by Ellery Queen
Jim was coming out of the kitchen with a tray, and Ellery said to him: “That’s a banshee, at least. What are they up to now?” And the two men hurried to the living room.
Dr. Willoughby was stooped over Rosemary Haight, who was still lying on the sofa half-covered with newspapers.
There was a tiny, sharp prickle in Mr. Queen’s heart.
Doc Willoughby straightened up. He was ashen.
“John.” The old doctor wet his lips with his tongue.
John F. said stupidly: “Milo, for jiminy sake. The girl’s passed out. She’s been . . . sick, like other drunks. You don’t have to act and look as if¯”
Dr. Willoughby said: “She’s dead, John.”
Pat, who had been the banshee, sank into a chair as if all the strength had suddenly gone out of her.
And for the space of several heartbeats the memory of the sound of the word “dead” in Dr. Willoughby’s cracked bass darted about the room, in and out of corners and through still minds, and it made no sense.
“Dead?” said Ellery hoarsely. ”A . . . heart attack. Doctor?”
“I think,” said the doctor stiffly, “arsenic.”
Nora screamed and fell over in a faint, striking her head on the floor with a thud. As Carter Bradford came briskly in.
Saying: “Tried to get here earlier¯where’s Pat?¯Happy New Year, everybody . . . What the devil!”
* * *
“Did you give it to her?” asked Ellery Queen, outside the door of Nora’s bedroom. He looked a little shrunken; and his nose was pinched and pointy, like a thorn.
“No doubt about it,” croaked Dr. Willoughby. ”Yes, Smith. I gave it to her . . . Nora was poisoned, too.” He blinked at Ellery. ”How did you happen to have ferric hydroxid on you? It’s the accepted antidote for arsenic poisoning.”
Ellery said curtly: “I’m a magician. Haven’t you heard?” and went downstairs.
The face was covered with newspapers now.
Frank Lloyd was looking down at the papers.
Carter Bradford and Judge Martin were conferring in hoarse low tones.
Jim Haight sat in a chair shaking his head in an annoyed way, as if he wanted to clear it but could not.
The others were upstairs with Nora.
“How is she?” said Jim. ”Nora?”
“Sick.” Ellery paused just inside the living room.
Bradford and the Judge stopped talking. Frank Lloyd, however, continued to read the newspapers covering the body.
“But luckily,” said Ellery, “Nora took only a sip or two of that last cocktail. She’s pretty sick, but Dr. Willoughby thinks she’ll pull through all right.”
He sat down in the chair nearest the foyer and lit a cigarette.
“Then it was the cocktail?” said Carter Bradford in an unbelieving voice. ”But of course. Both women drank of the same glass¯both were poisoned by the same poison.” His voice rose. ”But that cocktail was Nora’s! It was meant for Nora!”
Frank Lloyd said, still without turning: “Carter, stop making speeches. You irk the hell out of me.”
“Don’t be hasty, Carter,” said Judge Martin in a very old voice.
But Carter said stridently: “That poisoned cocktail was meant to kill Nora. And who mixed it? Who brought it in?”
“Cock Robin,” said the newspaper publisher. ”Go way, Sherlock Holmes.”
“I did,” said Jim. ”I did, I guess.” He looked around at them. ”That’s a queer one, isn’t it?”
“Queer one!” Young Bradford’s face was livid. He went over and yanked Jim out of the chair by his collar. ”You damn murderer! You tried to poison your own wife and by pure accident got your sister instead!”
Jim gaped at him.
“Carter,” said Judge Martin feebly.
Carter let go, and Jim fell back, still gaping.
“What can I do?” asked the Wright County Prosecutor in a strangled voice.
He went to the phone in the foyer, stumbling past Mr. Queen’s frozen knees, and asked for Chief Dakin at Police Headquarters.
PART THREE
Chapter 14
Hangover
The hill was still celebrating when Chief Dakin hopped out of his rattletrap to run up the wet flags of the Haight walk under the stars of 1941. Emmeline DuPre’s house was dark, and old Amos Bluefield’s¯the Bluefield house bore the marks of mourning in the black smudges of its window shades. But all the others¯the Livingstons’, the F. Henry Minikins’, the Dr. Emil Poffenbergers’, the Granjons’, and the rest¯were alive with lights and the faint cries of merriment.
Chief Dakin nodded: it was just as well. Nobody would notice that anything was wrong.
Dakin was a thin, flapping countryman with light dead eyes bisected by a Yankee nose. He looked like an old terrapin until you saw that his mouth was the mouth of a poet. Nobody ever noticed that in Wrightsville except Patricia Wright and, possibly, Mrs. Dakin, to whom the Chief combined the best features of Abraham Lincoln and God.
Dakin’s passionate baritone led Mr. Bishop’s choir at the First Congregational Church on West Livesey Street in High Village each Sunday. Being a temperance man, and having his woman, the Chief would chuckle, what was there left in life but song? And, in fact, Dakin was interrupted by Prosecutor Bradford’s telephone call in the midst of an “at-home” New Year’s Eve carol fest.
“Poison,” said Dakin soberly to Carter Bradford over the body of Rosemary Haight. ”Now I wonder if folks don’t overdo this New Year celebrating. What kind of poison. Doc?”
Dr. Willoughby said: “Arsenic. Some compound. I can’t tell you which.”
“Rat-killer, hey?” Then the Chief said slowly: “I figure this kind of puts our Prosecutor in a spot, hey, Cart?”
“Awkward as hell! These people are my friends.” Bradford was shaking. ”Dakin, take charge, for God’s sake.”
“Sure, Cart,” said Chief Dakin, blinking his light eyes at Frank Lloyd. ”Hi, Mr. Lloyd.”
“Hi yourself,” said Lloyd. ”Now can I go peddle my papers?”
“Frank, I told you¯” began Carter peevishly.
“If you’ll be so kind as not to,” said Dakin to the newspaper publisher with an apologetic smile. ”Thank you. Now, how come this sister of Jim Haight’s swallowed rat-killer?”
Carter Bradford and Dr. Willoughby told him.
Mr. Queen, seated in his corner like a spectator at a play, watched and listened and pondered how much like a certain New York policeman Chief Dakin of Wrightsville seemed. That ingrown air of authority . . .
Dakin listened to the agitated voices of his townsfellows respectfully; only his light eyes moved¯they moved over Mr. ”Smith’s” person three times, and Mr. ”Smith” sat very still. And noted that, after the first quick glance on entering the room, Chief Dakin quite ignored Haight, who was a lump on a chair.
“I see,” said Dakin, nodding. ”Yes, sir,” said Dakin. ”Hmm,” and he shambled off with his loose gait to the kitchen.
“I can’t believe it,” groaned Jim Haight suddenly. ”It’s an accident. How do I know how the stuff got into it? Maybe some kid. A window. A joke. Why, this is murder.”
No one answered him.
Jim cracked his knuckles and stared owlishly at the filled-out newspapers on the sofa.
Red-faced Patrolman Brady came in from outdoors, a little out of breath and trying not to look embarrassed.
“Got the call,” he said to no one in particular. ”Gosh.” He tugged at his uniform and trod softly into the kitchen after his Chief.
When the two officers reappeared, Brady was armed with numerous bottles, glasses, and odds and ends from the kitchen “bar.” He disappeared; after a few moments he came back, empty-armed.
In silence Dakin indicated the various empty and half-empty cocktail glasses in the living room.
Brady gathered them one by one, using his patrolman’s cap as a container, picking them up in his scarlet fingers delicately, at the rim, and storing them in the ha
t as if they had been fresh-laid pigeon eggs.
The Chief nodded and Brady tiptoed out.
“For fingerprints,” said Chief Dakin to the fireplace. ”You never can tell. And a chemical analysis, too.”
“What!” exclaimed Mr. Queen involuntarily.
The Dakin glance x-rayed Mr. Queen’s person for the fourth time.
“How do, Mr. Smith,” said Chief Dakin, smiling. ”Seems like we’re forever meeting in jams. Well, twice, anyway.”
“I beg pardon?” said Mr. ”Smith,” looking blank.
“That day on Route 16,” sighed the Chief. ”I was driving with Cart here. The day Jim Haight was so liquored up?”
Jim rose; he sat down. Dakin did not look at him.
“You’re a writer, Mr. Smith, ain’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Heard tell all over town. You said ‘What!’ “
Ellery smiled. ”Sorry. Wrightsville¯fingerprints . . . It was stupid of me.”
“And chem lab work? Oh, sure,” said Dakin. ”This ain’t New York or Chicago, but the new County Courthouse building; she’s got what you might call unexpected corners.”
“I’m interested in unexpected corners, Chief.”
“Mighty proud to know a real live writer,” said Dakin. ”Course, we got Frank Lloyd here, but he’s more what you’d call a hick Horace Greeley.” Lloyd laughed and looked around, as if for a drink. Then he stopped laughing and scowled. ”Know anything about this, Mr. Smith?” asked Dakin, glancing at Lloyd’s great back.
“A woman named Rosemary Haight died here tonight.” Ellery shrugged. ”The only fact I can supply. Not much help, I’m afraid, considering that the body’s lying right here.”
“Poisoned, Doc Willoughby says,” said Dakin politely. ”That’s another fact.”
“Oh, yes,” said Ellery with humility.
And tried to become invisible as Dr. Willoughby sent him a thick-browed question. Watch yourself. Doc Willoughby is remembering that little bottle of ferric hydroxid you whipped out when Nora Haight required an antidote against arsenic poisoning and even minutes were precious . . . Will the good doctor tell the good policeman the strange fact that a stranger to the house and the people and the case carried so strange a preparation as ferric hydroxid about with him when, strangely, one woman died and another was made seriously ill by the poison for which it was the official antidote?
Dr. Willoughby turned away.
He suspects I know something involving the Wright family, thought Ellery. He’s an old friend. He brought the three Wright girls into the world . . . He’s uneasy. Shall I make him still uneasier by confiding that I purchased the drug because I promised Patty Wright her sister Nora wouldn’t die?
Mr. Queen sighed. It was getting complicated.
“The family,” said Chief Dakin. ”Where they at?”
“Upstairs,” said Bradford. ”Mrs. Wright insists that Nora¯Mrs. Haight¯be moved over to the Wright house.”
“This is no place for her, Dakin,” said Dr. Willoughby. ”Nora’s pretty sick. She’ll need plenty of care.”
“It’s all right with me,” said the Chief. ”If it’s all right with the Prosecutor.”
Bradford nodded hastily and bit his lip. ”Don’t you want to question them?”
“Well, now,” said the Chief slowly, “I can’t see the sense of making the Wrights feel worse ‘n they feel already. At least right now. So if you’ve got no objection, Cart, let’s call it a night.”
Carter said stiffly: “None at all.”
“Then we’ll have a get-together right here in this room in the mornin’,” said Dakin. ”You tell the Wrights, Cart. Sort of keep it unofficial.”
“Are you remaining here?”
“For a spell,” drawled Dakin. ”Got to call in somebody to haul this corpus out of here. Figure I’ll phone old man Duncan’s parlors.”
“No morgue?” asked Mr. Queen, despite himself.
The Dakin eyes made another inspection. ”Well, no, Mr. Smith . . . Okay for you, Mr. Lloyd. Go easy on these folks in your paper, hey? This’ll raise plenty of hallelujah as it is, I guess . . . No, sir, Mr. Smith. Got to use a reg’lar undertaking parlor. You see”¯and the Chief sighed¯”ain’t never had a homicide in Wrightsville before, and I been Chief here for pretty near twenty years. Doc, would you be so kind? Coroner Salemson’s up in Piny Woods on a New Year vacation.”
“I’ll do the autopsy,” said Dr. Willoughby shortly. He went out without saying good-night.
Mr. Queen rose.
Carter Bradford walked across the room, stopped, looked back.
Jim Haight was still sitting in the chair.
Bradford said in an angry voice: “What are you sitting here for, Haight?”
Jim looked up slowly. ”What?”
“You can’t sit here all night! Aren’t you even going up to your wife?”
“They won’t let me,” said Jim. He laughed and took out a handkerchief to wipe his eyes. ”They won’t let me.”
He leaped from the chair and dashed upstairs. They heard the slam of a door¯he had gone into his study.
“See you in the morning, gents,” said Chief Dakin, blinking at Ellery.
They left the Chief in the untidy living room, alone with Rosemary Haight’s body. Mr. Queen would like to have stayed, but there was something in Chief Dakin’s eyes that discouraged company.
* * *
Ellery did not see Patricia Wright until they all gathered in the same untidy room at ten o’clock on the morning of New Year’s Day . . . all except Nora, who was in her old bed in the other house, guarded by Ludie behind the closed vanes of the Venetian blinds. Dr. Willoughby had already seen her this morning, and he forbade her leaving the room or even setting foot out of bed.
“You’re a sick biddy, Nora,” he had said to her sternly. ”Ludie, remember.”
“She’ll have to fight me,” said old Ludie.
“But where’s Mother? Where’s Jim?” moaned Nora, tossing on the bed.
“We’ve got to . . . go out for a few minutes, Nora,” said Pat. ”Jim’s all right¯”
“Something’s happened to Jim, too!”
“Don’t be a worry wart,” said Pat crossly, fleeing.
Ellery waylaid her on Nora’s porch. ”Before we go in,” he said quickly, “I want to explain¯”
“I don’t blame you, Ellery.” Pat was almost as sick-looking as Nora. ”It might have been worse. It might have been . . . Nora. It almost was.” She shivered.
“I’m sorry about Rosemary,” said Ellery.
Pat looked at him blankly. Then she went inside.
Ellery lingered on the porch. It was a gray day, like Rosemary Haight’s face: a gray day and a cold day, a day for corpses . . . Someone was missing¯Frank Lloyd.
Emmy DuPre chittered by, stopped, studied Chief Dakin’s car at the curb, frowned . . . walked on slowly, craning at the two houses.
A car drove up. Frank Lloyd jumped out. Then Lola Wright. They ran up the walk together.
“Nora! Is she all right?” gasped Lola. Ellery nodded. Lola dashed inside.
“I picked Lola up,” said Lloyd. He was breathing heavily, too. ”She was walking up the Hill.”
“They’re waiting for you, Lloyd.”
“I thought,” said the publisher, “you might think it funny.” There was a damp copy of the Wrightsville Record in his overcoat pocket.
“I think nothing funny on mornings like this. Did Lola know?” They walked into the house.
“No. She was just taking a walk, she said. Nobody knows yet.”
“They will,” said Ellery dryly, “when your paper hits the streets.”
“You’re a damn snoop,” growled Lloyd, “but I like you. Take my advice and hop the first train out.”
“I like it here,” smiled Ellery. ”Why?”
“Because this is a dangerous town.”
“How so?”
“You’ll see when the news gets around. Everybody who was at
the party last night will be smeared.”
“There’s always,” remarked Mr. Queen, “the cleansing property of a clear conscience.”
“That makes you apple pie.” Lloyd shook his heavy shoulders. ”I don’t figure you.”
“Why bother? For that matter, you’re not a simple sum in arithmetic yourself.”
“You’ll hear plenty about me.”
“I already have.”
“I don’t know,” said the newspaper publisher savagely, “why I stand here in the foyer gassing with a nitwit!” He shook the floor striding into the living room.
* * *
“The poison,” said Dr. Willoughby, “is arsenic trioxid, or arsenious oxid, as you prefer. ‘White’ arsenic.”
They were sitting in a rough circle, like unbelievers at a seance. Chief Dakin stood at the fireplace, tapping his false teeth with a rolled paper.
“Go ahead, Doc,” said Dakin. ”What else did you find? That part’s right. We checked in our own lab during the night.”
“It’s used in medicine mostly as an alterative or tonic,” said the doctor tonelessly. ”We never prescribe a bigger therapeutic dose than a tenth of a grain. There’s no way of telling from the dregs of the cocktail, of course¯at least with accuracy¯but judging from the speed with which the poison acted, I’d estimate there were three or four grains in that glass.”
“Prescribe any of that stuff recently for . . . anyone you know, Doc?” muttered Carter Bradford.
“No.”
“We’ve established a bit more,” said Chief Dakin soberly, looking around. ”Most probably it was plain ordinary rat poison. And moreover, no trace of the poison was found anywheres except in that one cocktail which Mrs. Haight and her sister-in-law drank¯not in the mixing glass, nor the rye whisky, nor the vermouth, nor the bottle of cherries, nor any of the other glassware.”
Mr. Queen surrendered. ”Whose fingerprints did you find on the poisoned-cocktail glass, Chief Dakin?”
“Mrs. Haight’s. Rosemary Haight’s. Jim Haight’s. No others.”
Ellery could see them translate silently. Nora’s . . . Rosemary’s . . . Jim’s . . . no others. His own thoughts were admiring. Chief Dakin had not remained idle after they left him last night. He had taken the fingerprints of the corpse. He had found some object unmistakably Nora Haight’s, probably in her bedroom, and had taken her fingerprints. Jim Haight had been in the house all night, but Ellery was willing to make a large bet that Jim had not been disturbed, either. There were plenty of his things in the house, too . . . Very pretty. Very considerate. It disturbed Mr. Queen powerfully¯the prettiness and considerateness of Chief Dakin’s methods.