She didn't look much like a horseback rider. Not that she was built wrong, she had a fairly nice little body, with good hips, but her face was more of a subway face than a bridle-path face. Naturally I had been expecting something out of the ordinary, one way or another, since according to Bess Huddleston she was an anonymous letter writer and had thought up the Stryker dwarf and giant party, and to tell the truth I was disappointed. She looked more like a school teacher-or maybe it would be more accurate to say that she looked like what a school teacher looks like before the time comes that she absolutely looks like a school teacher and nothing else.
Maryella Timms, on the other hand, was in no way disappointing, but she was irritating. Her hair started far back above the slant of her brow, and that made her brow look even higher and broader than it was, and noble and spiritual. But her eyes were very demure, which didn't fit. If you're noble and spiritual you don't have to be demure. There's no point in being demure unless there's something on your mind to be demure about. Besides, there was her accent. Cawned beef ha-a-sh. I am not still fighting the Civil War, and anyway my side won, but these Southern belles-if it sounds like a deliberate come-on to me then it does. I was bawn and braht up in the Nawth.
'I'll see if I can pry him loose,' I said, and went to the hall and through to the kitchen.
The outlook was promising for getting Wolfe to come and attend to business, because he had not yet got his hands in the hash. The mixture, or the start of it, was there in a bowl on the long table, and Fritz, at one side of the table, and Wolfe, at the other, were standing there discussing it. They looked around at me as I would expect to be looked at if I busted into a Cabinet meeting at the White House.
'They're here,' I announced. 'Janet and Maryella.'
From the expression on his face as his mouth opened it was a safe bet that Wolfe was going to instruct me to tell them to come back tomorrow, but he didn't get it out. I heard a door open behind me and a voice floated past:
'Ah heah yawl makin' cawned beef ha-a-sh…'
That's the last time I try to reproduce it.
The owner of the voice floated past me too, right up beside Wolfe. She leaned over to peer into the bowl.
'Excuse me,' she said, which I couldn't spell the way
she said it anyhow, 'but corned beef hash is one of my specialties. Nothing in there but meat, is there?'
'As you see,' Wolfe grunted.
'It's ground too fine,' Maryella asserted.
Wolfe scowled at her. I could see he was torn with conflicting emotions. A female in his kitchen was an outrage. A woman criticizing his or Fritz's cooking was an insult. But corned beef hash was one of life's toughest problems, never yet solved by anyone. To tone down the corned flavor and yet preserve its unique quality, to remove the curse of its dryness without making it greasy- the theories and experiments had gone on for years. He scowled at her, but he didn't order her out.
'This is Miss Timms,' I said. 'Mr. Wolfe. Mr. Brenner. Miss Nichols is in-'
'Ground too fine for what?' Wolfe demanded truculently. 'This is not a tender fresh meat, with juices to lose-'
'Now you just calm down.' Maryella's hand was on his arm. 'It's not ruined, only it's better if it's coarser. That's far too much potatoes for that meat. But if you don't have chitlins you can't-'
'Chitlins!' Wolfe bellowed.
Maryella nodded. 'Fresh pig chitlins. That's the secret of it. Fried shallow in olive oil with onion juice-'
'Good heavens!' Wolfe was staring at Fritz. 'I never heard of it. It has never occurred to me. Fritz? Well?'
Fritz was frowning thoughtfully. 'It might go,' he conceded. 'We can try it. As an experiment.'
Wolfe turned to me in swift decision. 'Archie, call up Kretzmeyer and ask if he has pig chitlins. Two pounds.'
'You'd better let me help,' Maryella said. 'It's sort of tricky…'
That was how I came to get so well acquainted with Janet that first day. I thought I might as well have company driving down to the market for chitlins, and Maryella was glued to Wolfe, and as far as that's concerned Wolfe was glued to her for the duration of the experiment, so I took Janet along. By the time we got back to the house I had decided she was innocent in more ways than one, though I admit that didn't mean much, because it's hard for me to believe that anyone not obviously a hyena could pull a trick like anonymous letters. I also admit there wasn't much sparkle to her, and she seemed to be a little absent-minded when it came to conversation, but under the circumstances that wasn't surprising, if she knew why she had been told to go to Nero Wolfe's office, as she probably did.
I delivered the chitlins to the hash artists in the kitchen and then joined Janet in the office. I had been telling her about orchid hybridizing on the way back uptown, and when I went to my desk to get a stack of breeding cards I was going to show her, I noticed something was missing. So I gave her the cards to look at and excused myself and returned to the kitchen, and asked Wolfe if anyone had been in the office during my absence. He was standing beside Maryella, watching Fritz arrange the chitlins on a cutting board, and all I got was a growl.
'None of you left the kitchen?' I insisted.
'No,' he said shortly. 'Why?'
'Someone ate my lollipop,' I told him, and left him with his playmates and returned to the office. Janet was sitting with the cards in her lap, going through them. I stood in front of her and inquired amiably:
