Rex Stout, The Red Box

Rex Stout, The Red Box
Copyright © Estate of Rex Stout
Original publication: 1938
Available as an ebook


It’s early spring in 1936; Helen Frost will turn 21 in about two months, and will come into her inheritance from her father. [1]  He left an estate worth about $2 million to her, cutting his wife (her mother) out of the will.  A $2 million estate, adjusted for inflation from 1918 [2] to current price levels, would be the rough equivalent of $35 million now.  If the estate yielded a 4% income return, her income would have been about $80,000 per year (or about $1.4 million today).  Clearly, whether we’re looking at 1936 or at 2020, she was a very well-to-do young woman.


But, until she turns 21, her uncle (Dudley Frost) is in charge of her estate, and her mother, Calida Frost, apparently has day-to-day management of the household.  Oh—and Dudley’s son Lew (an aspiring Broadway producer who seems to have a hit on his hands) is in love with his cousin, which has led to his exploring some sociological arcana.  Helen, despite her wealth, refuses to just live off her wealth—she has a job, as a model at the fashion house founded and run by Boyden McNair.  He was something of a family friend in the ‘teens, and a failed artist, when they were all living in Paris.  His wife died in childbirth and he lost his daughter about two years later.  His daughter was born about two months before Helen.


In relatively short order after the story opens, one of the other models (Molly Lauck) working a fashion show at McNair’s place dies of cyanide poisoning, from a box of chocolates she swiped (her term) from McNair’s desk.  So the poison was not intended for her; more likely, McNair was the intended victim.  Nero Wolfe is drawn into investigation by a strategem used by cousin Lew (whose real objective is to get Helen out of McNair’s place).  Subsequently, McNair comes to talk with Wolfe, and tells him that he wants Wolfe to accept him as his client, and announces his intention of making Wolfe the executor of his estate.  Wolfe is not amused.


He shortly becomes less amused—McNair dies, in Wolfe’s office, having taken poisoned aspirin tablets. 


The upshot of the second death is that Wolfe does agree to become McNair’s executor, and, in his will, is left a red box.  Exactly where it is, and what is in it, becomes the initial focus of Wolfe’s investigation.  And Wolfe believes, early on, that he knows who is responsible for these two deaths. And what the motive for the primary murder is.  But proof turns out to be very hard to acquire.


In the end, though, he thinks he has enough to try to wrap up the case.  We have the usual gathering of suspects and interested parties (and Inspector Cramer) in the office.  Wolfe explains what the motive for the murders has been, and, in doing so, reveals that the origins of the entire situation are a result of what happened in Paris nearly 21 years before.


Stout is still sorting some things out (this is the 4^th book in the series), and the character of Cramer is somewhat in flux.  Both Wolfe and his associate (and goad) Archie Goodwin are also coming into better focus.  I think this is one of the better of the early books, which is probably not the consensus opinion.  It’s certainly worth reading, however one chooses to rank it in the series.


[1] He died in 1916, while serving as a pilot in the newly-established British air corps.  (He was an American citizen, as were his wife and daughter.)


[2] The price level fell by about 7% between 1918 and 1936.