Calamity Town

The Return of Ellery Queen

This, thought Mr. Ellery Queen as he stood on the station platform, makes me an admiral all over again. The second voyage of Columbus . . .

He glanced moodily at the station sign. The tail of the train that had brought him from New York was just disappearing around the curve at Wrightsville Junction three miles down the line. He could have sworn that the two small boys swinging their dirty legs on the hand truck under the eaves of the station were the same boys he had seen¯in another century!¯on his first arrival in Wrightsville.

Gabby Warrum, the station agent, strolled out to stare at him. Ellery waved and made hastily for Ed Hotchkiss’s cab, drawn up on the gravel.

As Ed drove him “uptown,” Ellery’s hand tightened in his pocket about the telegram he had received the night before. It was from Carter Bradford, and it said simply: come, please.

* * *

He had not been away long¯a matter of three weeks or so¯but just the same it seemed to him that Wrightsville had changed. Or perhaps it would be truer to say that Wrightsville had changed back. It was the old Wrightsville again, the town he had come into so hopefully the previous August, nine months ago. It had the same air of unhurried peace this lovely Sunday afternoon. Even the people seemed the old people, not the maddened horde of January and February and March and April.

Mr. Queen made a telephone call from the Hollis Hotel, then had Ed Hotchkiss drive him up the Hill. It was late afternoon, and the birds were whizzing and chirping at a great rate around the old Wright house. He paid Ed off, watched the cab chug down the Hill, and then strolled up the walk.

The little house next door¯the house of Nora and Jim¯was shuttered up; it looked opaque and ugly in its blindness. Mr. Queen felt a tremor in his spine. That was a house to avoid.

He hesitated at the front steps of the big house and listened. There were voices from the rear gardens. So he went around, walking on the grass.

He paused in the shadow of the oleander bush, where he could see them without being seen.

The sun was bright on Hermy, joggling a brand-new baby carriage in an extremely critical way. John F. was grinning, and Lola and Pat were making serious remarks about professional grandmothers and how about giving a couple of aunts a chance to practice, for goodness’ sake? The baby would be home from the hospital in just a couple of weeks!

Mr. Queen watched, unobserved, for a long time. His face was very grave. Once he half turned away, as if he meant to flee once and for all. But then he saw Patricia Wright’s face again and how it had grown older and thinner since last he had seen it, and so he sighed and set about making an end of things. After five minutes of delicate reconnaissance he managed to catch Pat’s eye while the others were occupied¯caught her eye and put his finger to his lips, shaking his head in warning.

Pat said something casual to her family and strolled toward him. He backed off, and then she came around the corner of the house and flew into his arms.

“Ellery! Darling! Oh, I’m so glad to see you! When did you come? What’s the mystery for? Oh, you bug¯I am glad!” She kissed him and held him close, and for a moment her face was the gay young face he had remembered.

He let her sprinkle his shoulder, and then he took her by the hand and drew her toward the front of the house. ”That’s your convertible at the curb, isn’t it? Let’s go for a ride.”

“But Ellery, Pop and Muth and Lola¯they’ll be heartbroken if you don’t¯”

“I don’t want to disturb them now, Patty. They look really happy, getting ready for the baby. How is she, by the way?” Ellery drove Pat’s car down the Hill.

“Oh, wonderful. Such a clever little thing! And do you know? She looks just like¯” Pat stopped. Then she said quietly: “Just like Nora.”

“Does she? Then she must be a beautiful young lady indeed.”

“Oh, she is! And I’ll swear she knows Muth! Really, I mean it. We can’t wait for her to come home from the hospital. Of course, Mother won’t let any of us touch little Nora¯that’s her name, you know¯when we visit her¯we’re there practically all the time! except that I sneak over there alone once in a while when I’m not supposed to . . . Little Nora is going to have Nora’s old bedroom¯ought to see how we’ve fixed it up, with ivory furniture and gewgaws and big teddy bears and special nursery wallpaper and all. Anyway, the little atom and I have secrets . . . Well, we do! . . . Of course, she’s out of the incubator . . . and she gurgles at me and hangs on to my hand for dear life and squeezes. She’s so fat, Ellery, you’d laugh!”

Ellery laughed.

“You’re talking like the old Patty I knew¯”

“You think so?” asked Pat in a queer voice.

“But you don’tlook¯”

“No,” said Pat. ”No, I don’t. I’m getting to be an old hag. Where are we going?”

“Nowhere in particular,” said Ellery vaguely, turning the car south and beginning to drive toward Wrightsville Junction.

“But tell me! What brings you back to Wrightsville? It must be us¯couldn’t be anyone else! How’s the novel?”

“Finished.”

“Oh, grand! Ellery, you never let me read a word of it. How does it end?”

“That,” said Mr. Queen, “is one of my reasons for coming back to Wrightsville.”

“What do you mean?”

“The end,” he grinned. ”I’ve ended it, but it’s always easy to change the last chapter¯at least, certain elements not directly concerned with mystery plot. You might be of help there.”

“Me? But I’d love to! And-oh, Ellery. What am I thinking of? I haven’t thanked you for that magnificent gift you sent me from New York. And those wonderful things you sent Muth, and Pop, and Lola. Oh, Ellery, you shouldn’t have. We didn’t do anything that¯”

“Oh, bosh. Seeing much of Cart Bradford lately?”

Pat examined her fingernails. ”Oh, Cart’s been around.”

“And Jim’s funeral?”

“We buried him next to Nora.”

“Well!” said Ellery. ”You know, I feel a thirst coming on. How about stopping in somewhere for a long one, Patty?”

“All right,” said Pat moodily.

“Isn’t that Gus Olesen’s Roadside Tavern up ahead? By gosh, it is!”

Pat glanced at him, but Ellery grinned and stopped the car before the tavern, and helped her out, at which she grimaced and said men in Wrightsville didn’t do things like that, and Ellery grinned again, which made Pat laugh; and they walked into Gus Olesen’s cool place arm in arm, laughing together; and Ellery walked her right up to the table where Carter Bradford sat waiting in a coil of knots, and said: “Here she is, Bradford. C.O.D.”

* * *

“Pat,” said Cart, his palms flat on the table. ”Cart!” cried Pat.

“Good morrow, good morrow,” chanted a cracked voice; and Mr. Queen saw old Anderson the Soak, seated at a nearby table with a fistful of dollar bills in one hand and a row of empty whisky glasses before him.

“Good morrow to you, Mr. Anderson,” said Mr. Queen; and while he nodded and smiled at Mr. Anderson, things were happening at the table; so that when he turned back, there was Pat, seated, and Carter seated, and they were glaring at each other across the table. So Mr. Queen sat down, too, and said to Gus Olesen: “Use your imagination, Gus.” Gus scratched his head and got busy behind the bar. ”Ellery”¯Pat’s eyes were troubled¯”you tricked me into coming here with you.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d come, untricked,” murmured Mr. Queen. ”/ asked Queen to come back to Wrightsville, Pat,” said Cart hoarsely. ”He said he’d¯Pat, I’ve tried to see you. I’ve tried to make you understand that we can wipe the past out, that I’m in love with you and always was and always will be, and that I want to marry you more than anything in the world¯”

“Let’s not discuss that anymore,” said Pat. She began making pleats in the skirt of the tablecloth.

Carter seized a tall glass Gus set down before him; and Pat did, too, with a sort of gratitude for the diversion; and they sat in silence for a while, drinking and not looking at each other.

At his table old Anderson had risen, one hand on the cloth to steady himself, and he was chanting:

“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars,

And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,

And the tree toad is a chef-d’oeuvre of the highest, And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven¯”

“Siddown, Mr. Anderson,” said Gus Olesen gently. ”You’re rockin’ the boat.”

“Whitman,” said Mr. Queen, looking around. ”And very apt.” Old Anderson leered, and went on:

“And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,

And the cow, crunching with depressed head, surpasses any statue,

And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels!”

And with a courtly bow the Old Soak sat down again and began to pound out rhythms on the table. ”I was a poet!” he shouted. His lips waggled. ”And 1-look at me now . . . ”

“Yes,” said Mr. Queen thoughtfully. ”That’s very true indeed.”

“Here’s your poison!” said Gus at the next table, slopping a glass of whisky before Mr. Anderson. Then Gus looked very guilty and, avoiding the startled eyes of Pat, went quickly behind his bar and hid himself in a copy of Frank Lloyd’s Record.

Mr. Anderson drank, murmuring to himself in his gullet. ”Pat,” said Mr. Queen, “I came back here today to tell you and Carter who was really responsible for the crimes Jim Haight was charged with.”

“Oh,” said Patty, and she sucked in her breath.

“There are miracles in the human mind, too. You told me something in the hospital waiting room the day Nora died¯one little acorn fact¯and it grew into a tall tree in my mind.”

“ ‘And a mouse,’ “ shouted Mr. Anderson exultantly, “ ‘is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels!’ “

Pat whispered: “Then it wasn’t Jim after all . . . Ellery, no! Don’t! Please! No!”

“Yes,” said Ellery gently. ”That thing is standing between you and Cart. It’s a question mark that would outlive you both. I want to erase it and put a period in its place. Then the chapter will be closed, and you and Cart can look each other in the eye again with some sort of abiding faith.” He sipped his drink, frowning. ”I hope!”

“You hope?” muttered Cart. ”The truth,” said Ellery soberly, “is unpleasant.”

“Ellery!” cried Pat.

“But you’re not children, either of you. Don’t delude yourselves. It would stand between you even if you married . . . the uncertainty of it, the not-knowing, the doubt and the night-and-day question. It’s what’s keeping you apart and what has kept you apart. Yes, the truth is unpleasant. But at least it is the truth, and if you know the truth, you have knowledge; and if you have knowledge, you can make a decision with durability . . . Pat, this is surgery. It’s cut the tumor out or die. Shall I operate?”

Mr. Anderson was singing “Under the Greenwood Tree” in a soft croak, beating time with his empty whisky glass.

Patty sat up perfectly straight, her hands clasped about her glass. ”Go ahead . . . Doctor.”

And Cart took a long swallow and nodded.

* * *

Mr. Queen sighed.

“Do you recall, Pat, telling me in the hospital about the time I came into Nora’s house¯last Hallowe’en¯and found you and Nora transferring books from the living room to Jim’s new study upstairs?” Pat nodded wordlessly. ”And what did you tell me? That the books you and Nora were lugging upstairs you had just removed from a nailed box. That you’d gone down into the cellar just a few minutes before I dropped in, seen the box of books down there all nailed up, exactly as Ed Hotchkiss had left it when he cabbed it from the station weeks and weeks before . . . seen the box intact and opened it yourself.”

“A box of books?” muttered Carter.

“That box of books, Cart, had been part of Jim’s luggage which he’d shipped from New York to Wrightsville when he came back to Wrightsville to make up with Nora. He’d checked it at the Wrightsville station, Cart. It was at the station all the time Jim and Nora were away on their honeymoon; it was brought to the new house only on their return, stored down in the cellar, and on Hallowe’en, Pat found that box still intact, still nailed up, stilled unopened. That was the fact I hadn’t known¯the kernel fact, the acorn fact, that told me the truth.”

“But how, Ellery?” asked Pat, feeling her head.

“You’ll see in a moment, honey. All the time, I’d assumed that the books I saw you and Nora handling were merely being transferred from the living-room bookshelves to Jim’s new study upstairs. I thought they were house books, books of Jim’s and Nora’s that had been in the house for some time. It was a natural assumption¯I saw no box on the living-room floor, no nails¯”

“I’d emptied the box and taken the box, nails, and tools down to the cellar just before you came in,” said Pat. ”I told you that in the hospital that day.”

“Too late,” growled Ellery. ”When I came in, I saw no evidence of such a thing. And I’m not a clairvoyant.”

“But what’s the point?” frowned Carter Bradford.

“One of the books in the wooden box Patty opened that Hallowe’en,” said Ellery, “was Jim’s copy of Edgcomb’s Toxicology.’’’’

Cart’s jaw dropped. ”The marked passage about arsenic!”

“Not only that, but it was from between two pages of that volume that the three letters fell out.”

This time Cart said nothing. And Pat was looking at Ellery with deep quotation marks between her eyebrows.

“Now, since the box had been nailed up in New York and sent to General Delivery, Wrightsville, where it was held, and the toxicology book with the letters in it was found by us directly after the box was unpacked¯the letters fell out as Nora dropped an armful of books quite by accident¯then the conclusion is absolutely inescapable: Jim could not possibly have written those three letters in Wrightsville. And when I saw that, I saw the whole thing. The letters must have been written by Jim in New York¯before he returned to Wrightsville to ask Nora for the second time to marry him, before he knew that Nora would accept him after his desertion of her and his three-year absence!”

“Yes,” mumbled Carter Bradford.

“But don’t you see?” cried Ellery. ”How can we now state with such fatuous certainty that the sickness and death Jim predicted for his ‘wife’ in those three letters referred to Nora? True, Nora was Jim’s wife when the letters were found, but she was NOT his wife, nor could Jim have known she would BE his wife, when he originally wrote them!”

He stopped and, even though it was cool in Gus Olesen’s taproom, he dried his face with a handkerchief and took a long pull at his glass. At the next table, Mr. Anderson snored.

Pat gasped: “But Ellery, if those three letters didn’t refer to Nora, then the whole thing¯the whole thing¯”

“Let me tell it my way,” said Mr. Queen in a harsh voice. ”Once doubt is raised that the kwife’ mentioned in the three letters was Nora, then two facts that before seemed irrelevant simply shout to be noticed. One is that the letters bore incomplete dates. That is, they marked the month, and the day of the month, but not the year. So the three holidays¯Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s¯which Jim had written down on the successive letters as marking the dates of his ‘wife’s’ illness, more serious illness, and finally death, might have been the similar dates of one, two, or even three years before! Not 1940 at all, but 1939, or 1938, or 1937 . . .

“And the second fact, of course, was that not once did any of the letters refer to the name Nora; the references were consistently to ‘my wife.’

“If Jim wrote those letters in New York¯before his marriage to Nora, before he even knew Nora would marry him¯then Jim could not have been writing about Nora’s illness or Nora’s death. And if we can’t believe this¯an assumption we all took for granted from the beginning of the case¯then the whole structure which postulated Nora as Jim’s intended poison victim collapses.”

“This is incredible,” muttered Carter. ”Incredible.”

“I’m confused,” moaned Patty. ”You mean¯”

“I mean,” said Mr. Queen, “that Nora was never threatened, Nora was never in danger . . . Nora was never meant to be murdered.’’’’

Pat shook her head violently and groped for her glass.

“But that opens up a whole new field of speculation!” exclaimed Carter. ”If Nora wasn’t meant to be murdered¯ever, at all¯”

“What are the facts?” argued Ellery. ”A woman did die on New Year’s Eve: Rosemary Haight. When we thought Nora was the intended victim, we said Rosemary died by accident. But now that we know Nora wasn’t the intended victim, surely it follows that Rosemary did NOT die by accident¯that Rosemary was meant to be murdered from the beginning?’’’’

“Rosemary was meant to be murdered from the beginning,” repeated Pat slowly, as if the words were in a language she didn’t understand.

“But Queen¯” protested Bradford.

“I know, I know,” sighed Ellery. ”It raises tremendous difficulties and objections. But with Nora eliminated as the intended victim, it’s the only logical explanation for the crime. So we’ve got to accept it as our new premise. Rosemary was meant to be murdered. Immediately I asked myself: Did the three letters have anything to do with Rosemary’s death?

“Superficially, no. The letters referred to the death of Jim’s wife¯”

“And Rosemary was Jim’s sister,” said Pat with a frown.

“Yes, and besides Rosemary had shown no signs of the illnesses predicted for Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. Moreover, since the three letters can now be interpreted as two or three years old or more, they no longer appear necessarily criminal. They can merely refer to the natural death of a previous wife of Jim’s¯not Nora, but a first wife whom Jim married in New York and who died there some New Year’s Day between the time Jim ran out on Nora and the time he came back to marry Nora.”

“But Jim never said anything about a first wife,” objected Pat.

“That wouldn’t prove he hadn’t had one,” said Cart.

“No,” nodded Ellery. ”So it all might have been perfectly innocent. Except for two highly significant and suspicious factors: first, that the letters were written but never mailed, as if no death had occurred in New York; and second, that a woman did actually die in Wrightsville on New Year’s Day of 1941, as written by Jim in his third and last letter a long time before it happened. Coincidence? My gorge rises at the very notion.

“No, I saw that there must be some connection between Rosemary’s death and the three letters Jim wrote¯he did write them, of course; poor Judge Eli Martin’s attempt to cast doubt on their authenticity during the trial was a brave but transparent act of desperation.”

Mr. Anderson woke up, looking annoyed. But Gus Olesen shook his head. Mr. Anderson tottered over to the bar. ” ‘Landlord,’ “ he leered, “ ‘fill the flowing bowl until it does run over!’ “

“We don’t serve in bowls, and besides, Andy, you had enough,” said Gus reprovingly.

Mr. Anderson began to weep, his head on the bar; and after a few sobs, he fell asleep again.

“What connection,” continued Mr. Queen thoughtfully, “is possible between Rosemary Haight’s death and the three letters Jim Haight wrote long, long before? And with this question,” he said, “we come to the heart of the problem. For with Rosemary the intended victim all along, the use of the three letters can be interpreted as a stupendous blind, a clever deception, a psychological smoke screen to conceal the truth from the authorities! Isn’t that what happened? Didn’t you and Dakin, Bradford, instantly dismiss Rosemary’s death as a factor and concentrate on Nora as the intended victim? But that was just what Rosemary’s murderer would want you to do! You ignored the actual victim to look for murder motives against the ostensible victim. And so you built your case around Jim, who was the only person who could possibly have poisoned Nora, and never for an instant sought the real criminal¯the person with the motive and opportunity to poison Rosemary.”

Pat was by now so bewildered that she gave herself up wholly to listening. But Carter Bradford was following with a savage intentness, hunched over the table and never taking his eyes from Ellery’s face.

“Go on!” he said. ”Go on, Queen!”

“Let’s go back,” said Mr. Queen, lighting a cigarette. ”We now know Jim’s three letters referred to a hidden, a never-mentioned, a first wife. If this woman died on New Year’s Day two or three years ago, why didn’t Jim mail the letters to his sister? More important than that, why didn’t he disclose the fact to you or Dakin when he was arrested? Why didn’t Jim tell Judge Martin, his attorney, that the letters didn’t mean Nora, for use as a possible defense in his trial? For if the first wife were in all truth dead, it would have been a simple matter to corroborate¯the attending physician’s affidavit, the death certificate, a dozen things.

“But Jim kept his mouth shut. He didn’t by so much as a sober word indicate that he’d married another woman between the time he and Nora broke up almost four years ago and the time he returned to Wrightsville to marry her. Why? Why Jim’s mysterious silence on this point?”

“Maybe,” said Pat with a shiver, “because he’d actually planned and carried out the murder of his first wife.”

“Then why didn’t he mail the letters to his sister?” argued Cart. ”Since he’d presumably written them for that eventuality?”

“Ah,” said Mr. Queen. ”The very counterpoint. So I said to myself: Is it possible that the murder Jim had planned of his first wife did not take place at the time it was supposed to?”

“You mean she was alive when Jim came back to Wrightsville?” gasped Pat.

“Not merely alive,” said Mr. Queen; he slowly ground out the butt of his cigarette in an ashtray. ”She followed Jim here.”

“The first wife?” Carter gaped.

“She came to Wrightsville?” cried Pat.

“Yes, but not as Jim’s first wife. Not as Jim’s any-wife.”

“Then who¯?”

“She came to Wrightsville,” said Ellery, “as Jim’s sister.”

Mr. Anderson came to life at the bar and began: “Landlord¯”

“Go home,” said Gus, shaking his head.

“Mead! Nepenthe!” implored Mr. Anderson.

“We don’t carry that stuff,” said Gus.

“As Jim’s sister,” whispered Pat. ”The woman Jim introduced to us as his sister, Rosemary, wasn’t his sister at all? She was his wife?”

“Yes.” Ellery motioned to Gus Olesen. But Gus had the second round ready. Mr. Anderson followed the tray with gleaming eyes. And no one spoke until Gus returned to the bar.

“But Queen,” said Carter, dazed, “how in hell can you know that?”

“Well, whose word have we that the woman who called herself Rosemary Haight was Jim Haight’s sister?” demanded Ellery. ”Only the word of Jim and Rosemary, and they’re both dead . . . However, that’s not how I know she was his first wife. I know that because I know who really killed her. And knowing who really killed her, it just isn’t possible for Rosemary to have been Jim’s sister. The only person she could have been, the only person against whom the murderer had motive, was Jim’s first wife; as you’ll see.”

“But Ellery,” said Pat, “didn’t you tell me yourself that day, by comparing the woman’s handwriting on Steve Polaris’s trucking receipt with the handwriting on the flap of the letter Jim received from ‘Rosemary Haight,’ that that proved the woman was Jim’s sister?”

“I was wrong,” said Mr. Queen, frowning. ”I was stupidly wrong. All that the two signatures proved, really, was that the same woman had written them both. That meant only that the woman who showed up here was the same woman who wrote Jim that letter which disturbed him so. I was misled by the fact that on the envelope she had signed the name ‘Rosemary Haight.’ Well, she was just using that name. I was wrong, I was stupid, and you should have caught me up, Patty. Let’s drink?”

“But if the woman who was poisoned New Year’s Eve was Jim’s first wife,” protested Carter, “why didn’t Jim’s real sister come forward after the murder? Lord knows the case had enough publicity!”

“If he had a sister,” mumbled Patty. ”If he had one!”

“Oh, he had a sister,” said Ellery wearily. ”Otherwise, why should he have written those letters to one? When he originally penned them, in planning the murder of his then-wife¯the murder he didn’t pull off¯he expected those letters to give him an appearance of innocence. He expected to send them to his real sister, Rosemary Haight. It would have to be a genuine sister to stand the searchlight of a murder investigation, or he’d really be in a mess. So Jim had a sister, all right.”

“But the papers!” said Pat. ”Cart’s right, Ellery. The papers were full of news about ‘Rosemary Haight, sister of James Haight,’ and how she died here in Wrightsville. If Jim had a real sister, Rosemary, surely she’d have come lickety-split to Wrightsville to expose the mistake?”

“Not necessarily. But the fact is¯Jim’s sister did come to Wrightsville, Patty. Whether she came to expose the mistake I can’t say; but certainly, after she’d had a talk with her brother, Jim, she decided to say nothing about her true identity. I suppose Jim made her promise to keep quiet. And she’s kept that promise.”

“I don’t follow, I don’t follow,” said Cart irritably. ”You’re like one of those fellows who keep pulling rabbits out of a hat. You mean the real Rosemary Haight’s been in Wrightsville all these months, calling herself by some other name?”

Mr. Queen shrugged. ”Who helped Jim in his trouble? The Wright family, a small group of old friends whose identities, of course, are unquestionable, myself, and . . . one other person. And that person a woman.”

“Roberta!” gasped Pat. ”Roberta Roberts, the newspaperwoman!”

“The only outsider of the sex that fits,” nodded Ellery. ”Yes, Roberta Roberts. Who else? She ‘believed’ in Jim’s innocence from the start, she fought for him, she sacrificed her job for him, and at the end¯in desperation¯she provided the car by which Jim escaped his guards at the cemetery. Yes, Roberta’s the only one who could be Jim’s sister, from the facts; it explains all the peculiarities of her conduct. I suppose ‘Roberta Roberts’ has been her professional name for years. But her real name is Rosemary Haight!”

“So that’s why she cried so at Jim’s funeral,” said Pat softly. And there was no sound but the swish of Gus Olesen’s cloth on the bar and Mr. Anderson’s troubled muttering.

“It gets clearer,” growled Cart at last. ”But what I don’t understand is why Jim’s first wife came to Wrightsville calling herself Jim’s sister.”

“And why,” added Pat, “Jim permitted the deception. It’s mad, the whole thing!”

“No,” said Ellery, “it’s frighteningly sane, if you’ll only stop to think. You ask why. I asked why, too. And when I thought about it, I saw what must have happened.” He drank deeply of the contents of the frosty glass. ”Look. Jim left almost four years ago on the eve of his wedding to Nora, as a result of their quarrel about the house. He went to New York, I should suppose desperately unhappy. But remember Jim’s character. An iron streak of independence¯that’s usually from the same lode as stubbornness and pride. They kept him from writing to Nora, from coming back to Wrightsville, from being a sensible human being; although, of course, Nora was as much to blame for not understanding how much standing on his own feet meant to a man like Jim.

“At any rate, back in New York, Jim’s life¯as he must have thought¯blasted, Jim ran into this woman. We all saw something of her¯a sultry, sulky wench, quite seductive . . . especially attractive to a man licking the wounds of an unhappy love affair. On the rebound, this woman hooked Jim. They must have been miserable together. Jim was a good solid boy, and the woman was a fly-by-night, selfish and capable of driving a man quite mad with exasperation. She must have made his life intolerable, because Jim wasn’t the killing type and still he did finally plan to kill her. The fact that he planned each detail of her murder so carefully, even to writing those letters to his sisterin advance¯a. silly thing to do!¯shows how obsessed he became with the necessity of being rid of her.”

“I should think,” said Pat in a sick voice, “that he could have divorced her!”

Ellery shrugged again. ”I’m sure that if he could have, he would. Which leads me to believe that, at first, she wouldn’t give him a divorce. The leech, genus Homo, sex female. Of course, we can’t be sure of anything. But Cart, I’m willing to lay you odds that if you followed the trail back, you’d discover (a) that she refused to give him a divorce, (b) that he then planned to murder her, (c) that she somehow got wind of his plans, was frightened, ran away from him, causing him to abandon his plans, and (d) that she later informed him that she had got a divorce!

“Because what follows makes all that inevitable. We know that Jim was married to one woman¯we know that subsequently he came rushing back to Wrightsville and asked Nora to marry him. He would only have done that if he thought he was free of the first. But to think so, she must have given him reason. So I say she told him she’d got a divorce.

“What happened? Jim married Nora; in his excited emotional state he completely forgot about those letters which had been lying in the toxicology book for heaven knows how long. Then the honeymoon, Jim and Nora returned to Wrightsville to take up their married life in the little house . . . and the trouble began. Jim received a letter from his ‘sister.’ Remember that morning, Patty? The postman brought a letter, and Jim read it and was tremendously agitated, and then later he said it was from his ‘sister’ and wouldn’t it be proper to ask her up to Wrightsville for a visit . . . ”

Pat nodded.

“The woman who turned up claiming to be Jim’s sister¯and whom he accepted as his sister and introduced as his sister¯was, we now know, not his sister at all but his first wife.

“But there’s a more factual proof that the letter was from the first wife . . . the business of the identical signatures on the charred flag of the letter Jim received and on Steve Polaris’s receipt for the visitor’s luggage. So it was the first wife who wrote to Jim, and since Jim could scarcely have relished the idea of her coming to Wrightsville, it must have been her idea, not his, and that’s what her letter to him was about.

“But why did she write to Jim and appear in Wrightsville as Jim’s sister at all? In fact, why did Jim permit her to come? Or, if he couldn’t keep her from coming, why did he connive at the deception after her arrival and keep it a secret until her death and still afterward? There can be only one reason: she had a powerful hold over him.

“Confirmation of that? Yes. Jim was ‘squandering’ lots of money¯and mark that his squandering habits coincided in point of time with the arrival of his first wife in Wrightsville! Why was he pawning Nora’s jewelry? Why did he borrow five thousand dollars from the Wrightsville Personal Finance Corporation? Why did he keep bleeding Nora for cash? Why? Where did all that money go? Gambling, you said, Cart. And tried to prove it in court¯”

“But Jim himself admitted to Nora that he gambled the money away, according to the testimony,” protested Carter.

“Naturally if his secret first wife was blackmailing him, he’d have to invent an excuse to Nora to explain his sudden appetite for huge sums of cash! The fact is, Cart, you never did prove Jim was losing all that money gambling in Vic Carlatti’s Hot Spot. You couldn’t find a single eyewitness to his gambling there, or you’d have produced one. The best you could get was an eavesdropper who overheard Jim say to Nora that he’d been gambling! Yes, Jim drank a lot at theHot Spot¯he was desperate; but he wasn’t gambling there.

“Still, that money was going somewhere. Well, haven’t we postulated a woman with a powerful hold on him? Conclusion:he was giving Rosemary that money¯I mean, the woman who called herself Rosemary, the woman who subsequently died on New Year’s Eve. He was giving it on demand to the cold-blooded creature he had to continue calling his sister¯the woman he’d actually been married to!”

“But what could the hold on him have been, Ellery?” asked Pat. ”It must have been something terrific!”

“Which is why I can see only one answer,” said Ellery grimly. ”It fits into everything we know like plaster of Paris into a mold. Suppose the woman we’re calling Rosemary¯the first wife¯never did get a divorce? Suppose she’d only fooled Jim into believing he was free? Perhaps by showing him forged divorce papers? Anything can be procured for money! Then the whole thing makes sense. Then Jim, when he’d married Nora, had committed bigamy. Then he was in this woman’s clutches for good . . . She warned Jim in advance by letter and then came to Wrightsville posing as his sister so that she could blackmail him on the spot without exposing her true identity to Nora and the family! So now we know why she posed as his sister, too. If she exposed her real status, her power over Jim was gone. She wanted money, not revenge. It was only by holding a threat of exposure over Jim’s head that she would be able to suck him dry. To do that, she had to pretend to be someone else . . .

“And Jim, caught in her trap, had to acknowledge her as his sister, had to pay her until he went nearly insane with despair. Rosemary knew her victim. For Jim couldn’t let Nora learn the truth¯”

“No,” moaned Pat.

“Why not?” asked Carter Bradford.

“Once before, when Jim ran out on her, he’d humiliated Nora frightfully in the eyes of her family and the town¯the town especially. There are no secrets or delicacies, and there is much cruelty, in the Wrightsvilles of this world; and if you’re a sensitive, inhibited, self-conscious Nora, public scandal can be a major tragedy and a curse to damn your life past regeneration.

“Jim saw what his first defection had done to Nora, how it had driven her into a shell, made her over into a frightened little person half-crazy with shame, hiding from Wrightsville, from her friends, even from her family. If a mere jilting at the altar did that to Nora, what wouldn’t the shocking revelation that she’d married a bigamist do to her? It would drive her mad; it might even kill her.

“Jim realized all that . . . The trap Rosemary laid and sprung was Satanic. Jim simply couldn’t admit to Nora or let her find out that she was not a legally married woman, that their marriage was not a true marriage, and that their coming child . . . Remember Mrs. Wright testified that Jim knew almost as soon as it happened that Nora was going to have a baby.”

“This,” said Carter hoarsely, “is damnable.”

Ellery sipped his drink and then lit a fresh cigarette, frowning at the incandescent end for some time. ”It gets more difficult to tell, too,” he murmured at last. ”Jim paid and paid, and borrowed money everywhere to keep the evil tongue of that woman from telling the awful truth which would have unbalanced Nora or killed her.”

Pat was close to tears. ”It’s a wonder poor Jim didn’t embezzle funds at Pop’s bank!”

“And in drunken rages Jim swore that he’d ‘get rid of her’¯that he’d ‘kill her’¯and made it plain that he was speaking of his ‘wife.’ Of course he was. He was speaking of the only legal wife he had¯the woman calling herself Rosemary Haight and posing as his sister. When Jim foolishly made those alcoholic threats, he never meant Nora at all”

“But it seems to me,” muttered Cart, “that when he was arrested, facing a conviction, to keep quietthen¯”

“I’m afraid,” replied Mr. Queen with a sad smile, “that Jim in his way was a great man. He was willing to die to make up to Nora for what he had done to her. And the only way he could make up to her was to pass out in silence. He unquestionably swore his real sister, Roberta Roberts, to secrecy. For to have told you and Chief Dakin the truth, Cart, Jim would have had to reveal Rosemary’s true identity, and that meant revealing the whole story of his previous marriage to her, the divorce-that-wasn’t-a-divorce, and consequently Nora’s status as a pregnant, yet unmarried, woman. Besides, revealing the truth wouldn’t have done him any good, anyway. For Jim had infinitely more motive to murder Rosemary than to murder Nora. No, he decided the best course was to carry the whole sickening story with him to the grave.”

Pat was crying openly now.

“And,” muttered Mr. Queen, “Jim had still another reason for keeping quiet. The biggest reason of all. A heroic, an epic, reason. I wonder if you two have any idea what it is.”

They stared at him, at each other.

“No,” sighed Mr. Queen, “I suppose you wouldn’t. The truth is so staggeringly simple that we see right through it, as if it were a pane of glass. It’s two-plus-two, or rather two-minus-one; and those are the most difficult calculations of all.”

A bulbous organ the color of fresh blood appeared over his shoulder, and they saw that it was only Mr. Anderson’s wonderful nose.

“O vita, misero longa! felici brevis!” croaked Mr. Anderson. ”Friends, heed the wisdom of the ancients . . . I suppose you are wondering how I, poor wretch, am well-provided with lucre this heaven-sent day. Well, I am a remittance man, as they say, and my ship has touched port today. Felici brevis/” And he started to fumble for Patty’s glass.

“Why don’t you go over there in the corner and shut up, Andy?” shouted Cart.

“Sir,” said Mr. Anderson, going away with Pat’s glass, “ ‘the sands are number’d that make up my life; Here must I stay, and here my life must end.’ “ He sat down at his table and drank quickly.

“Ellery, you can’t stop now!” said Pat.

“Are you two prepared to hear the truth?”

Pat looked at Carter, and Carter looked at Pat. He reached across the table and took her hand.

“Shoot,” said Carter.

Mr. Queen nodded. ”There’s only one question left to be answered¯the most important question of all: who really poisoned Rosemary?

“The case against Jim had shown that he alone had opportunity, that he alone had motive, that he alone had control of the distribution of the cocktails and therefore was the only one who could have been positive the poisoned cocktail reached its intended victim. Further, Cart, you proved that Jim had bought rat poison and so could have had arsenic to drop into the fatal cocktail.

“All this is reasonable and, indeed, unassailable¯//Jim meant to kill Nora, to whom he handed the cocktail. But now we know Jim never intended to kill Nora at all!¯that the real victim from the beginning was meant to be Rosemary and only Rosemary!

“So I had to refocus my mental binoculars. Now that I knew Rosemary was the intended victim, was the case just as conclusive against Jim as when Nora was believed to be the victim?

“Well, Jim still had opportunity to poison the cocktail; with Rosemary the victim, he had infinitely greater motive; he still had a supply of arsenic available. BUT¯with Rosemary the victim, did Jim control the distribution of the fatal cocktail? Remember, he handed the cocktail subsequently found to contain arsenic to Nora . . . Could he have been sure the poisoned cocktail would go to Rosemary?

“No!” cried Ellery, and his voice was suddenly like a knife. ”True, he’d handed Rosemary a cocktail previous to that last round. But that previous cocktail had not been poisoned. In that last roundonly Nora’s cocktail¯the one that poisoned both Nora and Rosemary¯had arsenic in it! If Jim had dropped the arsenic into the cocktail he handed Nora, how could he know that Rosemary would drink it?

“He couldn’t know. It was such an unlikely event that he couldn’t even dream it would happen . . . imagine it, or plan it, or count on it. Actually,Jim was out of the living room¯if you’ll recall the facts¯at the time Rosemary drank Nora’s cocktail.

“So this peripatetic mind had to query: Since Jim couldn’t be sure Rosemary would drink that poisoned cocktail, who could be sure?”

Carter Bradford and Patricia Wright were pressing against the edge of the table, still, rigid, not breathing.

Mr. Queen shrugged. ”And instantly¯two minus one. Instantly. It was unbelievable, and it was sickening, and it was the only possible truth. Two minus one¯one. Just one . . .

“Just one other person had opportunity to poison that cocktail, for just one other person handled it before it reached Rosemary!

“Just one other person had motive to kill Rosemary and could have utilized the rat poison for murder which Jim had bought for innocent, mice-exterminating purposes . . . perhaps at someone else’s suggestion? Remember he went back to Myron Garback’s pharmacy a second time for another tin, shortly after his first purchase of Quicko, telling Garback he had ‘mislaid’ the first tin? How do you suppose that first tin came to be ‘mislaid’? With what we now know, isn’t it evident that it wasn’t mislaid at all, but was stolen and stored away by the only other person in Jim’s house with motive to kill Rosemary?”

Mr. Queen glanced at Patricia Wright and at once closed his eyes, as if they pained him. And he stuck the cigarette into the corner of his mouth and said through his teeth: “That person could only have been the one who actually handed Rosemary the cocktail on New Year’s Eve.”

Carter Bradford licked his lips over and over.

Pat was frozen.

“I’m sorry, Pat,” said Ellery, opening his eyes. ”I’m frightfully, terribly sorry. But it’s as logical as death itself. And to give you two a chance, I had to tell you both.”

Pat said faintly: “Not Nora. Oh, not Nora!”