As usual, the three novellas in Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe collection Triple Jeopardy (1952) had all first appeared in The American Magazine: “Home to Roost” (as “Nero Wolfe and the Communist Killer,” January 1952), “The Cop-Killer” (as “The Cop Killer,” February 1951), and “The Squirt and the Monkey” (as “See No Evil,” August 1951).

   In “Home to Roost,” Wolfe investigates the murder of Arthur Rackell, whose aunt, Pauline, states that he “was acting for the FBI when he joined the Communist party,” which Archie’s former G2 colleague Agent Wengert neither confirms nor denies. He immediately alerts Cramer, and Purley tells Archie, “this one has got stingers. Lay off”…so Wolfe takes on the case.

   Pauline is revealed as a secret Communist herself, who believed Arthur’s lie — intended to satisfy her façade of criticism for his leftist behavior — and killed him as an imminent threat. Wolfe calls Communists “enemies of this country,” yet adds here, “I deplore the current tendency to accuse people of pro-communism irresponsibly and unjustly…”

   As Stout’s biographer, John J. McAleer, noted, “By this time McCarthyism had brewed such tensions that even [critic and editor] Anthony Boucher said aloud he wished Wolfe would find another adversary. Boucher’s protest confirmed Rex’s belief that McCarthy helped Communism by making anti-Communism seem reactionary” (as quoted on Wikipedia).

   â€œThe Squirt and the Monkey” is set in the comic-strip milieu with the syndicated Dazzle Dan, created by Harry Koven and drawn by Pete Jordan and Byram Hildebrand. All are suspects — along with Harry’s wife, Marcelle, and agent/manager, Patricia Lowell — when his friend Adrian Getz (aka the Squirt) is killed; the only witness is Adrian’s pet monkey, Rookaloo, found in his cage clutching the murder weapon… Archie’s stolen pistol! Stout, with characteristic insouciance, conflates the names of Henry H. Barber and his successor as Wolfe’s lawyer, Nathaniel Parker, into Henry George Parker, who is asked to bring an action against Koven for $1 million after his lies lead Cramer to suspend Wolfe’s license.

   Carl and Tina Vardas, from Joel Fickler’s Goldenrod Barber Shop, entered this country illegally after escaping a Russian concentration camp, and have since feared detection; it seems to be at hand as plainclothes Det. Jacob Wallen questions the staff about the night before.

   They make a beeline for advice from favored customer Archie (who says he was born in Chillicothe, Ohio), but when he makes a recon, Purley Stebbins tells him Wallen was stabbed there with scissors, so one of them is “The Cop-Killer.” What led him to the shop from a stolen car that killed two women in a hit and run is not known, and all he had with him was that day’s early News, while the fugitives swear they never learned to drive.

   Suspects include barbers Ed Graboff (Archie’s), Jimmie Kirk (Wolfe’s), Philip Toracco, and Tom Yerkes, manicurist Janet Stahl, and Fickler; Archie and Wolfe tell, respectively, Purley and — when his curiosity compels him to stop by — Cramer that the Vardases are in their front room, knowing the truth will be dismissed as a joke.

   After learning that Janet has been hurt, Archie is summoned back, locking them in for their own safety, in spite of Carl’s impulsive attack in an effort to escape. Knocked out under the noses of the police, Janet will talk only to Archie, claiming improbably that Purley struck her, but he thinks she knows something, if unaware of its significance, and the killer sought to silence her.

   Wolfe arrives, ostensibly for a haircut, proposing to Cramer that “we see if we can settle this business” as he sits in the chair with the suspects assembled; he posits that whatever Wallen found in the car was folded in the paper, and is still there somewhere. As it turns out, Wolfe will need a new barber because the incriminating object, a two-week-old Time magazine hidden in plain sight after the murder, bears the shop’s subscription address. In Jimmie’s pocket when the chronic car-thief committed his crime while drunk, it was left behind unnoticed, which sent Waller to the shop, and with the Vardases cleared, Archie suggests calling in a favor from General Carpenter to work out their immigration status.

   A second-season episode of A&E’s A Nero Wolfe Mystery, “Cop Killer” (8/11/02) was the first of two directed by John R. Pepper, and the only entry adapted by Jennifer Salt. The daughter of screenwriter Waldo Salt, an Oscar-winner for Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Coming Home (1978), she had been an actress in the former and in Brian De Palma’s Sisters (1972), and as Eunice Tate on Soap. After an opening montage of frantic activity at the shop, cleverly scored with the overture to Gioachino Rossini’s opera Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville, 1816), we see Wallen (Doug Lennox) arrive, then segue to Tina (Nicky Guadagni) and Carl (Hrant Alianak) petitioning Archie (Timothy Hutton).

   With Fritz (Colin Fox) away from the house, Archie instructs Tina to bring beer — but not open it — if Wolfe (Maury Chaykin) should buzz while he is at the shop, assuring Purley (R.D. Reid) that he is only there for a shave. John Berrie (who succeeded Derek Rogers as cinematographer that season) often tilts his camera off-kilter, which along with quick cuts and high-angle shots produces a vertiginous effect, while the flashbacks are stylized with desaturated colors. In the chair, Archie reflects on Philip (Robbie Rox), who’d lost two sons in the war; Fickler (Ken Kramer), once attacked by his ex-wife; Jimmie (Boyd Banks), whom he accuses of stealing supplies; and race-track debtor Ed (James Tolkan).

   The over-dramatic Janet (Kari Matchett) seeks a show-business career, and Archie wisely writes off her initial story of stabbing Wallen after an attempted rape as, well, flummery. He returns as the Vardases dine with Wolfe, who “must have felt the distant rumblings of human sympathy” due to crimes by “Stalin’s puppets in Yugoslavia,” interpolated by Salt from The Black Mountain (1954). Bill Smitrovich beautifully plays Cramer’s indecision as he is challenged by Wolfe to look in the kitchen, used “to keep the murderers in,” but decides not to risk looking silly; Hitler and Stalin “told barefaced lies to have it taken for the truth, and we tell barefaced truth to have them take it for a lie,” Archie assures them.

   Janet, we learn in the climax, had seen Jimmie with a hot towel and the magazine, which she joked that he had been steaming when he tossed it on the table, prompting his earlier assault on her and a frantic dive in the novella that is foiled by Cramer, Purley, et alia. In the episode, Wolfe orders Jimmie to stop cutting his hair and give him a shave, seemingly playing cat and mouse and goading Jimmie into an abortive attempt to cut his throat. Salt has Archie make his suggestion not privately but at a dinner with the overjoyed Vardases, where we hear Wolfe’s side of the conversation as he commends “two exemplary people, who would make very significant additions to the citizenry of this country” to Carpenter.

         — Copyright © 2023 by Matthew R. Bradley.
   

Up next: Prisoner’s Base

Edition cited: Triple Jeopardy: Bantam (1957)

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