The Scarlet Letters

H· I· J· K·

That afternoon Ellery telephoned Leon Fields’s office.

“Mr. Fields isn’t here. Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Queen?”

“Who is this speaking?”

“Mr. Fields’s secretary.”

“Miss Loughman?”

“That’s right.”

“Where can I get in touch with Leon, Miss Loughman? It’s important.”

“I really couldn’t say. Is this a confidential matter?”

“Extremely.”

“Well, I handle a great many of Mr. Fields’s confidential matters, Mr. Queen—”

“I’m sure you do, Miss Loughman, but this isn’t going to be one of them. Where is he, at 88th Street off Madison?”

There was a silence. Then the woman said, “Hold on a minute.”

Ellery held on.

Three minutes later the columnist’s jarring voice said, “Don’t do that, Ellery. Your geography question had Harriet changing her panties. That’s supposed to be top-secret stuff. What’s on your mind?”

“Is it safe to talk?”

“On my phone? Listen, chum, I’m on automatic wiretap-testing service. They check every hour on the hour. Shoot.”

“Well, have you thought about it?”

“Have I thought about what?”

“What you said you were going to think about. Just before our parting kiss that night.”

“You mean Harrison?” An unpleasant flatness came into Fields’s voice. “Yes, I’ve thought about it.”

“And?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“You don’t know what yet?”

“Whether I’ve thought about it enough. Look, Ellery, I’m in a hurry. I’m packing to fly out to Hollywood. Why don’t you call me when I get back?”

“When will that be?”

“Two-three weeks.”

“I can’t wait that long, Leon!”

“My friend,” said Leon Fields softly, “you’ve got to wait that long.”

He hung up.

Ellery wasted no time thinking unkind thoughts of Leon Fields. Fields was a law unto himself, not subject to the pressures of ordinary men. If Fields said, “Wait,” you waited. Usually, it turned out to be well worth waiting for.

Ellery saw no point in moving to the direct assault on Van Harrison until he had in hand the force and armament to impress his will, as the military said, upon the enemy. What he was hoping for from Fields was a weapon. The fact that it was a secret weapon made its acquisition doubly desirable.

Meanwhile, he could only keep up with the lovers between largely futile attacks on his work. His desk was piled high with unanswered correspondence, unread manuscripts submitted to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and the cryptic notes on his new novel which were so old that even he could no longer decipher them.

He followed Martha to Central Park West and 81st Street and saw her meet Harrison at the Hayden Planetarium. He felt rather bitter about their behavior on that occasion. They went inside to view the evening performance. In the dark they watched the artificial stars, and Ellery was not touched.

They left separately, and they went in different directions. Apparently Martha dared risk only the time for an astronomy lesson.

The following week, as if to preserve the mood of space and flight, they met at the Idlewild airport in Queens. The wind of a departing plane whipped Martha’s skirts about prettily as her lover embraced her. She was nervous, and pulled away and looked around as usual; and he, as usual jaunty, laughed and kissed her and away they went in his convertible — away to lower Connecticut, to a country road with a beautiful house at the end of it, overlooking a slough of the Sound, with evergreens sighing all around like envious neighbors. And the actor carried Martha Lawrence over his threshold as if she were his bride, and Ellery — watching from the protection of a typical Connecticut boulder — backed his car around and drove off with a sickness in him.

In the third week he telephoned Leon Fields’s office again. Mr. Fields was still on the Coast, reported Miss Loughman. No, she had had no word of the exact day of his return, but if Mr. Queen would care to call again on Friday...

Mr. Queen would, and did, and on Friday Miss Loughman informed him that Fields had flown to Mexico City on a hot tip involving a well-known crusader for good government and a matter of a highly aromatic eighty-five thousand dollars, and no, she didn’t know when he would be back. He had said something over the phone about possibly having to hop over to Havana for a few days.

And Ellery ground his teeth down another millimeter and tried to console himself with the fact that Dirk Lawrence was working at a furious pace, with not a loud whisper of his jealousy disturbing the ménage.

Martha, too, was busy these days. She had completed casting of the Greenspan play and rehearsals had begun in one of the empty theaters on West 45th Street.

Van Harrison was not in the cast. All the roles were female except one, that of a boy of ten.

She was a thinner and quieter Martha, with a whip in her voice. One Broadwayite, after watching her run a rehearsal, reported at Sardi’s that “Martha’s found herself as a director. Something’s happened to her — thank God.” The memory of her first two productions was still bilious green in Shubert Alley. It began to get about that Martha had a hit in the offing, and everyone hoped emotionally that she might make back some of the fortune she had sunk in All Around the Mulberry Bush and Alex Conn’s stinker.

Still, Martha found time to slip away, in the fourth week of Leon Fields’s absence, to Jones Beach, where Ellery watched her somberly from the promenade through field glasses. She lay under a red umbrella with Harrison. Her bathing suit revealed a streamlined Martha, with all of the comfortable upholstery of her early marital years stripped away. She was almost thin. Ellery was not sure he liked her that way. A thin cherub sang no paeans. There was something sad about her figure.

Harrison was in a handsome bronze beach robe, his throat swathed in a royal-blue scarf. This concession to vanity was a matter of simple prudence; he would hardly put himself on exhibition before her against a foreground of all these hard flat young male bodies. But when Martha dashed off to plunge into the sea, he removed the robe, dropped robe and scarf under the umbrella, and lumbered into the water. Ellery followed him remorselessly with the glasses. Harrison undressed was a sight. His skin with its sunlamp tan was flabby, he had a paunch, the hair on his chest was gray, and his legs showed clots of varicose veins. While Martha dived and swam like a porpoise, Harrison paddled about dog-fashion, his chin rigidly above water. He had, of course, to keep his toupee dry.

Ellery entered all the facts in his little book, adding J to his alphabet and wondering why he was keeping the record at all.

And in the fifth week, with Fields in Miami — “He has a lot of friends down there among the permanent residents,” as Miss Loughman put it — Martha and her lover lunched at crowded Keen’s English Chop House on West 36th Street as if their love were licit.

“I can’t wait for Fields any longer,” Ellery told Nikki. “They’re getting more and more careless, and we can’t expect this sweet obliviousness of Dirk’s to last forever. I’ve got to tackle Harrison.”

It was a Sunday morning, and Ellery called Harrison’s Darien number with the gloomy confidence of a man entirely familiar with the weekend habits of actors. To his surprise, there was no answer. He tried again an hour later, thinking that Harrison might be sleeping off a Saturday night. But there was still no answer, and none an hour after that.

Then he remembered how the great Van Harrison was keeping his oar in, and he phoned Radio Registry, leaving his number.

His telephone rang twenty minutes later.

“Van Harrison speaking,” said the rich, pear-shaped tones. “I have a message to call this number. Who is this, please?”

“This is Ellery Queen.”

There was a silence.

“Oh, yes,” said Harrison pleasantly. “We met outside a tomb. What can I do for you, Queen?”

“I want to see you.”

“To see me? Whatever for?”

“Put your mind to it, Harrison. What are you doing today?”

“I haven’t said I’d see you.”

“Would you rather see Dirk Lawrence?”

“Not that,” moaned the actor. “Spare me, buddy. Of course I’ll see you. In hell, or anywhere you like.”

“Are you free right now?”

“I am not, Mr. Queen. I was good enough today to come to the aid of a friend of mine — poor wight — eking out his miserable existence as a director of radio dramas. Some idiot got the bellyache and had to bow out of tonight’s cast. Consequently I am in rehearsal, and I am calling from the studio during a ten-minute break. Now would you like to know what size bloomers I wear?”

“When do you get off the air?” asked Ellery.

“At seven-thirty.”

“Which studio, Harrison? I’ll meet you there.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort. A young lady who thinks she’s an actress, and has convinced several directors of same while on an Ostermoor, is likewise in the cast of this dramaturgical turd, and since she resides in Stamford, I have contracted at great personal inconvenience to drive her home after the alleged performance. I scarcely think our conversation — yours and mine — will be suitable for a young maiden’s ears. I’ll be home about nine o’clock, Queen — I take it you’ve sniffed out where I live.” There was a contemptuous click.

Ellery was waiting outside the glittery Darien house when the red Cadillac convertible slid up the lane.

Harrison was alone.

He got out carefully and came up the stone steps bringing with him a fragrance of bourbon. He did not offer to shake hands. He began to fumble for a key.

“It’s my Jap’s day off or you wouldn’t have had to park on the lawn. Waiting long?” It was almost ten o’clock.

“It doesn’t matter.”

His hat had a dent in the crown and there was a smear of lipstick under his right ear.

“I couldn’t get away from the little bitch. Hottest thing since Hiroshima. I’m really put out with you, Queen. Come in.” Harrison touched a switch.

The living room was typical of the more luxurious Darien waterfront houses, big and arty and full of gleams on the side facing the Sound. There was a large terrace beyond, and an immaculate lawn going down to the slough. The lawn was set with wrought-iron furniture wearing a W. & J. Sloane look. A stainless-steel barbecue on wheels was drawn up under a grove of dogwood trees, and a portable bar littered with glassware and empty bottles.

The room was really two rooms with the common wall left out — a sunken living room and a dining room beyond on a higher level. There were brown beams showing adz marks, a magnificent fieldstone fireplace, and a precious-looking staircase marching up one wall. The furniture was California modern, rugged-looking pieces selected for their masculine air. The doweled wideboard floors were polished to a shine and covered with brilliant Navajo rugs. Everything looked expensive.

The walls were cluttered with photographs, most of them of a younger and leaner Harrison in portrait or costume, the remainder being of theatrical people, uniformly autographed to Harrison.

“Forgive the disorder,” said the actor, tossing his hat in the general direction of the dining-room table. “These are bachelor digs, and contrary to the popular conception of Jap servants, Tama is no bargain, as you can see. But he mixes a fabulous martini and he’s a wonderful cook. A drab wanders in twice a week and waves a cloth vaguely here and there to supplement Tama’s tireless lethargy. And now for a drink, if Gladiola, or Hyacinth, or whatever her foul name is, has seen fit to leave any in the bar. She was here this morning.”

“No one answered your phone.”

“She ignores the phone. I suspect she can’t write.” Harrison rummaged in the redwood bar set in one corner. “Damn Tama! I told him to replenish the cellar before he left. A party last night cleaned me out.” He held two bottles up to the light. “There’s a suspicion of vermouth, and the whisky is dangerously near the vanishing point, but I think I can manage a few manhattans. I’ll get some ice.” He disappeared through a swinging door at the dining-room end of the long room.

Ellery waited patiently.

Harrison came back with a pitcher containing some ice cubes and a muddler, and two clean cocktail glasses. He set about mixing the manhattans, whistling bird calls.

“And there we are,” he said cheerily, handing Ellery a glass. “Now. What’s troubling your soul, Queen?”

Ellery put the glass down on an end table, untouched.

“What do you intend to do about Martha?”

Harrison laughed. He drank half his cocktail and said, “None of your unmentionable business. I think that covers all the possible corollary questions, too, old boy. But if you have any doubts, ask away.”

“Do you realize what you’re letting yourself in for?”

A telephone rang. Harrison said, “Excuse me,” politely, and he took his drink over to the big trestle-table standing behind the sofa. He sat on the sofa arm and plucked the phone from its cradle. “Hello?” He took another sip.

The glass remained at his lips for a moment. Then he slowly set it down. “Well, I’ll tell you, darling, I can’t very well just now. I’m not alone.”

Martha?

“Yes, the appointment I mentioned.”

Martha.

“But my sweet—”

She was speaking very rapidly in tones that vibrated the membrane.

“Take it easy, darling,” said Harrison soothingly. “There’s nothing to worry about—”

Again.

“But I can’t very well—”

And again.

“All right.” Harrison’s tone sharpened. “It’ll take me about ten minutes. What’s the number?” He scribbled something on a telephone pad as he listened, tore the top sheet away, stuffed it in his pocket. “Right.” He replaced the phone and rose, smiling. “I take it you insist on making your point, Queen, whatever it is?”

“Yes, I insist.”

“Then you’ll have to indulge me. One of those things — you know our gracious country living. That was the wife of a friend of mine. They’re up the road at some house party or other, and Keith’s fighting drunk. For some reason I’m the only one who can handle him. I’ll run him over to his place in Noroton, put him to bed, and be back here in thirty or forty minutes. That is, if you want to wait.”

“I want to wait.”

Harrison shrugged. He left quickly.

A moment later Ellery heard the Cadillac swivel about and swish up the road.

House party... wife of a friend... Ellery got up to wander about the room.

It was a clumsy lie. Harrison would hardly have asked for a house number on his own road. Besides, the houses on these shore roads had no numbers. That had been Martha. Harrison had phoned her during the day at the theater — she was working her cast overtime to prepare for a scheduled Bridgeport tryout in August — to tell her of the appointment for tonight. Martha had been frightened. So frightened she had risked a call while he was here.

Van, I’ve got to talk to you...

“Well, I’ll tell you, darling, I can’t very well just now. I’m not alone.”

He’s there, isn’t he?...

“Yes, the appointment I mentioned.”

He’s going to pump you, Van. We’d better discuss first what you should say. Get to another phone...

“But my sweet—”

Van, you’ve got to! I’m scared to death. I know you — you’ll start to bait him. You’ll treat it as if it were a big scene in a play...

“Take it easy, darling. There’s nothing to worry about—”

There’s a lot to worry about! Van, he’ll get suspicious if we keep this up. Get to a phone and call me back...

“But I can’t very well—”

Of course you can. Make up some story. A friend up the road in trouble or something. Call me back!...

“All right. It’ll take me about ten minutes. What’s the number?”

That was how it must have gone, what Martha probably said. And the ten minutes was the time it would take Harrison to drive into the business district of Darien to a public phone booth.

So much for Keith, the fighting drunk.

Ellery looked around.

And as he looked around, it came to him in a leap what an incredible opportunity had been handed him by Martha’s call.

He was alone in Harrison’s house, and he had at least a half-hour.

There were three bedrooms upstairs. Two were guest rooms — beds made up, windows latched, closets empty.

The third was the master bedroom.

Harrison’s room took Ellery back to old Hollywood. Here, spread royally, was the great Van Harrison in his heyday. The bed was an immense circular piece with satin sheets and a monogrammed spread that alone must have cost several hundred dollars. The rug was long-haired and black, sewn together from the hides of a great number of unclassifiable animals. The entire ceiling was mirrored. The walls, done in white leather, were covered with photographs of beautiful women, all — from the inscriptions — devoted slaves of the actor. Many were nude. Uninhibited sculptures occupied niches here and there. One recessed shelf was filled with pornographic books.

An oval picture window eight feet across overlooked the terrace and the slough, and before this window stood a striking kneehole desk of ebony. On the polished surface, looking rather forlorn in its magnificent surroundings, there was a portable typewriter.

Ellery went around the desk and sat down in the white leather chair behind it.

There was some typewriter paper on the desk, and he slipped a sheet into the carriage. He typed: Mrs. Dirk Lawrence, and Martha’s address.

They came out red.

The ribbon was the black-and-red type. Ellery looked for the lever that controlled the ribbon-shift. All he found was a raw stub, and this he could not budge.

The black upper half of the ribbon was frayed and worn; the ink had been pounded out of it.

He made a face. There was no significance to Harrison’s red typing after all. The color-shift lever had jammed and in trying to move it Harrison had snapped it off. He had simply neglected to have it repaired. Having worn away the ink of the black half of the ribbon, he had inverted the ribbon and used the red half...

No, there was no significance to the little scarlet letters produced by Harrison’s typewriter, and yet it was not without a meaning. A “satire of circumstance,” Thomas Hardy would have called it. Life was full of such curious tricks, and it took a poet to appreciate them.

Ellery was no poet. Neither, he fancied, was Dirk.

He took from his breast pocket the manila envelope of the Froehm Air-Conditioner Company in which Harrison had enclosed his first message to Martha; Ellery had brought it along with some vague notion that it might prove useful in his tilt with Harrison.

The address on the envelope and the words Ellery had just typed on Harrison’s machine were identical in every distinguishable feature.

He tucked the envelope back in his pocket, together with the sample he had written.

And he began to go through the drawers of the desk.

In the flat middle drawer above his knees he found a revolver.

It was an old Harrington & Richardson, a .22 Special with a six-inch barrel, chambered for nine shots. The blued-finish arm was a discontinued model; it had not been manufactured, Ellery knew, for over a dozen years. But this piece had been well-preserved; it was oiled and clean.

Ellery broke it open. The chambers were all occupied by their deadly tenants, high-speed .22 Long Rifle cartridges.

He was not happy. It was a disagreeable discovery that Van Harrison also owned a shooting iron, although not exactly a surprise. Men who made love to other men’s wives would understandably feel the need of a more emphatic protector than a wide eye or an earnest tongue. It was true that great differences existed between a .45 automatic, such as Dirk’s weapon, and a .22 revolver, such as Harrison’s, but these might be considered to disappear, for all practical purposes, within the confines of the average hotel bedroom.

Ellery replaced the weapon in the drawer as he had found it.

The two upper drawers of the three at the right side of the desk turned up nothing of importance. But in the rear compartment of the bottom drawer he found a sheaf of letters, without envelopes, held together by a thick rubber band.

The handwriting looked familiar. Ellery extracted the topmost letter and turned to the end.

It was signed, Martha.

He began to read it:

That was the end of the first page. Ellery turned the page and read some more; and then he stopped in the middle of a sentence and went through the other letters quickly. They were all the same — a day, an hour, a salutation of endearment, an outpouring of passion and hurt and loneliness. And all the time he was reading, Ellery saw between him and the closely written pages the dent in Harrison’s hat and the lipstick mark under his ear. And suddenly he rebound the letters with the rubber band and replaced them at the back of the drawer and shut the drawer violently.

He got up, moved the chair back to where he had found it, and went to the other end of Harrison’s bedroom. Two big doors stood side by side, and he opened them. They were closets. One contained nothing but men’s clothes — an immense wardrobe of custom-tailored suits and coats, running the fashion gamut from country casuals and sportswear to tails and — Ellery gaped — a black cape lined with red silk. The other wardrobe was filled with women’s clothes.

Ellery recognized at least two summer dresses of Martha’s and a blue suede sports coat of a distinctive shade which he had seen Martha wear on several occasions. He remembered Nikki’s remarking once, with the awe of the budgeted working girl, that Martha had bought the coat at Jay Thorpe. He looked at the label of the blue coat: it said Jay Thorpe.

On the shelf lay several handbags, one with a solid gold monogram: MGL.

He noticed a white garment on the floor of the closet, evidently tumbled from a hanger. He stooped. It was a nylon novelty slip with the name Martha embroidered above the hem.

Before he left the bedroom, on an impulse he did not stop to probe, Ellery searched Harrison’s bureau and the drawers of his makeup table, a heroic affair in ebony and white leather, with a triple mirror. He found them — a set of toupees, and two corsets.

Harrison came in rubbing his hands. “It’s turned brisk out tonight. I should have laid a fire.”

“How is your friend’s husband?” asked Ellery.

“Blotto. I just heaved him onto his bed and departed. Was I too long? — Here, you haven’t touched your drink. I’ll get some more ice.”

“Not for me, thanks,” said Ellery. “And, if you don’t mind, I’d like to say what I have to say and get out of here.”

“Fire when ready,” said the actor. He squatted at the fireplace, crumpling paper and fishing for kindling in a leather scuttle.

“Those may be prophetic words, Harrison.”

“What?” Harrison’s head twisted, astonished.

“Dirk Lawrence has an Army .45 automatic, and he’s recently taken to practicing with it. I might add that he has several medals for marksmanship in his bureau drawer.”

The actor tossed a length of firewood on the kindling and put a match to the paper. The fire flared up. He rose and turned around.

He was grinning.

“You find that amusing?” said Ellery.

Harrison poured himself a refill from the warm contents of the pitcher. Then he stretched out comfortably in a great leather chair.

“You know, of course, Queen, that what I ought to do is take you by the scruff of the neck and toss you into Long Island Sound. Who do you think you are, Anthony Comstock? What business is it of yours whose wife I take for a hayride? Martha’s over twenty-one, and I certainly am. We know just what we’re doing. And I’ll tell you a little secret, Queen — we like it.”

“Is that the line Martha told you to take with me over the phone just now?”

Harrison blinked. Then he laughed and tossed his drink down.

“I doubt it. I doubt that Martha likes it, Harrison. The Lawrence-apartment part of it, anyway. You’re typical of the successful tom-about-town — love ’em and leave them the labor pains. But you’re asking for a pain of your own. How well do you know Dirk Lawrence?”

“I don’t know him at all.”

“Martha’s certainly told you about him.”

“His jealous streak? They’re all that way, old fellow. I’d be myself if I were married. In fact, I was that way when I was married. All four times. That’s why I’m not married any more. Let the other gent wear the horns.” Harrison reached over and upended the pitcher over his glass. A few drops slid down, and he frowned.

“Harrison, you’re not dealing with the average husband. Dirk’s a moody customer. Hopped up one minute and in the dumps the next. Manic-depressive. And he’s been through the war. He’s killed men in cold blood. How hard would it be for a man like that to kill with his blood heated up?” Ellery rose. “You don’t interest me at all, Harrison, except as a case history. I don’t care a hoot whether you live or die. I do care about Martha and, incidentally, Dirk. You’re playing with TNT. If Dirk gets wind of this filthy business, you won’t have the time to think up a bad exit line. They’ll have to put you together for the morticians like a jigsaw puzzle. Dirk’s a mean man.”

“You scare the hell out of me,” said Harrison. He tossed off the dregs in his glass. “Look, my friend. I’m no more anxious to get a bullet through my loins than the next man. I am very, very careful about Mr. Harrison’s health. Mrs. Lawrence and I will not be bosom companions forever. You know how these things are... By the way, don’t waste your time repeating that to Martha. She won’t believe you. Where was I?... Oh, yes. At the first sign of danger, Queen, I assure you I’ll run like a hare. That may leave Martha holding a rather voluminous bag, but after all, those are the chances we girls take, aren’t they? Meanwhile, it’s fun. Can you find your way to the door?”

He caught Harrison at the side of the jaw with a right cross that knocked the actor’s chair over backwards and landed him on the hearth of his fireplace.

But as Ellery drove away, he felt no righteous flush. Of even small victory. He had achieved exactly as much as a man can with his bare hands.

It was not enough.

He never should have come without a deadly weapon.