Double, Double

Wednesday, May 24

The fire occurred eleven days later.

Ellery was awakened in the middle of the night by the sirens. He scrambled wildly for his robe and slippers, certain he could feel the heat of flames underfoot. The hiss of water under high pressure and the cry of the engines were very close by.

Rima and Ken were struggling into robes in the hall. Essie blubbered somewhere. From downstairs Mrs. Fowler was shrieking, “Fire! It’s a fire!”

From the glare and heat the whole street might have been going up. But when they joined Mrs. Fowler and Essie at the front gate they saw that the heart of the blaze was a small frame house directly across Algonquin Avenue.

“The Waldos,” cried Ken. He dashed into the street and Ellery ran after him, Rima screaming at them to come back.

Four engines were pumping away. The street swarmed with firemen and volunteers. But it was clear that they could only try to keep the fire from touching off the adjoining buildings. The Waldo house was unapproachable; the entire structure glowed with flame.

A smoke-blackened figure lay in the middle of the street.

“Here’s Dr. Winship!”

“This one’s smoked up bad, Doctor. Ambulance hasn’t come yet.”

Ken shouted at Rima and a few moments later she came racing from the house with blankets and his medical bag.

The little man was writhing and moaning.

“Which one are you?”

“David. Is my...?” He fainted.

Ellery ran over to Fire Chief Everitt Apworth, an elongated countryman who might have been Dakin’s brother. Chief Apworth was chewing tobacco mechanically and spitting in the direction of the fire.

“Where’s Jonathan Waldo, Chief?”

“Still in there. Couldn’t get to him. Lucky we got David. They were sleepin’ ’sthough they were drugged.”

A voice said, “They were,” and Ellery looked down at Rima.

“Drugged?”

“They were Dr. Dodd’s patients. I’ve seen their case cards in the file. They suffered from chronic insomnia and Dr. Dodd used to prescribe nembutal so they could sleep. They took it regularly.”

“So that’s it.” Chief Apworth ran off, swearing at one of his firemen.

When the ambulance took David Waldo away, Ken said, “He’s not bad at all. They didn’t get the other one out?”

At dawn they did. The little body was a cinder.

“Merchant chief?” said Dakin patiently. “Not Jonathan, Mr. Queen. Not hardly. A two-by-four tailor. Besides, Jonathan wasn’t even Dave’s partner, at least legally. I’ve had a talk with Mr. Gonzales at the Wrightsville National and he tells me the business was owned by Dave. Even the house is in Dave’s name. So where’s your merchant chief?”

“I don’t know,” groaned Ellery.

“This time you’re surely barking up the wrong tree.”

But Ellery gritted his teeth. “The Waldos were Otis Holderfield’s tailors and Sebastian Dodd’s patients. They shared in the prosperity that began with the death of Luke MacCaby. And now they’ve shared in the deaths, Dakin.”

“Pretty thin, Mr. Queen.” Then Dakin’s face softened. “Why don’t you give up? Darned if it wasn’t gettin’ me, too, till I got hold of myself.”

“Where did the fire start?”

“In the cellar. A neighbor saw the flames shoot out of the cellar windows. Then the whole house went up.”

“Doesn’t that sound like arson to you?” Ellery said desperately.

“No. The Waldos stored a lot of cleaning fluid in their cellar; used it in the shop. The house was one of the oldest on Algonquin Avenue. Just a tinderbox. No, Mr. Queen.”

“The fire started by itself, I suppose.”

“It’s called,” said Dakin gently, “spontaneous combustion. Or did you ever hear of defective electric wiring?”

“Any evidence of either?”

“You saw the ashes this morning. A smolderin’ lot.”

“Have you questioned David Waldo?”

“He can’t be talked to yet.”

Ellery left Dakin’s office and wandered over to the Square in the twilight. He had begun the day in a gyroscopic activity and his progress had been gyroscopic, too. Nothing was resolved. The fire might have been an accident and it might have been set. At the hospital David Waldo, while pronounced out of danger, was unapproachable. Jonathan Waldo was not a merchant chief, but he was dead. Either-or.

Dakin was right. The sensible thing was to pack up and take the first train back to New York.

The neon sign on the Record building was already glowing. Ellery turned into the Square.

He had never been so confused. Failure was an old story, but this was chaos. He could not even be sure the death of Jonathan Waldo and the narrow escape of his twin were part of the pattern. Their connection with the others was remote. He could not blame Dakin. Dakin was being reasonable.

Maybe that’s the trouble, Ellery thought He’s being reasonable. And this isn’t a reasonable case.

He found himself before the coral front door of the Record.

On impulse, he went in and asked to see O’Bannon.

Malvina Prentiss’s editorial assistant was framed in a boudoir of an office jabbing with two lackadaisical fingers at a rosecolored typewriter.

“If it’s a shakedown,” he said without looking up, “you can tell her and to hell with you. I’m about fed up, anyway.”

“By which I take it Malvina isn’t on the premises. O’Bannon, did you find the books in Boston?”

“Books in Boston,” said O’Bannon. “Hey?”

“Source books for the rhyme.”

“Oh! They’re around on the shelves somewhere.” O’Bannon began to peck again. “I’m roughing out a followup for Lady Muck on the Waldo conflagration. What do you know, Joe?”

“About what you do, I imagine.” Ellery located the books. “All these shelves need is some pink ruching and they’d look like lace panties. Are these all of them?”

Ellery sat down with the books in a chartreuse plastic chair. They were only an armful: Burton Stevenson’s Home Book of Modern Verse, William H. Newell’s Games and Songs of American Children, a volume called The Music Hour by Osbourne McConathy, a few others. He began turning pages.

“You won’t find anything in them,” said O’Bannon. “Original author of the lines unknown. Thrilling. Were you able to talk to David Waldo?”

“No.”

“Neither was I. What did Dakin tell you?”

“What did he tell you?”

“Check. I’ve interviewed the representative of the fire underwriters and he’s very unhappy. Are you happy, Queen?”

“No.”

“Nobody’s happy. Not even Malvina. Do you know this town is on the thin edge of group diarrhea?” Ellery had stopped turning pages and he was staring at some words. “Queen, tell me. Were the Waldos part of this mishmash?”

“Yes.”

The typewriter stopped. “Did you say yes?”

“Yes.”

“Say...”

“Yes!” Ellery got up. The books tumbled to the floor.

“Wait a minute!”

But Ellery was gone. O’Bannon picked up the books, puzzled.

“Two possibilities,” Ellery said after dinner that night. “Two again. But that’s not the important thing. The important thing is a comma.”

Rima glanced at her husband. Ken was scrutinizing Ellery with a frown.

“Comma, comma.” He was striding about the living room smoking furiously. “O’Bannon saw it with his own eyes and didn’t see it at all. Nobody’s seen it. What’s the alternate version of that rhyme? Rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief—”

“Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief,” said Rima.

“No, that was out long ago on sufficient grounds. The other one.”

“Doctor, lawyer, merchant chief.”

“Gives us seven victims of lunacy. Seven corpses. But oh, that comma.” He chuckled and rubbed his hands.

“What,” said Ken, “are you gassing about!”

“Why, Dr. Winship, it seems that of the second version there are two sub-versions. Two again, see? In the first sub-version the rhyme winds up with Doctor, lawyer, merchant chief. But go to the source books and you find the second sub-version: Doctor, comma, lawyer, comma, merchant, COMMA, chief!”

“Merchant comma chief,” Rima repeated. “Merchant and chief? Two separate—?”

“Beautiful, isn’t it? Yes, two separate words, Rima. Merchant, chief. Makes eight items where there were seven. Does it fit? Oh, yes. The Waldos weren’t ‘merchant chiefs’ — but they were merchant tailors... merchants. So somebody’s following the second sub-version, the one with eight characters. Number seven was Jonathan Waldo.”

“Then there’s an eighth to come,” said Rima damply.

“Chief?” muttered Ken.

“Chief what, Ellery? What kind of chief?”

Ellery’s glee faded. “Now there you’ve got me. The only chiefs in Wrightsville I know of are the chief of police and the fire chief.” Ellery hurled his butt into the fireplace. “Damn it, don’t look at me that way! Of course Dakin and Apworth will have me committed! But what else can I think? What else can I do? I’m going to bed!”