Nero Wolfe, an avid orchid collector, a great gourmet, a beer lover and a great detective, almost never leaves the house. He unravels all the crimes on the basis of the facts collected by Archie Goodwin, his charming, ironic assistant with an excellent memory. “When the doorbell rang, I was standing in the office, with my hands in my pockets, looking at the tie on Nero Wolfe’s desk. Because, if If there had been no tie, the story would have turned out differently, or perhaps there wouldn’t have been any, I’d rather tell everything from the beginning. For lunch, Wolfe wore a tie of dull brown silk with yellow swirls, a Christmas gift from a former client. When Fritz, having removed the remains of the pork ribs, was placing plates of cheese and salad on the table, he noticed that Wolfe had dribbled sauce on his tie, and Wolfe blotted the stain with a napkin, and then, when we moved from the dining room to the office, he took off the tie and put it on the table . Wolfe hates stains on his clothes, even if no one can see them. However, he did not consider it necessary to go up to his room to put on another one, since we were not expecting visitors, and at four o’clock he went to the greenhouse under the roof for an evening meeting with his orchids, with his collar unbuttoned, and his tie remaining on the table...”< /p>