Trouble at the Brownstone

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Let’s get something straight, right at the start: I am not a friend of Theodore Horstmann’s and never have been, from the first time we met in Nero Wolfe’s brownstone all those years ago. He is surly, smug, standoffish, and superior in his manner. Oh, and honesty compels me to mention that Theodore doesn’t like me, either, although you will have to ask him why. I’m not about to. And I don’t care.

All of that aside, the man is part of our “family” in the old brownstone on West Thirty-Fifth Street in Manhattan, which consists of Nero Wolfe, master detective and lord of all he surveys; Fritz Brenner, chef supreme, whose gourmet meals are part of the reason Wolfe weighs a seventh of a ton; Horstmann, the orchid nurse who works with Wolfe to coddle the 10,000 orchids in the greenhouse’s three climate-controlled rooms on the roof; and me, Archie Goodwin, gofer, errand boy, and cockle burr under Wolfe’s saddle whenever he shows signs of laziness while working on a case — which is often. Life in the brownstone had gone smoothly since the end of the war, and now, six years later and just past the midpoint of the twentieth century, that domestic peace had been disturbed.

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