The Nine Mile Walk

by Harry Kemelman

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  The Nine Mile Walk

  The Nicky Welt Stories

  Harry Kemelman

  To Arthur and Doris Fields

  Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  THE NINE MILE WALK

  THE STRAW MAN

  THE TEN O’CLOCK SCHOLAR

  END PLAY

  TIME AND TIME AGAIN

  THE WHISTLING TEA KETTLE

  THE BREAD AND BUTTER CASE

  THE MAN ON THE LADDER

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Introduction

  Nicky Welt was born in the classroom. I was teaching a class in advanced composition and trying to show my students that words do not exist in vacuo but have meanings that can transcend their usual connotations, that even short combinations can permit a wide variety of interpretations. The headline of a story in the newspaper lying on my desk caught my eye—something about a hike planned by the local Boy Scout troop—and I wrote on the blackboard, “A nine mile walk is no joke, especially in the rain.” I invited my class to draw what inferences they could from the sentence. As frequently happens with pedagogical brainstorms, the experiment was not too successful. I’m afraid my class regarded it as an elaborate trap and the safest course was to remain silent. But as I coaxed and offered hints and suggestions, I myself was caught up in the game. I made inference upon inference, projection upon projection, and was led further and further.…

  It occurred to me that I had the material for a story, and when I got home, I tried to write it, but it did not jell. I put the idea aside and a couple of years later, when something recalled it to mind, tried it again. It went no better than the first time. I tried it again several years later, and again several years after that.

  Then, fourteen years after my initial try, I tried once again. This time it went. The story flowed, and I knew when I finished at the end of the day that it would require little or no revision. A writer is frequently asked how long it takes to write a story. So there is one answer: it takes one day, or fourteen years, depending on how you look at it.

  I sent it off to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, where it was accepted almost immediately, along with a letter from the editor promising to buy as many stories of the same type based on the same character as I could write. But it was more than a year before I was able to come up with another.

  The Nicky Welt stories attracted attention, I think, because they were the epitome of the armchair type of detective story. The problems were solved by pure logic, and the reader was given the same clues that were available to the detective hero. Furthermore, Nicky Welt was given no advantage, no special powers of intuition, no profound knowledge of criminology. In all candor, this was not so much a matter of choice as of necessity, since I myself had no such knowledge.

  Shortly after the publication of “The Nine Mile Walk” I was approached by several publishers who were interested in seeing a full-length manuscript about Nicky Welt. Naturally, I was flattered, but at the same time I felt I had to refuse. I felt that the classic tale of detection was essentially a short story—the primary interest on the problem, with character and setting emerging as adjuncts. Hence to stretch such a story to novel length would call for either engulfing the reader in a tedious recital of every little step that led the hero to his solution—many of these, necessarily, steps in the wrong direction—or posing a problem so complex that the reader would be as puzzled at the end as he was in the beginning. And yet I was intrigued by the idea of writing a full-length book.

  The solution was as unexpected—and as logical—as any dreamed up by Nicky Welt.

  Some years later, when I moved to the suburbs, I became interested in the sociological situation of the Jew in suburbia. This, I felt, could best be handled in the form of fiction, so I wrote a novel called “The Building of a Temple.” I sent the manuscript around to various editors, all of whom wrote me nice notes but regretfully had to decline it.

  I had all but given up hope of having it published when fortunately it came to an editor, who, while agreeing that the manuscript as it stood was unsalable, considered the subject itself of enough interest to suggest lines of revision that would make it more suitable for the general public. Moreover, he knew and admired the Nicky Welt stories, which by now had grown into a respectable body of work.…

  As we discussed the book, once again meanings transcended usual connotations; inference piled upon inference; subjects, characters, events became blended; and what emerged—as in “The Nine Mile Walk”—was a totally new concept, but a solid projection from the original material.

  Why not incorporate my detective stories with my novel of the Jewish suburban community? The traditional function of the rabbi, as opposed to the priest or minister, is as a judge, interpreter of the Law, rather than as a religious leader. How better show this than by getting him involved in a murder mystery and having him work his way out of it?

  The solution also had the merit of resolving that problem of the full-length mystery novel. The murder would provide only one thread, albeit an important one, of a larger narrative. That would be the story of the entire community in which the murder occurs and which affects everyone involved. The result, of course, was the creation of the “unorthodox” mystery novels featuring Rabbi David Small—Friday the Rabbi Slept Late and Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry.

  In a sense, then, Rabbi David Small can be said to be the son of Professor Nicholas Welt.

  And now Nicky too is appearing in book form. I am glad, because he has always occupied a special place in my affection. I enjoy reading—and writing—the classic detective story. In fact, the last story in the book, “The Man on the Ladder,” is my most recent piece of fiction. Even more, I consider the genre itself important because it is the one modern form primarily dedicated to giving pleasure to the reader. We are apt to forget these days that that is the principal purpose of literature.

  H. K.

  Marblehead, Massachusetts

  The Nine Mile Walk

  I had made an ass of myself in a speech I had given at the Good Government Association dinner, and Nicky Welt had cornered me at breakfast at the Blue Moon, where we both ate occasionally, for the pleasure of rubbing it in. I had made the mistake of departing from my prepared speech to criticize a statement my predecessor in the office of County Attorney had made to the press. I had drawn a number of inferences from his statement and had thus left myself open to a rebuttal which he had promptly made and which had the effect of making me appear intellectually dishonest. I was new to this political game, having but a few months before left the Law School faculty to become the Reform Party candidate for County Attorney. I said as much in extenuation, but Nicholas Welt, who could never drop his pedagogical manner (he was Snowdon Professor of English Language and Literature), replied in much the same tone that he would dismiss a request from a sophomore for an extension on a term paper, “That’s no excuse.”

  Although he is only two or three years older than I, in his late forties, he always treats me like a schoolmaster hectoring a stupid pupil. And I, perhaps because he looks so much older with his white hair and lined, gnomelike face, suffer it.

  “They were perfectly logical inferences,” I pleaded.

  “My dear boy,” he purred, “although human intercourse is well-nigh impossible without inference, most inferences are usually wrong. The percentage of error is particularly high in the legal profession where the intention is not to discover what the speaker wishes to convey, but rather what he wishes to conceal.”

  I picked up my check
and eased out from behind the table.

  “I suppose you are referring to cross-examination of witnesses in court. Well, there’s always an opposing counsel who will object if the inference is illogical.”

  “Who said anything about logic?” he retorted. “An inference can be logical and still not be true.”

  He followed me down the aisle to the cashier’s booth. I paid my check and waited impatiently while he searched in an old-fashioned change purse, fishing out coins one by one and placing them on the counter beside his check, only to discover that the total was insufficient. He slid them back into his purse and with a tiny sigh extracted a bill from another compartment of the purse and handed it to the cashier.

  “Give me any sentence of ten or twelve words,” he said, “and I’ll build you a logical chain of inferences that you never dreamed of when you framed the sentence.”

  Other customers were coming in, and since the space in front of the cashier’s booth was small, I decided to wait outside until Nicky completed his transaction with the cashier. I remember being mildly amused at the idea that he probably thought I was still at his elbow and was going right ahead with his discourse.

  When he joined me on the sidewalk I said, “A nine mile walk is no joke, especially in the rain.”

  “No, I shouldn’t think it would be,” he agreed absently. Then he stopped in his stride and looked at me sharply. “What the devil are you talking about?”

  “It’s a sentence and it has eleven words,” I insisted. And I repeated the sentence, ticking off the words on my fingers.

  “What about it?”

  “You said that given a sentence of ten or twelve words—”

  “Oh, yes.” He looked at me suspiciously. “Where did you get it?”

  “It just popped into my head. Come on now, build your inferences.”

  “You’re serious about this?” he asked, his little blue eyes glittering with amusement. “You really want me to?”

  It was just like him to issue a challenge and then to appear amused when I accepted it. And it made me angry.

  “Put up or shut up,” I said.

  “All right,” he said mildly. “No need to be huffy. I’ll play. Hm-m, let me see, how did the sentence go? ‘A nine mile walk is no joke, especially in the rain.’ Not much to go on there.”

  “It’s more than ten words,” I rejoined.

  “Very well.” His voice became crisp as he mentally squared off to the problem. “First inference: the speaker is aggrieved.”

  “I’ll grant that,” I said, “although it hardly seems to be an inference. It’s really implicit in the statement.”

  He nodded impatiently. “Next inference: the rain was unforeseen, otherwise he would have said, ‘A nine mile walk in the rain is no joke,’ instead of using the ‘especially’ phrase as an afterthought.”

  “I’ll allow that,” I said, “although it’s pretty obvious.”

  “First inferences should be obvious,” said Nicky tartly.

  I let it go at that. He seemed to be floundering and I didn’t want to rub it in.

  “Next inference: the speaker is not an athlete or an outdoors man.”

  “You’ll have to explain that one,” I said.

  “It’s the ‘especially’ phrase again,” he said. “The speaker does not say that a nine mile walk in the rain is no joke, but merely the walk—just the distance, mind you—is no joke. Now, nine miles is not such a terribly long distance. You walk more than half that in eighteen holes of golf—and golf is an old man’s game,” he added slyly. I play golf.

  “Well, that would be all right under ordinary circumstances,” I said, “but there are other possibilities. The speaker might be a soldier in the jungle, in which case nine miles would be a pretty good hike, rain or no rain.”

  “Yes,” and Nicky was sarcastic, “and the speaker might be one-legged. For that matter, the speaker might be a graduate student writing a Ph.D. thesis on humor and starting by listing all the things that are not funny. See here, I’ll have to make a couple of assumptions before I continue.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked, suspiciously.

  “Remember, I’m taking this sentence in vacuo, as it were. I don’t know who said it or what the occasion was. Normally a sentence belongs in the framework of a situation.”

  “I see. What assumptions do you want to make?”

  “For one thing, I want to assume that the intention was not frivolous, that the speaker is referring to a walk that was actually taken, and that the purpose of the walk was not to win a bet or something of that sort.”

  “That seems reasonable enough,” I said.

  “And I also want to assume that the locale of the walk is here.”

  “You mean here in Fairfield?”

  “Not necessarily. I mean in this general section of the country.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Then, if you grant those assumptions, you’ll have to accept my last inference that the speaker is no athlete or outdoors man.”

  “Well, all right, go on.”

  “Then my next inference is that the walk was taken very late at night or very early in the morning—say, between midnight and five or six in the morning.”

  “How do you figure that one?” I asked.

  “Consider the distance, nine miles. We’re in a fairly well-populated section. Take any road and you’ll find a community of some sort in less than nine miles. Hadley is five miles away, Hadley Falls is seven and a half, Goreton is eleven, but East Goreton is only eight and you strike East Goreton before you come to Goreton. There is local train service along the Goreton road and bus service along the others. All the highways are pretty well traveled. Would anyone have to walk nine miles in a rain unless it were late at night when no buses or trains were running and when the few automobiles that were out would hesitate to pick up a stranger on the highway?”

  “He might not have wanted to be seen,” I suggested.

  Nicky smiled pityingly. “You think he would be less noticeable trudging along the highway than he would be riding in a public conveyance where everyone is usually absorbed in his newspaper?”

  “Well, I won’t press the point,” I said brusquely.

  “Then try this one: he was walking toward a town rather than away from one.”

  I nodded. “It is more likely, I suppose. If he were in a town, he could probably arrange for some sort of transportation. Is that the basis for your inference?”

  “Partly that,” said Nicky, “but there is also an inference to be drawn from the distance. Remember, it’s a nine mile walk and nine is one of the exact numbers.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  That exasperated schoolteacher-look appeared on Nicky’s face again. “Suppose you say, ‘I took a ten mile walk’ or ‘a hundred mile drive’; I would assume that you actually walked anywhere from eight to a dozen miles, or that you rode between ninety and a hundred and ten miles. In other words, ten and hundred are round numbers. You might have walked exactly ten miles or just as likely you might have walked approximately ten miles. But when you speak of walking nine miles, I have a right to assume that you have named an exact figure. Now, we are far more likely to know the distance of the city from a given point than we are to know the distance of a given point from the city. That is, ask anyone in the city how far out Farmer Brown lives, and if he knows him, he will say, ‘Three or four miles.’ But ask Farmer Brown how far he lives from the city and he will tell you. ‘Three and six-tenths miles—measured it on my speedometer many a time.’”

  “It’s weak, Nicky,” I said.

  “But in conjunction with your own suggestion that he could have arranged transportation if he had been in a city—”

  “Yes, that would do it,” I said. “I’ll pass it. Any more?”

  “I’ve just begun to hit my stride,” he boasted. “My next inference is that he was going to a definite destination and that he had to be there at a particular time. It was no
t a case of going off to get help because his car broke down or his wife was going to have a baby or somebody was trying to break into his house.”

  “Oh, come now,” I said, “the car breaking down is really the most likely situation. He could have known the exact distance from having checked the mileage just as he was leaving the town.”

  Nicky shook his head. “Rather than walk nine miles in the rain, he would have curled up on the back seat and gone to sleep, or at least stayed by his car and tried to flag another motorist. Remember, it’s nine miles. What would be the least it would take him to hike it?”

  “Four hours,” I offered.

  He nodded. “Certainly no less, considering the rain. We’ve agreed that it happened very late at night or very early in the morning. Suppose he had his breakdown at one o’clock in the morning. It would be five o’clock before he would arrive. That’s daybreak. You begin to see a lot of cars on the road. The buses start just a little later. In fact, the first buses hit Fairfield around five-thirty. Besides, if he were going for help, he would not have to go all the way to town—only as far as the nearest telephone. No, he had a definite appointment, and it was in a town, and it was for some time before five-thirty.”

  “Then why couldn’t he have got there earlier and waited?” I asked. “He could have taken the last bus, arrived around one o’clock, and waited until his appointment. He walks nine miles in the rain instead, and you said he was no athlete.”

  We had arrived at the Municipal Building where my office is. Normally, any arguments begun at the Blue Moon ended at the entrance to the Municipal Building. But I was interested in Nicky’s demonstration and I suggested that he come up for a few minutes.

  When we were seated I said, “How about it, Nicky, why couldn’t he have arrived early and waited?”

  “He could have,” Nicky retorted. “But since he did not, we must assume that he was either detained until after the last bus left, or that he had to wait where he was for a signal of some sort, perhaps a telephone call.”