Three Doors to Death (The Rex Stout Library) Read online

  Three Doors to Death (The Rex Stout Library)

  Rex Stout

  Rex Stout

  Three Doors To Death

  Introduction

  Let's face it.

  We can stare at each other over designer coffee and natter on about the spiritual and intellectual benefits of immersing oneself in haute litterature, but most of us read fiction to get away from the drudgery of our lives.

  And what a wonderful sanctuary Rex Stout has provided millions of readers for over half a century by introducing the world to Nero Wolfe.

  As the century fades, Wolfe lives on, fresh and current as ever. One reason is the way he lives – a self-contained, blatantly self-indulgent existence in a Manhattan brownstone on West Thirty-fifth Street surrounded by gleaming paneling, fine furniture, gourmet food, servants, exotic orchids, the power to control life's nasty little intrusions. What a glorious end-of-day tonic for clock watchers, straphangers, and freeway slaves. How many of us wouldn't commit minor mayhem in exchange for an Archie Goodwin to cheerfully run our errands and tidy up our scutwork, or a Fritz Brenner to prepare and serve our sweetbreads en croute on bone china? With a suitable wine. (Interestingly, Wolfe's cozy world also burlesques the isolated, self-indulgent life of the writer and, in that sense, can be regarded as Stout's wicked slant on the artiste.)

  Stout had wicked slants on lots of things and a gift for phrasing and rhythm and irony that remains remarkably contemporary. Consider lines such as these: "Her chin hinges began to give"; "the sort of greasy voice that makes me want to take up strangling"; "he was slender, elegant, and groomed to a queen's taste, if you let him pick the queen." And let us not forget the hilariously truistic: "Escorting a murderer on a subway without handcuffs is a damn nuisance, so I chose a taxi."

  Stout's sense of humor is at its best when it conveys a lusty misanthropy. Wolfe's truculent view of his fellow men – and women – is delicious in an age when sectarian selfishness and emotional lobotomy masquerade as political correctness and the carny freak parade is beamed into our homes daily in the form of pretentiously mislabeled talk shows so self-righteously smarmy they gag the consciousness. Take a blissful moment to imagine Wolfe on Geraldo or Oprah or any of the other high-octane patholothons. I, for one, would commit major mayhem for the privilege of witnessing it. Hell, one good "Pfui!" directed at a celibopsychic schizoid diaper devotee would be worth it.

  Then there's Wolfe's glorious gluttony, a perfect foil for the skeletal images and anorexic fiction promulgated with teeth-gnashing joy by the style-over-substance crowd. Stout doesn't spare Wolfe the consequences of his hyperphagia – the Great Man is so monstrously endomorphic that when he removes his pajama top, he reveals "enough hide to make shoes for four platoons;" but he does not assault us with cholesterol counts and dire warnings of vascular sludge. During the time we spend gourmandizing along with Wolfe, the nagging and finger-wagging of gram-counting aerobicops fade mercifully into the background. Wolfe may huff and puff during his infrequent outings into the "real" world – the description of his unplanned hike in the final story in this volume is as memorable as anything that has ever been put to paper – but he is happy with himself. And when we are with him, so are we, by God.

  Of course there's more to Wolfe than constructive agoraphobia or cream sauce. Stout's stories are always great mysteries – whodunits, howdunits, whydunits – and they zip along at a pace that would leave the Great Man anoxic.

  Some say Stout's talents were put to best use in the novella, and no contradiction of that judgment can be found in the three stories in this book.

  Turn the page, then, and prepare yourself for a well-deserved getaway: the funny, phony, bloody world of high fashion as portrayed in "Man Alive." The knife-in-the-back shenanigans of the nascent fast-food industry in "Omit Flowers" (how sadly civilized that bit of vulgarity seems compared to today's technoburger madness). And finally, the spooky and downright nasty family psychopathology of "Door to Death," a real chiller.

  Three gems.

  Three great escapes.

  –Jonathan Kellerman

  Foreword

  Looking over the scripts of these accounts of three of Nero Wolfe's cases, it struck me that they might give a stranger a wrong impression of him, so I thought it wouldn't hurt to put in this foreword for those who haven't met him before. In only one of these cases did he get pai d – I mean paid money – for working on it, and that might give someone a woolly idea which could develop into a nuisance. I want to make it clear that Wolfe does not solve murders just for the hell of it. He does it to make a living, which includes me, since he can't live the way he likes to without signing my pay check each and every Friday afternoon. Also please note that in the other two cases he did get something: in one, the satisfaction of doing a favor for an old and dear friend, and in the other, a fill-in for Theodore.

  With that warning, I like the idea of putting these three cases together because they make a kind of complicated pattern of pairs. In two of them Wolfe got no fee. In two of them he had to forget a document to get a crack started. In two of them the homicide was strictly a family affair. In two of them I became acquainted with a young female, not the same one, who quite so close to a murder. So I think they'll be a little more interesting, in a bunch like this, provided they don't start people phoning in to ask me to ask Wolfe to solve murders as a gift. I'm just telling you.

  Archie Goodwin

  Man Alive

  I

  She said, in her nicely managed voice that was a pleasure to listen to, "Daumery and Nieder."

  I asked her politely, "Will you spell it, please?"

  I meant the Daumery, since I already had the Nieder down in my notebook, her name being, so she had said, Cynthia Nieder.

  Her lovely bright blue eyes changed expression to show that she suspected me of kidding her – as if I had asked her to spell Shakespeare or Charlie Chaplin. But I was so obviously innocent that the eyes changed again and she smiled.

  She spelled Daumery and added, "Four ninety-six Seventh Avenue. That's what we get for being so cocky about how famous we are – we get asked how to spell it. What if someone asked you how to spell Nero Wolfe?"

  "Try it," I suggested, smiling back at her. I extended a hand. "Put your fingers on my pulse and ask me. But don't ask me how to spell Archie Goodwin, which is me. That would hurt."

  Wolfe grunted peevishly and readjusted a few hundred of his pounds in his built-to-order high-test chair behind his desk. "You made," he told our visitor, "an appointment to see me. I supposed you needed a detective. If so tell me what for, without encouraging Mr. Goodwin to start caterwauling. It takes very little to set him off."

  I let it go by, though I am much more particular than his insult implied. I felt like indulging him because he had just bought a new Cadillac sedan, which meant that I, Archie Goodwin, had a new car, because, of the four men who lived in Nero Wolfe's brownstone house on West 35th Street not far from the river, I was the only one who drove. Wolfe himself, who suspected all machinery with moving parts of being in a plot to get him, rarely left the house for any reason whatever, and never – well, hardly ever – on business. He stayed in his office, on the ground floor of the house, and used his brain if and when I could pester him into it. Fritz Brenner, chef and supervisor of household comforts, knew how to drive but pretended he didn't, and had no license. Theodore Horstmann, curator of the orchids in the plant rooms on the roof, thought walking was good for people and was still, at his age, trying to prove it.

  That left me. In addition to being chief assistant detective, bookkeeper and stenographer, the flea in the elephant's ear, and balance wheel, I was
also chauffeur and errand boy. Therefore the new car was, in effect, mine, and I thought I ought to show my appreciation by letting him call me a tomcat at least once. Another thing, the car had cost plenty, and we hadn't been offered an acceptable job for over a week. We could use a fee. The blue-eyed female treat looked as if she wasn't short on cash, and if I riled Wolfe about a little thing like a personal insult he might react by broadening out and insulting her too, and she might go somewhere else to shop.

  So all I did was grin understandingly at Cynthia Nieder, brandish my pen over my notebook, and clear my throat.

  II

  "Daumery and Nieder," Cynthia said, "is as good a name as there is on Seventh Avenue, including Fifty-seventh Street, but of course if you're not in the garment trade and know nothing about it – I imagine your wives would know the name all right."

  Wolfe shuddered.

  "No wife," I stated. "Neither of us. That's why we caterwaul."

  "Well, if you had one she would know about Daumery and Nieder. We make top-quality coats, suits, and dresses, and we confine our line, even here in New York. The business was started twenty years ago by two men, Jean Daumery and Paul Nieder – my Uncle Paul – my father's brother. It's -"

  "Excuse me," Wolfe put in. "Will it save time to tell you that I don't do industrial surveillance?"

  "No, that's not it," she said, waving it away. "I know you don't. It's about him, my uncle. Uncle Paul."

  She frowned, and was looking at the window beyond Wolfe's desk as if she were seeing something. Then her shoulders lifted and dropped again, and she went back to Wolfe.

  "You need some background," she told him. "At least I think it would be better. Daumery was the business head of the firm, the organizer and manager and salesman, and Uncle Paul was the designer, the creator. If it hadn't been for him Daumery wouldn't have had anything to manage and sell. They owned it together – a fifty-fifty partnership. It was my uncle's half that I inherited when my uncle killed himself – anyway, that's how it was announced, that he committed suicide – a little over a year ago."

  That gave me two thoughts: one, that I had been right about her having the price of a fee; and two, that we were probably in for another job of translating a suicide into a murder.

  "I suppose I should tell about me," Cynthia was saying. "I was born and brought up out West, in Oregon. My father and mother died when I was fourteen, and Uncle Paul sent for me, and I came to New York and lived with him. He wasn't married. We didn't get along very well together, I guess because we were so much alike, because I'm creative too; but it wasn't really so bad, we just fought all the time. And when it came down to it he let me have my way. He was determined about my going to college, but I knew I was creative and it would be a waste of time. We fought about it every day, and finally he said if I didn't go to college I would have to earn my living, and then what do you think he did? He gave me a job modeling for Daumery and Nieder at top salary! That's what he was like! Actually he was wonderful. He gave me the run of the place too, to catch on about designing, but of course he wouldn't have done that if he hadn't known I had unusual talent."

  "What kind of talent?" Wolfe asked skeptically.

  "As a clothes designer, of course," she said, as if that were the only talent worth mentioning. "I was only eighteen – that was three years ago – and completely without training, and for two years I only modeled and caught onto things, but I had a few little chances to show what I could do. I was surprised that my uncle was willing to help me along, because most established designers are so jealous; but he did. Then he went West on a vacation, and then the word came that he had killed himself. Maybe I ought to tell you why I wasn't surprised that he had killed himself."

  "Maybe," Wolfe conceded.

  "Because I knew how unhappy he was. Helen Daumery had died. A horse she was riding had gone crazy and thrown her off on some stones and killed her. She was Daumery's wife – the wife of my uncle's partner – and my uncle was in love with her. She had been one of their models – she was much younger than Daumery – and I think she was the only woman Uncle Paul ever loved – anyhow he certainly loved her. She didn't love him because she didn't love anybody but herself, but I think she probably gave him the cherry out of her cocktail just because she enjoyed having him like that when no other woman could get him. She would."

  I didn't put it in my notes that Miss Nieder had disapproved of Mrs. Daumery, but I could have, and signed it.

  "Helen's death broke my uncle up completely," Cynthia went on. "I never saw anything like it. I was still living in his apartment. He didn't say a word to me for three days – not a single word – nor to anyone else, and he didn't leave the apartment day or night – right in the middle of getting ready for the showings of the fall line – and then he said he was going away for a rest, and he went. Four days later the news came that he had committed suicide, and under the circumstances it didn't occur to me to question it."

  When she paused Wolfe inquired, "Do you question it now?"

  "I certainly do," she said emphatically. "I wasn't surprised, either, at the way he did it. He was always keyed up and dramatic, about everything. He was by far the best designer in New York, and he was the best showman, too. So you would expect him to do something startling about killing himself, no matter how unhappy he was. He took all his clothes off and jumped into a geyser in Yellowstone Park."

  Wolfe let out a mild grunt. I gave her an admiring eye for her calm voice and manner in dishing out a fact like that, but of course it was a year old for her.

  "Under the surface of that geyser," she said, "down below, the pressure in the pipe from above keeps the temperature far above the boiling point, according to an article about it I read in a newspaper."

  "That seems conclusive," Wolfe murmured. "Why do you now question it?"

  "Because he didn't die. Because he's not dead. I saw him last week, here in New York, alive."

  III

  I felt myself relaxing. It had seemed that we were about to be tagged for the chore of ripping the false face off of a murder disguised as a suicide, and at the smell of murder I always go tight all over. In the detective business that's the center ring in the big tent. The headline MAN DEAD gets the eye good, but Cynthia Nieder had scrapped that and changed it to MAN ALIVE, which was quite a comedown. Another thought had struck me: that if Uncle Paul was alive her inheriting half the business was out the window and her ability to pay a good exorbitant fee was open to question. My attitude toward her personally remained intact; she rated high priority on looks, voice, and other observable factors. But professionally I was compelled to grade her way down in the little routine items.

  So I relaxed and tossed my notebook on my desk, which is so placed that a half-turn of my swivel chair puts me facing Wolfe, and with another half-turn I am confronting the red leather chair beyond the end of his desk where a lone visitor is usually seated. Some visitors clash with it, but Cynthia, in a deep-toned yellow dress, maybe silk, a jacket in brown and yellow checks, flaring open, and a little brown affair slanting on her head, looked fine. Having learned one or two little things about women's clothes from Lily Rowan and other reliable sources, I decided that if Cynthia had designed that outfit Wolfe should eat his skepticism about her talent.

  She was talking, telling about the man alive.

  "It was last Tuesday," she said, "a week ago tomorrow, June third. We were showing our fall line to the press. We don't show in hotels because we don't have to, since our showroom seats over two hundred comfortably. For a press showing we don't let anyone in without a ticket because if we did the place would be mobbed. I was modeling a blue and black ensemble of lightweight Bishop twill when I saw him. He was in the fifth row, between Agnes Pemberton of Vogue and Mrs. Gumpert of the Herald Tribune. If you asked me how I recognized him I couldn't tell you, but I simply knew it was him, there wasn't the slightest doubt -"

  "Why shouldn't you recognize him?" Wolfe demanded.

  "Because he had a
beard, and he wore glasses, and his hair was slick and parted on the left side. That sounds like a freak, but Uncle Paul would know better than to look freaky. The beard was trimmed, and somehow it didn't make him conspicuous. It was lucky I didn't completely recognize him when I first saw him, or I would probably have stood and gawked at him. Later in the dressing room Polly Zarella asked Bernard – that's Bernard Daumery, Jean's nephew – who was the man that was growing his own wool, and Bernard said he didn't know, probably from the Daily Worker. Of course we know most of the guests at a press showing, but not all of them. When I modeled another number – a full-back calf-covering coat in tapestry tones of Kleinsell ratine – I took him in without being obvious about it, and all of a sudden I knew who it was – I didn't guess, I knew. It staggered me so that I had to get off quick, quicker than I should have, and in the dressing room it was all I could do to keep them from seeing me tremble. I wanted to run out and speak to him, but I couldn't because it would have ruined the show. I had four more numbers to model – one of them was our headliner, a tailored dress and jacket in black with white stripes, with slightly bouffant sleeves and a double hemline – and I had to go on to the end. When it was over I hurried out front and he was gone."

  "Indeed," Wolfe muttered.

  "Yes. I went outside, to the elevators, but he was gone."

  "You haven't seen him since?"

  "No. Just that one time."

  "Did anyone else recognize him?"

  "I don't think so. I'm sure they didn't, or there would have been a noise. A dead man come back to life?"

  Wolfe nodded. "Many of those present had known him?"

  "Certainly, nearly all of them. He was famous, as famous as you are."