Double, Double

Sunday, April 23

“What?” said Ellery. He was still hearing the carillon spiel of the First Methodist barker and Dakin’s axhead face was still blurry around the edges. He rubbed his eyes; Rima was there, too, seated on the edge of Manager Brooks’s bed, and without Ken Winship. “I thought Jacquard was dead. Or did I dream it all, Dakin?”

“I didn’t say Jacquard. I said Jacquard’s house. Y’know, Mr. Queen,” said the chief of police, “he lived in a house. More like a chicken coop than a house, with all those youngsters underfoot, but a house you’d have to call it even though it’s on Polly Street and the rats eat out of your hand.”

“Or your hand,” said Rima.

“The point is, I found Rima’s father’s five thousand dollars over there this morning.”

Now the last lingering bong was gone and Dakin was his proper hatchet self again, and Ellery said, “So,” like little Hercule Poirot, and he went over and shut one of the windows, shivering. It would happen on a cold Sunday in April. “So what, Dakin?”

“So I thought you’d be surprised,” said Dakin in a surprised voice.

“So did I,” said Rima.

“Really, you should have brought some coffee up with you,” said Ellery. “Where do you think Jacquard would hide money that didn’t belong to him?”

“Then why didn’t you look there?” Dakin was being awfully disagreeable so early in the morning, thought Ellery; a Sunday, too. “Now ask me why I didn’t look there. Well, sir, I didn’t look there because nobody bothered to tell me about Anderson’s coming back to Holderfield with Dodd’s five thousand in an envelope and turning it over to Holderfield with instructions to turn it over to Nick Jacquard if somethin’ happened to him, and Holderfield’s doing so. That’s why I didn’t look there, Mr. Queen. And I’ve got a little business with Mr. Holderfield this morning, too, that’s goin’ to make Mr. Holderfield remember me.”

“You’re so right, Dakin,” groaned Ellery. “It’s this damned zipper-mouth training I got in my youth. By the way, who did tell you?”

“I did,” said Rima. “I woke up early this morning after bad dreams and I went right to Chief Dakin. Didn’t tell Ken or Dr. Dodd or anybody — Ken had gone to the hospital and Dr. Dodd was still asleep.”

“Got me out of bed with it, bless her heart,” said Dakin, “and don’t give her that wait-till-I-get-you-alone look, Mr. Queen, ’cause she’s a better friend of mine than you are. Or were you waiting for Jacquard to cash in so you could find that five thousand yourself?”

“This is unworthy of our long friendship,” said Ellery with dignity. “I really must have some coffee... Well, anyway, you’ve got it, and that’s the main thing, and now that you have, what are you going to do with it? Oh, did you find the envelope and the letter Tom Anderson told Holderfield he had enclosed with the money?”

“To the second question, no, Jacquard must have destroyed it. To the first,” said the police chief, “why, Dr. Dodd gave that money to Tom Anderson, and Tom Anderson no longer being with us...”

“That’s why I’m here,” said Rima, looking Ellery in the eye. “I don’t want that money. Dr. Dodd gave it to Daddy for a purpose and Daddy didn’t live long enough to accomplish the purpose, so the money ought to go back where it came from. And that’s just where it’s going.”

Dakin looked at Ellery hopefully. “Well,” he said after a moment. Then he went to the door and Rima followed him.

“Wait,” said Ellery. They both stopped. “Rima, I’ll meet you in the lobby. I won’t be five minutes dressing.”

Dakin looked reproachful as they went out.

Ellery took Rima into the coffee shop and they sat down five tables away from the nearest traveling man. Rima said she would have just coffee, thank you, so Ellery ordered two pots of coffee and said, “What else did you tell Dakin?”

“Nothing else.”

“Why did you tell him anything at all?”

“I thought he ought to know.”

“You thought he ought to know. Do you know, in war you’d be shot for this?”

“I didn’t know Mr. Dakin was the enemy.”

“You argue like a Levantine,” growled Ellery. “Of course, he’s not. But you’re sworn. Head man — chief. That was supposed to be me, remember?”

“Ellery.”

“What?”

“I’m resigning.”

Ellery nodded and for a few moments they devoted themselves to their coffee. Finally Ellery lit a cigaret and blew a question mark.

“Yes. After what happened last night — Ken and me... Ellery, I couldn’t. Not and stay in love with Ken. It’s something neither you nor I knew would happen when we made our bargain. Of course you understand.”

“Of course.” Of course. But it had not occurred to him before. This is what comes, he thought ruefully, of thinking of people not as people but as chess pieces. “You’re perfectly right, Rima. There can’t be any other basis for your relationship. Only... respect my position, will you?”

“You mean I’m not to tell Ken anything?”

“Because of Ken’s loyalty to Dodd. He’d probably boil over and in his anger tip off Dodd. And that might spoil everything.”

“You’re going ahead with this?” Rima was astonished.

Ellery looked astonished at her astonishment. “Why, certainly.” And then he said, irrelevantly, “You know, Rima, Dodd is a very sick man.”

“You mean his nervousness?”

“His phobia.”

“Phobia?”

“It isn’t just worry or anxiety, Rima. It’s fear. And not an ordinary intermittent fear — a pathological fear. Obsessive. I suppose that’s what’s really keeping me in Wrightsville. What in the world is Dodd so unreasonably terrified of? And whatever it is, how is it connected with the deaths of MacCaby and Hart? And with what happened to your father? And to Jacquard?”

“To Jacquard?”

“Yes.”

“But Jacquard’s death...” She was bewildered.

“Exactly. First MacCaby’s death, then Hart’s death, then presumably your father’s death, and now Jacquard’s death. All connected. Or are they? Two possibilities, Rima. Remember? The double play.”

“But — it was his own fault!”

“Good heavens, I’m not turning a beady eye on your beloved. Poor Ken in any event would be an instrument of fate. I didn’t mean that. I meant — in theory — the two faces of the coin. One possibility: Jacquard, a petty thief, broke into the house of the town’s newest rich man. Past midnight, when it was in almost total darkness, you’ll recall. Why? For the obvious purpose of stealing something. What? Anything he could lay his hands on. Place, time, circumstances, intended victim, known character of the culprit — they all fit the simple interpretation. As, incidentally, did the previous events.

“But the reverse? Dodd the wicked man? In the grip of a deathly fear?... Follow him through to Jacquard.”

“I don’t see...”

“Suppose, again, Dodd murdered MacCaby for the fortune, drove Hart to suicide to gain sole control of the dye works, killed your father to avoid paying more blackmail. If that’s the truth, your father had some evidence that proved Dodd’s guilt — the box of pills Dodd gave MacCaby, or something else. It doesn’t matter what.

“Now Tom Anderson. Tom Anderson is an intelligent man. He knows Dodd is a murderer and that a man who has murdered twice will murder a third time. And he, Anderson, is putting pressure on that Dodd. He sees the dreary possibility. So he hides his evidence.

“He hides his evidence, and what does he do? He leaves a sealed letter with Holderfield with instructions that, if anything should happen to him — Anderson — Holderfield is to turn the envelope over to Nick Jacquard. And in this envelope he has not only placed the five thousand dollars he got from Dodd but also a letter of instructions to Jacquard telling Jacquard all about Dodd’s guilt, about the evidence, its nature and where Anderson has hidden it. So that if Dodd thought to resolve his difficulties by killing Anderson, Jacquard could disillusion him by carrying the blackmail on. They were friends, weren’t they? And Tom Anderson had come a long way from his poetry and his mortarboard.”

Rima said nothing, but her scorn was explicit.

Nevertheless, Ellery went on. “And where had Tom Anderson hidden the evidence of Dodd’s guilt? Well, what did Jacquard, Anderson’s heir, so to speak, do last night? He broke into Dodd’s study. Then suppose Anderson’s letter to Jacquard had said: I hid the evidence in the last place Dodd would think of looking for it — his own study. At Dodd’s own word, Anderson had been in Dodd’s house at least twice. Suppose it had been, however, not in Dodd’s waiting room as he said, but in Dodd’s study, that their conversations about the five thousand dollars took place. And suppose Dodd had been called out for a few minutes, leaving Anderson in the study alone? You see where the other fork of the road takes us, Rima? To Jacquard breaking into Dodd’s house to get possession of the evidence by which Anderson had blackmailed Dodd and for the suppression of which Dodd had killed Anderson. Dodd, Dodd, and Dodd. Dodd the frightened man. Always Dodd. That’s why I want so badly to get into that house, Rima. It’s only one of two possible theories, but finding that evidence — which Jacquard didn’t get — would block off one road and take us down the other to a destination. Now, wouldn’t it?”

Rima smiled. “Sorry, Mr. Queen. I don’t believe it. Except as perverted poetry, perhaps. But it’s pure imagination. You should have lived in Coleridge’s day. Or smoked opium with De Quincey. I’m going back to Ken and Dr. Dodd, who’s a sweet, troubled man... maybe sick from overwork, from nervous exhaustion, but not a murderer, not the nemesis of a rich man and a foolish man, a pauper and a thief... Ellery, what’s the matter?”

For Ellery was crouched there watching his cigaret scorch the flesh of his forefinger as if he were a Yogi.

“Ellery!” She slapped his hand and the butt fell into his coffee with a frustrated hiss. “What’s ailing you?”

He came back to the Hollis Coffee Shoppe with a start. And almost upset the table, he jumped up so wildly.

“Ellery! Where are you going?”

“Dodd!.. Pay the check. I mean... Oh, hell, I can’t wait for change. Still asleep, you said? Rima, come on!”

“What are you raving about?”

But he was already waving to the taxi parked outside.

Ellery said: “Dr. Dodd, I’m going to tell you a fairy tale.”

They had found Dodd in his study, in pajamas and a frayed black silk dressing gown, behind the desk where Nick Jacquard had made his last stand the night before. He was sipping black coffee with both hands about the dancing cup, staring through the window at his garden. Nothing was visible but Harry Toyfell turning up the earth around a row of narcissus shoots. Ken was giving the doctor a report on some patient he had just seen at the hospital, but the older man seemed not to have been listening.

Dodd was not so much shaking this morning as being shaken by a personal earthquake.

He tried to smile; the smile burst into fragments, leaving a stubbled chaos, everything in trembling motion. He seemed fascinated by Toyfell’s movements, the rise and fall of the bits of earth.

Ken Winship was frazzled himself this morning; Rima gently stroked his lids. “Ellery, I don’t think this morning is a good time.”

The best time, thought Ellery.

“A fairy tale,” he repeated. “But it has to be believed. And because it has to be believed, Dr. Dodd, I ask you to open your mind as wide as it can go.”

Now he had Dodd’s attention; an unpleasant victory, for this man was shaking to pieces before his eyes.

“I said—” began Ken.

“Darling, listen,” said Rima.

“I’ll have to start at the beginning. I came to Wrightsville with a theory. My theory was that Tom Anderson’s death was only a link in a chain. My theory was that it was the third link, the first link having been the death of Luke MacCaby and the second link the death of John Hart. Last night Nick Jacquard died. My theory last night was that Jacquard’s death was the fourth link.”

“What the devil are you talking about, Ellery?”

“Ken. Listen.”

“Dr. Dodd, this morning the theory became a fact. The deaths of MacCaby, Hart, Anderson, Jacquard are positively connected. In that exact order, by the way. As to what connects them...”

“What?” croaked Dr. Dodd.

“I want you to work it out with me, Doctor,” said Ellery. “MacCaby was the first to die. How would you describe MacCaby?”

Dodd was squeezing the edge of his desk. “How do you mean?”

“Not physically. As a personality.”

“An eccentric.”

“No. In social terms. The thing Wrightsville talked about most when they discussed him after his death.” Ellery paused. “Everyone thought he was—?”

“A poor man?” Dodd was squinting across the desk.

“When he was actually—?”

“A wealthy man.”

“The second casualty, Hart. In exactly the same sense, Doctor, how would you describe Hart?”

“He turned out to be an embezzler.”

“Yes, but what’s the fact that brought Hart down to the level of the lowliest Low Villager?”

“Everyone thought he was a millionaire when he was really penniless?”

“Yes, the have turns out to be the have-not. In our society, where the accumulation of wealth is the preoccupation of most individuals, the loss of it is the most tragic — that is, the most dramatic — of possible turns of the plot. So — in the scale of our social plot values — just as the most significant thing about Luke MacCaby was that, thought to be a poor man, he was actually rich, so the most significant thing about John Spencer Hart was that, thought to be a rich man, he was actually poor.

“And now,” said Ellery, “describe Tom Anderson.”

“It’s all right, Doctor,” began Rima.

“No,” said Ellery, “let’s stick to socio-economics. It’s obvious that we’ve been dealing with classifications of property, isn’t it? Riches, poverty. In that frame, Dr. Dodd, what was Tom Anderson?”

“Poverty.”

“More than poverty. Or, rather, less. Poverty is a relative term, Doctor, like vacuum. But Tom Anderson was an absolute. The economic untouchable. Rima, you told me in New York what Wrightsville called your father when they weren’t pinning the drunkenness label on him.”

“The Town Beggar.”

“He was also called The Town Beggar. And Jacquard, who followed The Town Beggar in this mystifying sequence? What was Jacquard noted for?”

“Petty thievery. The Town Thief.”

“MacCaby the rich man, Hart the poor man, Anderson the beggar, Jacquard the thief. In that order.” Ellery paused. Then he said lightly, “Rich man, poor man, beggar, thief.” And paused again. And when they said nothing, when they glanced blankly back at him, Ellery whipped his jacket open, flung his necktie over one shoulder, and jabbed at the top button of his shirt with a furious forefinger. “Rich man—” the button below — “poor man—” the button below that — “beggar-man—” the fourth button — “thief!”

Now they saw, and he pulled his tie back straight and rebuttoned his jacket and shook himself a little. “All right, I’m off my chump. Four men die, each under perfectly... adult circumstances, and here the fellow comes along and works out a child’s jingle, a counting game of the young, a fortune-telling abracadabra. ‘What are you going to be when you grow up, Junior? Tell your beads — I mean your buttons.’ And Junior puts his chubby little finger on his shiny little buttons, and he pipes, ‘Rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief...’ Well, say it! Or do you see, Dr. Dodd, that mad or not, that’s the incantation arising out of the ghosts of MacCaby, Hart, Anderson, and Jacquard? You’re a man who believes in four-leaf clovers! Will you believe that four deaths can follow a jingle?”

The sweat was rolling down Dodd’s speckled skull. “I don’t know what to say,” he stammered.

“You’ve got to believe! Try it yourself. Test it any way you want to. Sleep on it. Be scientific. What else can it mean? What else can it be? Four men die, following the pattern of a child’s counting game. Ridiculous! Insane! But true.”

“Coincidence.” Ken Winship was angry.

“Four? One certainly, two possibly, three conceivably, but four, Ken? No, not coincidence. Plan.”

“Whose?”

Rima said nothing, but she had grown very pale.

Dr. Dodd wiped his skull.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Doc. Look, Ellery.” Ken was being reasonable now. “This would be great stuff for one of your books, but chase those romantic cobwebs away for a minute. MacCaby’s heart quit. Hart put a bullet through his brain. Anderson — we don’t even know he’s dead. Jacquard... And you say there’s a directing mind behind this?”

“And yet... rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief. Plan, Ken. A directing mind. Not necessarily a hand, but a mind. I believe it. I have to. What’s more,” Ellery leaned on the desk, and he was not speaking to Dr. Winship now, “you have to, Doctor.”

“Me?” Dr. Dodd’s eyes kept roving. “Why?”

“It’s not finished.”

“What’s not finished?” demanded Ken irritably.

Rima was terribly still.

“Wait, Kenneth.” The shaking man remarkably stopped shaking. And he said slowly, “Rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief; doctor...”

“No, Rima.” Winship laughed, on his feet. “So that’s the way it works out.”

“Doctor,” nodded Ellery. “Dr. Dodd, Ken. Indicated. Next on the list.”

Dodd began shaking again. It was hard to look at him.

“The fifth character in the jingle is ‘doctor,’ so that means Dr. Sebastian Dodd. In a town with thirteen doctors of medicine, four doctors of dentistry, and I don’t know how many doctors of other sorts, ‘doctor’ in a jingle means Doc Dodd. Queen, who’s pulling whose leg? And why?” And now Ken sounded almost ugly.

“I don’t blame you, Ken,” said Ellery without rancor. “On the surface it’s lunacy or worse. But dig in. Dr. Dodd is the only doctor in Wrightsville who’s had an important connection with MacCaby’s death, Hart’s death, Anderson’s death, and Jacquard’s death — with all four. MacCaby was Dodd’s patient and Dodd inherited his fortune. Dodd became Hart’s business partner and then sole owner of the Hart-MacCaby business through Hart’s suicide. Dodd gave Anderson five thousand dollars a short time before Anderson’s disappearance. And it was in Dr. Dodd’s home, with Dr. Dodd’s gun, that Nick Jacquard met his death. That’s why ‘doctor’ in the rhyme means Dr. Dodd to me, Ken. Call it hunch, paranoia, superstition, but that’s why I’m convinced that Dr. Dodd is down in somebody’s book as victim number five. You people have to see it. You have to take precautions. I’ll help, if you’ll accept help—”

“Ken!”

At Rima’s shriek Dr. Winship whirled. But Ellery was already pushing him aside.

Sebastian Dodd was on his feet behind the desk. His mouth was flapped back. His eyes glassed terror in, like cages.

He pitched forward just as Ellery got to him.

Shock, said Ken, his tone official. They were outside Dodd’s bedroom. Rima was keeping watch over the doctor. Each man was stiffly on edge.

“There’s nothing wrong with his heart. If there were, Queen, you’d have killed him.”

“He’s sicker than I thought. But I had no choice. He’s tagged. I had to warn him. He’s got to watch himself.”

“I’ll watch him. He’ll be up by tomorrow morning.”

“I’d like to help, Ken.”

Winship did not reply.

“There’s no point in our acting like two strange dogs. You’ve got Rima and a long life ahead of you and I’ve got my conscience to live with. We both owe Dodd something. The job is to take care of him and find out what this is all about.” Ellery said patiently, “I’m going to do it anyway.”

“But I don’t believe any of this,” Ken Winship snarled.

“Dodd does. You heard what he said when you revived him. Do we join forces, Ken, or square off?”

Ken relaxed suddenly. “Oh, hell, pull out of the Hollis and move into one of these rooms. If you’re right, Ellery, I’ll... buy you a whole set of nursery rhymes!”