Gambit (novel)
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| Author | Rex Stout |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Nero Wolfe |
| Genre(s) | Detective fiction |
| Publisher | Viking Press |
| Released | October 12, 1962 |
| Media type | Hardcover |
| Pages | 188 pp. |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-553-25172-4 |
| Preceded by | Homicide Trinity |
| Followed by | The Mother Hunt |
Gambit is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, first published by the Viking Press in 1962.
Gambit employs three distinctive plot elements found in other Wolfe stories. The means by which poison is administered is very similar to the means used in "Cordially Invited to Meet Death" (collected in Black Orchids). A tape recording is made in an Italian restaurant, one which also appears in "Poison à la Carte"; and the part that a gambit plays in a murder echoes "Method Three for Murder." (The latter two stories appear in Three at Wolfe's Door.)
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
Sally Blount's father, Matthew Blount, has been arrested for the murder of Paul Jerin, a chess master. Blount had arranged for Jerin to play twelve simultaneous games of blindfold chess at his club. Well into the contest, Jerin complains of physical discomfort and cannot continue. Shortly thereafter, Jerin dies of what tests show to be arsenic poisoning.
During the contest, Jerin had been sitting by himself in a small library off the chess club's main game room. He had nothing to eat or drink except a pot of hot chocolate, brought to him by Blount. After Jerin fell ill, he was diagnosed by a doctor who was playing in the contest; the doctor called for an ambulance but Jerin died at a hospital.
Not only had Blount brought the hot chocolate to Jerin, he had washed out the pot and the cup after Jerin complained that he didn't feel well. Blount is charged with murder.
The only people to enter the library where Jerin sat, other than Blount, were four messengers, who relayed the moves between the main game room and the library. The messengers apparently had no good opportunity to put arsenic in Jerin's chocolate.
Dan Kalmus is Blount's corporate lawyer, and represents Blount after he has been jailed without bail. Blount's daughter Sally is convinced, however, that Kalmus is in love with Blount's wife Anna, and that he won't be inclined to give Blount his best legal efforts. Furthermore, Blount's specialty is business law, not criminal law, and he might not have the needed background.
But Sally is certain that her father is innocent, so she hires a reluctant Wolfe to investigate on her father's behalf. Neither Wolfe nor Archie seems to have his heart in the case because the circumstances point so clearly at Blount. And Wolfe learns from the police that their own inquiries discovered no connection between the messengers and Jerin, whereas Blount was unhappy that Jerin had been seeing Sally.
Because none of the messengers could have a motive to kill Jerin, and because he has assumed that Sally is correct that her father didn't, Wolfe conjectures that Jerin was poisoned not because the murderer had it in for Jerin, but to get at Blount, whose apparent motive would surely get him arrested. Wolfe's hypothesis, then, is that Jerin was a pawn, sacrificed in a gambit to get rid of Blount.
Wolfe speaks with each of the messengers as the best alternative suspects, to try to determine which of them might have wanted Blount, not Jerin, out of the way. Each of the four has a possible motive: Sally thinks Kalmus is in love with her mother, Farrow would like to take over Blount's firm, Yerkes wants Blount's vote in a in a board election but won't get it, and Hausman resents Blount for going easy on him in chess games but winning anyway.
Wolfe learns that there is, in Blount's words, "a certain fact" known only to Blount and to Kalmus that will demonstrate his innocence. The fact turns out to be that Blount really did put something in Jerin's chocolate, but it was sedative in effect, not poisonous. This puts a very different face on things, and as a result Wolfe and Archie, independently, are able to infer both the murderer's identity and how the arsenic got into Jerin.
[edit] The Unfamiliar Word
In most Nero Wolfe novels and novellas, there is at least one unfamiliar word, usually spoken by Wolfe. Gambit contains these three (the page references are to the Bantam edition):
- Trimmer. Page 71, at the beginning of Chapter 8. This word, with this meaning, also appears in Champagne for One.
- Analeptic. Page 125, halfway through Chapter 12.
- Contemned. Page 154, next-to-last page of the book. This word also appears in Prisoner's Base.
[edit] Characters in Gambit
- Nero Wolfe – The private investigator
- Archie Goodwin – Wolfe's assistant (and the narrator of all Wolfe stories)
- Matthew Blount – Wealthy businessman, in jail on a charge of murder
- Sally Blount – Daughter of Matthew Blount, and Wolfe's client
- Anna Blount – Wife of Matthew Blount
- Dan Kalmus – Matthew Blount's lawyer, messenger at chess contest
- Charles Yerkes – Banker, business acquaintance of Blount, messenger at chess contest
- Morton Farrow – Sales manager at Blount's company, Anna Blount's nephew, messenger at chess contest
- Ernst Hausman – Retired broker, Sally Blount's godfather, messenger at chess contest
- Victor Avery – The Blounts' family doctor, participant in chess contest
[edit] The Peripatetic Piotti
In Gambit, Piotti's restaurant is located on Thirteenth Street, east of Second Avenue (of course, in Manhattan)[1]. In Poison à la Carte, published two years earlier in Three at Wolfe's Door, the restaurant is on Fourteenth Street, between Second and Third Avenues, thus west of Second Avenue[2]. Stout was not known for consistency in minor plot matters.
[edit] Footnotes
[edit] References
- Stout, Rex (1962). Gambit. Viking Press. ISBN 0-553-14646-7.
