Black Orchids

Black Orchids Rex Stout Series: Nero Wolfe [9] Published: 1992 Tags: Cozy Mystery, Vintage Mystery, Early 20th Century

Cozy Mysteryttt Vintage Mysteryttt Early 20th Centuryttt

SUMMARY: 'It is always a treat to read a Nero Wolfe mystery. The man has entered our folklore'.--The New York Times Book Review. Incomparable sleuth Nero Wolfe and his perennially hardy sidekick, Archie Goodwin, find themselves trying to weed out a garden-variety killer at the annual flower show.

Rex Stout

Black Orchids

BLACK ORCHIDS

Chapter 1

Monday at the Flower Show, Tuesday at the Flower Show, Wednesday at the Flower Show. Me, Archie Goodwin. How's that?

I do not deny that flowers are pretty, but a million flowers are not a million times prettier than one flower. Oysters are good to eat, but who wants to eat a carload?

I didn't particularly resent it when Nero Wolfe sent me up there Monday afternoon and, anyway, I had been expecting it. After all the ballyhoo in the special Flower Show sections of the Sunday papers, it was a cinch that some member of our household would have to go take a look at those orchids, and as Fritz Brenner couldn't be spared from the kitchen that long, and Theodore Horstmann was too busy in the plant rooms on the roof, and Wolfe himself could have got a job in a physics laboratory as an Immovable Object if the detective business ever played out, it looked as if I would be elected. I was.

When Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at six P.M. Monday and entered the office, I reported:

'I saw them. It was impossible to snitch a sample.'

He grunted, lowering himself into his chair. 'I didn't ask you to.'

'Who said you did, but you expected me to. There are three of them in a glass case and the guard has his feet glued.'

'What color are they?'

'They're not black.'

'Black flowers are never black. What color are they?'

'Well.' I considered. 'Say you take a piece of coal. Not anthracite. Cannel coal.'

'That's black.'

'Wait a minute. Spread on it a thin coating of open kettle molasses. That's it.'

'Pfui. You haven't the faintest notion what it would look like. Neither have I.'

'I'll go buy a piece of coal and we'll try it.'

'No. Is the labellum uniform?'

I nodded. 'Molasses on coal. The labellum is large, not as large as aurea, about like truffautiana. Cepals lanceolate. Throat tinged with orange-'

'Any sign of wilting?'

'No.'

'Go back tomorrow and look for wilting on the edges of the petals. You know it, the typical wilting after pollination. I want to know if they've been pollinated.'

So I went up there again Tuesday after lunch. That evening at six I added a few details to my description and reported no sign of wilting.

I sat at my desk, in front of his against the wall, and aimed a chilly stare at him.

'Will you kindly tell me,' I requested, 'why the females you see at a flower show are the kind of females who go to a flower show? Ninety per cent of them? Especially their legs? Does it have to be like that? Is it because, never having any flowers sent to them, they have to go there in order to see any? Or is it because-'