Literature / The Red Box

A 1937 mystery novel written by Rex Stout, and fourth in the Nero Wolfe series.

A beautiful model, Molly Lauck, has died after eating a poisoned Jordan almond. Socialite and Broadway producer Llewellyn Frost, therefore, hires Nero Wolfe to... extract his beautiful cousin Helen, a fellow model, from the fashion boutique of Boyden McNair, where both women were employed and the murder took place. And if that means also solving the murder, so be it. Reluctant to do so — especially since Frost is trying to get him to leave his house to investigate — Wolfe nevertheless finds himself becoming intrigued when Helen accidentally reveals that she knew the contents of the tampered box of chocolates despite apparently having never seen them before. When Frost suddenly tries to sever his contract in response, Wolfe and Archie Goodwin find themselves digging their heels into a matter involving hidden family secrets and a ruthless killer who will stop at nothing to prevent them from being exposed....

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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.)

• Abhorrent Admirer: Perren Gebert is in the habit of referring to Helen Frost as "practically my fiancee", when it's blindingly clear that she can't stand him and finds him utterly repellent.
• Asshole Victim: Averted with Molly Lauck, who was just a sweet-natured woman who happened to "pinch" the wrong box of chocolates. Also averted with Boyden McNair, but played straight with Perren Gebert.
• Berserk Button:
  • The entire Frost family has one with regards to anyone "bothering" Helen (perhaps understandably, as she is the heir to her father's fortune and as such is the family's golden goose), but Llewellyn has this worst of all. Ironically, Helen herself is rather unflappable and can take care of herself.
  • Wolfe's Berserk Button of Sacred Hospitality being violated is brutally punched when Boyden McNair consumes a poisoned aspirin from a tampered bottle he's been carrying and dies on the floor of his office. While the culprit presumably didn't intend for McNair to die in the office, Wolfe is clearly seething afterwards.
• Blackmail Backfire: The slimy and unscrupulous Perren Gebert is clearly blackmailing someone. In a Nero Wolfe novel. Guess what ends up happening to him. Specifically, he's found out that Helen Frost isn't really Calida Frost's daughter, and is blackmailing Calida both to support himself and to get her support in his intention to marry Helen.
• Call-Back: References to Fer-de-lance, The League of Frightened Men and The Rubber Band are peppered throughout the story.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Helen Frost starts off rather cold, aloof and distant, but gradually warms up.
• Did Not Think This Through: Wolfe identifies this as Llewellyn Frost's key flaw — he tends to impulsively leap into action without considering the potential consequences, only to then have to try and backtrack when the consequences blow up in his face. As probably the key example, he spies an opportunity to get Helen Frost out of Boyden McNair's boutique by hiring Wolfe to investigate Molly Lauck's death, but fails to consider that any halfway competent investigator — much less the finest detective in New York — would naturally want to interview Helen herself, as she's a key witness to Molly's death. Then, when Wolfe picks up on an inconsistency in Helen's story, Llewellyn panics, thinks Wolfe is trying to fix the murder on her, and immediately tries to sever his contract with Wolfe, not stopping to think that (a) Wolfe might take offence to this and dig his heels in and (b) this might just make Helen look even guiltier.
• Double Meaning: The red box of the title. The tampered box of chocolates that killed Molly Lauck was red. But so was the box that Boyden McNair kept the proof that the woman known as Helen Frost was actually his daughter Glenna.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • A woman breaks down into tears at a couple points during an interview with Nero Wolfe, and his response is simply to mutter some encouraging words to help her get past it so that they can get back on track, albeit in a somewhat gruff tone. In later novels, Archie would make a point of noting that Wolfe was so allergic to displays of feminine suffering that a woman even looking like she was considering entertaining the notion of thinking about having a little cry would be enough to make him practically bolt from the room.
  • The story features the last appearance of Wolfe experiencing what Archie calls a "relapse" (where he basically just shuts down and focuses on cooking and eating to the exclusion of all else).
  • Archie gives an (admittedly rather obnoxious) assistant district attorney a slap after the ADA insults Wolfe's honor. He'll generally react less violently and more with withering putdowns in future situations.
• Exact Words: Wolfe notes how Boyden McNair, speaking of his family, said, "My wife died the day the baby was born, April second, 1915, and I lost my daughter two years later." Specifically, he notes how unusual it is for someone to say "died" once in a conversation to refer to someone and then use "lost" moments later to refer to someone else who was also supposedly dead. This causes him to deduce that McNair's daughter is actually alive.
• Generation Xerox: Both Frost children appear to have adopted key characteristics of their parents:
  • Llewellyn Frost, like his father Dudley, is rather impulsive, foolish and seems to think that any problem can be solved just by him chattering or yelling at the other person without letting them get a word in edgewise until they give up.
  • Helen Frost, like her mother, comes off as an Ice Queen, though in Helen's case she eventually graduates to Defrosting Ice Queen. Though it's subverted in her case, or at least is a case of Nature vs. Nurture, since it turns out that Helen isn't actually Calida's daughter. As a little hint to this, she alone of her family appears to have a decent work ethic.
• Gratuitous French: Perren Gebert taunts Archie using a French quote "Au moins, je meurs ardemment!", knowing he won't understand it. Becomes less gratuitous when it turns out that he's also taunting the murderer; the quote means "At least I'm dying ardently," and the Latin word for "ardently" is "Calida"...
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Llewellyn Frost is rather hot-tempered and tends to fly off the handle quickly, especially where his cousin Helen is concerned. He also couples this with an apparent inability to consider the consequences of his actions, however, meaning that he also tends to come across more as ineffectual and prone to irrational errors in judgement and minor tantrums rather than threatening.
• His Name Is...: Boyden McNair dies from being poisoned literally seconds before being able to tell Wolfe where the titular red box (and the evidence enclosed) is. The various principals of the case, particularly Inspector Cramer, are very skeptical about this throughout the story and are convinced Wolfe is hiding something.
• Ice Queen: Calida Frost is the sort of woman who seems to show no passion or emotion towards anything whatsoever. It's clearly been passed on to Helen, though Helen gradually begins to get better. Not least because Calida is, by the end of the story, a triple murderer.
• It's Personal: Sort of. Wolfe has no particular connection to or interest in the death of Molly Lauck at all, but he eventually becomes stubbornly determined to solve her death. However, it's mainly because Llewellyn Frost badgered him into taking the case, manipulated him into leaving his house to investigate the crime scene by making a group of influential orchid growers sign a petition requesting him to do so, only to them turn around and immediately try and fire Wolfe when Wolfe's investigations seemed to be going in a direction he didn't like. This insults Wolfe, who objects to being treated like a plumber, and just makes him determined to make Llewellyn pay one way or another by either (a) solving the crime (and thus fulfilling the contract) or making Llewellyn pay an exorbitant amount to break the contract.
• Kissing Cousins: Played with. Llewellyn Frost clearly has romantic feelings for his cousin Helen, but since they're first cousins and it would be considered inappropriate, he doesn't directly act on them. It turns out to be moot, as Helen isn't really his cousin at all. A passing reference in a later novel confirms that they do eventually marry - also that she has resumed her birth name, Glenna.
• Leave Behind a Pistol: Wolfe gives Calida Frost the red box he has discovered. It is, in fact, a mock-up containing a bottle of the same poison she has used to commit her murders. Calida gets the message.
• Like a Daughter to Me: It's often noted that Boyden McNair treats Helen Frost like his own daughter, primarily because he's an old family friend and she's the same age as the daughter he had who died as an infant. While Helen calls him "Uncle Boyden" and loves him like an uncle, others like Llewellyn (who is also motivated to a degree by jealousy) suspect he may have ulterior motives. It's actually because she is his daughter; Helen Frost was the infant who died, and Calida bought the then-impoverished Boyden's daughter from him in order to secure her husband's fortune through her.
• Motor Mouth: Archie notes in amusement that Dudley Frost is one of the few people to ever flummox Wolfe. It's not out of any intellectual prowess, however; it's just because Dudley is one of those imbeciles who just tends to blather on witlessly without letting anyone else get a word in edgewise in order to try and steamroll them, and Wolfe — a man who uses words carefully — isn't prepared to deal with such a person. His son Llewellyn also tries this tactic, but he's less effective at it.
• Murder by Mistake: It's made clear from the start that no one had reason to kill Molly Lauck, and she just had the bad fortune to steal a box of chocolates that someone had tampered to kill someone else. Specifically, Boyden McNair was the intended target.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Helen Frost is clearly wracked with guilt after Boyden McNair is murdered, as she had key evidence that could have been used to prevent it but stubbornly refused to reveal it out of selfishness. This contributes to her Defrosting Ice Queen status.
  • Boyden McNair came to bitterly regret having sold his daughter Glenna to Calida Frost after the death of the real Helen Frost, and was trying to make amends. As this partly involved revealing the truth to Helen/Glenna, Calida decided that he had to go.
• Nature vs. Nurture: Played with throughout the novel, though it only really comes into focus retroactively. Helen Frost has clearly inherited her mother Calida's rather cold, controlled and aloof nature. However, unlike the rest of her family, it is frequently noted that she has a strong work ethic and, despite being an heiress to a serious fortune, wants to get some kind of job because she can't stand simply sitting around idly. When it's revealed at the end that she's actually Boyden McNair's daughter Glenna, who was previously thought dead, this clearly implies that despite her upbringing she has also inherited her real father's Self-Made Man nature.
• Noodle Incident: The exact reasons why Helen Frost's father felt compelled to completely shut his wife out of his will and leave everything to his daughter are not gone into, but it is heavily suggested that infidelity on her part played a very big role. The identity of the other man (if indeed there was one) isn't revealed, but mentions of rumours suggesting a Frenchman was involved hint that it might have been Perren Gebert, and other hints imply that it may have been Dudley Frost.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Played with; it actually isn't that serious in this book (Wolfe was simply badgered and manipulated into it), but Sgt. Stebbins and Inspector Cramer react to Wolfe visiting a crime scene in person as something akin to the parting of the Red Sea.
• Papa Wolf: Perren Gebert's blackmailing Calida into approving of his attempts to marry Helen helped make Boyden disgusted enough to want to openly get back his daughter, causing Calida to consider murder.
• Police Are Useless: Discussed. Inspector Cramer refers to Wolfe's frequent claim that the police are sufficient to handle nine out of ten homicide cases, and that it's usually only the tenth one that requires his particular genius. Cramer dryly notes that he actually has successfully closed nine homicide cases since the last one Wolfe was involved with.
• Police Brutality: After being detained by police, Perren Gebert is subjected to some rough treatment by officers of the Homicide South squad. While the treatment that Gebert receives is fairly mild (for the standards of the time, at least) and Archie, having become acquainted with Gebert's personality, isn't exactly heartbroken at seeing Gebert get slapped around a bit, it's nevertheless criticised; Archie's overall pretty disgusted at the blunt, unthinking ineptitude of the officers involved and dismisses the procedure overall as being useless and unlikely to produce any useful results. Even Inspector Cramer grudgingly concedes that it's not going to do anyone any good.
• Prince Charming Wannabe: A variant, at least; Llewellyn Frost clearly wants to be the Knight in Shining Armor sweeping in to defend the helpless Damsel in Distress for his cousin Helen, but his impulsiveness and lack of common sense make him quite ineffective, and he actually ends up causing her most of the trouble she gets into throughout the story through his witless attempts to play the hero. And what makes it worse is that she's cool-headed, collected and has a pretty strong will. She's clearly much better at taking care of herself than he is at looking out for her.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Wolfe delivers one to Helen and Llewellyn after Boyden McNair is murdered in front of him; both of them tried to hamper or stonewall his investigation for their own selfish purposes, had they not done so the victim might still be alive, and he accordingly has little sympathy on hand for them when they come to his office looking for it. Helen takes the point on board and hires him to solve both murders, but Llewellyn doesn't.
  "If that is what you came here for, to shudder at the spot where your best friend died, that won't help us any. This is a detective bureau, not a nursery for morbidity. [...] I did appeal to you, courteous and respectful, without success. If it is painful to you to be reminded that your best friend died, in agony, on the spot now occupied by your chair, do you think it was agreeable for me to sit here and watch him do it? And you, sir, who engaged me to solve a problem and them proceeded to hamper me as soon as I made the first step — now you are quick on the trigger to resent it if I do not show tenderness and compassion for your cousin's remorse and grief. I know none because I have none. If I offer anything for sale in this office that is worth buying, it is certainly not a warm heart and maudlin sympathy for the distress of spoiled obtuse children."
• Secret Test of Character: Edgar Frost appears to have set up his will to provide one for his brother Dudley. The will leaves everything to Helen but gives Dudley power of attorney until she comes of age, and specifically states that there will be no oversight or investigation into how Dudley manages the estate, meaning he could theoretically plunder it all before Helen's 21st birthday and leave her with nothing. Several characters speculate that this could be a motive for murder. If it was a test then Dudley passes it, revealing that he signed away his rights to an actual attorney because he knew he wouldn't be able to resist temptation.
• Self-Made Man:Boyden McNair has pulled himself up from poverty to become a successful and wealthy fashion designer. He did it so that he could one day try to buy back his long-lost daughter.
• Serendipitous Survival: Boyden McNair's life is prolonged after Molly picks up his poisoned chocolate box before he can take any of it.
• Sherlock Scan: At one point early in the novel, Llewellyn Frost describes his cousin Helen as an "ortho-cousin". Wolfe immediately pegs that he's got Kissing Cousins desires for her, as only an anthropologist would otherwise use such a technical term, implying that he's researched the subject extensively in order to determine exactly whether or not it would be appropriate for him to act on his feelings.
• Spoiled Brat: Wolfe clearly considers Llewellyn and Helen to be this, not entirely without reason. Llewellyn is the flighty "wants what he wants when he wants it" type, who keeps making impulsive demands only to try and back out of them when it turns out it's not what he wants after all, then throws mini-tantrums when he encounters difficulties doing so. Helen, meanwhile has more of an aloof and cold "I'm above all this" air going on. Both undergo some improvements throughout the story, although Helen's is more substantial.
• Wham Line: Nero Wolfe, beginning The Summation: "I shall be brief. First of all, I shall no longer call you Miss Frost, but Miss McNair. Your name is Glenna McNair and you were born on April 2nd, 1915."
• What You Are in the Dark: While a blustering fool with a drinking problem who never shuts up, Dudley Frost reveals at least one iota of self-awareness and decency in a situation when he didn't have to. He reveals that, despite the terms of his brother's will giving him the freedom to plunder his niece's future inheritance as much as he wanted before she would have access to it, he instead turned over the legal rights of management to a trusted and capable lawyer. He knew he wouldn't be able to resist temptation and wanted her to have her rightful inheritance when she came of age.