Double, Double

Thursday, June 8

Decoration day it poured, but the annual exercises in Memorial Park were dampened by more than the heavens. Mrs. Holmes of Wrightsville High, who taught Comparative Lit., was heard to murmur something Hardyesque about the Greek unities. Other comments were less highfalutin. Some said the exercises had never been the same since 1939, which was the year Murdock Wheeler, Wrightsville’s last surviving veteran of the Grand Army of the Republic, passed away; others ascribed the flickering of the patriotic fire to more recent passings.

Everyone seemed glad to go home.

The weather turned nice the next day, but Wrightsville’s mood remained glum. No one knew why, but you could feel it all over town.

At least this was the litmus reaction of one outsider. Ellery admitted to himself that it might be his chemistry, not Wrightsville’s, which turned everything blue. He had taken to wandering about town at all hours, leaving the doves on Algonquin Avenue to their hearty cooing.

Nothing came up. Nothing.

One day Ellery hunted up the Anderson shack in The Marshes. He located it after blundering about in a state of growing excitement, as if at last he faced a clarifying issue. But all he found was a pretty hut, blackweathered and overgrown with roses, lilac, and lily-of-the-valley, complete with backhouse, mossy well, and vegetable garden. And inside Harry Toyfell with some of the books Rima had not removed.

The Town Philosopher was serene. “What more does a man need? Tell me I’m not the equal of the richest man on the Hill. What’s he got I haven’t? Worries. And what have I got he’ll never have? Liberty. Yes, sir, I couldn’t ask for better ’n this... The Waldos? Too bad. Well, at least they can’t set the blame for that on me!”

On the way back Ellery detoured to Little Prudy’s Cliff. He spent a few minutes trying to read the soft mass at its foot. It remained illegible.

Another day, with a sudden yearning for the company of the late Otis Holderfield’s secretary, he walked over to the Granjon Block.

“Where does she live?” Ellery asked the old elevator man.

Buzz Congress chuckled. “With Flossie Bushmill ye have to work fast, Mr. Queen. She’s lit out.”

“Gone? From town?”

“Yep. With some drummer for a Boston, now, ladies’ underwear company. I seen it comin’, Mr. Queen! And then she’ll ditch him and latch onto somebody else. Itchy feet, that Floss. Always had, ’specially since her dad died. Jake Bushmill, the blacksmith. Real pioneer type, Flossie.” The old man cackled.

And still another day, learning from Ken Winship that David Waldo was on the mend, Ellery visited the Wrightsville General Hospital. But the intern on duty in the men’s ward shook his head.

“He gets hysterical when anyone tries to question him. Chief Apworth, a man from the Record, and the fire insurance people didn’t get a thing out of him. Better come back next week, Mr. Queen.”

When Ellery went back to the hospital the following Thursday, Waldo was gone. He had left the hospital three days before.

Rather annoyed, Ellery set about finding him. His annoyance soon vanished.

On Waldo’s release from the hospital on the morning of June 3 he had gone to Slocum Township. In Slocum he had sought out a tailor named Elbert Scolly who, it seemed, had been trying for a year to buy out the Waldos. Waldo had signified to Scolly that he was now willing to sell, but only for spot cash and provided the sale could be effected in twenty-four hours. Scolly, a down-Easter, had driven a smart bargain. Waldo had agreed to accept a sum far below the actual value of his stock, fixtures, lease, and good will and the two men had driven over to Wrightsville in Scolly’s delivery truck for a session with Sam Izzard of Finegold & Izzard, Upham Block, who were the Waldos’ accountants. The papers were then drawn up at the Wrightsville National Bank, Scolly had returned to Slocum to arrange matters with his bank there, and David Waldo — after a short visit to his shop in the Granjon Block — had disappeared; Ellery could not discover where he had spent the night. However, he had turned up again on Tuesday morning, closed out his accounts at The Public Trust Company and the Wrightsville National, paid all his bills, met Scolly and the bank officials and consummated the sale, and at 2:30 P.M. he was driven by Ed Hotchkiss to the railroad station with a new suitcase and a considerable amount of cash in a wallet he had purchased from saleswoman Eppie Simpson at the leather goods counter of the Bon Ton, along with the suitcase. The settlement of his fire insurance claim he had left in the hands of Lyman Hinchley, the insurance broker in The Public Trust Company building.

Gabby Warrum, the stationmaster, could not recall David Waldo’s having appeared at the ticket window. “Saw him climb onto the southbound, though,” said Gabby. “Figure he bought his ticket on the train. The 3:12.”

The 3:12 was a Connhaven local, stopping at every station.

Waldo had left no forwarding address. He had told Lyman Hinchley, “I’ll get in touch with you in a few weeks.” Scolly, Izzard, Mr. Lorrie Preston of the Wrightsville National, Hinchley, Eppie Simpson, and everyone else who had been in contact with Waldo during those twenty-four hours agreed that he was “the most jittery man” they had ever seen. They ascribed it to the horror of his experience in the fire and the shock of his brother Jonathan’s death. “You know how it is with identical twins,” said Lyman Hinchley, whose aunt, Sara Hinchley of the Junction Hinchleys, had been a trained nurse. “Very delicate and sympathetic nervous systems.”

There was no evidence, however, that David Waldo had visited his brother’s grave in Twin Hill Cemetery before disappearing.

“Dakin, you’ve got to find Waldo for me,” Ellery said in the police chief’s office Thursday night. Ellery looked tired and sounded urgent.

“But why?”

“I can’t tell you why. I don’t know why.”

“You’ve got to have a reason!”

“Maybe it’s because I think Waldo knows something. Maybe he doesn’t even know he knows it—”

Dakin held his head. “Doesn’t even know he knows what?”

“That’s what we’ve got to find out, Dakin, don’t you see?” said Ellery patiently. “Dave Waldo may be the key to the whole thing.”

The chief of police glared at Ellery like a paralytic confronted by a hornet. “You’re the man recites kiddie rhymes ending in ‘chief,’” he said bitterly. “But I’m still breathin’ and Ev Apworth says he never felt better in his life. Why don’t you let me be?”

“If you won’t do it, Dakin, I’ll have to do it myself. But it’s going to take me a lot longer than it would take you, with your facilities, and by the time I got to him...”

In the end Dakin flung up his hands and agreed to look for David Waldo.