods too. When I open the door he may cross the sill and march down the hall without a grunt of greeting, or he may hello me man to man. Twice he has even called me Archie [And Be a Villain [1948] chapter 12], but that was a slip of the tongue. That day he let me take his hat and coat, and when I got to the office he was in the red leather chair near the end of Wolfe's desk, but not [132]


settled back. That chair has a deep seat, and Cramer likes to plant his feet flat on the floor. I have never seen him cross his legs. He told Wolfe this wouldn't take long, he just wanted a little information to fill in, and Wolfe grunted. ("Kill Now, Pay Later" [1961], chapter 1, in Trio for Blunt Instruments [1964])

The shouting matches usually ended up with Cramer bawling, "Nuts!" and stomping out. If he was at bay, he'd stick his neck out with his red face hanging on the end of it and yell, "Balls!" That meant he was going to stay put until he got what he came for. When a tantrum caught up with him, he used language the way DiMaggio did a baseball bat. He once called me "a snippy little bastard" (which shows how high he was; I am neither snippy nor little), and, in the next breath, he called Wolfe "a goddam liar" ("Man Alive" [1947], chapter 5, in Three Doors to Death [1950]). Both Cramer and Wolfe had carefully veneered themselves with a kind of brusque, testy, mutual antipathy. But once in every so often that veneer would crack and their inner fondness for each other would show through — as when Wolfe said: "Look here, Mr. Cramer. It would not have been impossible for me to see this through alone, deliver the murderer and the evidence to you, and flap my wings and crow. But first, I have no ambition to expose you as a zany, since you're not; and second, I need your help." ("The Gun with Wings" [1949], chapter 5, in Curtains for Three [1950])

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THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE Cramer was not to be outdone. He got up out of the red leather chair, stood looking down at Wolfe, and said, "I like you, you know. You know damn well I do." (The Rubber Band [1936], chapter 9)

As many times as he and Wolfe tangled, Cramer always started out on the defensive. His most prominent oddity was a huge load of suspicion. It was part of his character, and he dumped it on Wolfe (or me — or both of us) the minute he discovered we were on a murder case. And he had another oddity: Purley Stebbins.* But as much as I would like to include Purley in the family, I must draw the line. He was Cramer's shadow, at his elbow, at arm's length, nearly always beside or behind him . . . and he was a good cop, but somewhere along the assembly line they had forgotten to tighten a few screws. He rattled a bit. And he was inclined to be pompous, which irritated Wolfe to the vexing point. But Cramer knew how to handle him, and they had a couple of those loose screws in common, which made for small-talk communication when they were driving somewhere to the scene of a crime together. Yes, Cramer was family. The closest members of our professional family were what some of the operatives in the trade called "Wolfe's Three Musketeers." I described them so often that, in retrospect, their dimensions are hazy, larger than life, and probably not as great as I thought they were. But they were damned good. * For a closer look at Stebbins's character, see "Poison a la Carte" (1960), chapters 6 and 7, in Three at Wolfe's Door (1960).

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When Wolfe came down to the office from the plant rooms at eleven o'clock Friday morning, Saul Panzer ($10 an hour and worth double that), Fred Durkin ($8 an hour and worth it), and Orrie Cather ($8 an hour and usually worth it) were on three of the yellow chairs facing me, with notebooks in their hands. They had been there an hour. Saul, wiry and a little undersized all but his ears and nose, could have occupied about any spot in life that appealed to him, but he had settled for free-lance operative years ago because he could work only when he wanted to, make as much money as he needed, be outdoors a lot, and wear his old wool cap from November 1 to April 15. A reversible cap like that, light tan on one side and plaid on the other, and not there at all if you stick it in a pocket, can be a help when you'e tailing. Fred, shorter than me but some broader, was apt to fool you. Just when you decided that it was too bad that some of his muscle power couldn't be traded for brain power, he might get a wedge in where it was hard to see a crack. It was too bad that Orrie knew how goodlooking he was. A mirror can be a handy tool, either your own or one on a wall, but not if you're more interested in checking on your hair than in the subject. (The Father Hunt [1968], chapter 8)

You can guess what the fee would be for those three men today. Back then you could get a plumber for $5 an hour, now a plumber gets $25 an hour, and that's a commercial rate! Here's a brief, individual portrait of them, seen from the [135]


vantage point of those busy years when we all depended on each other (sometimes literally) for our next breath. I suppose to some people Saul Panzer is just a little guy with a big nose who always seems to need a shave, but to others, including Wolfe and me, he's the best freefor-all operative that ever tailed a subject. Wolfe had never been at his place before, but I had, many times over the years, mostly on Saturday nights with three or four others for some friendly and ferocious poker. Inside, Wolfe stood and looked around. It was a big room, lighted with two floor lamps and two table lamps. One wall had windows, another was solid with books, and the other two had pictures and shelves that were cluttered with everything from chunks of minerals to walrus tusks. In the far corner was a grand piano. "A good room," Wolfe said. "Satisfactory. I congratulate you." ("The Next Witness" [1955], chapter 4, in Three Witnesses [1956])

Saul was about five feet seven, weighed close to 145 pounds, had a big nose and flat ears, hair the color of rust but not rusty, and liked good wines and old brandy. Fred Durkin was bigger, about five feet ten, weighed 190 pounds, was bald and burly, and liked Canadian or bourbon. Durkin was all right up to the neck. When I consider how thick he was in most respects I am surprised how [136]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE he could tail. I know bull terriers are dumb, but good tailing means a lot more than just hanging on, and Fred Durkin was good. I asked him once how he did it, and he said, "I just go up to the subject and ask him where he's headed for, and then if I lose him I know where to look." I suppose he knew how funny that was; I don't know, I suspect him. (Fer-de-Lance [1934}, chapter 1)

And then there was Orrie Cather, the handsomest and the most vain of the three. I believe the best way to illustrate his personality is by comparison with the others. One day, Wolfe asked me to collect all of them for a job we were stuck with, and I obliged. I had told them on the phone that Sally Blount would be present, and, when we entered the office and I introduced them to her, it was interesting, as it always is, to see how true they ran to form. Saul Panzer . . . apparently looked casually in her direction only to be polite, but you could safely give a thousand to one that he had every little detail of her on file for good. Fred Durkin . . . looked at her, then away, then back at her. He doesn't know he does that. Ever since the time, years ago, when he fell temporarily for a pretty little trick with ample apples, and his wife caught on, he doesn't trust himself with females under thirty. Orrie Cather, six-feet-flat, 180 pounds, good design from tip to toe, gave her a straight, honest, inquisitive, and acquisitive eye. He was [137]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE born with the attitude toward all attractive women that a fisherman has toward all the trout in a stream, and has never seen any reason to change it. (Gambit [1962], chapter 9)

He was still sure he should have my job and thought it was conceivable that someday he would. He also thought he was twice as attractive to all women under forty, and I guess he was. He could say let's look at the record. (A Family Affair [1975], chapter 7) As a live-in member of Wolfe's professional family I have always had a fairly good opinion of myself. Even when I've made mistakes — and Lord knows I've made some beauties — I haven't collapsed from remorse or gone into a blue funk over them. My ego is not repressed, my psyche does not squirm under any inferiority complex, I have no delusions of grandeur, I'm not inclined to be manic, and I don't depress easily. In fact, I like me, and I wish a lot of my fellow human beings could say the same for themselves because I have learned that if you can't like yourself, it's a thousand to one that you can't like your neighbor, be he or she next door or in Saudi Arabia. Physically, I'm not crazy about all of me; there are a few items where genetic improvement would have been appreciated, but I'm not neurotic about them. Fourteen years ago a young lady by the name of Jill Hardy touched on one, though, that I thought had been long buried, which just goes to show that Freud wasn't totally cuckoo. She sat there in the office, looked at me and said, [138]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE "You look a little like Orrie. The same size." That didn't strike me as an ideal opening for a friendly conversation. I do not look like Orrie. He's handsome and I'm not. My face needs more nose, but I quit worrying about that when I was twelve. (Death of a Doxy [1966], chapter 4)

You see how a little thing like a nose can crop up and generate umbrage? But I can't brood over something I've been following around all these years. Maybe the reason it's small is because of the wear and erosion caused by my lifelong habit of sticking it into other people's business. I don't know. I doubt that anybody but the DMV and the IRS will need any of the following, but here's what I look like statistically: 1. I was born October 23 rd (League of Frightened Men [1953], chapter 12). 2. I was christened Archie, not Archibald ("Cordially Invited to Meet Death" [1942], chapter 3, in Black Orchids [1942]). 3. My mother, whose maiden name was Leslie, says I was born in Canton, Ohio (Too Many Women [1947], chapter 27). 4. My father's name was James Arner Goodwin, and I was the youngest of five children: two brothers, two sisters (Ibid.). 5. I had an Aunt Anna who lived in Chillicothe, Ohio, who could make the most delicious chicken pies with fluffy dumplings (The Final Deduction [1961], chapter 4). 6. Aunt Anna told me that my mother was daffy, and that I was really born in Chillicothe. That's the birthplace I [139]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE gave my draft board ("The Cop Killer" [1951], chapter 1, in Triple Jeopardy [1952]). 7. I started smoking cigarettes in 1934 (The League of Frightened Men [1935], chapter 10). I quit in 1938 when I met Lily Rowan, a fact verified in The Doorbell Rang ([1965], chapter 4). 8. I was stabbed once — a pretty good slash. It took twenty-two stitches to close me up (The Final Deduction [1961], chapter 5). 9. I was nicked in the shoulder by a poorly aimed bullet that was intended to kill me in 1950. ("Disguise for Murder" [1950], chapter 9, in Curtains for Three [1950]). 10. Both wounds were repaired by Edwin A. Vollmer, M.D. (Gambit [1962], chapter 11). 11. My mother came to New York occasionally, and dined with Wolfe and me a couple of times. Wolfe liked her; treated her like family (The Final Deduction [1961], chapter 10).* 12. When Wolfe disappeared in 1950, I opened my own office at 1019 Madison Avenue. I decided I could make a living without Wolfe . . . and did so (In the Best Families [1950], chapter 10). 13. I have always loved to dance — and I still do. (FACT). The highest praise one ever received from Nero Wolfe was offered in two words: "Very satisfactory." That phrase was * Being the youngest of five, I was not yet ten years old when my father died. That wound was reopened with a vengeance when my mother remarried. I was thirteen then, and I spent the rest of my teens feeling hurt by what 1 then considered Mom's desertion of Dad's memory. I was still sore about it and carrying that adolescent scar when I wrote Fer-de-Lance in 1934, where I reported that my parents "both died when I was a kid." What can I say? I've apologized to Mom ever since. She was very understanding and forgave me. I hope you'll do the same.

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synonymous with being knighted, or decorated for valor, and a mere "satisfactory" was an accolade of great value. Once in a very long while he would go overboard with Fritz, or Theodore, or someone who had distinguished himself beyond the ordinary heroics of living, and on top of his "very satisfactory" would come a gift. I have two prize possessions: the first is a phrase, the second a tangible memento. "Intelligence guided by experience." He said I had it and I should use it (The Final Deduction [1961], chapter 10). The memento was given to me back in 1935. It was brown, ostrich skin, and was tooled in gold all over the outside. On one side the tooling was fine lines about half an inch apart, with flowers stemming out from them; the flowers were orchids; the workmanship was so good that you could tell Wolfe had given the guy a cattleya to work from. The other side was covered with Colt automatics, fifty-two perfect little gold pistols all aiming at the center. Inside was stamped in gold: A.G. from N . W . Wolfe had given it to me on October 23, at the dinner table, and I didn't even know he knew when my birthday was. I carried my police and fire cards in it, and my operator's license. I might have traded it for New York City if you had thrown in a couple of good suburbs. (The League of Frightened Men [1935], chapter 12)

I still have the leather case, preserved and intact though somewhat worn, a treasure to remind me that I was once [141]


twenty-five years of age and a member of the family's inner circle. There were honorary members in Wolfe's professional family, good friends who had earned his esteem and gratitude through years of association. Marko Vukcic held the number one spot; second place was shared by our attorney, Nathaniel Parker, and Doc Vollmer. I can give you a for-instance about Doc's unique value. Once, when Wolfe and I were about to be descended upon by Cramer and/or Stebbins with an arrest warrant, we had to get out of the house fast, before they arrived. As we descended the stoop I asked, "The car?" and he said no, and at the bottom he turned right, toward Ninth Avenue. But we didn't reach Ninth Avenue. Halfway there he turned right and started up a stoop of a brownstone the same size and color and age as his, but it had a vestibule. He had used his vestibule to enlarge the hall years ago. He pushed the button, and in a moment the door was opened by a dark-haired woman with fine frontage to whom we had sent orchids now and then for the past ten years. She was a little startled at the sight of us. "Why, Mr. Wolfe . . . Mr. Goodwin . . . come in. You want to see the doctor?" We entered, and she closed the door. "Not professionally," Wolfe said. "And briefly. Here will do." "Of course. Certainly." She was flustered. I had been there off and on, but Wolfe hadn't; Doc Vollmer had come to him when required. She went down the hall [142]


and opened the door and disappeared, and in a minute Vollmer came — a sad-looking little guy with lots of forehead and not much jaw. He had once taken twentytwo stitches in my side where a character with a knife had gone wide enough but not deep enough. He approached. "Well, well! Come in, come in!" "We have come to impose on you, Doctor," Wolfe said. "We need a room to sit in the rest of today and beds for tonight. We need enough food to sustain us until tomorrow. Can you oblige us?" Vollmer wasn't startled; he was merely stunned. "Why — of course — you mean for you? You and Archie?" "Yes. We expected a troublesome visitor, and we fled. By tomorrow he will be less troublesome. We want seclusion until then. If it would inconvenience you beyond tolerance . . . " "No, of course not." He smiled. "I'm honored. I'm flattered. I'm afraid the food won't be quite . . . I have no Fritz. Will you need a phone in the room?" "No, just the room." (The Final Deduction [1961], chapter 5)

With friends like that you don't need a guardian angel. Another character who earned membership in the honorary department was Lon Cohen. He was our inside man on the Gazette, and he always kept his ears cocked for any leaks from Homicide, or the DA's office; frequently I could barter for information Wolfe or I needed by promising him an exclusive on our current case, or actually handing him a scoop. Sometimes I could do it with a square meal: [143]


It was an afternoon paper and Lon Cohen's line was usually busy from 10 A.M. to 4:20 P.M., but I finally got him. I told him I wanted thirty seconds and he said I could have five. "Then," I said, "I won't tell you about the steer that grew the Chateaubriands that Felix is saving for us. Can you meet me at Rusterman's at a quarter past six?" "I can if I have to. Bringing what?" "Just your tongue. And of course plenty of lettuce for later." The later meant the poker game at Saul Panzer's apartment which started at eight o'clock. . . . Just looking at Lon you would never guess, from his neat little face and his slick black hair, how sharp he is. But people who know him know, including the publisher of the Gazette, which is why he has a room to himself two doors down the hall from the publisher's room. (Please Pass the Guilt [1973], chapter 3)

That particular time he gave me an earful. Incidentally, those poker games were movable, like Hemingway's feast. If we couldn't get together on Saturday night, we shifted to Wednesday, and sometimes to Thursday. Funny thing, Lon was a consistent winner. The only other honorary member of Wolfe's professional family (who became a bona fide member by valor), and is now a member-by-marriage, was Lily Rowan. There is a lot to say about her; you'll find it in chapter 11.

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A N D now we come to the master of the house, the head of the family, the stubborn cerebral mountain of towering selfesteem who would have done nothing but sit on his big fat chair, read books, consume beer, count the bottle caps, and flesh himself on Fritz's gourmet foods had it not been for the fact that he had to earn a living some of the time so he could do all of those things most of the time. It should be apparent, by now, that it was my job to pry him loose from inertial stasis and make him get a move on. Fritz put a handle on the situation one day at breakfast, when I told him: " . . . The woman that came yesterday gave us a job, and it's already done. All over. Enough to pay your salary and mine for months." "Fort bien." He spooned batter on the griddle. "You did it last night?" [145]


"No. He did it sitting down." "Yes? But he would do nothing without you to piquer." "How do you spell that?" He spelled it. I said, "I'll look it up. . . . " (The Final Deduction [1961], chapter 3)

Wolfe really hadn't done a damned thing "yesterday" but accept a retainer often thousand dollars from Mrs. Vail, then wangle an additional (paid-in-advance!) fee of fifty thousand out of her for services he hoped to render in locating and rescuing her kidnapped husband. What he did next was so energetic that it earned us the whole sixty thousand: he steepled his fingers and dictated an advertisement, to be run in the newspapers and which I took down verbatim, and then went back to reading his book. Now Vail had been released unharmed, the ransom paid, but under circumstances that demanded Wolfe's full investigative faculties. And there he was, still up in his room, giving me a "No" over the house phone in the kitchen, after which — He hung up. He would be two minutes late getting to the plant rooms on the roof. As Fritz brought my second cake and pair of sausages I said, "For a bent nickel I'd go up and peekay him." He patted my shoulder and said, "Now, Archie. If you should, you will. If you shouldn't, you won't." I buttered the cake. "I think that's a compliment. It's tricky. I'll study it." (Ibid.) [146]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE It seemed pretty damn silly, being hired in connection with something as gaudy as the kidnapping of Jimmy Vail, merely to put an ad in the paper and collect a fee and then call it a day. (Ibid.)

1 called him a few names that day, and I'm not given to haphazard profanity. Come to think of it, neither is Wolfe. I can recall only two instances when he actually swore, and they were thirty years apart. A crying woman was the catalyst for the first episode. It started with her shoulders going up and down in a minor convulsion, and then her head went forward and her hands went up to cover her face, and the regulation sounds began to come. "Good God," Wolfe muttered in a tone of horror, and got to his feet and went. ("Before I Die" [1947], chapter 11, in Trouble in Triplicate [1949]) What he used in place of profanity was "language." He made up expletives for himself like "Great hounds and Cerberus!" (The Rubber Band [1936], chapter 5), and he "confounded" everything and everyone who thwarted him, or irritated him (mostly me), but actual profanity? Only once more: [I had written up a verbatim report of a conversation 1 had had with one Benjamin Igoe.] I swiveled to get it [147]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE from my desk, swiveled again, and got up and handed it to him. Three pages. He read the last page twice, looked at me with his eyes half shut, and said, "By God." I stared at him. I may have gaped. He never says by god, and he said it with a capital G. (A Family Affair [1975], chapter 6) Wolfe inserted strange words into his speech from time to time, and I wore a path in the rug from my desk to the dictionary before I caught on that most of the polysyllables he put into play were merely substitutes for simpler words. I ask you, who uses pretermit, metonymy, abditory, plerophory, and thaumaturgy in everyday usage (outside of Bill Buckley, Jr.)? Certainly not me. Back in 1961 he ended an argument with me by using the word "subdolous." As I went to the front I was making a mental note not to look up "subdolous." That trick of his, closing an argument by using a word he knew damn well I had never heard, was probably subdolous. (The Final Deduction [1961], chapter 5)

So I was crafty, cunning and artful, was I? Look who taught me! I didn't find the word in the college dictionary, and it wasn't in Roget's International Thesaurus. I finally went to the' public library and found it in the third edition of Webster's New International Dictionary, Unabridged, published by the G. & C. Merriam Company of Springfield, Massachu[148]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE setts, the very edition he had burned up in the front-room fireplace (Gambit [1962], chapter 1)! Another time he stumped me was in a conversation with Inspector Cramer, who wanted to know what was going on in Wolfe's mind. (A fat chance.) When I went in, Wolfe was saying, " . . . I'm not going to tell you what I intend to do. Actually I don't intend to do anything. I'm going to loaf, drift, for the first time in ten days. Read books, drink beer, discuss food with Fritz, logomachize with Archie. Perhaps chat with you if you have occasion to drop in. I'm loose, Mr. Cramer. I'm at peace." "Like hell you are. Your licenses have been suspended." (A Family Affair [1975], chapter 18) It was that word "logomachize" that got my goat. Yes, I looked it up, and it means "strife or contention in words only." I decided to get even. So, one day after an argument, I said, "Okay, if that's the way you feel about it, I'll go up to my room and try seppuku!" He let me get almost to the door before he said, "The ancient Japanese word for hara-kiri. Good luck." I didn't turn around, just walked on out. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing how sore I was. Wolfe sometimes expressed views about politics, mostly local stuff, but there was one political figure about whom he [149]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE was very articulate. Knowing how easily some people are offended, I came close to not reporting it. ". . . I would have given all my orchids — well, most of them — to have an effective hand in the disclosure of the malfeasance of Richard Nixon. I once dictated to him a letter offering my services to Mr. Jaworski, and [Archie] typed it, but it wasn't sent. I tore it up." . . . "Well, Mr. Nixon is now out, no longer in command of our ship of state, no longer the voice of authority to us and of America to the world, but the record is by no means complete. History will dig at it for a century. . . . " (A Family Affair [1975], chapter 7)

If you are interested in Wolfe's views on women, you can get an eyeful in the first chapter of A Right to Die. But then, he always expressed his views of women, by his attitude, every time he met one. It's a good thing he's in Alexandria, now that the E.R.A. has become such a noisy issue. His views, written to us in a recent letter, about enforced integration via the busing of schoolchildren for three hours a day, are quotable. Mixing one minority with another group by busing both of them forty miles across a busy city to each other's schools is as indefensible as forcing residents of any locality to exchange abodes with a like number from another locality, say from Harlem to Central Park West. Integration is an evolutionary process, it will never be achieved by any shotgun tactics.

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THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE At $85,000 or more per bus, the taxpayers' money is being squandered. Those dollars should be used to pay teachers not adequately, but well, to renew facilities, elevate the quality of educational methods, and to discipline the study habits of students, many of whom come out of high school with reading-and-writing difficulties. If you add to all the air pollution (caused by such a staggering plethora of vehicles) the gigantean lure such sums of money always create among corrupt men and agencies, waiting and willing to participate in the rape of the public, the inevitable result is a fracture not only of the environment but of the educational system as we know it. Forced integration is immoral and preternatural, and I deplore it.

I wrote back that he should come home and put some of his views to practical use. All critical comments of integration and busing aside, I think if school buses were painted his shade of yellow, he would approve. His addiction to yellow was extreme. I opened the door and entered [his bedroom] and flipped the light switch. I don't know why he looks bigger in those yellow pajamas than in clothes. Not fatter, just bigger. He had pushed back the yellow electric blanket and black sheet and was sitting up. (A Family Affair [1975], chapter 1) I reported somewhere that Wolfe always used the elevator. I renege. He once went to bed for two and a half days because the house was under siege and he didn't want to be bothered. He and Doc Vollmer contrived a fake nervous breakdown, and it worked. [151]


I was in the kitchen helping Fritz sharpen knives, I suppose on the principle that in times of crisis we instinctively seek the companionship of fellow creatures, when the bell rang and I went to the front door, fingered the curtain aside for a peek, and saw Breslow. I opened the door a crack and barked through at him: "No admittance this is a house of mourning beat it!" I banged the door and started back to the kitchen, but didn't make it. Passing the foot of the stairs I became aware of sound and movement. . . . Wolfe, covered with nothing but the eight yards of yellow silk it took to make him a suit of pajamas, was descending. I goggled at him. If nothing else, it was unprecedented for him to move vertically except with the elevator. (The Silent Speaker [1946], chapter 33)

In 1978, we received a strange letter from Wolfe. He had obtained a copy of all the daily papers (he still keeps in touch with events going on in New York, Chicago, etc.) and an article in the Los Angeles Times had turned him livid. After the usual salutory comments and general news, he penned a statement, the whole of which Lily and I consider commendable and forthright. Since it is the only letter he has written in the last few years of any length and important subject matter, we think you should see it. I'll skip the personal preamble and get right to the nitty-gritty. The English language has lost a beautifully descriptive noun/ adjective. It has been ripped away by a noisy element of our human family into whose genes has been sown the seed of potential racial

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THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE suicide. The noun is "gaiety" — the adjective is "gay" — and both have been stripped of their beauty to become the sole property OF homosexuals, BY homosexuals and F O R homosexuals.

E. H. Chapin wrote: Gaiety is often the reckless ripple over depths of despair. And no truer words were ever written TO homosexuals. They should have looked at that epigram long and carefully before selecting "gay" as the escutcheon for their culture, because the tragic truth is that "there is no depth of despair like that of an aging fag." Those words were spoken by a homosexual just two months before he killed himself. He was fifty-eight . . . and he was alone. He was extraordinarily talented, a gifted musician who had enjoyed a prosperous and successful career, a true intellectual who loved fine painting and good literature, a master of charm and social grace who, suddenly deserted by his lover, and too old to attract another, became, in utter despair, a suicide. He once told me that the homosexual love-marriage arrangement {his words) "is a constant, predatory cock fight. Fidelity has little meaning, and jealousy is a scorching blaze barely concealed beneath the surface of the male-to-male or female-to-female relationship." Then he added, "Each partner lives in a suppressed agony of suspicion, imagining or suspecting that the other is on the lookout for a new connection in case this one falls apart." And these are the people who want to be called gay? Webster defines the word in the following degrees: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Joyous and lively; merry, happy, lighthearted. Bright, brilliant (as gay colors) Given to social life and pleasure (a gay life) W a n t o n ; licentious (as a gay old dog) (slang) homosexual. — SYN. see lively.

So there it is! Already the pejorative definition has crept into the dictionary (today no longer slang) and it has swallowed up all other connotations. It is now the appellation of the condition!

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THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE Even for the most dignified and respectable of homosexuals, what could be less gay than possessing the physique of a man, but the psychic response of a woman? And vice versa? And what a revulsion these people of dignity must bear to witness the shocking public declamations of the overt vulgarians whose displays are so bold, egregious, aggressive, and inflammatory ? They congregate in restricted spas and night clubs, and wear their concupiscence and promiscuity as merit badges. In their ingrown, cruising subculture, disease is inescapable, despair is as certain as the morning after, and selfdestruction is the remedy of choice. And these are the people we are asked to call "GAY?" (!) In the Los Angeles Times of Sunday, September 1st, there was an extensive article credited to a Doug Smith with the unlikely caption: "VENTURA BLVD. — WHERE THE STRAIGHT AND GAY FOLK MEET." It was a malodorous column. In the first place, "gay" and "straight" folk meet everywhere: in office buildings, movie theaters, street cars, Rome, The Bronx, and Pacific Palisades, so why single out Ventura Boulevard as the definitive locale? In the second place, Mr. Smith is rude. He sneered at both sides, and he used the word "gay" seventy-nine times, frequently twice in the same short sentence. I make no assessment of the alleged talent or mental equipment of Mr. Doug except to comment, in passing, that he is in flagrant contempt of the name SMITH. Smith denotes worksmanship of a

high order: Silversmith, Clocksmith, Gunsmith, Jack Smith, etc., and Doug Smith reveals an enormous paucity in the practice of the writing craft. That the Los Angeles Times should give him that amount of space for the evacuation of his logorrhea is undoubtedly

a sign of The Times! And why this sudden brouhaha, anyway? The homosexual situation has been with us since before written history. It is no new thing. It is louder, that's all, and it has taken to the streets as though in celebration of some ineffable discovery. It is militant; it

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THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE yells at the world. It wants to be equal. Equal to what? There is no equivalence! These loud voices shout for equal rights, but the rights they want are expected to be more "equal" than anybody else's rights. They demand liberation, but no human being of whatever sex is ever liberated from a fundamental moral obligation to the society in which he or she or it lives. They beg not to be arrested for soliciting and pandering, but "Oh please, officer, arrest that man. He struck me when I fondled his fly." Homosexuality is a private affair. It is being turned, by a few, into a public farce, and publicity is the imitation. Press and television coverage becomes so attractive to such a vociferous element that even the cheap penalty for murder is not too high a price to pay for the exciting and often indecent exposure provided by the tube. "Look, Pa, I'm on television! My picture's on Time magazine. All I had to do was kill Ma!" All three genders have a job of street cleaning to do. We should be at it while there is still a street. The responsible, self-governing homosexuals — and there are thousands quietly functioning without shame or insult in the world's citizenry — must group together to discipline that segment of their kind which has now become so offensively exhibitionistic and repugnantly defiant. Our heterosexual judicial and law enforcement systems must collaborate to reduce the felon and the psychotic to a complete state of anonymity, and to restore swift punishment to fit every crime. (Manson and Sirhan Ditto are actually in line for parole!) The hermaphroditic Media must cease exposing to public view — and to the concomitant fortune and fame which follows it — the infamous, the notorious, the mass murderer, and the violence of the publicitY-hungry mob. And what of the legal profession, which has no gender at all? It must be self-policed to exterminate its parasites!

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THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE I, personally, would ask for one more thing. You know my love for words, Archie, as well as Lily does, and I would like to see the word "gay" restored, unsoiled, to the English language. I would like returned to me the privilege of feeling gay, joining a gay party, enjoying gay colors, singing gay songs {if I could sing), and offering gay greetings at gay seasons to gay friends without eliciting the leers and lewd comments of my peers, or the smirks and winks of parading queens, bull-dykes, faggots, lesbians, fairies and old fruits! (All unloved words.) Honest homosexuals don't like the word "gay" anyway. I wish there was some way for them to give it back to me. But no, it is already too late. After rereading the above, I conclude that you are both bearing the brunt of Marko's absence. It was ordinarily my custom to sound off to him with my pet aversions and philosophical differences with the world's condition. He was a brother of like philosophy . . . a tolerant and understanding man. Thank you for standing in his place. Gratefully, and with continued affection. . . . N.

W.

P.S. As you may have surmised, I am working for peace, in this country and in others nearby; wish me well. Anwar Sadat is a man beyond measure.

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Rowan came into my life (and Wolfe's) in 1938 by way of a pratfall — mine, not hers or his. We might never have met had it not been for a blowout, a tree, and a very indignant prize bull. The blowout came first, then the tree, which smashed up the front end of the car, followed by a walk through a pasture toward a farmhouse to get to a phone, then the bull! I left Wolfe standing on a boulder in the middle of the pasture and beat the beef to the fence, and there were three witnesses to the crash landing I made on the other side. LILY

I sat up and panted and heard a voice above me: "Beautiful! I wouldn't have missed that for anything." I looked up and saw two girls, one in a white dress and red jacket, the other in a yellow shirt and slacks. I snarled at them, "Shall I do it again?" (Some Buried Caesar [1939], chapter 1)

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THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE By a lot of maneuvering, and with the help of a guy with a gun who was guarding that pasture and the bull, we managed to get Wolfe safely outside the fence in one large piece, but when I saw he was going to be childish and blame the whole thing on me — I put in brusquely: "Could I use a telephone?" . . . "I'll show you the phone." It was a voice behind me, and I turned. The girl in yellow slacks was there close. I realized with surprise that her head came clear to my chin or above, and she was blonde but not at all faded, and her dark blue eyes were not quite open, and one corner of her lips was up with her smile. "Come on, Escamillo," she said, "I'll show you the phone." I told her, "Much obliged," and started off with her. She brushed against me as we walked and said, "I'm Lily Rowan." "Nice name." I grinned down at her. "I'm Escamillo Goodwin." (Ibid.) That was the beginning. She got to be a habit with me, and very soon I decided that it was one I never wanted to break. There are plenty of reasons why she should be included in this book about Wolfe's brownstone house, but I'll cite only three. First, she was the only female Wolfe ever truly trusted, even with his life. Second, she was intellectually, physically, [158]


financially, morally, and politically the most admirable woman any of us in that house had known, and third, the most fatuous prevarication I ever put into print concerned her ranch out in Montana (where both Wolfe and I had been guests), and this confession/apologia wouldn't be doing an honest job unless I expunge the lie and set the record straight. And on the way, you'll get a glimpse of Lily's personality. I remember walking to her place in Manhattan when it was twenty above, and no taxis. At every corner a snowy blast bent me nearly double. I had no choice but to grit my teeth and walk. When I finally made it, shook the snow off of my coat and hat under the canopy and in the lobby, took the elevator and left it at the top and pushed the button, and Lily opened the door, I said, "The nearest bed." She raised a brow, a trick I taught her. "Try next door," she said. She let me by and shut the door. "You didn't walk!" "Sure. You could call it walking." I put my hat and coat in the closet. "If they walked up Everest, I walked here." We linked arms and entered the living room, with its 19-by-34 Kashan rug, a garden pattern in seven colors,* its Renoir and Manet and Cezanne, its off-white piano, and its glass doors to the terrace, where the wind was giving the snow a big play. When we sat she poked her

* Costing $14,000 ("The Rodeo Murder" [1960], chapter 1, in Three at Wolfe's Door [1960]).

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THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE feet out, the shins parallel, and muttered, "Antelope legs." "In the first place," I said, "that was many years ago. In the second place, what I said was that you looked like an antelope in a herd of Guernseys. In a crowd you still do. . . ." (A Right to Die [1964], chapter 2)

. . . Lily Rowan's penthouse . . . was on the roof of a ten-story building on 63rd Street between Madison and Park Avenues, Manhattan. . . . Nero Wolfe was there, entering from the terrace. Somehow he always looks bigger away from home, I suppose because my eyes are so used to fitting his dimensions into the interiors of the old brownstone on West 35th. There he was, a mountain coming at us. . . . What had brought him was the grouse. When, two years back, I had returned from a month's visit to Lily Rowan on a ranch she had bought in Montana, . . . the only detail of my trip that had really interested Wolfe was one of the meals I described. At that time of year, late August, the young blue grouse are around ten weeks old and their main item of diet has been mountain huckleberries, and I had told Wolfe they were tastier than any bird Fritz had ever cooked, even quail or woodcock. Of course, since they're protected by law, they can cost up to five dollars a bite if you get caught. Lily Rowan doesn't treat laws as her father did while he was piling up the seventeen million dollars he left her, but she can take them or leave them. So when she [160]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE learned that Harvey Greve was coming to New York for the rodeo, and she decided to throw a party for some of the cast, and she thought it would be nice to feed them young blue grouse, the law was merely a hurdle to hop over. ("The Rodeo Murder" [1960], chapter 1, in Three at Wolfe's Door [1960])

Lily wasn't an outlaw; she merely bent the law to suit a whim, and Wolfe liked that. He did it all the time. Now we come to a list of fraudulent statements I wrote about Lily's ranch. I'll quote the fictional reference first and follow it with a correction. The italics are mine, as of today, and point up the names and places I cheated on: [I had written a letter to Wolfe.] It was typed on an Underwood on a table in a corner of the big room in Lily Rowan's cabin in a corner of her ranch, and it was in the airmail envelope I poked through the slot in the post office in Timberburg, the county seat, that Saturday morning — on a letterhead that had Bar JR Ranch, Lame Horse, Montana in big type across the top. (Death of a Dude [1969], chapter 1)

There are no towns in Montana named Timberburg or Lame Horse. The real names are Big Timber and McLeod, and they're both on the map. Monroe County was pretty worked up about the murder of Philip Brodell. (Ibid.) [161]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE It was Sweet Grass County. Of the fifty-three counties in Montana there is none named Monroe. The population of Timberburg was only 7463, but it was the biggest batch between Helena and Great Falls, and its customers covered a lot of territory — from the Fishtail River, where the hills graduated into mountains, east to where the range got so flat you could see a coyote two miles off. (Ibid.) All population figures are deliberately misquoted. Big Timber, and the ranch, are not between Helena and Great Falls. There is a town called Fishtail in Montana but no river by that name. From [Lame Horse] it was 2.8 miles to the turnoff to Lily's ranch, and another 300 yards to the turnoff to her cabin. In that three miles you climbed nearly 2000 feet. To get to the ranch buildings you crossed a bridge over Berry Creek, but from there the creek took a swing to make a big loop, and the cabin was in the loop only a few hundred yards inside the ranch boundary. . . . and downstream is Beaver meadow. . . . (Ibid.) The figures above are fairly accurate, but there is no Berry Creek in that area. The reason I wrote all those misdirections was to keep Lily's Montana retreat incognito. But now it can be told, because I'm here with her, all respectable and legal, and if you want [162]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE to come visit us here are the true directions. Just unfold your auto-club map of the State of Montana and latch on. Eighty-two miles west of Billings, and ninety-five miles east of Butte, on Highway 10, there's a town with an airport named Big Timber. It is in Sweet Grass County about seventeen miles southeast of the Crazy Mountains. If you leave Highway 10 at Big Timber and follow 298, going southwest, in sixteen miles you come to a wide spot in the road called McLeod (pronounced like cloud). Eight miles further on, 298 turns right, but you keep going straight ahead on the turnoff to Mt. Douglas for 2.8 miles and you'll come to the Bar-JR Ranch gate on your left. Drive on through, and in 300 yards you'll cross the bridge over Little Misty Creek. It's one of a half-dozen tiny tributaries feeding the Stillwater River that joins the Yellowstone at Columbus. Little Misty does make a loop around the ranch house, and the flatland downstream is really called Beaver Meadow. The cabin is logs of course, and is all on one level. Crossing a stone-paved terrace with a roof, you enter a room 34 by 52, with a 10-foot fireplace at the rear, and for living that's it. For privacy or sleeping, there are two doors at the right, one to Lily's room and the other to a guest room. A door at the left leads to a long hall, and when you take it, first comes a big kitchen, then Mimi's room, then a big storeroom, and then three guest rooms. There are six baths, complete with tubs and showers. A very nice little cabin. Except for the beds, the furniture you sit on is nearly all wicker. The rugs in all rooms are genuine bayetas. There is just one picture in view any[163]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE where, a framed photograph of Lily's father and mother on the piano — one of the few things she carts back and forth from New York. (Ibid.) I tend to ramble on about Lily — her looks, brains, her dwelling places, etc. — but there's more to her than just places and parts: she glows. I remember telephoning her one day in New York, letting eight rings go by (par for that number) and hearing her voice: "Hello?" She always makes it a question. "Hello. The top of the afternoon to you." "Well. I haven't rung your number even once, so you owe me a pat on the head or a pat where you think it would do the most good. Are you alive and well? Are you at home?" "I'm alive. I'm also ten short blocks from you. Only a ten-minute walk if you feel like company." "You are not company. As you know, we are still trying to decide what each other is. I speak English. Lunch is nearly ready. Cross on the green." . . . We usually don't kiss for a greeting, but that time she put her hands on my arms and offered, and I accepted. More, I returned the compliment. (A Family Affair [1975], chapter 6) Wolfe was aware, of course, that I was seeing Lily on a regular basis, but he thought she was just another crush in my life. His estimation of my charm and prowess with the fair sex was vastly overblown — well, maybe not vastly. But [164]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE then Lily performed a service for us in such a superb fashion that he did a complete flip-flop in her direction. She got into the case when Wolfe (who now adores her) turned to me one day and, with some irritation, said: " . . . We need a woman. You know all kinds." "Not all kinds," I objected. "I do draw the line. What kind do we need?" "Fairly young, attractive, a little wanton in appearance, utterly devoted to you and utterly trustworthy, and not a fool." "My God, if I knew where to find one like that I'd have been married long ago. Also I would be bragging —" "Archie," he snapped. "If after all your promiscuous philandering you can't produce a woman to those specifications, I've misjudged you. . . . " "There's one. . . . I could ask her." "What's her name?" "You know, Lily Rowan." He made a face. "She is rich, intemperate, and notorious." "Nuts. She is well-heeled and playful. You remember the time she helped out with an upstate murderer. I have no further suggestions. Do I phone her?" "Yes." (In the Best Families [1950], chapter 8)

That was Lily: fairly young, attractive, a little wanton in appearance, utterly devoted to me and utterly trustworthy, [165]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE and not a fool. She still is all of those things except for the youth department. People do mature! But she has done it so gracefully, and is still beautiful and rich and playful. But enough. I think I have accomplished what I set out to do: clarify, retract, confess, and amend the discrepancies in the seventy cases of Nero Wolfe, and accurately to illuminate the old brownstone house for posterity (before they tear it down). Even if I've missed something (or things) here or there — that's it. Lily, looking over my shoulder, just said, "Not quite. While you're in a confessional mood, you should add this list of sins. Their titles represent case histories you started to write about Nero, and then put aside. I want it known that the first-draft, musty old manuscripts do exist, and that I have them on hold in the deep freeze. Agreed?" Agreed. The list is appended, and if Wolfe doesn't return from Egypt pretty soon (and if Nicholas Meyer or Loren D. Estleman don't beat me to it) I just may write up one of those titles myself. Now, with a serious closing thought, I wish once more to pay homage and tribute to John McAleer. Between the covers of his biography he has caught and imprisoned the epochal years in the life span of Rex Stout, his forebears, his family, and the creations of his agile mind. Not many achieve immortality in this world, but McAleer has performed what Wolfe would call a thaumaturgical masterpiece. Rex, and Wolfe, and all the residents of the old brownstone house will go on living forever. . . . . . . and I am endlessly grateful. AG [166]

CASES MENTIONED BY ARCHIE GOODWIN (Incomplete and unpublished) 1.

A Better Bargain

2.

A Smaller Fry

3.

4.

5.

Fer-de-Lance Chapter 3 (1934) (". . . the only girl I had ever been really soft on had found another bargain she liked better. That was how I happened to meet Wolfe. . . .")

Fer-de-Lance Chapters 14 and 16 (1934) Prisoner's Base Chapters 2 and 3 (1952) (". . . the day little Tommie Williamson had been restored to his parents in Wolfe's office. . . .") The Fashalt Case "Door to Death" Chapter 4 (1948) (in Three Doors to Death [1950]) The Fairmount Fer-de Lance Chapter 1 Bank Case (1934) The Red Box Chapter 9 (1937) The League of Chapter 13 Frightened Men (1935) The Lamb"Immune to Chapter 1 McCullough Job Murder" (1955) (in Three for the Chair [1957])

[167]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE 6. Emeralds Graves

for

7.

The Spooner Affair

8.

The Hayfever Case

9.

The Crampton Gore Case

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

Fer-de-Lance (1934)

Chapter 2

Plot It Yourself (1959)

Chapter 1

The League of Frightened Men (1935) Some Buried Caesar (1939)

Chapter 4

Chapter 21

The Whittemore Bonds

The League of Chapter 9 Frightened Men (1935) The Wright The League of Chapter 14 Blackmail Frightened Men (1935) One for the File In the Best Families Chapter 2 (1950) (". . . a case I will not identify by name because it was never allowed to get within a mile of a newspaper or a microphone.") The Chisholm "This Won't Kill Chapter 1 Debt You" (1952) (in Three Men Out [1954]) The McIntyre A Right to Die Chapter 7 Scrape (1964)

15.

The Sopko Hole

Please Pass the Guilt (1973)

Chapter 10

16.

A Gang of Fur

Chapter 2

17.

The Nauheim Business

Murder by the Book (1951) Cordially Invited to Meet Death (1942)

18.

The ChestertonBest Case

The Silent Speaker (1946)

Chapter 24

19.

The Boeddiker Case

The Silent Speaker (1946)

Chapter 29

[168]

Chapter 1

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE 20.

The Pitcairn Affair

21.

The Poison Pen Case

22.

The Longren Case

23. Brigham Forgery Case

The Second Confession (1949) In

Chapter 10

the Best Families (1950)

Chapter 10

Murder by the Book (1951) "Counterfeit for Murder" (1961) (in Homicide Trinity [1962])

Chapter 19

Champagne for One (1958)

Chapter 2

Chapter 1

24.

Robilotti Jewel Theft

25.

The Goldsmith Fer-de-Lance Chapter 5 Case (1934) ("I looked back at him and said, 'Look here, Mr. Anderson. Ypu said you didn't remember me. I remember you. You haven't forgotten the Goldsmith case five years ago. It wouldn't have hurt you a bit to let people know what Wolfe handed you on that.'")

26.

Diplomacy Club Fer-de-Lance Chapter 5 Business (1934) ("Wolfe . . . was elegant with women. . . . it was hard to see how that enormous lump of flesh and folds could ever be called elegant, but he certainly was. Even when he was bullying one of them, like the time he sweated the Diplomacy Club business out of Nyura Pronn.")

27.

The Pine Street Fer-de-Lance Chapter 6 Case (1934) ("I had never really understood Wolfe's relapses. Sometimes it seemed plain that it was just ordinary discouragement and funk, like the time the taxi driver ran out on us in the Pine Street case, but other times there was no accounting for it at all.")

[169]


WORDS AND EPIGRAMS OF NERO WOLFE I can furnish chapter and verse for every one of these: casuistry rodomontade insousiance contumacy apodictical yclept dolichocephalic brachycephalic

gibbosity plerophory consilience gaspodar assiduity obreptitious temerarious dysgenic

adventitious recondite cadaveric lamia analeptic cui bono? subreption subdolous

Wolfe's finger was a minatory wand. A guest is a jewel on the cushion of hospitality. Impetuosity is a virtue only when delay is dangerous. A modern satyr is part man, part pig, and part jackass. All music is a vestige of barbarism. All you need to know about any human society is what they eat. If you know what they eat you can deduce everything else — culture, philosophy, morals, everything. Every man alive today is half idiot and half hero. Only heroes could survive the maelstrom [of traffic], and only idiots would want to. What the tongue has promised the body must submit to. A hole in the ice offers peril only to those who go skating. In a world of cause and effect, all coincidences are suspect. England's colonizing genius was due to her repulsive climate, on account of which Britons with any sense and will power invariably decided to go somewhere else. [170]

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE It is always wiser, where there is a choice, to trust to inertia. It is the greatest force in the world.

PERSONNEL STATISTICS Lon Cohen of the Gazette is named and consulted in twentyfive of Wolfe's case histories. Saul Panzer is named and engaged as an operative in fortyfive. Fred Durkin is named and engaged as an operative in fortyone. Orrie Cather is used as an operative in thirty. Bill Gore, Johnny Keems, Dol Bonner, Sally Corbett were operatives used by Wolfe at various times. Keems was murdered while on duty. Nero Wolfe, I have said many times, rarely left his house on business, but out of the seventy cases, he left the brownstone house in almost half of them: thirty-three. In The Black Mountain, he even left the continent. Wolfe was locked up in jail twice: once in Too Many Detectives (chapter 4, 1956) and again, for the last time, in A Family Affair (chapter 11, 1975). And then there's Lily. She appeared in twenty-four of the tales, beginning with number six (Some Buried Caesar) in 1938, clear to number seventy in 1975 (A Family Affair). Our lives together have been anything but jejune — a word she used on me once that I had to look up. [171]


As many of you know, a lot of Wolfe's cases ended in the office with him putting on a charade in front of a big audience of suspects, witnesses and cops. But here are eighteen that ended up outside the office! The finales came: At an airfield in White Plains. On a train returning from Kanawha Spa, West Virginia. On a ranch 237 miles northeast of Times Square. In the fumigation room on the roof of the brownstone. In Van Cortland Park where Wolfe played executioner. In the apartment of Martha Poor with a loaded cigar. In the hideaway of Arnold Zeck with a man named Roeder. In the barbershop where Wolfe and I got our hair cut. Aboard a ship returning from Europe and Montenegro. In the house of invalid Husk, New York City. In the clubhouse of the New York Giants. In the display room of an advertising agency. Before a judge in a crowded courtroom. At the River Bend Mountain Lodge in the Adirondacks. In a room at the Latham Hotel in Albany, N.Y. In the apartment of Saul Panzer. In Lucy Valdon's swank living room. In Saul Panzer's apartment and on the front stoop.

[172]

FINAL NOTE

Back in chapter 10 I stated that Wolfe had used honestto-god profanity only twice. Lily just proved that I was wrong (again!) by showing me the following, found in chapter 5 of Fer-de-Lance (1934), written almost ha1f-a-century ago. Even so I should have remembered. I went into his bedroom early. You would never believe there was such a thing in the world as Wolfe in bed if you didn't see it. I had seen it often, but it was still a treat. On top was a black silk puffy cover which he always used, winter and summer. From the mound in the middle it sloped precipitously on all sides, so that if you wanted to see his face you had to stand well up front, and then you had to stoop to look under the canopy arrangement that he had sticking out from the head of the bed. It was also of black silk, and extended a foot beyond his chin and hung quite low on all three sides. Inside it on the white pillow his big fat face reposed like an image in a temple. [173]


His hand came from beneath the cover to pull a cord that hung at his right, and the canopy folded back against the headboard. He blinked. I told him that Fletcher M. Anderson was downstairs and wanted to see him. He cursed. I hated to hear him curse. It got on my nerves. The reason for that, he told me once, was that whereas in most cases cursing was merely a vocal explosion, with him it was considered expression of a profound desire. He did it seldom. That morning he cursed completely. At the end he said, "Leave, get out, go." Good advice. I'll take it. All that's left is the bibliography anyway. Thanks.

Archie Goodwin

[174]

CHRONOLOGICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY of NERO WOLFE'S BROWNSTONE HOUSE

YEAR 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1940 1942 1942 1944 1944 1944 1946 1947 1948 1949 1949

The

BOOK TITLE

PUBLISHER

Fer-de-Lance 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 Cordially Invited to Meet Death Not Quite Dead Enough Booby Trap The Nero Wolfe Omnibus The Silent Speaker Too Many Women And Be a Villain The Second Confession Trouble in Triplicate "Help Wanted, Male" "Instead of Evidence" "Before I Die"

Farrar & Farrar & Farrar & Farrar & Farrar & Farrar & Farrar & Farrar & Farrar & Farrar & Farrar & Farrar & World Viking Viking Viking Viking Viking

[175]

Rinehart Rinehart Rinehart Rinehart Rinehart Rinehart Rinehart Rinehart Rinehart Rinehart Rinehart Rinehart

THE BROWNSTONE HOUSE OF NERO WOLFE 1950 1950

1950

1951 1952 1952

1953 1954 1954

1955 1955 1956 1956

1957 1957

1958 1958

In the Best Families Three Doors to Death "Man Alive" "Omit Flowers" "Door to Death" Curtains for Three "Bullet for One" "The Gun with Wings" "Disguise for Murder" Murder by the Book Prisoner's Base Triple Jeopardy "The Cop Killer" "The Squirt and the Monkey" "Home to Roost" The Golden Spiders The Black Mountain Three Men Out "This Won't Kill You" "Invitation to Murder" "The Zero Clue" Before Midnight Full House (omnibus) Might As Well Be Dead Three Witnesses "When a Man Murders" "Die Like a Dog" "The Next Witness" If Death Ever Slept Three for the Chair "Immune to Murder" "A Window for Death" "Too Many Detectives" Champagne for One And Four to Go "Christmas Party" "Easter Parade" [176]

Viking Viking

Viking

Viking Viking Viking


Viking Viking Viking Viking

Viking Viking

Viking Viking


1958 1959 1960 1960

1961 1961 1962 1962

1963 1964 1964

1965 1965 1966 1968 1969 1969 1971 1971 1973 1973 1974 1975

"Fourth of July Picnic" "Murder Is No Joke" All Aces (omnibus) Plot It Yourself Too Many Clients Three at Wolfe's Door "Poison a la Carte" "Method Three for Murder" "The Rodeo Murder" The Final Deduction Five of a Kind (omnibus) Gambit Homicide Trinity "Death of a Demon" "Eeny Meeny Murder Mo" "Counterfeit for Murder" The Mother Hunt A Right to Die Trio for Blunt Instruments "Kill Now — Pay Later" "Murder Is Corny" "Blood Will Tell" The Doorbell Rang Royal Flush (omnibus) Death of a Doxy The Father Hunt Death of a Dude Kings Full of Aces (omnibus) Three Aces (omnibus) Wolfe Pack (omnibus) Please Pass the Guilt Three Trumps (omnibus) Triple Zeck (omnibus) A Family Affair

[177]




Viking Viking Viking Viking Viking Viking Viking Bantam Viking Viking Viking Viking


1973

The

ABOUT WOLFE'S DIET Nero Wolfe Cook Book Viking (By Rex Stout and the Editors of the Viking Press)

[178]

The Brownstone House of Nero Wolfe

The Brownstone House of Nero Wolfe

The Complete Nero Wolfe

The Nero Wolfe Cookbook

Stout, Rex - Nero Wolfe - The Third Nero Wolfe Omnibus

Nero Wolfe Contro L'FBI

Nero Wolfe, Difenditi!

Nero Wolfe Contro L'FBI

Nero Wolfe, Difenditi!

Nero Wolfe Contro L'FBI

Nero Wolfe, Difenditi!

Nero Wolfe - Silver Spire

Quella Bomba Di Nero Wolfe

Quella Bomba Di Nero Wolfe

Nero Wolfe 09 - Black Orchids

Black Orchids (Nero Wolfe Mysteries)

Nero Wolfe 35 - Final Deduction

Nero Wolfe Fa La Spia

Nero Wolfe Fa La Spia

Nero Wolfe 41 - Death of a Doxy

Death of a Doxy (Nero Wolfe Mysteries)

Before Midnight (Nero Wolfe Mysteries)

Nero Wolfe 25 - Before Midnight

Nero Wolfe 38 - The Mother Hunt

Nero Wolfe 22 - The Golden Spiders

Nero Wolfe 15 - The Second Confession

Quella Bomba Di Nero Wolfe

Nero Wolfe: Too Many Women

Nero Wolfe Fa La Spia

Nero Wolfe - 4th Of July Picnic

Nero Wolfe of West Thirty-fifth Street

The Brownstone House of Nero Wolfe