Literature / Black Orchids

A 1942 Nero Wolfe collection by Rex Stout, the first publication of a collection of Wolfe novellas rather than a single story.

The first story, "Black Orchids," tells of how Wolfe acquired the titular flowers. Wolfe is compelled out of the brownstone to the Flower Show by jealousy of Lewis Hewitt's new hybrid on display, while Archie is taken by a lovelier display — a girl in a glade exhibit. During the exhibit, the girl's companion, gardener Harry Gould, is shot and killed by a concealed pistol, but with horticulture on his mind, Wolfe would rather find a way to get ahold of Hewitt's plants than stop a murderer. When the two opportunities collide, there is no limit to what he will do — including risking the lives of himself, Archie, and Inspector Cramer — to earn the orchids as his fee.

In "Cordially Invited to Meet Death," the second and last story in the collection, Archie travels to party planner Bess Huddleston's estate to stop a case of anonymous letters. With a Big, Screwed-Up Household including Bess's brother and nephew, her assistant and secretary, her butler, the local doctor, and a playful orangutan, Archie has his share of suspects to pick from. But when she dies of tetanus following Archie's visit, two mysteries make their way into the brownstone: how can Wolfe uncover the poison-pen writer and murderer? And why was a certain bouquet of black flowers laid on Bess Huddleston's casket?

Not to be confused with the Doctor Who episode "Black Orchid" or the DC Comics superheroine Black Orchid.

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Tropes in this work: (Tropes relating to the series as a whole, or to the characters in general can be found on Nero Wolfe and its subpages.)

• Asshole Victim: Gould. After the case has been solved and a tally of his various unsavory deeds has been made, Wolfe even states that;
  Wolfe: It is surprising that Mr. Gould lived as long as he did, in view of his character.
• "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: Once Wolfe reveals to Hewitt how his cane was used in Gould's murder, he promptly demands a fee in the form of all three black orchid plants in order to clear him. Hewitt is quick to call it blackmail. Wolfe avers.
  "I'm going to have to work for them. You may call it blackmail to relieve your feelings, but what about me? It's possible that this evidence I'm withholding from Mr. Cramer is vital evidence, and I don't intend to shield a murderer. If I withhold it I'll have to find the murderer myself, and enough evidence to convict him without this. And if I fail I'll have to tell Mr. Cramer all about it, which would be deplorable, and shall have to return the plants to you, which would be unthinkable. So I shan't fail."
• Chekhov's Gun: The snapshot left behind when Bess Huddleston first hires Wolfe, and Larry Huddleston's hexagonal wristwatch. The snapshot of Janet, trimmed to six sides, fits in the wristwatch, indicating that the two were once lovers.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Pete Arango, a gardener Archie briefly chins with at the Flower Show. W. G. Dill bribed him to infect the Updegraff plantation with the Kurume yellows disease, and Gould's uncovering this led to his death.
• The Chessmaster: Wolfe's Tricked to Death ploy stands out as one of his most cold, bold and calculated gambits of the entire series. He notes that it relied heavily on its subject following an exact series of actions, but that things were engineered so that the subject wouldn't have any alternate options that seemed safe.
• Coattail-Riding Relative: Bess Huddleston's brother and nephew (although the later does help with her party planning) both live off of her.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Bess Huddleston dies a slow, lingering death from tetanus poisoning.
• Dogged Nice Guy: Fred Updegraff is obviously madly in love with Anne Tracy and does all he can to pursue her, but Archie has already set his own sights on her. But when he tells Archie he's been waiting outside Wolfe's house since eight o'clock, Archie, speechless, steps aside. (It should be noted that he says this sometime between 9:30 and 10:00, and he was waiting on the sidewalk.)
  "Good God," I said, stupefied. "You win." I waved a hand. "You can have her."
• Driving Question: The overarching mystery of the two stories, as Archie states after the stories' conclusion, is "Why did Nero Wolfe send rare black orchids to Bess Huddleston's funeral?" He suggests three explanations and gives his best guess, but admits he doesn't know for certain and likely never will.
• Everyone Has Standards: Wolfe, typically unfazed by the murders he deals with unless they impact upon him personally, seems to consider the method of murder in "Cordially Invited to Meet Death" — switching a bottle of iodine with a tampered bottle containing argyrol laced with tetanus spores, meaning that someone who used what they thought was iodine would in fact be infecting themselves with tetanus, thus dooming themselves to a particularly horrifying and painful death — to be particularly heinous, and the person who could conceive and execute such a plan to be especially despicable.
• For Want Of A Nail: Wolfe states that Bess Huddleston's murder would have gone unsolved if it had rained in the time period between Archie's visit and her death. (Or more accurately, between Archie's visit and Daniel Huddleston digging up the turf strip containing the bogus iodine.)
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The villain from the first story is tricked into poisoning himself while trying to kill Wolfe. Wolfe notes that if Cramer tried to press charges against him he could just argue that it was Dill who committed the fatal act of turning the gas pump, and that it was his own fault that he stayed long enough to be fatally gassed, due to wanting to make sure that the gas he thought was filling up the plant room would kill Wolfe and the others, and that it was ultimately self-defence since Dill would have only turned the pump in the first place because he was intending to murder eight people, including Wolfe and Cramer himself.
• Hot Guys Are Bastards: Harry Gould, and arguably Larry Huddleston.
• Innocently Insensitive: Bess Huddleston attempting to hire Nero Wolfe to be the detective for a mystery party she was throwing didn't really have any condescension or malice behind it, but Wolfe took it as an insult.
• Insult Backfire: In the first story after hearing every detail of Wolfe’s Batman Gambit, Cramer sneers that he should send a bill to the city for acting as Dill’s executioner. Wolfe wryly says that he could probably collect it.
• Jumped at the Call: Lewis Hewitt willingly helps Wolfe with his Tricked to Death gambit partially due to having a bit of a theatrical nature for most of his life.
• Kick the Dog: Wolfe considers the murderer in "Cordially Invited to Meet Death" to be especially despicable and sadistic; swapping a bottle of iodine with a bottle of silver argyrol laced with tetanus. Bad enough that the medication tampering essentially means that someone who thinks that they're cleaning a wound is in fact effectively killing themselves through fatal infection, but it's made clear that tetanus is an especially painful and lingering way to die, thus increasing the killer's sadism.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Lewis Hewitt is a recurring character for the rest of the series, making his innocence fairly obvious to anyone reading the series out of order, even though it does look as if he's the killer for a while.
• Medication Tampering: Bess Huddleston is killed by a bottle of silver argyrol containing tetanus germs swapped for a bottle of iodine.
• Must Make Amends: Archie's favorite of the potential explanations for why Wolfe sent orchids to Bess's funeral is that Wolfe was doing this to make up for failing to prevent her death, due to believing that he might have been able to crack the case in time to save her if he hadn't been so lazy.
• Nephewism: Bess Huddleston's nephew Larry lives off of her and she takes an interest in his love life.
• Oblivious to Love: Maryella Timms is utterly shocked when Dr. Brady says he's loved her for some time.
• Revealing Cover Up: Janet Nichols planted a piece of glass in her bath brush, scratched her arm with it, and infected herself with a tetanus-tainted bottle of fake iodine in order to keep suspicion off her. But the scratch on her arm was only an inch long, whereas if she'd been using her bath brush normally, it should have extended at least halfway up her arm.
• Sacred Hospitality: Wolfe is infuriated by Inspector Cramer taking Daniel Huddleston in for questioning while he's in the middle of lunch at the brownstone.
• Scars Are Forever: Larry worries this after being scratched on the face by Janet.
• Serious Business: Wolfe's meals, combined with Sacred Hospitality. He's so enraged that Inspector Cramer removes a suspect from his home without letting him stay for dinner that it spoils the meal and gives him indigestion, leading him to swear revenge on Cramer by vowing to solve the case before him.
• Sexual Extortion: Gould was blackmailing Anne Tracy into marrying him over a crime her father had committed.
• Snake Oil Salesman: Daniel Huddleston seems to be earnest in his pursuit of a cure-all medicine, but Wolfe clearly sees him this way upon hearing about that endeavor.
• Southern Belle: Maryella Timms. Archie even uses the term to describe her. She manages to pull off a rarity for any woman in the oeuvre by impressing Wolfe, waltzing directly into the kitchen to show him how to make corned beef hash, long a difficulty of his.
• Tricked to Death: Wolfe pulls a bold one on the murderer in "Black Orchids" — bold because if it had failed, he'd have likely killed himself, Archie, Theodore, Inspector Cramer, and most of the suspects in the case. With everyone gathered in the fumigating room, he laid out the entire murder plot, only accusing Hewitt (with his permission) instead of W. G. Dill, who had actually killed Harry Gould. He then sent Dill into the potting room to answer a phone call, anticipating that Dill would turn on the ciphogene gas in order to asphyxiate them all. But Wolfe had previously plugged up the pipe in the fumigating room and opened the one in the potting room, so Dill gassed himself instead.
• Troll: One possible reason that Wolfe sent the orchids to Bess's funeral was that he knew Archie would be there and just wanted to annoy him.
• The Un Twist: Janet Nichols, the person Bess Huddleston was suspicious of from the start, albeit for vague reasons, was in fact guilty.
• Unusual Pets for Unusual People: Bess Huddleston is a larger than life personality with four exotic pets (two bears, an alligator, and a chimpanzee).
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: By picking up Lewis Hewitt's cane in the hall, Archie fired the shot that killed Harry Gould — the cane was attached to the pistol's trigger with a long string.
• Wham Line: There are two in quick succession in the first story. Wolfe suddenly stops his summation, building his case against Hewitt to ask Theodore to check something for him. And Theodore's reply reveals that W. G. Dill, who just left the room, has locked them inside, at which point Wolfe then reveals his misdirection to the whole room.
  Theodore: I don't have to. I heard the bolt. the lower one squeaks.
  Wolfe: Well, Miss Lasher, what do you think of it? I ask Miss Lasher because she knew all along that I was lying. She knew it couldn't have been Mr. Hewitt who put that cane there on the floor of the corridor, because she saw Mr. Dill do it.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Janet Nichols stages an attempt on her own life in the same manner Bess Huddleston was killed — scratched by broken glass in a place it shouldn't have been, the poison being in the iodine used to treat it — so as to divert suspicion from herself. But this only confirmed her guilt to Wolfe, as the scratch on her arm wasn't long enough for someone who had been using a bath brush they assumed was fine.