Calamity Town

by Ellery Queen

  Pat actually smiled up at him. ”I was being silly. Now it doesn’t seem half so bad, with you under this tree, and the moonlight touching that flat plane of your right cheek . . . You’re very handsome, you know, Ellery¯”

  “Then why in hell,” growled a male voice from the darkness, “don’t you kiss him?”

  “Cart!” Pat snuggled against the black chest of the elm.

  They could hear Bradford breathing somewhere near¯breathing short deep ones.

  Too absurd, thought Mr. Queen. A man of logic should evade such encirclements by chance. But at least it cleared up the minor irritation of the sound-that-had-stopped. It had been Carter Bradford’s car.

  “Well, he is handsome,” said Pat’s voice from the tree trunk. Ellery grinned to himself.

  “You lied to me,” cried Carter. He materialized: no hat and his chestnut hair angry. ”Don’t hide in a bush, Pat!”

  “I’m not hiding,” said Pat peevishly, “and it isn’t a bush, it’s a tree.” She came out of the darkness, too; and they faced each other with punctilio.

  Mr. Queen watched with silent enjoyment.

  “You told me over the phone that you had a headache!”

  “Yes.”

  “You said you were going to bed!”

  “I am.”

  “Don’t quibble!”

  “Why not? You raise such unimportant points, Mr. Bradford.”

  Carter’s arms flapped under the unfriendly stars. ”You lied to get rid of me. You didn’t want me around. You had a date with this scribbler! Don’t deny it!”

  “I do deny it.” Pat’s voice softened. ”I did lie to you, Cart, but I didn’t have a date with Ellery.”

  “That,” remarked Mr. Queen from his observation post, “happens to be the truth.”

  “Stick your two cents out, Smith!” shouted Carter. ”I’m trying to keep my temper, or I’d drape you over the lawn!”

  Mr. ”Smith” grinned and held his peace.

  “All right, so I’m jealous,” muttered Cart. ”But you don’t have to be a sneak, Pat! If you don’t want me, say so.”

  “This has nothing to do with my wanting you or not wanting you,” said Pat in a timid-turtle voice.

  “Well, do you or don’t you?”

  Pat’s eyes fell. ”You’ve no right to ask me that¯here¯now.” Her eyes flashed up. ”You wouldn’t want a sneak, anyway, would you?”

  “All right! Have it your way!”

  “Cart . . . !”

  His voice came back in a bellow of defiance. ”I’m through!”

  Pat ran off toward the big white house.

  Thought Mr. Queen as he watched her slim figure race across the lawn: In a way it’s better . . . much better. You don’t know what you’re in for. And Mr. Carter Bradford, when you meet him next, may very well be an enemy.

  * * *

  When Ellery returned from his pre-breakfast walk the next morning, he found Nora and her mother whispering on the Wright porch.

  “Good morning!” he said cheerfully. ”Enjoy the lecture last night?”

  “It was very interesting.” Nora looked distressed, and Hermione preoccupied, so Ellery began to go into the house.

  “Mr. Smith,” said Hermy. ”Oh, dear, I don’t know how to say it! Nora dear¯”

  “Ellery, what happened here last night?” asked Nora.

  “Happened?” Ellery looked blank.

  “I mean with Pat and Carter. You were home¯”

  “Is anything wrong with Pat?” asked Ellery quickly.

  “Of course there is. She won’t come down to breakfast. She won’t answer any questions. And when Pat sulks¯”

  “It’s Carter’s fault,” Hermy burst out. ”I thought there was something queer about her ‘headache’ last night! Please, Mr. Smith, if you know anything about it¯if something happened after we went to Town Hall last night which her mother ought to know¯”

  “Has Pat broken off with Cart?” asked Nora anxiously. ”No, you don’t have to answer, Ellery. I can see it in your face. Mother, you’ll simply have to give Patty a talking-to. She can’t keep doing this sort of thing to Cart.”

  Ellery walked Nora back to the little house. As soon as they were out of earshot of Mrs. Wright, Nora said: “Of course you had something to do with it.”

  “I?” asked Mr. Queen.

  “Well . . . don’t you agree Pat’s in love with Carter? I’m sure you could help by not making Carter jealous¯”

  “Mr. Bradford,” said Mr. Queen, “would be jealous of a postage stamp Patty licked.”

  “I know. He’s so hotheaded, too! Oh, dear.” Nora sighed. ”I’m making a mess of it. Will you forgive me? And come in to breakfast?”

  “Yes to both questions.” And as he helped Nora up the porch steps, he wondered just how guilty he really was.

  * * *

  Jim was full of political talk, and Nora . . . Nora was wonderful. No other word for it, thought Ellery. Watching and listening, he could detect no least tinkle of falsity. They seemed so much like two young people luxuriating in the blessedness of early marriage that it was a temptation to dismiss the incidents of the previous evening as fantasy.

  Pat arrived, with Alberta and eggs, in a rush.

  “Nora! How nice,” she said, as if nothing at all had happened. ”Can you spare a starving gal an egg or two? Morning, Jim! Ellery! Not that Ludie didn’t have breakfast for me. She did. But I just felt that nosy impulse to look in on the lovebirds . . . ”

  “Alberta, another setting,” said Nora, and she smiled at Pat. ”You do talk in the morning! Ellery, sit down. The honeymoon being over, my husband doesn’t rise for my family anymore.”

  Jim stared. ”Who¯Patso?” He grinned. ”Say, you are grown-up! Let me look. Yep. A real glamour girl. Smith, I envy you. If I were a bachelor¯”

  Ellery saw the swift cloud darken Nora’s face. She pressed more coffee on her husband.

  Pat kept chattering. She wasn’t a very good actress¯couldn’t look Jim in the eye. Heroic, though. Remembering instructions in the midst of her own troubles . . .

  But Nora was superb. Yes, Pat had been right. Nora had decided not to think about the letters or their horrible implication. And she was using the minor crisis of Pat and Cart to help her not to think.

  “I’ll fix your eggs myself, darling,” said Nora to Pat. ”Alberta’s a jewel, but how could she know you like four-minute coddling, to the second? Excuse me.” Nora left the dining room to join Alberta in the kitchen.

  “That Nora,” chuckled Jim. ”She’s a real hen. Say! What time is it?

  I’ll be late at the bank. Patty, you been crying? You’re talking sort of funny, too. Nora!” he shouted. ”Didn’t the mail come yet?”

  “Not yet!” Nora called from the kitchen.

  “Who, me?” said Pat feebly. ”Don’t¯don’t be a goop, Jim.”

  “All right, all right,” said Jim, laughing. ”So it’s none of my damn business. Ah! There’s Bailey now. ‘Scuse!”

  Jim hurried out to the foyer to answer the postman’s ring. They heard him open the front door; they heard old Mr. Bailey’s cracked “Mornin’, Mr. Haight,” Jim’s joshing response, the little slam of the door, and Jim’s slow returning footsteps, as if he were shuffling through the mail as he came back.

  Then he walked into the field of their vision and stopped, and they saw him staring at one of the several envelopes the postman had just delivered. His face was liverish.

  And then he vaulted upstairs. They heard his feet pound on the carpeting and a moment later a door bang.

  Pat was gaping at the spot Jim had just vacated.

  “Eat your cereal,” said Ellery.

  Pat flushed and bent quickly over her plate.

  Ellery got up and walked without noise to the foot of the staircase. After a moment he returned to the breakfast table.

  “He’s in his study, I think. Heard him lock the door . . . No! Not now. Here’s Nora.”

  Pat choked over her Crack
le-Crunch.

  “Where’s Jim?” asked Nora as she set the eggs before her sister.

  “Upstairs,” said Ellery, reaching for the toast.

  “Jim?”

  “Yes, Nora.” Jim reappeared on the stairs; he was still pale, but rigidly controlled. He had his coat on and carried several unopened letters of assorted sizes.

  “Jim! Is anything wrong?”

  “Wrong?” Jim laughed. ”I never saw such a suspicious woman! What the devil should be wrong?”

  “I don’t know. But you look so pale¯”

  Jim kissed her. ”You ought to’ve been a nurse! Well, got to be going. Oh, by the way. Here’s the mail. The usual junk. Bye, Patty! Smith! See you soon.” Jim raced out.

  After breakfast Ellery said something about “strolling in the woods” behind the house and excused himself.

  A half hour later Pat joined him. She came hurrying through the underbrush with a Javanese scarf tied around her head, looking back over her shoulder as if someone were chasing her.

  “I thought I’d never get away from Nora,” Pat panted. She dropped to a stump. ”Whoo!”

  Ellery blew smoke thoughtfully. ”Pat, we’ve got to read that letter Jim just received.”

  “Ellery . . . where’s this all going to end?”

  “It stirred Jim up tremendously. Can’t be coincidence. Somehow this morning’s letter ties in with the rest of this puzzle. Can you lure Nora out of the house?”

  “She’s going to High Village this morning with Alberta to do some shopping. There’s the station wagon! I’d recognize that putt-putt in Detroit.”

  Mr. Queen ground out his cigarette carefully. ”All right, then,” he said.

  Pat kicked a twig. Her hands were trembling. Then she sprang off the stump. ”I feel like a skunk,” she moaned. ”But what else can we do?”

  * * *

  “I doubt if we’ll find anything,” said Ellery as Pat let him into Nora’s house with her duplicate key. ”Jim locked the door when he ran upstairs. He didn’t want to be caught doing . . . whatever it was he did.”

  “You think he destroyed the letter?”

  “Afraid so. But we’ll have a look, anyway.”

  In Jim’s study, Pat set her back against the door. She looked ill.

  Ellery sniffed. And went directly to the fireplace. It was clean except for a small mound of ash.

  “He burned it!” said Pat.

  “But not thoroughly enough.”

  “Ellery, you’ve found something!”

  “A scrap that wasn’t consumed by the fire.”

  Pat flew across the room. Ellery was examining a scrap of charred paper very carefully.

  “Part of the envelope?”

  “The flap. Return address. But the address has been burned off. Only thing left is the sender’s name.”

  Pat read: “ ‘Rosemary Haight.’ Jim’s sister.” Her eyes widened. ”Jim’s sister, Rosemary! Ellery, the one he wrote those three letters to about Nora!”

  “It’s possible that¯” Ellery did not finish.

  “You were going to say it’s possible there was a first letter we didn’t find, because he’d already sent it! And that this is the remains of his sister’s answer.”

  “Yes.” Ellery tucked the burnt scrap away in his wallet. ”But on second thought I’m not so sure. Why should his sister’s reply bother him so much, if that’s what it is? No, Patty, this is something different, something new.”

  “But what?”

  “That,” said Mr. Queen, “is what we’ve got to find out.” He took her arm, looking about. ”Let’s get out of here.”

  * * *

  That night they were all sitting on the Wright porch watching the wind blow the leaves across the lawn. John F. and Jim were debating the presidential campaign with some heat, while Hermy anxiously appeased and Nora and Pat listened like mice. Ellery sat by himself in a corner, smoking.

  “John, you know I don’t like these political arguments!” said Hermy. ”Goodness, you men get so hot under the collar¯”

  John F. grunted. ”Jim, there’s dictatorship coming in this country, you mark my words¯”

  Jim grinned. ”And you’ll eat ‘em . . . A// right, Mother!” Then he said casually: “Oh, by the way, darling, I got a letter from my sister, Rosemary, this morning. Forgot to tell you.”

  “Yes?” Nora’s tone was bright. ”How nice. What does she write, dear?”

  Pat drifted toward Ellery and in the darkness sat down at his feet. He put his hand on her neck; it was clammy.

  “The usual stuff. She does say she’d like to meet you¯all of you.”

  “Well, I should think so!” said Hermy. ”I’m very anxious to meet your sister, Jim. Is she coming out for a visit?”

  “Well . . . I was thinking of asking her, but¯”

  “Now, Jim,” said Nora. ”You know I’ve asked you dozens of times to invite Rosemary to Wrightsville.”

  “Then it’s all right with you, Nor?” asked Jim quickly.

  “All right!” Nora laughed. ”What’s the matter with you? Give me her address, and I’ll drop her a note tonight.”

  “Don’t bother, darling. I’ll write her myself.”

  When they were alone, a half hour later, Pat said to Ellery: “Nora was scared.”

  “Yes. It’s a poser.” Ellery circled his knees with his arms. ”Of course, the letter that stirred Jim up this morning was the same letter he just said he got from his sister.”

  “Ellery, Jim’s holding something back.”

  “No question about it.”

  “If his sister, Rosemary, just wrote about wanting to come out for a visit, or anything as trivial as that . . . why did Jim burn her letter?”

  Mr. Queen kept the silence for a long time. Finally he mumbled: “Go to bed, Patty. I want to think.”

  * * *

  On November the eighth, four days after Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been elected to the Presidency of the United States for a third term, Jim Haight’s sister came to Wrightsville.

  Chapter 10

  Jim and the Fleshpot

  “Miss Rosemary Haight,” wrote Gladys Hemmingworth in the Society column of the Wrightsville Record, “was strikingly accoutered in a na-turel French suede traveling suit with sleeveless jerkin to match, a dashing jacket of platinum-fox fur topped with the jauntiest fox-trimmed archery hat of forest green, and green suede wedgies and bag . . . ”

  Mr. Ellery Queen happened to be taking a walk that morning . . . to the Wrightsville station. So he saw Rosemary Haight get off the train at the head of a safari bearing luggage and pose for a moment, in the sun, like a movie actress. He saw her trip over to Jim and kiss him, and turn to Nora with animation and embrace her, presenting a spruce cheek; and Mr. Queen also saw the two women laugh and chatter as Jim and the safari picked up the visitor’s impedimenta and made for Jim’s car.

  And Mr. Queen’s weather eye clouded over.

  That night, at Nora’s, he had an opportunity to test his first barometric impression.

  And he decided that Rosemary Haight was no bucolic maiden on an exciting journey; that she was pure metropolis, insolent and bored and trying to conceal both. Also, she was menacingly attractive. Hermy, Pat, and Nora disliked her instantly; Ellery could tell that from the extreme politeness with which they treated her. As for John F., he was charmed, spryly gallant. Hermy reproached him in the silent language of the eye.

  And Ellery spent a troubled night trying to put Miss Rosemary Haight together in the larger puzzle and not succeeding.

  * * *

  Jim was busy at the bank these days and, rather with relief, Ellery thought, left the problem of entertaining his sister to Nora. Dutifully Nora drove Rosemary about the countryside, showing her the “sights.” It was a little difficult for Nora to sustain the charming-hostess illusion, Pat confided in Ellery, since Rosemary had a supercilious attitude toward everything and wondered “how in heaven’s name you can be happy in such a dull place, Mrs. H!�
��

  Then there was the gauntlet of the town’s ladies to run . . . teas for the guest, very correct with hats on in the house and white gloves, an ambitious mah-jongg party, a wiener roast on the lawn one moonlit night, a church social . . .

  The ladies were cold. Emmeline DuPre said Rosemary Haight had a streak of “commerce,” whatever that was, Clarice Martin thought her clothes too “you-know,” and Mrs. Mackenzie at the Country Club said she was a born bitch and look at those silly men drooling at her!

  The Wright women found themselves constrained to defend her, which was hard, considering that secretly they agreed to the truth of all the charges.

  “I wish she’d leave,” said Pat to Ellery a few days after Rosemary’s arrival. ”Isn’t that a horrid thing to say? But I do. And now she’s sent for her trunks!”

  “But I thought she didn’t like it here.”

  “That’s what I can’t understand, either. Nora says it was supposed to be a ‘flying’ visit, but Rosemary acts as if she means to dig in for the winter. And Nora can’t very well discourage her.”

  “What’s Jim say?”

  “Nothing to Nora, but”¯Pat lowered her voice and looked around¯”apparently he’s said something to Rosemary, because I happened in just this morning and there was Nora trapped in the serving pantry while Jim and Rosemary, who evidently thought Nora was upstairs, were having an argument in the dining room. That woman has a temper!”

  “What was the argument about?” asked Ellery eagerly.

  “I came in at the tail end and didn’t hear anything important, but Nora says it was . . . well, frightening. Nora wouldn’t tell me what she’d heard, but she was terribly upset¯she looked the same way as when she read those three letters that tumbled out of the toxicology book.”

  Ellery muttered: “I wish I’d heard that argument. Why can’t I put my finger on something? Pat, you’re a rotten assistant detective!”

  “Yes, sir,” said Pat miserably.

  Rosemary Haight’s trunk arrived on the fourteenth. Steve Polaris, who ran the local express agency, delivered the trunk himself¯an overgrown affair that looked as if it might be packed with imported evening gowns. Steve lugged it up Nora’s walk on his broad back; and Mr. Queen, who was watching from the Wright porch, saw him carry it into Nora’s house and come out a few minutes later accompanied by Rosemary, who was wearing a candid red, white, and blue negligee. She looked like an enlistment poster.