Calamity Town

The Tragedy on Twin Hill

He was looking at the old elms before the new Courthouse. The old was being reborn in multitudes of little green teeth on brown gums of branches; and the new already showed weather streaks in its granite, like varicose veins.

There is sadness, too, in spring, thought Mr. Ellery Queen.

He stepped into the cool shadows of the Courthouse lobby and was borne aloft.

“No time for visitors to be visitin’,” said Wally Planetsky sternly. Then he said: “Oh. You’re that friend of Patty Wright’s. It’s a hell of a way to be spendin’ the Easter Sunday, Mr. Queen.”

“How true,” said Mr. Queen. The keeper unlocked an iron door, and they trudged together into the jail. ”How is he?”

“Never saw such a man for keepin’ his trap shut. You’d think he’d taken a vow.”

“Perhaps,” sighed Mr. Queen, “he has . . . Anyone been in today to see him?”

“Just that newspaperwoman. Miss Roberts.”

Planetsky unlocked another door, locked it carefully behind them.

“Is there a doctor about?” asked Ellery unexpectedly.

Planetsky scratched his ear and opined that if Mr. Queen was feelin’ sick . . .

“Is there?”

“Well, sure. We got an infirmary here. Young Ed Crosby¯that’s Ivor Crosby the farmer’s son¯he’s on duty right now.”

“Tell Dr. Crosby I may need him in a very little while.”

The keeper looked Ellery over suspiciously, shrugged, unlocked the cell door, locked it again, and shuffled away.

Jim was lying on his bunk, hands crossed behind his head, examining the graph of sky blue beyond bars. He had shaved, Ellery noted; his clean shirt was open at the throat; he seemed at peace.

“Jim?”

Jim turned his head. ”Oh, hello, there,” he said. ”Happy Easter.”

“Jim¯” began Ellery again, frowning.

Jim swung his feet to the concrete floor and sat up to grip the edge of his bunk with both hands. No peace now. Fear. And that was strange . . . No, logical. When you came to think of it. When you knew.

“Something’s wrong,” said Jim. He jumped to his feet. ”Something’s wrong!”

Ellery grimaced. This was the punishment for trespassing. This was the pain reserved for meddlers.

“I’m all for you, Jim¯”

“What is it?” Jim made a fist.

“You’ve got a great deal of courage, Jim¯”

Jim stared. ”She’s . . . It’s Nora.”

“Jim, Nora’s dead.”

Jim stared, his mouth open.

“I’ve just come from the hospital. The baby is all right. A girl. Premature delivery. Instruments. Nora was too weak. She didn’t come out of it. No pain. She just died, Jim.”

Jim’s lips came together. He turned around and went back to his bunk and turned around again and sat down, his hands reaching the bunk before he reached it.

“Naturally, the family . . . John F. asked me to tell you, Jim. They’re all home now, taking care of Hermione. John F. said to tell you he’s terribly sorry, Jim.”

Stupid, thought Ellery. A stupid speech. But then he was usually the observer, not a participant. How did one go about drawing the agony out of a stab to the heart? Killing without hurting¯for as much as a second? It was a branch of the art of violence with which Mr. Queen was unacquainted.

He sat helplessly on the contraption which concealed Wright County’s arrangement for the physical welfare of its prisoners, and thought of symbolism.

“If there’s anything I can do¯”

That wasn’t merely stupid, thought Ellery angrily; that was vicious. Anything he could do! Knowing what was going on in Jim’s mind!

Ellery got up and said: “Now, Jim. Now wait a minute, Jim¯”

But Jim was at the bars like a great monkey, gripping two of them, his thin face pressed as hard between two adjacent ones as if he meant to force his head through and drag his body after it.

“Let me out of here!” he kept shouting. ”Let me out of here! Damn all of you! I’ve got to get to Nora! Let me out of here!”

He panted and strained, his teeth digging into his lower lip and his eyes hot and his temples bulging with vessels.

“Let me out of here!” he screamed.

A white froth sprang up at the corners of his mouth.

When Dr. Crosby arrived with a black bag and a shaking Keeper Planetsky to open the door for him, Jim Haight was flat on his back on the floor and Mr. Queen knelt on Jim’s chest holding Jim’s arms down, hard, and yet gently, too.

Jim was still screaming, but the words made no sense.

Dr. Crosby took one look and grabbed a hypodermic.

* * *

Twin Hill is a pleasant place in the spring. There’s Bald Mountain off to the north, almost always wearing a white cap on its green shoulders, like some remote Friar Tuck; there’s the woods part in the gulley of the Twins, where boys go hunting woodchuck and jackrabbit and occasionally scare up a wild deer; and there are the Twins themselves, two identical humps of hill all densely populated with the dead.

The east Twin has the newer cemeteries¯the Poor Farm burial ground pretty far down, in the scrub, the old Jewish cemetery, and the Catholic cemetery; these are “new” because not a headstone in the lot bears a date earlier than 1805.

But the west Twin has the really old cemeteries of the Protestant denominations, and there you can see, at the very bald spot of the west Twin, the family plot of the Wrights, the first Wright’s tomb¯Jezreel Wright’s¯in its mathematical center. Of course, the Founder’s grave is not exposed to the elements¯that wind off Bald Mountain does things to grass and topsoil. John F.’s grandfather had built a large mausoleum over the grave¯handsome it is, too, finest Vermont granite, white as Patty Wright’s teeth. But inside there’s the original grave with its little stick of headstone; and if you look sharp, you can still make out the scratches on the stone¯the Founder’s name, a hopeful quotation from the Book of Revelation, and the date 1723.

The Wright family plot hogs pretty nearly the whole top of the west Twin. The Founder, who seems to have had a nice judgment in all business matters, staked out enough dead land for his seed and his seed’s seed to last for eternity. As if he had faith that the Wrights would live and die in Wrightsville unto Judgment Day.

The rest of the cemetery, and the other burial grounds, simply took what was left. And that was all right with everyone, for after all didn’t the Founder found? Besides, it made a sort of showplace. Wrightsvillians were forever hauling outlanders up to Twin Hill, halfway to Slocum Township, to exhibit the Founder’s grave and the Wright plot. It was one of the “sights.”

The automobile road ended at the gate of the cemetery, not far from the boundary of the Wright family plot. From the gate you walked¯a peaceful walk under trees so old you wondered they didn’t lie down and ask to be buried themselves out of plain weariness. But they just kept growing old and droopier. Except in spring. Then the green hair began sprouting from their hard black skins with a sly fertility, as if death were a great joke.

Maybe the graves so lush and thick all over the hillside had something to do with it.

Services for Nora¯on Tuesday, April the fifteenth¯were private. Dr. Doolittle uttered a few words in the chapel of Willis Stone’s Eternal Rest Mortuary, on Upper Whistling Avenue in High Village. Only the family and a few friends were present¯Mr. Queen, Judge and Clarice Martin, Dr. Willoughby, and some of John F.’s people from the bank. Frank Lloyd was seen skulking about the edge of the group, straining for a glimpse of the pure, still profile in the copper casket. He looked as if he had not taken his clothes off for a week or slept during that time. When Hermy’s eye rested on him, he shrank and disappeared . . . Perhaps twenty mourners in all.

Hermy was fine. She sat up straight in her new black, eyes steady, listening to Dr. Doolittle; and when they all filed past the bier for a last look at Nora, she merely grew a little paler and blinked. She didn’t cry. Pat said it was because she was all cried out. John F. was a crumpled, red-nosed little derelict. Lola had to take him by the hand and lead him away from the casket to let Mr. Stone put the head section in place.

Nora had looked very calm and young. She was dressed in her wedding gown.

Just before they went out to the funeral cars, Pat slipped into Mr. Stone’s office. When she came back, she said: “I just called the hospital. Baby’s fine. She’s growing in that incubator like a little vegetable.”

Pat’s lips danced, and Mr. Queen put his arm about her.

* * *

Looking back on it, Ellery saw the finer points of Jim’s psychology. But that was after the event. Beforehand it was impossible to tell, because Jim acted his part perfectly. He fooled them all, including Ellery.

Jim came to the cemetery between two detectives, like an animated sandwich. He was “all right.” Very little different from the Jim who had sat in the courtroom¯altogether different from the Jim Ellery had sat upon in the cell. There was a whole despair about him so enveloping that he had poise and self-control, even dignity.

He marched along steadily between his two guards, ignoring them, looking neither to right nor to left, on the path under the aged trees up to the top of the hill where the newly turned earth gaped, like a wound, to receive Nora. The cars had been left near the gate.

Most of Wrightsville watched from a decent distance¯let us give them that. But they were there, silent and curious; only occasionally someone whispered, or a forefinger told a story.

The Wrights stood about the grave in a woebegone group, Lola and Pat pressing close to Hermione and their father. John F.’s sister, Tabitha, had been notified, but she had wired that she was ill and could not fly to the funeral from California, and the Lord in His wisdom taketh away, and perhaps it was all for the best, may she rest in peace, your loving sister, Tabitha. John F. made a wad out of the wire and hurled it blindly; it landed in the early morning fire Ludie had lit against the chill in the big old house.

So it was just the immediate family group, and Ellery Queen, and Judge Eli Martin and Clarice and Doc Willoughby and some others; and, of course, Dr. Doolittle.

When Jim was brought up, a mutter arose from the watchers; eyes became very sharp for this meeting; this was very nearly “the best part of it.” But nothing remarkable happened. Or perhaps it did. For Hermy’s lips were seen to move, and Jim went over to her and kissed her. He paid no attention to anyone else; after that he just stood there at the grave, a thin figure of loneliness.

During the interment service a breeze ran through the leaves, like fingers; and indeed, Dr. Doolittle’s voice took on a lilt and became quite musical. The evergreens and lilies bordering the grave stirred a little, too.

Then, unbelievably, it was over, and they were shuffling down the walk, Hermy straining backward to catch a last glimpse of the casket which could no longer be seen, having been lowered into the earth. But the earth had not yet been rained upon it, for that would have been bestial; that could be done later, under no witnessing eyes but the eyes of the gravediggers, who were a peculiar race of people. So Hermy strained, and she thought how beautiful the evergreens and the lilies looked and how passionately Nora had detested funerals.

The crowd at the gate parted silently.

Then Jim did it.

* * *

One moment he was trudging along between the detectives, a dead man staring at the ground; the next he came alive. He tripped one of his guards. The man fell backward with a thud, his mouth an astonished O even as he fell. Jim struck the second guard on the jaw, so that the man fell on his brother officer and they threshed about, like wrestlers, trying to regain their feet.

In those few seconds Jim was gone, running through the crowd like a bull, bowling people over, spinning people around, dodging and twisting . . .

Ellery shouted at him, but Jim ran on.

The detectives were on their feet now, running, too, revolvers out uselessly. To fire would mean hitting innocent people. They pushed through, cursing and ashamed.

And then Ellery saw that Jim’s madness was not madness at all. For a quarter way down the hill, past all the parked cars, stood a single great car, its nose pointed away from the cemetery. No one was in it; but the motor had been kept running, Ellery knew, for Jim leaped in and the car shot forward at once.

By the time the two detectives reached a clear space and fired down the hill, the big limousine was a toy in the distance. It was careening crazily and going at a great speed.

And after another few moments, the detectives reached their own car and took up the chase, one driving, the other still firing wildly. But Jim was well out of range by this time, and everyone knew he had a splendid chance of escaping. The two cars disappeared.

For some moments there was no sound on the hillside but the sound of the wind in the trees.

Then the crowd shouted and swept over the Wrights and their friends, and automobiles began flying down the hill in merry clouds of dust, as if this were a paid entertainment and their drivers were determined not to miss the exciting climax.

* * *

Hermy lay on the living-room settee, and Pat and Lola were applying cold vinegar compresses to her head while John F. turned the pages of one of his stamp albums with great deliberation, as if it were one of the most important things in the world. He was in a corner by the window to catch the late afternoon light. Clarice Martin was holding Hermy’s hand tightly in an ecstasy of remorse, crying over her defection during the trial and over Nora and over this last shocking blow. And Hermy¯Hermy the Great!¯was comforting her friend!

Lola slapped a new compress so hard on her mother’s forehead that Hermy smiled at her reproachfully. Pat took it away from her angry sister and set it right.

At the fireplace Dr. Willoughby and Mr. Queen conversed in low tones.

Then Judge Martin came in from outdoors.

And with him was Carter Bradford.

Everything stopped, as if an enemy had walked into camp. But Carter ignored it. He was quite pale but held himself erect; and he kept from looking at Pat, who had turned paler than he. Clarice Martin was frankly frightened. She glanced quickly at her husband, but Judge Eli shook his head and went over to the window to seat himself by John F. and watch the fluttering pages of the stamp album, so gay with color.

“I don’t want to intrude, Mrs. Wright,” said Carter stiffishly. ”But I had to tell you how badly I feel about¯all this.”

“Thank you, Carter,” said Hermy. ”Lola, stop babying me! Carter, what about”¯Hermy swallowed¯”Jim?”

“Jim got away, Mrs. Wright.”

“I’m glad,” cried Pat. ”Oh, I’m so very glad!”

Carter glanced her way. ”Don’t say that, Patty. That sort of thing never winds up right. Nobody ‘gets away.’ Jim would have been better . . . advised to have stuck it out.”

“So that you could hound him to his death, I suppose! All over again!”

“Pat.” John F. left his stamp album where it was. He put his thin hand on Carter’s arm. ”It was nice of you to come here today, Cart. I’m sorry if I was every harsh with you. How does it look?”

“Bad, Mr. Wright.” Carter’s lips tightened. ”Naturally, the alarm is out. All highways are being watched. It’s true he got away, but it’s only a question of time before he’s captured¯”

“Bradford,” inquired Mr. Queen from the fireplace, “have you traced the getaway car?”

“Yes.” ‘

“Looked like a put-up job to me,” muttered Dr. Willoughby. ”That car was in a mighty convenient place, and the motor was running!”

“Whose car is it?” demanded Lola.

“It was rented from Homer Findlay’s garage in Low Village this morning.”

“Rented!” exclaimed Clarice Martin. ”By whom?”

“Roberta Roberts.”

Ellery said: “Ah,” in a tone of dark satisfaction, and nodded as if that were all he had wanted to know. But the others were surprised.

Lola tossed her head. ”Good for her!”

“Carter let me talk to the woman myself just now,” said Judge Eli Martin wearily. ”She’s a smart female. Insists she hired the car just to drive to the cemetery this morning.”

“And that she left the motor running by mistake,” added Carter Bradford dryly.

“And was it a coincidence that she also turned the car about so that it pointed down the hill?” murmured Mr. Queen.

“That’s what I asked her,” said Carter. ”Oh, there’s no question about her complicity, and Dakin’s holding her. But that doesn’t get Jim Haight back, nor does it give us a case against this Roberts woman. We’ll probably have to let her go.” He said angrily: “I never did trust that woman!”

“She visited Jim on Sunday,” remarked Ellery reflectively.

“Also yesterday! I’m convinced she arranged the escape with Jim then.”

“What difference does it make?” Hermy sighed. ”Escape¯no escape¯Jim won’t ever escape.” Then Hermy said a queer thing, considering how she had always claimed she felt about her son-in-law and his guilt. Hermy said: “Poor Jim,” and closed her eyes.

* * *

The news arrived at ten o’clock that same night. Carter Bradford came over again, and this time he went directly to Pat Wright and took her hand. She was so astonished she forgot to snatch it away.

Carter said gently: “It’s up to you and Lola now, Pat.”

“What . . . on earth are you talking about?” asked Pat in a shrill tight voice.

“Dakin’s men have found the car Jim escaped in.”

“Found it?”

Ellery Queen rose from a dark corner and came over into the light. ”If it’s bad news, keep your voices down. Mrs. Wright’s just gone to bed, and John F. doesn’t look as if he could take any more today. Where was the car found?”

“At the bottom of a ravine off Route 478A, up in the hills. About fifty miles from here.”

“Lord,” breathed Pat, staring.

“It had crashed through the highway rail,” growled Carter, “just past a hairpin turn. The road is tricky up there. Dropped about two hundred feet¯”

“And Jim?” asked Ellery.

Pat sat down in the love seat by the fireplace, looking up at Cart as if he were a judge about to pronounce doom.

“Found in the car.” Cart turned aside. ”Dead.” He turned back and looked humbly at Pat. ”So that’s the end of the case. It’s the end, Pat . . . ”

“Poor Jim,” whispered Pat.

* * *

“I want to talk to you two,” said Mr. Queen.

It was very late. But there was no time. Time had been lost in the nightmare. Hermione had heard, and Hermione had gone to pieces. Strange that the funeral of her daughter should have found her strong and the news of her son-in-law’s death weak. Perhaps it was the crushing tap after the heavy body blows. But Hermy collapsed, and Dr. Willoughby spent hours with her trying to get her to sleep. John F. was in hardly better case: he had taken to trembling, and the doctor noticed it and packed him off to bed in a guest room while Lola assisted with Hermy and Pat helped her father up the stairs . . . Now it was over, and they were both asleep, and Lola had locked herself in, and Dr. Willoughby had gone home, sagging.

“I want to talk to you two,” said Mr. Queen.

Carter was still there. He had been a bed of rock for Hermy this night. She had actually clung to him while she wept, and Mr. Queen thought this, too, was strange. And then he thought: No, this is the rock, the last rock, and Hermy clings. If she lets go, she drowns, they all drown. That is how she must feel.

And he repeated: “I want to talk to you two.”

Pat was suspended between worlds. She had been sitting beside Ellery on the porch, waiting for Carter Bradford to go home. Limply and far away. And now Carter had come out of the house, fumbling with his disreputable hat and fishing for some graceful way to negotiate the few steps of the porch and reach the haven of night shadows beyond, on the lawn.

“I don’t think there’s anything you can have to say that I’d want to hear,” said Carter huskily; but he made no further move to leave the porch.

“Ellery¯don’t,” said Pat, taking his hand in the gloom.

Ellery squeezed the cold young flesh. ”I’ve got to. This man thinks he’s a martyr. You think you’re being a heroine in some Byronic tragedy. You’re both fools, and that’s the truth.”

“Good night!” said Carter Bradford.

“Wait, Bradford. It’s been a difficult time and an especially difficult day. And I shan’t be in Wrightsville much longer.”

“Ellery!” Pat wailed.

“I’ve been here much too long already, Pat. Now there’s nothing to keep me¯nothing at all.”

“Nothing . . . at all?”

“Spare me your tender farewells,” snapped Cart. Then he laughed sheepishly and sat down on the step near them. ”Don’t pay any attention to me, Queen. I’m in a fog these days. Sometimes I think I must be pretty much of a drip.”

Pat gaped at him. ”Cart¯you? Being humble?”

“I’ve grown up a bit these past few months,” mumbled Cart.

“There’s been a heap of growing up around here these past few months,” said Mr. Queen mildly. ”How about you two being sensible and proving it?”

Pat took her hand away. ”Please, Ellery¯”

“I know I’m meddling, and the lot of the meddler is hard,” sighed Mr. Queen. ”But just the same, how about it?”

“I thought you were in love with her,” said Cart gruffly.

“I am.”

“Ellery!” cried Pat. ”You neveronce¯”

“I’ll be in love with that funny face of yours as long as I live,” said Mr. Queen wistfully. ”It’s a lovely funny face. But the trouble is, Pat, that you’re not in love with me.”

Pat stumbled over a word, then decided to say nothing.

“You’re in love with Cart.”

Pat sprang from the porch chair. ”What if I was! Or am! People don’t forget hurts and burns!”

“Oh, but they do,” said Mr. Queen. ”People are more forgetful than you’d think. Also, they have better sense than we sometimes give them credit for. Emulate them.”

“It’s impossible,” said Pat tightly. ”This is no time for silliness, anyway. You don’t seem to realize what’s happened to us in this town. We’re pariahs. We’ve got a whole new battle on our hands to rehabilitate ourselves. And it’s just Lola and me now to help Pop and Muth hold their heads up again. I’m not going to run out on them now, when they need me most.”

“I’d help you, Pat,” said Cart inaudibly.

“Thanks! We’ll do it on our own. Is that all, Mr. Queen?”

“There’s no hurry,” murmured Mr. Queen.

Pat stood there for a moment, then she said good-night in an angry voice and went into the house. The door huffed. Ellery and Carter sat in silence for some time.

“Queen,” said Cart at last.

“Yes, Bradford?”

“This isn’t over, is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I have the most peculiar feeling you know something I don’t.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Queen. Then he said: “Really?”

Carter slapped his hat against his thighs. ”I won’t deny I’ve been pigheaded. Jim’s death has done something to me, though. I don’t know why it should, because it hasn’t changed the facts one iota. He’s still the only one who could have poisoned Nora’s cocktail, and he’s still the only one who had any conceivable motive to want her to die. And yet . . . I’m not so sure anymore.”

“Since when?” asked Ellery in a peculiar tone.

“Since the report came in that he was found dead.”

“Why should that make a difference?”

Carter put his head between his hands. ”Because there’s every reason to believe the car he was driving didn’t go through that rail into the ravine by accident.”

“I see,” said Ellery.

“I didn’t want to tell that to the Wrights. But Dakin and I both think Jim drove that car off the road deliberately.”

Mr. Queen said nothing.

“And somehow that made me think¯don’t know why it should have¯Well, I began to wonder. Queen!” Carter jumped up. ”For God’s sake, tell me if you know! I won’t sleep until I’m sure. Did Jim Haight commit that murder?”

“No.”

Carter stared at him. ”Then who did?” he asked hoarsely.

Mr. Queen rose, too. ”I shan’t tell you.”

“Then you do know!”

“Yes,” sighed Ellery.

“But Queen, you can’t¯”

“Oh, but I can. Don’t think it’s easy for me. My whole training rebels against this sort of¯well, connivance. But I like these people. They’re nice people, and they’ve been through too much. I shouldn’t want to hurt them anymore. Let it go. The hell with it.”

“But you can tell me, Queen!” implored Cart.

“No. You’re not sure of yourself; not yet, Bradford. You’re rather a nice chap. But the growing-up process¯it’s been retarded.” Ellery shook his head. ”The best thing you can do is forget it and get Patty to marry you. She’s crazy in love with you.”

Carter grasped Ellery’s arm so powerfully that Ellery winced. ”But you’ve got to tell me!” he cried. ”How could I . . . knowing that anyone . . . any one of them . . . might be . . . ?”

Mr. Queen frowned in the darkness.

“Tell you what I’ll do with you, Cart,” he said at last. ”You help these people get back to normal in Wrightsville. You chase Patty Wright off her feet. Wear her down.

“But if you’re not successful, if you feel you’re not making any headway, wire me. I’m going back home. Send me a wire in New York, and I’ll come back. And maybe what I’ll have to say to you and Patty will solve your problem.”

“Thanks,” said Carter Bradford hoarsely.

“I don’t know that it will,” sighed Mr. Queen. ”But who can tell? This has been the oddest case of mixed-up people, emotions, and events I’ve ever run across. Good-bye, Bradford.”