by Jack Grochot
Neither—I submit—will Rex Stout’s most famous creation, Nero Wolfe. And since the fat sleuth’s 1934 debut, readers and critics have drawn parallels between the two detectives. More than that, they have put them on the same family tree by speculating that Wolfe is the son of Sherlock or, less frequently, Mycroft Holmes. Certainly Wolfe looks like Mycroft. And in the novel Baker Street Irregular, Stout says that the character was based on Mycroft.
In October 1954, as they appeared together at a book signing at Kann’s Department Store in Washington, D.C., Frederic Dannay asked Stout how he came up with the name of Nero Wolfe. According to Dannay, Stout thought for a while and then said that he based the name on Sherlock Holmes. In McAleer’s version, Stout was just quoting Alexander Woollcott’s theory. Here’s how Dannay lays it out in the book In the Queen’s Parlor:
Now…how in the world does Nero Wolfe resemble Sherlock Holmes? Well, one likeness is quickly apparent: both names have the same number and the same distribution of syllables: Sherlock has two, Holmes one; Nero likewise has two, Wolfe one. But this is a superficial kinship: the relationship is far more subtle. Consider the vowels, and their placement, in the name Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock has two—e and o, in that order; Holmes also has two—the same two, but in reverse order—o-e. Now consider the vowels in Nero Wolfe: Nero has two—the same two as in Sherlock, and in exactly the same order! Wolfe also has two—the same two as in Holmes, and again in the same reverse order!
Dannay called this “the great O-E theory,” and mused that it probably all went back to P-O-E. Clearly, Rex Stout was not the only one having fun with Sherlock Holmes.
William S. Baring-Gould, in his biography Nero Wolfe of Baker Street, mentions the great O-E theory in passing in a chapter called “Alias Nero Wolfe,” in which he argues that Wolfe is the son of Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler. Frankly, in my opinion, Baring-Gould’s attempt to prove a genetic connection between the two detectives rather limps. For example, in listing similarities between the two men, Baring-Gould writes: “In his youth, Nero Wolfe, like Sherlock Holmes, was an athlete.” This is proof?
Undeterred by what seems to me very flimsy evidence, mystery writer John T. Lescroart adopted this paternity theory whole-heartedly in his books Son of Holmes (1986) and Rasputin’s Revenge (1987). They recount the World War I adventures of John Hamish Adler Holmes under the primary alias of Auguste Lupa. Lescroart’s hero also calls himself Julius Adler and Cesar Mycroft. We are to assume that he later adopted the first name of another Roman emperor and anglicized the lupine last name. I personally found these books entertaining, but the series had short legs; it stopped at two.
As the Holmes-Wolfe connection kept being proposed over the years, Stout came up with a number of amusing ways of saying, in effect, “leave me out of this.” As early as 1935, in a letter to the editor of The Baker Street Journal, he pleaded client confidentiality in his role as Archie Goodwin’s literary agent. In 1968, he wrote to Bruce Kennedy, “Since the suggestion that Nero Wolfe is the son of Sherlock Holmes was merely someone’s loose conjecture, I think it is proper and permissible for me to ignore it.” A couple of years later he wrote to another admirer, “As for the notion that he [Wolfe] was sired by Sherlock Holmes, I don’t believe Archie Goodwin has ever mentioned it.”
And yet Archie Goodwin notes in Fer-de-Lance that he, Archie, has a picture of Sherlock Holmes over his desk. On August 12, 1969, McAleer asked Stout: “Did Archie hang up the picture of Sherlock Holmes that is found over his desk, or did Wolfe put it there?” Stout’s response was typically unequivocal: “I was a damn fool to do it. Obviously it’s always an artistic fault in any fiction to mention any other character in fiction. It should never be done.”
We shall charitably assume that the reference to fictional characters reflects Stout’s advanced age at the time.
Another interesting picture in the Wolfe establishment on West 35th Street is the painting of a waterfall, behind which Archie and others often hide in a secret alcove to observe and hear the goings-on in Wolfe’s office. According to John McAleer, Stout surmised that the painting represented the Reichenbach Falls.
If Stout guessed correctly, this is quite appropriate—for Nero Wolfe and Sherlock Holmes both battled a criminal genius to the death. Professor Moriarty, a figure as archetypical in popular mythology as Holmes himself, is a significant presence in “The Final Problem,” “The Adventure of the Empty House,” and The Valley of Fear. He is also mentioned in three other stories. Arnold Zeck, Moriarty’s counterpart in the world of Nero Wolfe, has speaking parts in the novels And Be a Villain and The Second Confession and appears in the third book of the trilogy, In the Best Families.
“I’ll tell you this,” Wolfe says to Archie in the first of these books. “If ever, in the course of my business, I find that I am committed against him and must destroy him, I shall leave this house, find a place where I can work—and sleep and eat if there is time for it—and stay there until I have finished. I don’t want to do that, and therefore I hope I will never have to.”
Like Holmes, he is ready to give his all. In the Best Families finds him doing exactly that. It’s a kind of “Final Problem” and “Empty House” in one epic novel—epic not in size, but in terms of its significance to the Wolfe corpus. Wolfe isn’t believed dead in the book, but he might as well be. He leaves the brownstone on West 35th Street with the door wide open and a strong indication that he will never be back. When he does return, months later, Archie doesn’t recognize him. Physically he’s a mere shadow of his former one-seventh of a ton, his face full of seams from the weight loss. His resolve and mental resources are undiminished, however. And by the last page, Zeck is as dead as Moriarty.
Julian Symons, an English crime writer and often-difficult critic, was effusive in his praise of what Stout achieved in the Zeck Trilogy, which was later collected in an omnibus volume called Triple Zeck. He wrote:
In the fight to death between master-detective and master-criminal the most ingenious and unlikely subterfuges are used…All this is very improbable. It is the art of Mr. Stout to make it seem plausible…Holmes was a fully realized character. There is only a handful of his successors to whom that compliment can be paid. One of them, certainly, is Nero Wolfe.
Surprisingly, Stout told McAleer more than once that this story arc wasn’t planned—that he didn’t know for sure when he wrote And Be a Villain that Zeck would reappear in another book. That would mean, then, that he wasn’t intentionally paying homage to Reichenbach and The Return. But who can doubt that Stout was influenced by the death and resurrection of Sherlock Holmes, however subconsciously?
Nor is this by any means the only impact the Canon had on Rex Stout and Nero Wolfe.
In Rex’s appreciation of Doyle’s art [wrote John McAleer], we find valuable guidelines for understanding Rex’s own art. He saw the necessity of making Wolfe a man rich in human contradictions. Wolfe’s eccentricities surpass those of Holmes. At times he is childish in his moods. He shuts his eyes more often than Holmes does to “moral issues.” More than once he “arranges” for the suicide of a culprit, to save himself a court appearance. Yet, withal, even as Holmes is, he is “grand and glorious.”
He also has a sidekick without whom he would be just another genius sleuth. The parallels between John H. Watson, M.D., and Archie Goodwin may not be immediately obvious, but they are strong. Like Watson, Archie is:
• his boss’s Boswell (although better known in crime writing as a “Watson”);
• a man of action;
• a ladies’ man;
• the one who always carries the gun (although Holmes occasionally does, too);
• a colorful and interesting character, unlike S.S. Van Dine or the unnamed “I” of Poe’s Dupin stories;
• a conductor of light, if not himself luminous.
In this matter, Stout’s debt to
Conan Doyle was conscious and acknowledged. In The Mystery Writer’s Handbook, a 1956 volume from The Mystery Writers of America, Stout wrote an article called “What to do About a Watson.” He argued that a Watson helps solve what he called “your main technical difficulty” of having the detective hero learn information that the author isn’t ready to share with the reader. “A Watson can be a devil of a nuisance at times,” he wrote, “but he is worth it for his wonderful cooperation in clearing the toughest hurdle on the course.”
At the end of his three-page essay, Stout cited an example of a Watson at work for the author in this exchange from “The Red-Headed League”:
“Evidently,” said I, “Mr. Wilson’s assistant counts for a good deal in this mystery of the Red-headed League. I am sure that you inquired your way merely in order that you might see him.”
“Not him.”
“What then?”
“The knees of his trousers.”
“And what did you see?”
“What I expected to see.”
“Why did you beat the pavement?”
“My dear doctor, this is a time for observation, not for talk.”
And then Stout added—gleefully, in my imagination—“That’s the way to do it!”
Nobody who has ever read Rex Stout’s mysteries could deny that he did it his own unique way. But he was also operating under the spell of Arthur Conan Doyle’s arcane magic.
The great private eye novelist Ross Macdonald expressed the opinion of many critics when he wrote:
Rex Stout is one of the half-dozen major figures in the development of the American detective novel. With great wit and cunning, he devised a form which combined the traditional virtues of Sherlock Holmes and the English school with the fast-moving vernacular narrative of Dashiell Hammett.
Stout deserves full credit for doing this so well, and over a 41-year period. But Conan Doyle was there before him. While the first part of The Valley of Fear is an exemplar of “Sherlock Holmes and the English school,” the flashback half—the story of tough guy Birdy Edwards in Vermissa Valley, U.S.A.—is arguably (as Steve Doyle writes in Sherlock Holmes for Dummies) “the world’s first hard-boiled detective story.”
So even in his best known and most enduring contribution to the American detective story, Rex Stout walked in the footprints of a giant. And they were not the footprints of a gigantic hound!
TO WALK A CROOKED MILE, by Hal Charles
I
Kelly Locke had just gotten off the phone with her—what should she call him, she wondered—her significant other, when the doorman at the entrance of the Baker Street complex buzzed to let her know her father was on the way up to her second-floor condo. Originally, as Paul’s baseball team had a rare day off, they planned that after she finished doing The Six O’Clock Report, they would grab a bite, then club through the night, but he had called with the out-of-the-blue news that he’d been traded to the L.A. Dodgers and had to be in the City of Angels for tomorrow’s matinee game. So, since her publisher had been clamoring for her to finish the sequel to her bestseller, Six O’Clock and the Single Girl, she had hidden from her feelings by starting the next chapter.
She finished the paragraph she was on, all the while her mind lingering on the obvious: Paul was going to ask her to follow him to the left coast, and she was going to have to choose between him and her newly negotiated contract that made her one of the nation’s highest-paid local anchors.
As she opened the door, she could tell her usually optimistic father was not his typical self. “Glad I caught you when you weren’t doing anything,” he said.
“Just playing on the computer,” she said. “You know how we lonely old maids get at night.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell Paul,” said the Chief of Detectives. “Anyway,” he said, throwing his suit coat over her new white leather couch, “I need to talk.” He went straight to her fridge. “I can see by the Sam Adams that the person you never tell dear old dad about is still in the picture.”
“Perceptive as ever,” she said. Even though they lived within a few miles, her father rarely came by for a visit, except for two things. She wondered which one it was tonight. And then it hit her. “I was expecting you, actually,” she lied, irritated at herself for not being ready. Best to ease into things, she told herself. “The last time we talked, Dad, you were debating labeling the Strong case as cold. Made up your mind yet?”
Matt Locke pulled two long necks out and unscrewed their tops. “If you ever get tired of news reporting, you could start a new career as Madame Kelly, Mind Reader. He handed her a bottle, oblivious to the wineglass that sat beside her computer. “I’d hate to put that box in the storeroom. Any time the owner of a company involved in national defense is found dead in his office with a major gash in his skull, a lot of people want answers, but there are none.”
“Nothing new?” tried Kelly.
“No new forensic evidence, no new witnesses, no new suspects, and no reason to doubt the interviews with his widow, his son, or even the butler.”
Kelly sat down on the new couch across from her favorite Lazy-Boy that her father had appropriated. “A dead end.”
“As dead as the last time we talked,” he admitted, “but it’s like watching your favorite movie over and over—you think you’ll see something new or at least gain a different perspective than you used to have.”
“Can I check out the evidence box?” Kelly said. “Since it’s only 8:05 now, I’d guess you came here straight from work and have the box in your car’s trunk because you’re going to take just one more look at it.”
“Remind me not to try to hide any birthday or Christmas presents from you,” said the detective, taking a deep draw on the amber bottle. “Why is it that every time I come over here, I feel like a cross between Watson and Tonto?”
At that moment her cell phone buzzed, identifying the caller as her agent. “Excuse me, Dad. I have to grab this.” She walked into her bedroom. “Fira, what’s up?”
“Haveta hurry, girl. Taking a big meeting in an n-sec on Kardasians: The Movie,” her agent fired out. “Best deal I can get you in L.A. on such short notice is weekend anchor at the market’s #2. Seems like a big step backwards, but it’s your call.”
“L.A.…weekend anchor,” said Kelly, aware that flabbergasted did not begin to describe her confusion. Then the what-do-I-need-to-complete-this-puzzle piece came to her. “Paul—”
“What a coincidence, girl. He’s ringing in right now on my other line. Did I tell you he wants me to negotiate a new deal with the Dodgers? Hey, if Jay Z can represent jocks, why not little old Fira?”
“Paul asked you to find me a new job?”
“Just before he pleaded with me to represent him now that he’s the toast of the coast.”
“But,” Kelly protested, “I didn’t ask—”
“I know. Ain’t it wonderful? You love dumplings have been cooking together in the same wine for so long that he knows what you want without you even asking. Gotta run. Ciao.”
Once she got past the image of being cooked in wine, Kelly realized she was furious, but as she returned to the living room, she noticed her father had that look on his face that said he might actually enjoy listening to country music. She touched his hand. “It’s that time of year again, isn’t it?”
“‘In me thou seest the twilight of such day/As after sunset fadeth in the west’.”
“Shakespeare,” said Kelly.
“Your mother,” returned her father. “Since she left me, every day has seemed like twilight.”
Kelly knelt down beside her father. “I can remember so clearly Coach Ferguson dropping me off at the precinct house after my softball game. I wondered why he wasn’t taking me to the Remaleys’ where Myles and I were staying while you and Mom had—what did she call it—a wee
kend alone. Coach didn’t say a word.”
“I told Fergie it was my job to tell you and Myles. I…I…still can’t believe that explosion. I’d just gone down the mountain to get the paper and some donuts. Fire department said it was the propane tank…something about a leak. But I’d just checked it. Maybe if—”
“Dad,” said Kelly, “not all mysteries can be solved.”
“Maybe not,” he said gruffly, “but this one above all should have been. Sweetheart, her body was in pieces. If only I could kiss that heart-shaped birthmark on her cheek one more time. She called it her love tattoo.”
Kelly took his shaking hand. “Would you like to just sit here for a bit?”
He wiped his eyes. “No time for tears. We need to go down to my car and get that evidence box that I can tell you’re just dying to pore through.”
II
As she pulled her recently-purchased Mini-Cooper into the parking garage at WBAK-TV, Kelly couldn’t keep her mind focused on either of the dueling emotions that had been vying for her attention since the previous evening. The image of her father, a man who was usually so in control of the situation, trying to stay outwardly strong while she knew he was crumbling inside at those devastating memories, had her on the edge of tears, while at the same time Paul’s presumptive call to her agent about jobs in L.A. had her gritting her teeth.
Kelly headed toward the elevator, determined to put both emotions on hold so that she could get herself ready for the newscast coming up in a couple of hours. She wondered if Paul had told anyone else about “their” plans. The thought of her boss learning that a move to the west coast was even a possibility sent shivers down her spine. Bill Phillips was not the easiest of men to work with in the best of circumstances. Fira fought hard to get her the new contract, and Phillips had not given in without a struggle. Now, it could be a whole new ballgame…so to speak.