Double, Double

Weekend, April 8–9

They passed over another bridge or two before the weekend was out. The first crossing from formality proved to be their shopping excursion. Ellery smuggled Rima into Lachine’s on Fifth Avenue, where you may buy everything from a bobby pin to an ermine wrap and whose salespeople are never surprised by anything. He spent most of the afternoon worrying his thumbs and wondering what magics were being performed in the dressing room. At 4:30 he saw and was awed. Then there was an interminable session with François on the fifth floor. Rima emerged at last, accompanied by an agitated Gallic male who kept wailing that one does not gild a lily and what should one do to improve such a complexion, Monsieur? — but the hair, Monsieur, and the feet, Monsieur! Ellery replied hotly that the hair, Monsieur, and the feet, Monsieur, were as God had made them, François retorted that if such was the case, Monsieur, why in the sacred name of a paper bag had Monsieur brought Mad’moiselle to his salon, and Rima sat down in her new clothes and put her manicured fingers to her made-up eyes and wept all over them, reducing both François and Ellery to agonized silence. At this point a motherly saleswoman sent them both away, and when Ellery next saw Rima she was cool, and perfect, and she smiled a New York smile and said, “Am I according to plan, Pygmalion?” whereupon his shame melted in a warm gush of something and he found himself suddenly adoring her.

Then he took her off to dinner at the snootiest place he could think of.

He no longer thought of her as a child. Quite the contrary. In fact, he found himself glaring at the Van Johnson type at the next table. Afterwards, back on 87th Street, he saw the admiration in Inspector Queen’s eyes; and when the Inspector, who was an absolute Englishman about the inviolability of his room, actually offered Rima the use of his bed for the night, Ellery knew the worst. Hastily, he took her to a women’s hotel in the 60s, where it would be necessary to say goodnight under the frigid eye of an elderly female desk clerk.

He returned to 87th Street slightly damp under the collar.

He found his father waiting up for him.

“Back so soon?” asked Inspector Queen.

“The question answers itself,” said Ellery coldly. “What did you think I’d be doing?”

“Odd type, that girl,” said the Inspector in an absent way. “From Wrightsville, you said?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re going back with her tomorrow?”

“Yes!”

“I see,” said the Inspector, and he went to bed.

She was a nuisance all night.

On the train the next day, rather hollow-eyed, Ellery tried to analyze it. It wasn’t the clothes. All the clothes did was to point up what she was. But what was she? he thought as he felt her fingers withdrawn from his. After a moment he attacked the question negatively. She wasn’t a... She wasn’t a great many things, but when you added them all up you still had a positive something left that remained as irritating a mystery. In the end he decided that the secret of her lay in the child-woman dichotomy somewhere. She was neither, and she was both. Like a child, she took your hand; like a woman, she suddenly let go. At bottom it was probably — he winced — unbelievable innocence. You simply didn’t find innocence like hers. She had no tactile experience of the world. Of the world of books, yes; of nature, decidedly; but of man, none at all. It came of being brought up in the woods like a wild animal. Something Thomas Hardy Anderson hadn’t figured on. A girl like this could do devastating damage, to others as well as to herself. You couldn’t depend on either her actions or her reactions; she moved in other spheres. Where values were indecipherable. Normal contact with parents, friends, relatives, strangers, teachers, bigots, bullies, lovers — with terrestrial life — the contact of bruises and caresses which prepares the growing individual for maturity had been kept from her during her formative years. There were blank spaces in her, to an extent and of a nature no one could fathom, least of all Rima herself. You had to keep remembering how she had been brought up, how green she was, how alone.

And of a sudden Ellery saw the danger that she might attach herself to him like a motherless doe. There were signs. She had stopped calling him Mr. Queen and was addressing him as “Ellery” and “darling.” She had put her hand in his a dozen times. She was asking no questions; she seemed to have no concern about what he proposed doing with her when they got to Wrightsville; she had put herself utterly in his keeping. After lunch in the dining car she had kicked off her smart shoes, lain down on the long seat of their compartment with her head in his lap, burrowed for a moment like a puppy, and then fallen asleep with a happy sigh. As if she were Mowgli and he were the branch of a tree. The trouble was — and it was a trouble — he wasn’t the branch of a tree. He doubted if any normal man, similarly situated, could feel like the branch of a tree. Ellery found himself determining to marry her off to a deserving young poet — he would have to be a poet — just as quickly as one could be found. She simply couldn’t be allowed to run around loose.

When Rima woke up she yawned and stretched and wriggled, but she made no move to sit up.

“Hello, darling.” Her voice was sleepy, and her smile. He felt her hand in his again.

“Had a good nap?” Ellery tried to keep his tone on a fatherly level.

“Aery light, from pure digestion bred,” laughed Rima.

“What?”

“Didn’t you ever read Paradise Lost? You’re funny, Ellery.”

“Comical, or queer?”

She laughed again, throwing her head back. “My error! Oh, I like you so much.”

“I like you, Rima.” The skirt of her new suit had ridden up well over her knees and in spite of himself Ellery reached over to pull it down.

She watched him curiously. “Why did you do that?”

“Why did I do it?”

“Because my legs are ugly?”

“Because they’re not.”

“Then why cover them?”

“See here, Rima,” Ellery began angrily.

“I’ve never quite understood that. I’ve seen girls at Slocum Lake and the lake at Pine Grove parading around in bathing suits that made them practically naked. But when they got dressed they’d keep pulling their skirts down. Over the same legs.”

“Yes. Good point. Exactly. There’s a time and a place for everything, you see, Rima.”

“But we’re alone, Ellery. Don’t you want to see my legs?”

“No. I mean yes, very much. That’s why the rules say you mustn’t let me.”

“Rules?”

“Haven’t you ever gone to church?”

“No.”

“You should. You should, Rima.”

“But I don’t mind your seeing my legs, Ellery.”

“Perhaps I do!”

That was when she withdrew her hand. “You want to see my legs but you mind seeing them? What’s the matter with you?”

“Would you let any man see your legs who wanted to?”

“No...”

“Well, there you are.”

“I mean, it would depend on the man and why he wanted to see them. Which rules?”

“What? Oh! The rules of society, morality, good manners, er... any number of things.” Ellery said desperately, “Didn’t your father ever teach you anything but English literature?”

“He taught me everything.”

“Well, he appears to have left one or two things out—”

“You mean about sex?”

“Look there, Rima! In another two weeks the countryside will be simply beautiful—”

The problem of Rima Anderson, it seemed, was going to present even greater difficulties than the problem of her father.

It was twilight when they reached Wrightsville. And there was old Gabby Warrum in the doorway of the stationmaster’s cubby waggling his one tooth and waving to the trainman. And the two boys in jeans swinging their bare feet from the handtruck might have been the very same boys who had sat there on a certain summer day in 1940 when Ellery had stepped off the same train onto the Wrightsville station platform for the first time.

Nothing had changed. Well, almost nothing. The chrome on Phil’s Diner had a less pristine glitter and the blue of its awnings was considerably faded; the garage which had been a smithy cowered under a new neon sign; there was a three-story “hotel” (nameless) among the shanties across the tracks which had not been there before; and the gravel about the station had disappeared along with the horse droppings, replaced by paving. But there was the same crackerbarrel skyline above Low Village, the same fat-behinded bus marked Wrightsville Omnibus Company backing up to the station platform, the same broad fields to the south, the same crooked thread of Lower Whistling Street wandering west and north to become Upper Whistling when it reached High Village and respectability. And there were Lower Dade and Washington, from the west side of town, and Lower Apple and Piney Road and Shingle Street from the east side of town — they all squeezed close to one another as they ran down to the station in the extreme southeast corner of the municipality.

And they all looked good and the air, Low Village notwithstanding, smelled as if it had been washed, washed and hung out in the sun to dry.

“You like Wrightsville,” said Rima as Ellery handed her into Ed Hotchkiss’s taxi. She sounded amazed.

“Very much, Rima.”

Rima looked at him and then at Wrightsville, through the window, a little frown between her eyes.

“Where to?” said Ed.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” asked Ellery with a smile.

Ed Hotchkiss scratched his nose. He was heavier; he had another chin. “I hacked you years ago. Say!”

“You do remember.”

“Green. No... Queen! By Christmas, Mr. Queen!”

“Hi, Ed.”

“Say!” They pumped each other’s arms. “Paying the old dump another visit, hey? Who’s the bad news for this time?” Ed started his motor. “Or is it a honeymoon?”

“Does he mean me?” murmured Rima.

Ed looked around at Rima, glanced at Ellery, and winked.

“Upham House,” said Ellery. It was impossible to stop at the same hotel. Simply impossible. Not in Wrightsville. As Ed Hotchkiss swung the cab into Washington Street Ellery took Rima’s hand and said, sotto voce, “That wink did it. It’s Wrightsvillese for naughty-naughty.”

“He thinks we’re married!” Rima doubled up, laughing silently.

“I doubt it. Rima, I’m going to register at the Hollis—”

“But you told him Upham House.”

“That’s where you’re registering.”

“Me? In a Wrightsville hotel?”

“Now don’t start that business about Mosquito Manor again. They’ll be nice to you — you’ll be alone, and you have a respectable-looking suitcase.”

“Is this part of your plan?”

“I want you to take this money.”

She stared at the bills he had pressed into her hand. “But I owe you so much already.”

“My plan,” said Ellery firmly. He had no idea what his plan was, except as it got her decently clothed, housed, fed, and protected. “We’ll worry about the business details later. Er, Rima. Have you ever been in a hotel before?”

“No.”

Another problem.

“But I know what to do,” Rima went on, a bit dryly. “If that’s what’s worrying you. You seem to think I’m some sort of savage.”

“It does sound that way, doesn’t it?” Ellery said feebly. “Books, I suppose. They’re full of hotels.”

“It can’t be very hard. You sign your name on a card and you tip the bellboy a quarter.”

“And lock your door!”

“Yes, Ellery.” And this time she didn’t sound like a child at all.

He dropped her at Upham House, reviling himself for the nasty caution which told him not to be seen taking her in, and he had Ed drive him around the Square to the Hollis.

Ed seemed puzzled.

They had dinner at the Hollis Gold Gardens, a rather unsuccessful affair, since Rima was unaccountably cool and unimpressed with the Gold Gardens décor, whose lamé-like balloonings and gilded tablecloths were Wrightsville’s pride. She did not even respond to the “dinner music” of Floyd Lycoming and His Hollis Hummadours, but this was probably because Ellery forgot himself and asked her to dance. “The fact that I know a fork from a knife has fooled you,” Rima said sweetly. “I’m a barbarian, remember?” And afterwards she said she was tired and would he take her back to Ma Upham’s. So Ellery took her back to Mrs. Upham’s chaste Revolutionary hostelry and they said goodnight on the steps between the Colonial pillars, with their fingertips. He half-suspected that as soon as he was gone she would slip off her New York shoes and sprint downtown through Low Village to the shack in The Marshes.

Ellery was definitely depressed as he wandered back to the Square. Of course, Wrightsville was not at its best on Sunday nights. Most of the shops were closed. The streets were empty, except for Lower Main between the Square and Upper Whistling, and there was little activity even here because everyone was in the Bijou. The Gold Gardens had had its sprinkling of diners, and probably the Upham House Colonial Terrace was half-full of old ladies, but most of the upper crust, he knew, were visiting one another’s homes on the Hill, North Hill Drive, Twin Hill-in-the-Beeches, and Skytop Road; it was the Sunday night tradition. If there was any liveliness, it could be found only on Route 16, along the three-mile stretch between Low Village and Wrightsville Junction, where the roadhouses were.

But it was not Wrightsville that depressed him.

It was himself.

He couldn’t seem to get hold of anything.

The facts of the MacCaby-Hart-Dodd hodgepodge were meaningless, or he was dull. He had no idea where to begin...

And perhaps Rima had something to do with it.

Ellery found himself on State Street, outside the County Court House. It was about 10 o’clock and everything was properly dark, the old elms nodding overhead and the occasional flash of headlights darting across State and Upper Whistling barely jerking the neighborhood from its drowse. Across State the Northern State Telephone Company, the Wrightsville Light & Power Company, the tomblike Chamber of Commerce, the Carnegie Library buildings were almost nonexistent. The entrance to Memorial Park, fronted by the long concavity of the Our Boys Memorial, whose gilded roster was already flaky and half-illegible, gaped vacantly. Beyond, the marble apron on the lap of Town Hall glimmered clean under the “eternal light” surmounting the flagstaff. Ellery was tempted to invade the dark park and sit down on one of the benches near the American Legion Bandstand to commune with the bracing ghost of Sousa. He actually started for the entrance. But then he noticed the green lights in the driveway between the park and the Court House, and he stopped.

Wrightsville police headquarters.

Chief Dakin.

He went in. A little, black-tonsured officer sat behind the desk, his chin on his breast.

At the opening of his door, Dakin grasped the arms of his swivel chair.

“Positively not an apparition,” said Ellery. “Excuse me for not knocking. But I didn’t want to wake Lieutenant Gobbin up.”

“Mr. Queen!”

“I said to myself,” said Ellery cheerfully, “that the state of crime in Wrightsville might be sufficient to make you pass up your Sunday night church choir, and it seems I was absolutely solid. How are you, Dakin?”

“Oh, you baby doll.” Dakin pumped for all he was worth. “What are you doing in Wrightsville?”

“I hardly know.” Dakin was an old man. That lean Yankee look was swelling and showed little red veins.

“I’m tickled to see you anyway. Sit down, sit down! Just get in?”

“Few hours ago.”

“How long you figurin’ on staying?”

“That,” said Ellery, “depends on what you can tell me about Little Prudy’s Cliff.”

Dakih’s colorless eyes crimped at the corners. “The Anderson girl?”

“She came to me in New York. I came back with her.”

“So you’re fixing to find out what happened to Tom Anderson.”

“Can you save me the trouble?”

Dakin laughed. “Do I look that contented?”

“Tough?”

“Tougher than a preacher on Sunday.”

“You’re sure Anderson was murdered.”

Chief Dakin swiveled to stare at a photograph of J. Edgar Hoover above his water cooler. “I’ve sat here night after night thinkin’ on it. It’s got so it’s almost a personal issue between me and Anderson. What’s another case? An old rummy... he’d have got his sooner or later, one way or another — a knife in the ribs some night at Vic Carlatti’s, or drowned in Willow River when he was too full to navigate, like Matt Mason in ’26. Just the same...”

“How do you know Anderson was murdered?”

“His coat was torn fresh in half a dozen places. Two buttons yanked off. His hat trampled. There was some blood.” Dakin turned around. “The way I figure it, Anderson had an appointment with somebody. He was jumped, he fought back, and he lost. I couldn’t trace his movements past 11 o’clock Saturday night — the night before the morning his coat and hat were found on the Cliff. He was last seen around that hour walking along Congress Avenue in Low Village, alone.”

“Sober?”

“Walking straight as a Baptist deacon. And headed east, to the outskirts of Low Village, where The Marshes begin. But Anderson didn’t get home that night, his daughter says. I figure at 11 that Saturday night he was headed for his appointment at Little Prudy’s Cliff. It was Garrison Jackson saw him on Congress Avenue — Abe L. Jackson’s kid brother. Garry says Anderson was walking like he was bound somewhere. My guess is he was dead by midnight.

“The aggravating thing about this case, Mr. Queen,” said the chief of police slowly, “is that it don’t add up to nothin’. Nobody stood to gain by Anderson’s death. No enemies. Hadn’t had any trouble. Harmless and friendly. Everybody liked him. He couldn’t have been killed by mistake; full moon that night, brightest night in a month. Maniac? Hophead? We’ve checked and checked. But we wasted our time. It wasn’t an accident, it wasn’t a freak, it wasn’t a mistake. Tom Anderson was lured to his death by somebody who knew just what he was doing. But who, and why?” Nothing personal. Just a matter of convenience. “What’s that you said, Mr. Queen?”

“I was thinking about ladybugs,” said Ellery. “I take it you didn’t neglect Anderson’s soul-mates?”

“Who?”

“Harry Toyfell. Nick Jacquard.”

“First ones I questioned. If either of ’em did it, he did a mighty fine job of covering up afterwards.”

“Neither had any idea whom Anderson might have been meeting?”

“They say no.” Dakin swiveled to stare out at State Street. “Anyway, they’re small potatoes. This is big. I feel it in my bones.”

“Anderson had given Jacquard and Toyfell no hint about anything unusual in his life?” persisted Ellery.

“No. Though talking about something unusual in his life, you know Anderson had taken the pledge.”

“So Rima told me.”

“I have a sneaky notion,” muttered the chief to State Street, “that had something to do with it.”

“If that’s true, it points a hard moral.”

Dakin turned back, smiling faintly. He was a teetotaler.

“What did you mean this thing is ‘big,’ Dakin? Big how? Importance? Ramifications? Involving well-known people?”

“Maybe.”

“Give me an example.”

“I can’t.” Dakin pulled himself to his feet, angrily. “You see, I’m a useless old man. Worn down to the nub and bellywappin’ on the raw material. Have a cigar?”

Ellery had a cigar and for a half hour they talked about pleasanter things. Governor Cart Bradford was making the pork-barrel fraternity in the State Capital rear back and howl. “You mark my words, that boy’ll wind up in the White House yet.” Prosecutor Chalanski, the idol of Low Village, had cracked a scandalous embezzlement case wide open and there was talk of running him for Congress next year. Everybody was complaining about the four-mill jump in the tax rate. Judge Eli Martin had had a mild stroke the previous winter, after the death of his wife Clarice, but he was fine now, although retired from his law practice and raising prize asters which he gave away to all comers; Andy Birobatyan of the Wrightsville Florist Shop was looking pained. Wolfert Van Horn had been caught in flagrante delicto last fall at his Lake Pharisee summer lodge in the upper Mahoganies with one of the young Watkins girls, the giggly one, and Jess Watkins had beaten him up good with an old buggy whip and afterwards refused to prosecute — “Leave it to Jess to turn a profit on a deal.” Julie Asturio had got religion and had left town in the wake of a foaming evangelist. The Busy Bee Stores were building a supermarket on the California plan on Slocum Street, between Washington and Upper Whistling, next door to the Bluefield Block; Bloody Logan across the street was chewing his nails to the quick. One of Jorking’s sows over on the pig farm on Route 478 had dropped a five-legged piglet. Doc Sebastian Dodd had come into something like four million dollars by the will of old Luke MacCaby, and Doc was planning a new wing for the hospital.

“Oh, yes,” said Ellery. “I’ve heard about your Dr. Dodd. Fellow who seems determined to earn the title of Town Saint.”

“He’s earned it,” said Dakin. “Lord knows Doc deserved a break.”

“Unsuccessful?”

“Heck, no. Most successful doctor in town, if you count patients. Only thing is,” chuckled Dakin, “his patients don’t have the scratch. Doc still lives in the house he was born in — big three-story turkey on the corner of Wright and Algonquin. Dates back to the Civil War. It’s so darn big the spare bedrooms on the third floor ain’t even used. Doc’s a bachelor — never been married.”

“Then why does he need such a big house?”

“Who’d buy it? And he’s got to live somewhere. At that, he’s got a houseful. There’s Doc’s housekeeper and cook, Regina Fowler — Mrs. Fowler’s a distant cousin of old John F. Wright’s, his middle name was Fowler; know he’d died? — and then there’s the maid, Essie Pingarn, and Tom Winship’s boy Kenneth, and now old Harry Toyfell.”

“Tom Winship. Is that the Thomas Winship who testified in the Haight trial for the State in ’41? Head cashier of the Wrightsville National?”

“That’s the one. Well, Tom died about six years ago. Didn’t leave much, because his wife was an invalid and nearly every cent went to hospitals and sanitariums and fancy big-city specialists. Not that it did Mrs. Winship any good — when their only child, Kenneth, came back from his hitch overseas he found his ma dead, too. Well, it sort of broke Kenny up and he went to pieces for a while. And who d’ye think—?”

“Dr. Sebastian Dodd.”

“Right. Doc Dodd took Kenny in hand, straightened him out, sent him back to college to finish up his medical course that was interrupted by the war, and now Kenneth is Doc’s assistant and protégé. Doing a fine job, too, Doc tells me. He’s mighty proud of that boy, says he’s going to be a big doctor some day. Cast your bread upon the waters, that’s Doc’s motto.”

“I must meet this paragon,” murmured Ellery. “I really must. In fact, I think I’ll walk over and look in on him tomorrow if I can find a spare half hour. And Harry Toyfell’s working for him now. And living there. It certainly is a blessing to have a man like Dodd around. By the way, Dakin, I understand old Luke MacCaby’s having all that wealth came as something of a surprise to Wrightsville.”

“Set the town right on its hams.”

“And that partner of MacCaby’s — what was his name? — Hart, John Spencer Hart, Wrightsville Dye Works. Must have come as quite a shock when Hart blew the top of his head off.”

“How long’d you say you’ve been in Wrightsville, Mr. Queen?” said Chief Dakin dryly.

Ellery laughed. “I suppose you’re satisfied that Hart did die by his own hand? And MacCaby by God’s?”

“What?”

“I know about the Hart inquest, but did anybody go into the question of MacCaby’s death?”

Dakin was sitting still. “I didn’t know it was a question. No. Why?”

“Just curious.”

“Luke MacCaby was 74 years old,” said the chief of police slowly. “He’d had heart trouble near twenty years. Doc Willoughby once told me MacCaby would have died years ago if not for Doc Dodd’s care. And old Luke knew it; that’s why he left his bundle to Doc. So it all adds up just dandy. Except that you’re curious, Mr. Queen. I thought we were talkin’ about the Anderson case. Or were you?” Ellery was silent. A flick of eagerness scudded over Dakin’s face. “You know something I don’t!”

“I don’t know anything, Dakin.” Ellery got to his feet. “But there are two sides to every coin. Take the Anderson case. You’re convinced Anderson is dead. But you can’t produce his body, Dakin. I always turn the coin over. Have that type of mind.” Dakin was gripping the rim of his desk. “As for MacCaby and Hart, maybe they died as advertised, and maybe they didn’t. And maybe their deaths had nothing to do with Tom Anderson’s disappearance, and maybe their deaths had everything to do with it.”

“And maybe I’m crazy!”

“Keep that reversible mind, Dakin. Keep that coin on edge, where you can take a quick look at either side.” Ellery laughed and shook Dakin’s slack hand.

Dakin was still staring at him as he shut the door.

Of course, thought Ellery charitably as he crossed the Square to the Hollis, poor Dakin doesn’t have an obliging friend named Anonymous.