Rex Stout, Trio for Blunt Instruments

Rex Stout, Trio for Blunt Instruments
Originally published 1964.
This edition Bantam Crime Line, 2002
© Rex Stout 1963, 1964
ISBN 0-53-2419105

This was the final collection of novellas published during Stout’s lifetime (a subsequent collection, Death Times Three, was prepared for publication by Stout’s biographer, John McAleer, and published in 1985).  Two of the three are very good; the other has what are, for me, significant problems.  And, with this, I have concluded my bedtime re-reading of the novellas. 

“Kill Now—Pay Later,” the first in the collection and the first published, has its points of interest.  First of all, we learn that both Wolfe and Godwin have their shoes polished (3 times a week) by a bootblack (Peter Vassos), whose business involves his going to his customers, rather than his customers coming to him.  His (apparent) usual for a shine is $0.25 (but Wolfe pays $1). [1]  As the story opens, he has arrived early, because one of his customers was otherwise occupied—he’d been pushed, or fallen, or jumped out of a 10^th floor window.  That customer was Dennis Ashby, head of sales in a company manufacturing products for the clothing manufacturing business.

Ashby was apparently something of a cad, and the police settle on the theory that he had debauched Pete’s daughter, and he had responded by defenestrating Ashby.  The daughter, Elma, shows up the next day to hire Wolfe—Pete has been found dead, at the bottom of a cliff in New Jersey; the police have concluded it’s suicide, and she wants Wolfe to discover the murderer.  His initial gambit is to sue the people—including Inspector Cramer—who might have said that Ashby had debauched Elma—for $1,000,000 each.  And he proceeds to uncover the murderer. 

Save for one pretty significant fact about Pete’s death, that no competent/experienced cop would have overlooked, this is an above-average story among the novellas. 

 [1] I have a little trouble working out the economics of this.  Say he manages to serve 4 customers per hour—and given that he’s moving around, that might be generous, and that they all (or almost all) pay $0.25.  So his gross is $1 per hour, and, given that his clientele is apparently working, so his working day is 8 AM to 5 PM and that he has a “full book”, with a half hour out for lunch.  That’s 34 customers per day, of $8.50.  Let’s round it up to $10 per day.  And, given what we know about his clientele, weekends can’t be very lucrative.  So $50 per week, $2,600 per year.  (And he does have some costs of doing business, but let’s ignore them.)  The average annual income for hourly wage workers in the US in 1962 was about $4,000 per year.  The minimum wage was $1.10, so about $2,200 for a full year.  Vassos would not be covered by the minimum wage law, as he was self-employed.  So he (and his daughter) could have managed to live in (apparently) Manhattan, but clearly not well.
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Archie’s relationship with a young woman who has become a highly-paid fashion model (Susan McLeod) sets the stage for “Murder Is Corny.”  Wolfe has been buying 12 ears of corn weekly from Duncan McLeod (her father), and Rusterman’s has been buying 15-20 dozen.  As Wolfe tell s Cramer “…sweet corn…roasted in the hottest possible over for 40 minutes, shucked at the table, and buttered and nothing else, is ambrosia.”  But this week’s corn was not up to Wolfe’s specifications.  The corn was being delivered by Ken Faber that summer, who was working for McLeod because he wanted to be closer to Susan (who spent her weekends on the farm) and Cramer has delivered this week’s corn because Faber is dead.

The problem is that Cramer thinks Archie was in the alley at Rusterman’s when Faber made the delivery there, and might have killed Faber because he’s been spreading rumors about Susan.  And Wolfe (and Archie) have to uncover the actual murderer, in no small part to keep Archie out of jail.  Cramer, somewhat surprisingly as far as I’m concerned, seems bent on misinterpreting a piece of evidence that points away from Archie, rather than toward him.  [2]

[2] And you have to be willing to believe that McLeod can determine which ears of corn are at the peak of perfection for eating—without disturbing the husks.  Always a bit difficult for me.
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A strange piece of mail for Archie the starting point for “Blood Will Tell.”  He gets, in a cream-colored envelope [with a return address (James Neville Vance and a street address in the Village) that’s “really” engraved], with a tie (same color scheme as the stationery) and a note typed on matching stationery that says:  “Archie Goodwin—Keep this until you hear from me.”  Followed by a phone call telling him to burn it, from someone whom Archie thinks may be disguising his voice.  And the tie has a splotch on it that appears to be blood. [3]  Archie is moved (a) to have the spot tested to see if it’s blood and (b) drop in on Mr. Vance.  While he’s at Vance’s town house (with three apartments—the 1st floor is occupied by the Fougere; the 2nd by Bonny Kirk (her husband, Martin, has moved out; Vance occupies the 3rd and 4th floors) a policeman stops by to ask Vance to let him into the second floor apartment—the cops got a call saying something might be wrong there.  And there is; Bonnie Kirk has been bludgeoned to death with a (full) vodka bottle.  (Archie leaves discreetly.)

Martin Kirk is the obvious suspect, because of Bonnie’s infidelity, because he moved out, and because the note Archie received in the mail (allegedly from Vance) was typed on a typewriter Kirk recently disposed of.  And Kirk has asked for Wolfe to help him, and Wolfe agrees (although Archie clearly has doubts).  Again, Wolfe pulls a rabbit out of a hat.

Now here I have to suggest that you stop reading, because what follows is a massive spoiler.  Massive.  Not just whodunit, but also some major plot points I have not mentioned.  So stop now.

[3] Archie identifies the tie—silk—as a “Sutcliffe” tie, probably $20 retail—or about $160 if tie prices have kept pace with inflation.  The only truly high-class tie label I’m even semi-familiar with is Sergio Ferragamo, which seem to be about $150 these days. So, a reasonable factoid.

Everybody gone?  OK.

Remember the tie?  It’s the same color as the stationery (and the paint job on the townhouse).  Vance had 9 of them, identical.  He claims that he gave 1 to Kirk (which is putatively the tie someone—Kirk?—sent to Archie) and that 1 is otherwise missing.  As both Archie and Wolfe recognize, Vance’s having given Kirk a tie is suspect.  But another tie is missing as well?  Uh.  Why?  What possible reason is there for the second tie to be missing?  It makes no sense, even after the killer is identified.  And if Kirk killed his wife, and got blood on the tie, why not just take it off and leave it there, or burn it?  What possible reason could Kirk have for mailing the tie to Archie?  The whole fol-de-rol with the ties is clearly very odd and clearly points anywhere but to Kirk.

The second major issue I had with this story has to do with Stout’s treatment of sexually disturbed men, in this case, a middle-aged man.  For James Neville Vance is our murderer.  We learn that Bonnie Kirk has been “playing” (her husband’s term) Vance—playing one of his pianos when she’s bored, dressing somewhat provocatively apparently.  And Vance wants her badly.  But all she does is flirt and tease.  So he conceives the hocus-pocus with the ties—at least 3 weeks before the murder, because Kirk got rid of the old typewriter that long before the murder. He makes a present of one of his ties to Kirk (and hides another one).  He kills her not in the heat of some passion; he planned the murder.  And, having killed her, he cuts off a (bloody lock of her hair and hides in inside a glove.  I could see a heat-of-passion killing, actually, although nothing we learn about Vance suggests he cares that much about anything except himself and modern piano music.  There’s nothing about his character as it is revealed to us that makes this ending plausible (except Paul Fougere’s assertion that Vance had the hots for Bonnie Kirk, and that’s an assertion than neither of the other people in the story who were familiar with both the murder victim and the murderer seem to have noticed.  I just couldn’t buy it.