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Title: Homicide Trinity
Series:
Nero Wolfe #36
Author: Rex Stout
Rating:
4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery
Pages:
197
Words: 71K
Publish: 1962
3 novellas, just like every other “tri” titled Nero Wolfe book.
When I start my re-read of this series, I’m going to just read the
novellas by themselves and review each one. Trying to stuff all three
into one review is a killer. It’s like a collection of short
stories. I don’t review every short story in a collection either.
So I had a good time and that’s all you get.
★★★★☆
From Wikipedia
Eeny
Meeny Murder Mo
Bertha Aaron, a secretary at a law
firm, comes to the brownstone to hire Wolfe to investigate a possibly
serious ethical lapse by a member of the firm. She has no appointment
and arrives during Wolfe's afternoon orchid session, so Archie gets
the particulars from her.
The firm she works for is representing
Morton Sorell in a messy, highly publicized divorce. A few evenings
ago, Aaron noticed a junior member of the law firm – she won't say
which one – in a cheap eatery, tête-à-tête with Mrs. Rita
Sorell, the firm's opponent in the divorce action. That sort of ex
parte communication is highly improper. Later, she asked the lawyer
about it, and he wouldn't discuss the matter. She won't take the
problem to the firm's senior member, Lamont Otis, because she fears
that the news, coupled with Otis's advanced age and heart condition,
will kill him. But it has to be investigated.
It's a novel problem, and Archie takes
the unusual step of consulting Wolfe in the plant rooms. Because the
case concerns a divorce, it's one that Wolfe normally would not
touch. But because legal ethics, not the divorce itself, is the
central issue, Archie thinks there's a chance Wolfe will take it.
Even so, Wolfe tells Archie he won't do it, and Archie returns to the
office to give Aaron the bad news.
Back in the office, Archie finds he
can't give the news to her because she's dead, hit on the head with a
heavy paperweight and then strangled with a necktie. It's Wolfe's
paperweight. Even worse, it's Wolfe's necktie. He had spilled some
sauce on it at lunch, removed it, and left it on his desk where
someone could find it and use it to strangle Bertha Aaron.
Late that night, after Inspector Cramer
and other police investigators have left, Otis arrives, along with
one of the law firm's associates, Ann Paige. The death of his valued
secretary has upset Otis, and he wants to know what happened.
Wolfe allows Otis to read a copy of the
statement Archie gave the police, and Otis is clearly shaken by the
report of the ex parte communication. Otis asks Paige to leave
Wolfe's office – he wants to discuss things privately – and
Archie escorts her to the front room. Wolfe and Otis discuss the
situation at length, and Wolfe gets Otis's take on the three junior
members of the firm, one of whom Aaron saw talking with Mrs. Sorell.
During their discussion, Archie checks on Paige, and finds that she
has opened the window in the front room and, apparently, jumped down
to the sidewalk. She is nowhere to be found.
The next morning, Archie calls on Rita
Sorell, using as entrée a note he's written, informing her that she
and the unidentified junior member were seen together in the
restaurant. He wants to bring her to talk with Wolfe, but she plays
dumb, and the best Archie can get from her is a promise to phone
later in the day.
On returning to the brownstone, Archie
finds the office occupied only by a man he doesn't recognize. He
finds Wolfe at the peephole, and learns that the man's name is
Gregory Jett, one of the law firm's junior members. Jett is there to
complain that Wolfe's behavior caused Otis undue stress. Brushing
aside Jett's complaint, Wolfe learns that Jett is engaged to marry
Ann Paige, and also that he had a brief fling with Rita Sorell a year
earlier.
Then the two other junior members,
Frank Edey and Miles Heydecker, arrive looking for information and
acting like lawyers. Mrs. Sorell's promised phone call comes, and she
tells Archie that Bertha Aaron must have seen her talking with
Gregory Jett. Wolfe and Archie regard this information with
skepticism: she seems to them devious.
Now Wolfe tells them what Aaron had to
say before she was murdered – as yet, that's been disclosed only to
the police and to Lamont Otis. Wolfe also states his assumption that
the guilty lawyer followed Aaron to Wolfe's office, convinced her to
admit him while Archie was in the plant rooms with Wolfe, and then
took the opportunity to kill her.
The problem is that the three lawyers
share a mutual alibi for the date and time that Aaron was murdered:
they were in conference together at their office, fully a mile from
the brownstone. The lawyers leave, suspicious of one another, and not
happy.
When Wolfe then learns from Inspector
Cramer that the timing apodictically exonerates Edey, Heydecker and
Jett, he arranges for all involved to be brought to the brownstone
for the traditional climax. This time, though, all but one are in the
front room, listening via hidden microphone to Wolfe talk things over
with the murderer.
Death of
a Demon
Lucy Hazen has a preemptive confession
to make to Nero Wolfe – having come to despise her husband Barry, a
cruel public relations counsellor, she has recently become plagued by
thoughts of shooting him with his own gun. In order to deter herself
from following through on this impulse, she has decided to confess
this to Nero Wolfe, knowing that if she did commit the crime he would
reveal the act to the police. Although bemused by the meeting, Wolfe
humors her and agrees to show her his orchid collection, but while
they are upstairs Archie Goodwin hears on the radio that Barry
Hazen’s body has been discovered in an alley, shot in the back.
Despite Lucy’s confession, Archie is
convinced by her reaction when he informs her of her husband’s
murder that she is innocent of the crime. Wolfe and Archie learn from
Lucy that she last saw her husband at a dinner party held the
previous evening for a group of his clients – Mrs. Victor Oliver,
Anne Talbot, Jules Khoury and Ambrose Perdis – and his copy-writer
Theodore Weed, whom Lucy clearly harbors feelings for. Although
similarly convinced of her innocence, Wolfe is reluctant to accept
Lucy as his client and sends her away, though he keeps the gun in his
possession for safe-keeping. Using an old mattress, Archie acquires a
fired bullet from the gun and turns it over to Inspector Cramer for
comparison.
Lucy is detained as a suspect in her
husband’s murder, and hires Wolfe to exonerate her. Theodore Weed
approaches Wolfe, also offering to hire him. He admits that he is in
love with Lucy Hazen and that Barry Hazen knew this, taking pleasure
from his discomfort about the situation when in her presence. He
reveals his suspicions that his employer was extorting money from his
clients. Via Nathaniel Parker, Wolfe’s attorney, Lucy gives Wolfe a
key to her apartment, and informs him that her husband had given her
instructions in the event of his death; she was to locate a metal box
hidden in their home, empty the contents, and destroy them.
Archie Goodwin is dispatched to acquire
the box, but on arriving at the Hazen residence discovers that the
guests from the dinner party are already there, clearly searching the
apartment. He manages to hold them at gunpoint, and – after
locating the box – brings them to Wolfe’s brownstone. The guests
confirm that Hazen was blackmailing them, and inform Wolfe that he
took sadistic pleasure in taunting each person with hints about what
they had done. Wolfe and Archie open the box only to discover it is
empty, but Wolfe nevertheless claims to each guest that he will sell
them the contents of the box for $250,000 each.
Inspector Cramer arrives at the
brownstone in a gloating mood, revealing that the police have
discovered the gun that Lucy Hazen apparently used to murder her
husband – a pistol that her father used to commit suicide. The gun
is of the same make as the one Lucy brought to Wolfe, however, and
the bullet from the first gun did not match the bullet that killed
Barry Hazen. This leads Wolfe to a conclusion, which is further
confirmed that evening when, alone of the others, Jules Khoury
refuses to give Wolfe any money for the contents of the box.
Wolfe reveals that the box was empty
and accuses Khoury of murdering Barry Hazen. He admits that he has no
evidence, but argues that Hazen’s hints and the specific gun used
strongly imply that Khoury’s secret was that he actually murdered
Lucy’s father, his former business partner. Furthermore, Khoury’s
refusal to pay Wolfe suggest that he knew all along that the box was
empty, having located and destroyed the evidence after murdering
Hazen. His use of the duplicate gun was an attempt to frame Lucy for
the crime. Khoury is arrested and evidence is discovered tying him to
both murders, and Lucy and Theodore admit their feelings for each
other.
Counterfeit
for Murder
Hattie Annis
doesn't like cops.[1] So when she shows up at Wolfe's door with
a brown paper package holding a large stack of $20 bills, she thinks
that there could be a reward for returning it to its owner, but she
won't trust the cops with it. They'll probably stiff her.
Wolfe is busy with the orchids, but
Hattie says she'll come back later if Archie will hold the money for
her. Sometime later, a young woman named Tammy Baxter shows up. She
is one of the tenants of Hattie's cheap boarding house, whose
rooms she only rents to people working in show business. Tammy is
concerned for Hattie, who almost never leaves her house, but today
she said she was going to see Nero Wolfe, and she hasn't come home.
Feeling protective of Hattie, Tammy has gone to Nero Wolfe's house to
see if Hattie arrived. Archie lies and says he hasn't seen her, and
Miss Baxter leaves.
When Hattie returns, she collapses at
the doorstep; on her way back to Wolfe's house, a car swerved onto
the sidewalk and hit her – fortunately, not hard enough to break
bones, but enough to shake her up. In the front room, Hattie is
revived by Fritz's coffee, and tells Wolfe and Archie about the
money. She was chasing a mouse that ran behind the shelves in her
parlor when she found the package hidden behind some books. She took
the package and opened it to find a large amount of money – Archie
estimates $10,000 in twenties.
The doorbell rings. It's Albert Leach,
an agent of the Treasury Department, wanting to know if Archie has
seen or spoken with a young woman named Tammy Baxter or an older
woman named Hattie Annis. Archie, not caring for Leach's approach,
admits to meeting Tammy, but does not mention that Hattie is present
in the house. Then he returns to the front room, closely examines one
of the twenties, and announces that there will probably be a reward:
the bills are counterfeit.
Wolfe won't take Hattie on as a client,
but he allows Archie to accompany her to her boarding house and
investigate. Once there, Archie meets Hattie's boarders: Raymond
Dell, Noel Ferris and Paul Hannah, three actors, and Martha Kirk, a
dancer; Hattie caters to stage people. It isn't until Archie and
Hattie enter the parlor that Archie sees the fifth boarder, Tammy
Baxter, lying dead on the floor with a kitchen knife in her chest.
When Homicide arrives, Hattie locks
herself in her bedroom and refuses to communicate with the police.
Cramer doesn't want to break Hattie's door down and asks Archie to
reason with her. Archie does so, and, acting as Wolfe's agent, takes
Hattie as a client, but cannot talk her into coming out from her
room. Eventually, Cramer gives up, breaks down her door, and has her
carried away to be interrogated.
On his way back to the brownstone,
Archie phones Wolfe to inform him that he has been hired. Over
Wolfe's objection, Archie mentions that Hattie has extensive assets –
close to half a million dollars in bonds, in addition to her
four-story house in Manhattan. Wolfe, reluctant as always, accedes,
and concurs that Parker should be instructed to see to her bail.
Archie has concluded that the murdered
woman, Tammy Baxter, was a Treasury agent: Leach, when he asked about
Miss Baxter, indicated that he knew both her phone number and that
she had been to the brownstone earlier that day. He and Wolfe
conjecture that she had been placed in Hattie's boardinghouse by the
Treasury Department to investigate a counterfeiting operation.
The surviving tenants, Dell, Ferris,
Hannah and Kirk, call at the brownstone. As she was being carried out
of her house, Hattie told them to go to Nero Wolfe and tell him
everything they had told the police. They set in to do so, but Wolfe
takes control of the conversation, and questions each of them about
personal background, present employment and source of income.
Wolfe gets some hints, and the next day
sends Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin and Orrie Cather to reconnoiter at the
boarders' places of employment. Archie is called to the DA's office
to help sort out why the Treasury Department, and not Manhattan
Homicide, has possession of the counterfeit money, which is evidence
in a murder case. When Archie returns to the brownstone it is to find
all concerned – the boarders, Inspector Cramer and Sgt. Stebbins,
Agent Leach, and Saul Panzer – in the office to hear Saul describe
the counterfeiting equipment that he found in the building where
Wolfe sent him.
