Double, Double

Saturday, May 13

O’Bannon disappeared, Rima and Ken came back, Malvina Prentiss went to town on the front page of the Record, O’Bannon returned; and Ellery simmered in the May sunshine like an emptying kettle or sulked in the gloomier parts of the Dodd house trying not to hear the music of the newlyweds. Rima reminded him of a newly mated bird busy with her nest. She shopped, tore down curtains, changed drapes, made diplomatic changes in Mrs. Fowler’s and Essie Pingarn’s routine, received patients, typed case cards, answered the telephone, hauled her books over from the shack, took her driver’s test in Ken’s aging but faithful Packard, announced that she was going to repaper the house herself and spent snatched hours at Whitby’s Paint Store poring over wallpaper books, overhauled her husband’s wardrobe — which she declared a disgrace — and at night dropped into bed tired and ecstatic. And Ken could be heard whistling at all hours, even when the record player Ellery had given them as a wedding present was silent. At other times the house was full of Mozart, Haydn, and Bach — good round geometric beauty which succeeded only in mocking the insoluble mathematics in Ellery’s head. Sometimes the music drove him into the garden with a hoe or the insecticide spray, but this invariably invoked the departed image of Harry Toyfell and from this it was but a frame to the picture of little Otis Holderfield; so gardening was no escape, either.

The Record recited its deadly rhyme and O’Bannon was avenged. Everybody howled. From the refuse heaps of Low Village to the cathedral aisle of the Hill Rich man, poor man raised its treble voice in glee. It became a proud Wrightsville property and strong businessmen took it into their councils whenever the moment called for hilarity. Floyd Lycoming set it to music and His Hollis Hummadours gave its première at the annual May dance of Wrightsville High. The next day the whole town was singing it, and it was the feature of Lycoming’s broadcast over KWRI the following week.

The Record’s editorial retorted — against O’Bannon’s advice — that fiddling was an old custom but Rome burned just the same. The ineffable Malvina, it seemed, had a tarnish spot on her polished armor: she could let pique make her tilt at windmills. The laughter only infuriated her and Who Is the Lawyer? remained her stubborn head. Even the halls of the County Court House and the County Lawyers’ Block rang, and Judge Lysander Newbold, presiding over the spring term, was heard for the first time within the memory of court attendants to utter a witticism: When an attorney for the defense failed to answer at the opening of court one morning, Judge Newbold smiled and said archly, “Cherchez l’avocat.”

Prosecutor Chalanski and Chief of Police Dakin were monotonously reported in the Record as declining comment. But one day Essie Pingarn called Ellery to the phone and he picked it up to hear Dakin’s bitter voice remark, “I suppose this is your doings, Mr. Queen. Who is this lawyer that’s tagged to be next?”

“Otis Holderfield, I think,” said Ellery humbly. “Maybe Holderfield will listen to you, Dakin. Or if he won’t promise to be careful, put him under guard.”

“I haven’t the time, manpower, or budget to play games, Mr. Queen,” rasped Dakin. “Got a town of ten thousand to police. Besides, Holderfield came to me and told me what you’d told him. He’s blaming you for this whole thing. Otis ain’t laughing, and I’m not either!”

“Well, I’m glad to hear he doesn’t find it funny any more.”

“Mr. Queen, I made up my mind about something and I may as well tell you right now.”

“What’s that?”

“This Rich man, poor man tripe did it. There’s not been a crime in the carload. I can’t go along with you any more on this.” And Chief Dakin hung up abruptly.

Ellery crept away.

Ellery was alone in the living room one Saturday afternoon, leafing listlessly through a copy of Mother Goose which he had borrowed from the Carnegie Library the night before. Ken was out making house calls; Rima had gone over to Logan’s Market to place her weekly order, an act of housewifely initiative to which Mrs. Fowler had not yet become inured — Ellery could hear her rattling pots around in the kitchen; Essie was pushing a carpet sweeper somewhere upstairs. Then the front door banged, and Ellery looked up to see Rima, panting.

“Otis Holderfield...”

As he raced for his coat and hat, Rima gasped out what she knew. She had been in Logan’s waiting her turn at the meat counter when she heard screams from the street. People were converging from every direction on the Granjon Block diagonally across the street. She had caught one glimpse of something sprawled on the pavement before the Waldo Brothers’ tailoring shop and then the crowd had closed in.

“A taxi driver said it was Lawyer Holderfield... fell out of a window...”

Ellery found the southeast corner of Washington and Slocum Streets roped off. Saturday afternoon was High Village’s busiest time of the week and several hundred people pressed against the police lines. In the doorways of the shops within the lines pale faces were packed; among them Ellery glimpsed the duplicate Waldos. A blue-coat was leaning far out of a fourth-floor window of the Granjon Block on which was lettered OTIS HOLDERFIELD, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW. On the sidewalk directly below him Chief Dakin, Malvina Prentiss, Francis O’Bannon, and several uniformed men stood about a newspaper-covered heap.

Ellery shouted; Dakin spied him and said something and an officer let him through.

Ellery lifted a corner of the papers. Holderfield was lying in an impossible position, like a doublejointed acrobat. He was coatless. His custom-made trousers were no longer immaculate and his silk shirt was a camouflage in oily grime, dust, and blood.

An emergency truck from the Volunteer Fire Department on Minikin Road and Lincoln Street, two squares away, was backed up to the curb a few feet from the heap.

The crowd watched in silence.

When Ellery rose, Chief Dakin said, “A lawyer it was, Mr. Queen,” in hostile accents.

“Not just a lawyer, Dakin. Lawyer Holderfield.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it’s done, Dakin. Can’t be undone.”

“Yeah.”

Ellery looked at him, the hostility penetrating. “You sound as if you blame me for this, Dakin,” he said pleasantly.

“Not talkin’ about blame. But sometimes... you put an idea in a man’s head and he makes it come true.”

“Oh, I see,” said Ellery.

Dakin said abruptly, “They’ll take care of him. Come on upstairs. Chalanski’s there checking my boys.”

There were some law books open on Holderfield’s desk and on a pad of ruled yellow paper Holderfield’s handwriting told that he had been working on a brief in a case in which Prosecutor Chalanski said the lawyer had been scheduled to appear the following week. Holderfield’s beautiful suit jacket poised over the back of his chair and on the clothestree floated his twenty-dollar hat.

“Holderfield let his secretary, Flossie Bushmill, go at around 2:30,” said the prosecutor. “She’s usually off at one on Saturdays, but she says she had a lot of correspondence to get out. He went down with her and they walked over to the Kelton grill and had a bite of lunch together. He left her outside the Kelton and she saw him walk back toward the Granjon Block. Buzz Congress took him up in the elevator, alone.”

“Buzz says he was moody,” said Chief Dakin, “not his usual wisecracking self. So does Flossie Bushmill.” He added, “They say he’d been that way ever since Dr. Dodd died, and specially bad this week.”

“Buzz saw him unlock the office door and go in. And that’s the last anyone saw him alive.”

“Except his killer,” said Malvina Prentiss.

“No evidence of that at all, Miss Prentiss,” said Chalanski mildly. “At some point in his work Holderfield got up from his desk and went to the window, which was open, by the way. It’s been hot for May and he probably wanted a breath of air. And he fell out—”

“Or threw himself out,” put in Dakin. He was staring at Ellery.

But the prosecutor shook his head. “Doubt it, Dakin. Some of the letters Holderfield dictated this morning referred to appointments for Monday, and so on. And his brief is lucid and concise, not like the work of a man whose mind was playing around with thoughts of suicide. No,” said Chalanski, “this was an accident. It wouldn’t be the first time a man went to a window on a warm day, feeling dizzy, and fell out.”

“Or was pushed out,” smiled Miss Prentiss.

The prosecutor glanced heavenward and went to the window.

Ellery stirred. “Have you talked to the other tenants in the building?”

“Nobody to question,” Dakin said. “The last tenant but Holderfield to leave the building was Lawyer Wendell Wheeler, third floor, who was late for a golf date at the Country Club and left at 4:15; Buzz Congress took him down. Buzz went home at five, his regular Saturday quittin’ time; there’s no night man and after hours late tenants walk down. We questioned the storekeepers on the street floor—”

“Including the Waldo brothers?” Ellery found himself murmuring.

“Sure including the Waldos,” snapped Dakin. “They’re no privileged characters. But nobody saw anyone enter or leave the building after five.”

“And if somebody had,” remarked Francis O’Bannon, “would the storekeepers have noticed? Or were they all sunning themselves on the sidewalk between five and six on their busiest afternoon of the week?”

“Good point, Spec,” said his employer. “The thing is, gentlemen, this could have been murder and you know it. Either Holderfield’s killer got in by the Washington Street door or the back entrance via Granjon Alley, either from Slocum Street or Wright. And out the same way.”

Chalanski turned around. “I’d like something a little more concrete in the way of evidence, Miss Prentiss.”

“Read the Record,” she retorted. “Rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief; doctor, lawyer—”

“Indian chief,” finished the prosecutor with a broad smile. “Dakin, do we have any redskins in Wrightsville? Because, according to Miss Prentiss — and Mr. Queen? — s omebody named Hiawatha is going to be the next victim of Phantom Killer.”

“Do you have any Indians in Wrightsville?” asked Ellery.

“No!” shouted Dakin.

“I don’t mean necessarily a character in breechclout and turkey feathers,” said Ellery. “A remoter connection will do. For instance, someone with Indian blood who’s descended from — forgive me — a chief.”

“Far as I know, Mr. Queen,” replied Chalanski with gravity, before Dakin could explode again, “no one in town qualifies. However, you might ask Dolores Aikin over at the Library. She has the genealogy of Wrightsville at her fingertips.”

“Make a note of that, Spec,” said the newspaper publisher.

“I asked the Aikin woman that last week,” replied O’Bannon. “No Indian chief.”

“What,” demanded the chief of police in a howl, “has all this fiddlededee got to do with Otis Holderfield? Now, you tell me! Mr. Chalanski, I’m through here! And if you are, too—”

“Just another moment or two,” said Ellery. “As far as Holderfield’s death is concerned, gentlemen, you can shout your Yankee horse sense hoarse but you can’t get by the fact that a lawyer was called for next in the rhyme and a lawyer was the next to die. And not merely a lawyer, but a lawyer up to his chubby dimple in the MacCaby-Hart-Anderson-Jacquard-Dodd case. You can’t ignore it. You can’t laugh it off... Yes, Holderfield might have fallen out of that window — accident. Yes, he might have thrown himself out on impulse — suicide. But he also might have been pushed out by someone who got into the building at a time when there was no risk of being seen. And of the three theories it’s the murder theory that is supported by our miserable rhyme. Don’t ask me to explain it; that’s why I’ve been hanging around Wrightsville. I can’t explain it. Nor do I expect your coroner’s jury, Mr. Chalanski, to bring in anything but a verdict of accidental death. The legal mills properly reject fantastic grist like this. But I ask you — and you, Dakin — to open your minds unofficially to it. And to keep them open to the last possibility.”

“What last possibility?” snarled Dakin.

“With no Indians in Wrightsville, there’s only one other place the rhyme can go.”

“Is there more to it?” exclaimed Chalanski.

“Not in that version, no. But it happens that the rhyme, or verse, or game, exists in two forms.” That everlasting dualism, thought Ellery. “In one version it’s Rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief; doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. In the other version it’s Rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief; doctor, lawyer—”

“Merchant chief,” said O’Bannon.

“Exactly.”

Dakin made a despairing sound and Chalanski threw up his hands.

“Frankly,” said Ellery, “if I owned a successful retail business in this town — especially if I were the leading merchant in my line — I shouldn’t sleep too well tonight. This last one adds a nice touch. There’s no ‘merchant chief who’s been involved in any of the deaths so far. Not only can’t we prevent the last death, we can’t even hazard a guess as to who’s going to be honored. Perhaps, Miss Prentiss,” said Ellery, turning to the silver woman in the very silent office, “that’s a fact which in the interest of Wrightsville’s peace of mind you won’t care to print in your newspaper.”

That night Ellery walked over to Upper Curling Street under black young leaves to find a group of High Villagers standing on the broken walk before the house he was seeking. They were women as well as men and some of the men had been drinking. He did not like the suspended faces or their lack of conversation. Ellery made his way through them very carefully.

It was a shabby little building in need of paint, with the shrunken look of so many of Wrightsville’s very old houses, and its interior was harmoniously miniature and seedy. He’d have got rid of this if things had gone differently for him, Ellery thought in the flickering entrance hall; as it is, it’s getting rid of him.

He found Dakin in the yellowlit parlor going through a sagging breakfront, watched by Harry Toyfell. Toyfell wore a torn gray sweater buttoned to his rootlike neck, as if he were cold. His eyes were just visible.

“Going through Holderfield’s personal stuff,” grunted the chief of police. “Begins to look like Otis’s death is going to make lots of folks in town mighty sad. Didn’t leave much beside debts.”

“Oh?” said Ellery. As Toyfell turned, he said, “Don’t go yet, Toyfell. I came over to see you.”

Toyfell stopped.

“Carried a second mortgage on the house, they’ll repossess his car, and if there’s two hundred dollars’ worth of cash value in his household effects I’ll eat ’em with molasses. A hundred and sixty-four dollars in his checking account, no savings, no stocks or bonds, and no insurance. Some accounts receivable outstanding, and course there’s what the Dodd estate owes him, but that’s going to take months and balancin’ it off against his bills, when it’s all settled there won’t be enough left over to buy him a grave marker. He owes the Waldos alone over a thousand dollars for tailoring.”

“Vanitas, vanitas, eh, Toyfell?” said Ellery.

“Live a fool and die a pauper,” said Harry Toyfell. “Live a pauper and die a fool. It comes to the same thing in the end. Riches are all around us, and every man is free to partake.”

“That’s what Nick Jacquard thought, too,” said Dakin dryly. “And in his own way Otis Holderfield. Then you can’t think of anything Holderfield said or did, Harry, that might explain the way he died?”

Toyfell bared his gums, and Ellery wondered if he was laughing. “No more than the others.”

“What others?” Dakin was looking through papers.

“Doc Dodd, Nick Jacquard, Tom Anderson, Mr. Hart, Mr. MacCaby.”

“Oh, you think they’re all connected, too.”

“Maybe.”

“How?”

“Don’t know,” said Toyfell. “Maybe by me.”

“By you!” Dakin rose. “How d’ye mean?”

Toyfell shrugged. “Every one of ’em I worked for or had anythin’ to do with up and died. They’re sayin’ I’m a Jonah. If this was tar-and-feather country, I’d likely be rid out on a rail.” He stopped, but his jaws kept working. “Maybe I won’t find me another job so easy.”

Dakin considered this for a long time. Finally he closed the break-front decisively. “I’ll see you’re not pestered, Harry. Course, you’ll have to clear out of here. Somebody from the Sheriff’s office’ll be here tonight or tomorrow.”

“Have anywhere to go, Toyfell?” asked Ellery.

“I’ll find some place.”

“That’s why I walked over tonight. There’s still the Anderson shack. Rima asked me to tell you again you’re welcome to use it.”

“Thank Rima kindly. Now maybe I will.”

He accompanied them to the front door.

“Better lock it, Harry,” said Dakin.

“No, sir.”

“That’s an ugly bunch out there.”

“I’m as good as they are, Mr. Dakin. No better, no worse. I ain’t goin’ to run and I ain’t goin’ to hide behind a lock.”

He was shuffling down the dim hall before the door closed.

Dakin said something to one of his men and after a few minutes the people before the house dispersed. The two men stood in the lilac shadows of the porch until the street was empty. The house behind them grew dark.

“Mighty hard man to figure,” grunted Dakin finally.

“So was Tom Paine,” said Ellery. “No thanks, Dakin, I’ll walk. Good night.”

“Good night,” said Dakin stiffly.