Calamity Town

by Ellery Queen

  “But the facts, Nora¯” said Ellery wearily.

  “Oh, the facts!” She took her hands away; her wet eyes were blazing.

  “What do I care about the facts? A woman knows. There’s something so horribly wrong you can’t make sense out of it. I don’t know who tried to poison me three times, but I do know it wasn’t Jim!”

  “And the three letters, Nora? The letters in Jim’s handwriting announcing your illness, your . . . death?”

  “He didn’t write them!”

  “But Nora darling,” said Pat, “Jim’s handwriting¯”

  “Forged.” Nora was panting now. ”Haven’t you ever heard of forgery? They were forged!”

  “And the threat against you we heard him make, that day I told you about, when he was drunk?” asked Ellery.

  “He wasn’t responsible!”

  No tears now. She was fighting. Ellery went over the whole damning case with her; she fought back. Not with counter-facts. With faith. With an adamant, frightening faith. And at the end Ellery was arguing with two women, and he had no ally.

  “But you don’t reason¯” he exploded, throwing up his hands. Then he smiled. ”What do you want me to do? I’m softheaded, but I’ll do it.”

  “Don’t say anything about these things to the police!”

  “All right, I won’t.”

  Nora sank back, closing her eyes.

  Pat kissed her and then signaled to Ellery.

  But Ellery shook his head. ”I know you’re pretty well pooped, Nora,” he said kindly, “but as long as I’m becoming an accessory, I’m entitled to your full confidence.”

  “Anything,” said Nora tiredly.

  “Why did Jim run out on you that first time? Three years ago, just before you were to be married, when Jim left Wrightsville?”

  Pat looked at her sister anxiously.

  “That.” Nora was surprised. ”That wasn’t anything. It couldn’t have anything to do¯”

  “Nevertheless, I’d like to know.”

  “You’d have to know Jim. When we met and fell in love and all, I didn’t realize just how independent Jim was. I didn’t see anything wrong in-well, accepting help from Father until Jim got on his feet. We’d argue about it for hours. Jim kept saying he wanted me to live on his cashier’s salary.”

  “I remember those battles,” murmured Pat, “but I didn’t dream they were so¯”

  “I didn’t take them seriously enough, either. When Mother told me Father was putting up the little house and furnishing it for us as a wedding gift, I thought I’d keep it a surprise for Jim. So I didn’t tell him until the day before the wedding. He got furious.”

  “I see.”

  “He said he’d already rented a cottage on the other side of town for fifty dollars a month¯it was all we’d be able to afford, he said; we’d just have to learn to live on what he earned.” Nora sighed. ”I suppose I lost my temper, too. We . . . had a fight. A bad one. And then Jim ran away. That’s all.” She looked up. ”That’s really all. I never told Father or Mother or anyone about it. Having Jim run out on me just because of a thing like that¯”

  “Jim never wrote to you?”

  “Not once. And I . . . thought I’d die. The whole town was talking . . . Then Jim came back, and we both admitted what fools we’d been, and here we are.”

  So from the very first it had been the house, thought Ellery. Queer! Wherever he turned in this case, the house was there. Calamity House . . . Ellery began to feel that the reporter who had invented the phrase was gifted with second sight.

  “And these quarrels you and Jim have been having since your marriage?”

  Nora winced. ”Money. He’s been asking for money. And my cameo, and other things . . . But that’s just temporary,” she said quickly. ”He’s been gambling at that roadhouse on Route 16¯1 suppose every man goes through a phase like that¯”

  “Nora, what can you tell me about Rosemary Haight?”

  “Not a thing. I know she’s dead, and it sounds an awful thing to say, but . . . I didn’t like her. At all.”

  “Amen,” said Patty grimly.

  “Can’t say I was smitten myself,” murmured Ellery. ”But I mean¯do you know anything about her that might tie her in with . . . well, the letters, Jim’s conduct, the whole puzzle?”

  Nora said tightly: “Jim wouldn’t talk about her. But I know what I felt. She was no good, Ellery. I don’t see how she ever came to be Jim’s sister.”

  “Well, she was,” said Ellery briskly, “and you’re tired, Nora. Thanks. You’d have been wholly justified in telling me to mind my own business about all this.”

  Nora squeezed his hand, and he left as Pat went into the bathroom to wet a towel for her sister’s head.

  Nothing. Utter nothing. And tomorrow the inquest!

  Chapter 16

  The Aramean

  Coroner Salemson was nervous about the whole thing. Any audience more numerous than three paralyzed his vocal cords; and it is a matter of public record that the only time the Coroner opened his mouth at Town Meeting except for breathing purposes¯he had asthma¯was one year when J. C. Pettigrew reared up and demanded to know why the office of Coroner shouldn’t be voted out of existence¯Chic Salemson hadn’t had a corpus to justify his salary in his nine years’ tenure. And then all the Coroner could stammer was: “But suppose!”

  And so now, at last, there was a corpus.

  But a corpus meant an inquest, and that meant the Coroner had to sit up there in Judge Martin’s court (borrowed from the County for the occasion) and preside; and that meant talk, and lots of it, before hundreds of glittering Wrightsville eyes¯not to mention the eyes of Chief Dakin and Prosecutor Bradford and County Sheriff Gilfant and Lord knows who.

  To make matters worse, there was John F. Wright. To think of the exalted Name linked nastily with a murder weakened the Coroner’s knees; John F. was his household god.

  So as Coroner Salemson rapped feebly for order in the jammed courtroom, he was a nervous, miserable, and desperate man. And all through the selection of the Coroner’s Jury he became more nervous, and more miserable, and more desperate, until finally his nervousness and misery were swallowed by his desperation, and he saw what he must do to cut his ordeal short and save¯if saving was possible¯the honor of the Wright name.

  To say that the old Coroner sabotaged the testimony deliberately would be unjust to the best horseshoe pitcher in Wright County. No, it was just that from the first the Coroner was convinced no one named Wright, or connected with anyone named Wright, could possibly have had the least pink or brownish stain on his conscience. So obviously it was either all a monstrous mistake, or the poor woman committed suicide or something, and strike this out, and that’s just supposing . . . and the result was that, to the disgust of Dakin, the relief of the Wrights, the sad amusement of Mr. Ellery Queen and¯above all¯the disappointment of Wrightsville, the confused Coroner’s jury brought in a harmless verdict of “death at the hands of person or persons unknown” after several days of altercation, heat, and gavel breaking.

  Chief Dakin and Prosecutor Bradford immediately retired to Bradford’s office for another conference, the Wrights sped home thankfully, and Coroner Salemson fled to his twelve-room ancestral home in the Junction, where he locked himself in with trembling hands and got drunk on an old bottle of gooseberry wine left over from his orphaned niece Eppie’s wedding to old man Simpson’s son Zachariah in 1934.

  Gently, gently, into one neat six-foot hole in the ground.

  What’s her name? Rosalie? Rose-Marie?

  They say she was a glamour girl. The one they’re burying¯the one Jim Haight poisoned by mistake¯his sister . . . Who says Jim Haight . . . ? Why, it was right there in the Record only yesterday! Didn’t you read it? Frank Lloyd didn’t say so, just like that; but you know if you read between the lines . . . Sure, Frank’s sore. Sweet on Nora Wright, Frank was, and Jim Haight cut him out. Never did like Haight. Kind of cold proposition¯couldn’t look you in the eye
, ‘pears to me . . . So he was the one, huh? Why don’t they arrest him?

  That’s what I’d like to know!

  Ashes to ashes . . .

  Think there’s dirty work going on?

  Wouldn’t be bowled over! Cart Bradford and that Patricia Wright started necking years ago. That’s Haight’s sister-in-law.

  Aaah, the rich always get away with murder.

  Nobody’s getting away with murder in Wrightsville! Not if we have to take the law¯

  Gently, gently . . .

  Rosemary Haight was buried in East Twin Hill Cemetery, not (people were quick to remark) in West Twin Hill Cemetery, where the Wrights had interred their dead for two hundred-odd years. The transaction was negotiated by John Fowler Wright, acting for his son-in-law James Haight, and Peter Callendar, sales manager of the Twin Hill Eternity Estates, Inc., selling price sixty dollars. John F. handed Jim the deed to the grave in silence as they drove back from the funeral.

  The next morning Mr. Queen, rising early for purposes of his own, saw the words “Wife Killer” printed in red school chalk on the sidewalk before Calamity House.

  He erased them.

  * * *

  “Morning,” said Myron Garback of the High Village Pharmacy.

  “Morning, Mr. Garback,” said Mr. Queen, frowning. ”I’ve got a problem. I’ve rented a house; and there’s a small greenhouse in the garden¯found vegetables growing there, by George! In January!”

  “Yes?” said Myron blankly.

  “Well, now, I’m mighty fond of homegrown tomatoes; and there’s a fine tomato plant or two in my greenhouse, only the plant’s overrun with some kind of round little bug¯”

  “Mmmm. Yellowish?”

  “That’s right. With black stripes on their wings. At least,” said Mr. Queen helplessly, “I think they’re black.”

  “Eating the leaves, are they?”

  “That’s just what the pests are doing, Mr. Garback!”

  Myron smiled indulgently. ”Doryphora decemlineata. Pardon me. I like to show off my Latin. Sometimes known as the potato beetle, more commonly called potato bug.”

  “So that’s all they are,” said Mr. Queen with disappointment. ”Potato bugs! Dory¯what?”

  Myron waved his hand. ”It doesn’t matter. I suppose you’ll want something to discourage them, eh?”

  “Permanently,” said Mr. Queen with a murderous scowl.

  Myron bustled off and returned with a small tin carton, which he began to wrap in the High Village Pharmacy’s distinctive pink-striped wrapping paper. ”This’11 do the trick!”

  “What’s in it that discourages them?” asked Mr. Queen.

  “Arsenic¯arsenious oxid. About fifty percent. Technically . . . ” Myron paused. ”I mean, strictly speaking, it’s copper aceto-arsenite in this preparation, but it’s the arsenic that slaughters ‘em.” He tied the package, and Mr. Queen handed him a five-dollar bill. Myron turned to the cash register. ”Want to be careful with that stuff, of course. It’s poisonous.”

  “I certainly hope so!” exclaimed Mr. Queen.

  “And five,” said Myron. ”Thank you. Call again.”

  “Arsenic, arsenic,” said Mr. Queen loquaciously. ”Say, isn’t that the stuff I was reading about in the Record? I mean that murder case? Some woman swallowed it in a cocktail at a New Year’s Eve party?”

  “Yes,” said the pharmacist. He gave Ellery a sharp look and turned away, presenting his graying nape and heavy shoulders to his customer.

  “Wonder where they got it,” said Mr. Queen nosily, leaning on the counter again. ”You’d need a prescription, wouldn’t you, from a doctor?”

  “Not necessarily.” It seemed to Ellery that Pharmacist Garback’s voice took on an edge. ”You didn’t need one just now! There’s arsenic in a lot of commercial preparations.” He fussed with some cartons on the shaving-preparations shelf.

  “But if a druggist did sell a person arsenic without a prescription¯”

  Myron Garback turned about hotly. ”They won’t find anything wrong with my records! That’s what I told Dakin, and the only way Mr. Haight could have got it would have been when he bought¯”

  “Yes?” asked Ellery, breathing not at all.

  Myron bit his lip. ”Excuse me, sir,” he said. ”I really mustn’t talk about it.” Then he looked startled. ”Wait a minute!” he exclaimed. ”Aren’t you the man who¯?”

  “No, indeed,” said Mr. Queen hastily. ”Good morning!” And he hurried out.

  So it had been Garback’s pharmacy. A something. A trail. And Dakin had picked it up. Quietly. They were working on Jim Haight¯quietly.

  * * *

  Ellery struck out across the slippery cobbles of the Square toward the bus stop near the Hollis Hotel. An iced wind was whistling, and he put up his overcoat collar and half-turned to protect his face. As he turned, he noticed a car pull into a parking space on the other side of the Square. The tall figure of Jim Haight got out and strode quickly toward the Wrightsville National Bank.

  Five small boys with strapped books swinging over their shoulders spied Jim and began to troop after him.

  Ellery stopped, fascinated.

  They were evidently jeering Jim, because Jim stopped, turned, and said something to them with an angry gesture. The boys backed off, and Jim turned away.

  Ellery shouted.

  One of the boys had picked up a stone.

  He threw it, hard.

  Jim went down on his face.

  Ellery began to run across the Square. But others had seen the attack; and by the time he reached the other side of the Square, Jim was surrounded by a crowd. The boys had vanished.

  “Let me through, please!”

  Jim was dazed. His hat had fallen off. Blood oozed from a dark stain on his sandy hair.

  “Poisoner!” said a fat woman. ”That’s him¯that’s the poisoner!”

  “Wife killer!”

  “Why don’t they arrest him?”

  “What kind of law have we got in this town, anyway?”

  “He ought to be strung up!”

  A small dark man kicked Jim’s hat. A woman with doughy cheeks jumped at Jim, screaming.

  “Stop that!” growled Ellery. He cuffed the small man aside, stepped between the woman and Jim, and said hastily: “Out of this, Jim. Come on!”

  “What hit me?” asked Jim. His eyes were glassy. ”My head¯”

  “Lynch the dirty bastard!”

  “Who’s the other one?”

  “Get him, too!”

  Ellery found himself, absurdly, fighting for his life with a group of blood-maddened savages who were dressed like ordinary people.

  As he struck back, he was thinking: This is what comes of meddling. Get out of this town. It’s no good.

  Using his elbows, his feet, the heels of his hands, and occasionally a fist, he maneuvered the screeching crowd with him toward the bank building.

  “Hit back, Jim!” he shouted. ”Defend yourself!”

  But Jim’s hands remained at his sides. One sleeve of his overcoat had disappeared. A rivulet of blood coursed down a cheek. He let himself be pushed, poked, punched, scratched, kicked.

  Then a one-woman Panzer division struck the crowd from the direction of the curb. Ellery grinned painfully over a swollen lip. Hatless, white-mittened, fighting mad.

  “You cannibals! Let ‘em alone!” Pat screamed.

  “Ouch!”

  “Serves you right, Hosy Malloy! And you¯Mrs. Landsman! Aren’t you ashamed? And you drunken old witch, you¯Yes, I mean you, Julie Asturio! Stop it! Stop it, I say.”

  “Attaboy, Patsy!” shouted a man from the edge of the crowd. ”Break it up, folks¯come on, that’s no way to carry on!”

  Pat burst through to the struggling men. At the same moment Buzz Congress, the bank “special,” ran out and hit the crowd with himself. Since Buzz weighed two hundred and fifteen pounds, it was a considerable blow; people squawked and scattered, and between them Ellery and Pat got Jim into the bank.


  Old John F. ran by them and breasted the crowd, his gray hair whipping in the wind.

  “Go home, you lunatics!” roared John F. ”Or I’ll sail into you myself!”

  Someone laughed, someone groaned, and then, with a sort of outgoing-tidal shame, the mob ebbed away. Ellery, helping Pat with Jim, saw through the glass doors, at the curb, the big silent figure of Frank Lloyd.

  There was a bitter twist to the newspaper publisher’s mouth. When he saw Ellery watching him, he grinned without mirth, as if to say: “Remember what I told you about this town?” and lumbered off across the Square.

  * * *

  Pat and Ellery drove Jim back to the little house on the Hill. They found Dr. Willoughby waiting for them¯John F. had phoned him from the bank.

  “Some nasty scratches,” said Dr. Willoughby, “a few ugly bruises, and that’s a deep scalp wound; but he’ll be all right.”

  “How about Mr. Smith, Uncle Milo?” asked Pat anxiously. ”He looks like a fugitive from a meat grinder, too!”

  “Now, now, I’m perfectly fine,” protested Ellery.

  But Dr. Willoughby fixed up Ellery, too.

  When the doctor had gone, Ellery undressed Jim, and Pat helped get him into bed. He immediately turned over on his side, resting his bandaged head on a limp hand, and closed his eyes.

  They watched him for a moment and then tiptoed from the room.

  “He didn’t say a word,” moaned Pat. ”Not one word. All through the whole thing . . . He’s like that man out of the Bible!”

  “Job,” said Ellery soberly. ”The silent, suffering Aramean. Well, your Aramean had better stay away from town from now on!”

  After that day, Jim stopped going to the bank.

  Chapter 17

  America Discovers Wrightsville

  The activities of Mr. Ellery Queen during the trying month between January and February were circumambient. For, no matter in how straight a line he started, he invariably finished by finding himself back in the same place . . . and, moreover, with the realization that Chief Dakin and Prosecutor Bradford had been there before him. Quietly, quietly.