In Rex Stout’s If Death Ever Slept (1957), Archie is posing as secretary “Alan Green” to learn if millionaire Otis Jarrell’s daughter-in-law, Susan, is stealing business secrets and cheating on his son, only to find predecessor James Eber with a bullet in the head. Wolfe tells Archie to “be guided by your intelligence and experience,” later expressed — e.g., in Gambit (1962) — as using his “intelligence guided by experience.” He hires Dol Bonner and Sally Colt, whom he met in “Too Many Detectives” (1956), to reinforce Archie and the ’teers; they find the .38 that killed two men in Susan’s locker at Clarinda Day’s, “an establishment…where women could get almost anything done that occurred to them…”

   As its title suggests, the next collection, And Four to Go (1958), is unique in containing a quartet of novellas, including “Christmas Party,” which debuted as “The Christmas-Party Murder” in the final issue of Collier’s (January 4, 1957). Two appeared in Look: “Easter Parade” (as “The Easter Parade Murder,” April 16, 1957) and “Fourth of July Picnic” (as “The Labor Union Murder,” July 9, 1957). Published there for the first time, “Murder Is No Joke” was subsequently rewritten and expanded into “Frame-Up for Murder,” which was serialized in three issues of The Saturday Evening Post (June 21-July 5, 1958), and finally appeared in book form in the posthumous collection Death Times Three (1985).

   In “Easter,” Wolfe has Archie hire a thief, Tabby, to snatch the spray of Millard Bynoe’s unique, flamingo-pink Vanda from his wife’s shoulder…just as she collapses, shot with a strychnine-filled needle at the titular event. With typical insouciance regarding character continuity, Bob Skinner is yet again the D.A. despite apparently becoming Commisioner, replaced by Ed Bowen, in Prisoner’s Base (1952); an A.D.A. Doyle also appears, but as Stout used the surname repeatedly, it is unclear if this one has any specific antecedent. In “Fourth of July,” Wolfe reluctantly agrees to deliver a speech for the Independence Day picnic of the United Restaurant Workers of America at Culp’s Meadows on Long Island.

   He is persuaded by Felix Martin, the maitre d’ at Rusterman’s, which he has supervised since Marko Vukcic died; Paul Rago, the Churchill’s sauce chef; food and wine importer H.L. Griffin; and the URWA president and director of organization, respectively, James Korby and Philip Holt. Waiting on deck, Wolfe finds Holt stabbed to death, alerting only Archie, but while he is speaking, Korby’s daughter, Flora, screams upon discovering the body. We learn that after two weeks of college, Archie “came to New York and got a job guarding a pier, shot and killed two men and was fired, was recommended to Nero Wolfe for a chore he wanted done, did it, was offered a full-time job…took it [and] still have it.”

   In “Joke,” Bianca Voss is hit with a marble paperweight and strangled with a scarf while on the phone with Wolfe, whom Flora Gallant has asked to end a pernicious influence on her brother, star couturier Alec. Or so it seems until Sarah Yare, a customer of his who’d infatuated Archie with her performance in the play Thumb a Ride, is found an apparent suicide, so Wolfe deduces that she’d acted a part to conceal, perhaps unknowingly, the fact that Voss was already dead. With 31 additional pages, “Frame-Up” turns Flora from a frump into a subject of Archie’s admiration; innocently devised to protect the interests of Alec (a hero of the French Resistance), Flora’s charade was hijacked by the killer of Bianca and Sarah.

   In “Christmas,” Archie refuses to drive Wolfe to Lewis Hewitt’s on Long Island to meet British hybridizer Thompson, citing a prior engagement — a party at the office of interior decorator Kurt Bottweil, for whom they recovered some stolen tapestries—and showing a license to wed sales representative Margot Dickey. Also present are “angel” Mrs. Perry Porter (Edith) Jerome; her playboy son, Leo; fellow employees receptionist Cherry Quon, business manager Alfred Kiernan, and “pet wizard” Emil Hatch; and Santa…tending bar. In mid-toast, Bottweil succumbs to cyanide in his Pernod, and Archie realizes that Santa has vanished in the tumult, leaving behind his mask and costume in the private elevator.

   The license was, of course, “for the birds,” a ploy requested by Margot, merely a frequent dancing partner, to make Kurt — who tore it up — stop stalling and marry her, warding off a bid by Cherry. Wolfe took seriously enough the threat of either losing Archie or having the brownstone invaded by a female to forego Thompson and observe the “happy couple” incognito, making him by default a fugitive from justice and the primary suspect. Unlike the police, he knows that the bottle in Kurt’s desk was unadulterated before Wolfe put the costume on but, unwilling to explain to Cramer the reasons for his presence there, asserts he must crack the case before the Santa-hunt inevitably leads the law to West 35th Street.

   Arriving uninvited, Cherry reveals knowledge that Wolfe was Santa, but says she has not yet told the police, fearing they’d be diverted from the real culprit, allegedly Margot; she wants “evidence” (i.e., a frame-up), because everyone knew Emil had potassium cyanide in his workshop, and agrees to give Wolfe time to assemble the facts. After making some arrangements with Saul, typically keeping Archie in the dark, he convenes the suspects in his office, where Emil offers motives: Edith and Al were jealous of a Kurt/Cherry union, and Leo did not want his inheritance drained. With Purley in tow, Cramer shows up and tries to arrest Saul, but Wolfe puts him in his place, and is ready to identify the murderer.

   Offering an edited version of the truth, with Santa a vagabond who couldn’t have known about the poison, Wolfe explains that he had Saul send each suspect a note in which “St. Nick” professes to have seen what they did, offering to meet at Grand Central. Emil and both Jeromes took theirs to the police, as did Al, who agreed to attend the rendezvous and signal them, but Margot showed up without having done so. Guilty after all, she had lied about Kurt agreeing to marry her, to deflect suspicion from herself; Wolfe tells Cherry in private after the arrest that her objective was achieved, even if not by the method she had suggested — leaving her with no reason to muddy the waters by identifying the true Santa.

   â€œChristmas Party” (7/1/01) and the previous first-season entry of A Nero Wolfe Mystery, “Door to Death” (6/4/01)  — both directed by Holly Dale and adapted by Sharon Elizabeth Doyle — were linked for international broadcast and DVD as the faux telefilm Wolfe Goes Out. Margot (Francie Swift) cuts in on Lily Rowan (Kari Matchett) and Archie (Timothy Hutton) at the Flamingo Club to discuss her proposal; we flash forward to Wolfe (Maury Chaykin) broaching the invitation from Hewitt, which here includes his former employee, Andy Krasicki. Like Lily, Theodore’s sometime substitute is not seen in the novella, nor does he appear on screen, but is obviously invoked to connect this with “Door to Death.”

   Doyle has Wolfe dismiss Christmas as “an excuse for wretched excess, aptly symbolized by an elephantine elf who delivers gifts to the whole world in one night,” and order Fritz (Colin Fox) to remove his Santa hat. M.J. Kang, in her only series appearance as Cherry, and Jody Racicot — previously seen in “Prisoner’s Base” (5/13 & 20/01)—as Leo join rep players David Schurmann (playing Al), Richard Waugh (Emil), Nicky Guadagni (Edith), and Robert Bockstael (Kurt). Wolfe’s indirect method of revealing “Santa’s” identity is retained, sending Archie to his room ostensibly to fetch his copy of Herbert Block’s Here and Now , found with the white gloves Wolfe himself purchased to complete the costume.

   Stout makes much of Cherry’s “Oriental inscrutability,” unsurprisingly eliminated for the 21st-century audience, although Kang is dressed and coiffed to emphasize the character’s ethnicity; in the novella, Margot states, “her father was half Chinese and half Indian—not American Indian — and her mother was Dutch.” The assembly in the office arrives in two contingents, with the Jeromes, Cherry, and Emil later joined by Cramer (Bill Smitrovich), Purley (R.D. Reid), and those picked up at the rendezvous: Saul (Conrad Dunn), Margot, and Al. Saul’s other errand had been to confirm that Kurt’s wastebasket was not emptied before Archie searched it, belying Margot’s claim that he tossed in the license-fragments.

         — Copyright © 2024 by Matthew R. Bradley.
   

Up next: Champagne for One

Editions cited —

         If Death Ever Slept in Seven Complete Nero Wolfe Novels: Avenel (1983)

         And Four to Go, Death Times Three: Bantam (1974, 1985)

Online source —