Stout, Rex - Trouble in Triplicate (1949)

War and the detective story

World War II plays a part in these stories, written in 1945, 1946 and 1947. In fact almost every detective story written in Britain or America during the forties shows at least a trace of the war’s effects. People were displaced into new territories, sometimes new countries, and brought into contact with people they would never otherwise have known. Romances blossomed and collapsed at an unprecedented rate, and illegitimate births became a fact of life. Women entered the workforce in large numbers, finding their way into offices and factories and disrupting established ways of doing things. Deaths in battle led to unexpected inheritances, and the destruction of records made it possible for people to adopt new identities. New and deadly skills learnt in the Forces were put to work in private life, and espionage became an everyday concern. After the war people came home changed and traumatized, acting in unpredictable ways. Despite the appalling reality of life during World War II, for detective fiction it provided a shot in the arm.

Rex Stout, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin

Rex Stout combined a busy career in business and politics with a steady output of writing. Starting with a few adventure novels, he turned to detection and created four memorable teams or characters: Doll Bonner, the female PI; Tecumseh Fox, a country - dwelling gumshoe on the lines of Phoebe Atwood Taylor’s Asey Mayo; Inspector Cramer, who appears in the Wolfe books but also has a book of his own; and the team of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.

Wolfe and Goodwin are inseparable: it is impossible to think of one functioning without the other. They share a house and all their cases. Wolfe prefers to sit at home exercising his reason; Archie is restless and intrusive, the perfect legman. The dialogue between these two diverse characters is always engaging and often hilarious, but a deep affection and respect always shows through. Wolfe acknowledges Archie’s talents, especially in dealing with the female gender; while Archie acknowledges that his boss is a genius – although perhaps not quite as much of a genius as Wolfe thinks he is: ‘he can’t fire me because then he would never do any work at all and would eventually starve to death’. By making Archie the narrator it is possible for Stout to lay out the story and detail the events without revealing the solution; that only comes after Wolfe puts his brain to work. With Ellery Queen and Perry Mason, Wolfe is one of the three great American detectives of the Golden Age.

In his later years, Rex Stout was able to live comfortably on writing two works a year; one Wolfe and Goodwin novel, and a novella about the same characters which usually appeared in The American Magazine. The novels are fairly widely available in second - hand bookshops, and have started to appear online, but some of the novellas remain uncollected. Trouble in Triplicate is a collection of three of these: Before I Die, Help Wanted, Male, and Instead of Evidence.

Before I Die

The war is at work here from the very first page: there is a Great Meat Shortage, and Wolfe, the gourmand, is suffering. In desperation he agrees to meet and deal with a wealthy black marketeer, Dazy Perrit, despite Archie’s reservations: For the sake of making a wild grab for a rib roast, he had left his chair, walked clear to the front room, opened a window, and invited the most deadly specimen between the Battery and Yonkers into his house… I went on listening to Perrit because there was nothing else to do but shoot him, and I had missed the psychological moment for that. Having secured his meat Wolfe, a creature of fixed habits, retreats to his orchid rooms, leaving Archie to deal with the interview.

Perrit has a job for Wolfe; his real daughter, Beulah Page, whose mother died when she was two and Perrit was in jail, doesn’t know that the racketeer is her father. Perrit’s rival, Thumbs Meeker, has found that a daughter exists and is threatening to reveal the connection, so to draw him off the scent Perrit has hired another girl, Angelina Murphy, to act as his daughter. But now Angelina is blackmailing him: so Perrit wants Wolfe to stop her.

Angelina is invited to Wolfe’s brownstone; while Archie is sent to investigate Beulah. She is twenty - one years old. Flummox her. Wolfe tells him. Archie adopts the persona of Harold Stevens, a visitor from Ohio, and calls on her apartment. Beulah has an attentive boyfriend there, a law student called Morton Schane, who accompanies her and Archie back to Nero Wolfe’s for dinner, and afterward unsuccessfully tries to persuade Archie to drive the couple to Maryland so they can get married.

Wolfe’s third interview is with the blackmailing Angelina, a very different proposition. With the sly Angelina, Wolfe is at his browbeating, sesquipedalian best. He turns her trick back on her by demanding 90% of any blackmail payment she receives, on pain of handing her over to the authorities. With one night to think about the proposition, Angelina goes for a drive with Archie – She was a first - rate driver, fully half as good as me - while he puts an alternative proposition: she lays off the blackmail and asks merely for an increase in her weekly allowance.

Angelina is reacting to his charm – but when she leaves the car she is shot down from a passing taxi and killed. Archie is detained and Lieutenant Rowcliff, his bete noir on the police force, is given charge of the case. He puts Archie through the mill, without result, and sends him home. Archie believes that Perrit is responsible for the killing, but when Perrit and his henchman bail him up on the steps of Wolfe’s house they too are shot down and killed from a passing cab, while Archie has his second narrow escape.

With his client dead, Wolfe’s case appears to have closed, but Archie and Wolfe are not out of it yet, and Wolfe calls in another detective, Saul Panzer, to assist. Saul Panzer is one of the most appealing characters in the Wolfe canon. Archie reluctantly admits that for the minutiae of detection nobody is Saul’s equal: disguise, searching and trailing all come naturally to him. Along with his associates Fred Durkin, Johnny Keems and Orrie Cather, he provides a third set of important skills: he comes in handy when Stout needs to have things found out without their being revealed to Archie.

Perrit’s lawyer Schwartz comes calling: he tells Wolfe that Perrit has appointed Wolfe as his executor for a fee of fifty thousand dollars. Archie and Wolfe find themselves under threat from Perrit’s gang, in the shape of a Mr. Fabian, for apparently setting up the killings for his and Wolfe’s benefit. Meanwhile Beulah Page, Perrit’s heir, also wants to know what’s going on. She arrives, with Morton Schane, at Wolfe’s back door, and requests that Wolfe tells her the truth about her father. When she reacts to the news with tears Wolfe leaves in disgust, leaving her with Archie. Later Inspector Cramer, Rowcliff’s superior, rings up; he too believes that Wolfe and Archie are marked men, but Wolfe is apparently unconcerned.

Saul appears and the detectives share a gloomy lunch with Beulah and Schane. Later they are joined by Fabian and Schwartz for a set - piece finale: the gathering of suspects in Wolfe’s office. Thumbs Meeker gatecrashes and there is an armed confrontation between him and Fabian, which Wolfe defuses by facing them both down. Archie and Wolfe are cleared when the true murderer is revealed and faces a mobster’s revenge.

Help Wanted, Male

He paid us a visit the day he stopped the bullet. – Archie’s laconic introduction to the shooting of Ben Jensen, an unscrupulous newspaper publisher. (The media plays an important role in the Wolfe stories; one of Archie’s most important informants – and a poker - playing buddy – is Lon Cohen of the Gazette, and Wolfe’s investigations take in radio panel games and publishers’ conventions, among others.) Archie is in the armed forces now with a major’s rank, but still residing at the brownstone. He is keen to see active service, but has been assigned to assisting Wolfe in ‘special projects’ for Military Intelligence (alas, Archie has failed to recount any of these for us). Jensen shows him and Wolfe a threatening note that he has received, but Wolfe insists there is nothing he can do to prevent a determined murderer. Archie recommends that Jensen try another agency. When Jensen is killed that night, Wolfe receives a visit from Inspector Cramer of Homicide.

Cramer is another appealing character – upright, determined, not short of brains, but hamstrung by his own principles and the regulations of his office. His genuine admiration for Wolfe is mingled with exasperation and rage when Wolfe blithely disregards law and order in the pursuit of justice. But he cannot bear down too hard since he often needs Wolfe’s inspiration to solve his crimes. The two fence warily, but never quite come to blows. “In the past dozen years,” Cramer said in his ordinary growl, without any particular feeling, “you have told me, I suppose, in round figures, ten million lies.”

Jensen has been shot down and killed in the street, along with Doyle, his bodyguard from the other agency. But Wolfe refuses to get involved. Then he too receives a similar threatening note. With Archie due to leave for Washington that evening, he has little time to act.

The connection between Jensen and Wolfe stems from the case of Peter Root, an Army captain court - martialled for attempting to sell secrets to Jensen’s paper. Root is under lock and key, but his fiancee, Jane Geer, is at liberty. Wolfe asks to have Root brought to see him, and puts Archie on to locating Geer – not a hard task, since they have developed a relationship. He talks to her about the murders that afternoon but dismisses her as a possible killer. Geer is one of the many attractive, intelligent, self - willed women who appear in the Wolfe stories and usually manage to get involved with Archie; the best - known is Lily Rowan, who plays an active part in many of the novels.

Archie brings Jane Geer to see Wolfe; as they enter the brownstone they are joined by Emil Jensen, Ben Jensen’s son. Wolfe is sequestered and will not see them, so they are sent away together, and Archie leaves to catch a train to Washington, where he becomes mired in the Army bureaucracy. While there he sees an ad in a New York paper. It appears that someone wants to hire a Wolfe impersonator; is it the murderer? Archie escapes from the Pentagon and flies back to Manhattan, to find the impostor sitting in Wolfe’s chair. It is an architect called H. H. Hackett whom Wolfe has hired, ostensibly to run interference for him while he solves the case. Archie’s affection for the real Wolfe shows through in the antagonism he immediately develops for his double.

Jane Geer is invited to visit and talk to the fake Wolfe, while the real Wolfe looks on through a spyhole. When Jane Geer turns up, Emil Jensen is with her. Archie puts them in the front room and goes to the concealed Wolfe for instructions; while he is there a shot is fired. Hackett’s ear is nicked, but he is otherwise unhurt; and when Archie searches the front room he finds the gun concealed in a vase. One of the two visitors appears to be a quick - thinking killer.

Back in the office the real Wolfe makes his appearance. The visitors are questioned and locked away in the front room while the gun is sent to Inspector Cramer for tests. Little happens till Cramer arrives with the results two hours later, accompanied by Sergeant Purley Stebbins, Stout’s third main police protagonist, and a search warrant. Wolfe is incensed at this intrusion on his privacy, and the two fence briefly before Cramer gives in. Only the front room and the study are searched, an impostor is revealed, and Wolfe uncovers the clue that gives him his murderer.

The plot of this story is a little far - fetched and the coincidences strain credibility, but there is some nice interplay between Archie and Wolfe, particularly with the arrival of Wolfe’s double.

Instead of Evidence

A shorter story about another threatened man – Eugene R. Poor, a manufacturer of novelties, who believes he will be killed by his partner Con Blaney. He hires Wolfe for five thousand dollars, not to prevent the killing but to report his suspicions to the police should it take place. Archie takes their details and types it up while Wolfe has his regular daily dose of beer: Do your typing. I like to hear you typing. If you are typing you can’t talk.

That night Cramer rings up and reports Poor is dead – killed by an exploding cigar. Archie goes to their apartment and meets Cramer, Rowcliff, Poor’s wife Martha and an employee of Poor’s called Helen Vardis. Later Conroy Blaney and another employee called Joe Groll join the party.

Archie reports back to Wolfe, who fails to show any signs of mental activity. Archie resigns – a not infrequent response to what he sees as Wolfe’s refusal to earn his fees, and a natural extension of his role as Wolfe’s gadfly and goad to action. The resignation is not accepted; so Archie goes on to propose other cases, including an apparent hit - and - run near White Plains. Wolfe remains ungoaded until Inspector Cramer visits to warn him that he plans to arrest Mrs. Poor.

Cramer describes the secret mechanism by which the explosive cigars were made, and the skills required by the murderer – skills possessed by all the suspects, including Mrs Poor. Two of Mrs Poor’s hairs were found in the cigar box, which prompts him to charge her, but Wolfe points out the weakness of this argument. Blaney arrives while Cramer is there and Archie puts him in the front room.

Brought into the office, Blaney appals Wolfe into speechless flight by offering to make and sell a fake talking orchid under his name. Archie is left to dislodge the visitor and contact Saul Panzer: at last Wolfe has been jolted into action.

Archie is sent to pick up Joe Groll and is followed by a taxi. He takes Groll to Pete’s Bar and Grill – a favourite haunt – and tries out his theories on him. Groll is suffering from post - war nerves, exacerbated because the girl he loved – Martha Davis – has married his boss while he was away. On the rebound Groll has fallen for Helen Vardis, and he believes Blaney is the killer, so he offers to take Archie to the office and show him the hiding - places Blaney has devised. The tailing taxi turns out to contain Vardis, whom Archie invites along.

After getting sprayed in the face with water and banged on the shin by a trick cupboard, Archie leaves the searching to Groll. He finds four strange items in a trick calendar on Blaney’s desk: back at the office Wolfe tests one to see if it is a cigar detonator, and is nearly brained by the flying debris. Irritated still further, he sends Groll and Vardis away and goes to bed.

The next morning Archie visits Cramer and hands over two of the detonators; Cramer threatens to come and get the third. Martha Poor appears at Wolfe’s but is sent away without seeing him. Wolfe begins to think seriously, and manages to link up the hit - and - run in White Plains with the murder case. He plans a denouement, and Archie and Saul go to visit Mrs Poor.

Jon.

A

Stout writes well, with a vitality, good humour and eye for the telling phrase that recalls Wodehouse (who loved Stout’s books).  The stories are the right length—not short enough to be mere sketches or anecdotes, and not so long that they bore.  There’s plenty of invention in situation (Wolfe’s involvement with gangsters or hiring a double to avoid assassination), and the plots are very clever (even if, as in “Help Wanted, Male”, contrived).  There’s also an “Of course!” clue in two of the three—“Shame”, and an unfamiliarity with cigars. 

Nick Fuller.