Calamity Town (12 page)

It was fifteen minutes to midnight when Rosemary waved a dramatic arm and commanded: ‘Jim! 'Nother drink!'

Jim said pleasantly: ‘Don't you think you've had enough, Rosemary?' Surprisingly, Jim had drunk very little himself.

Rosemary scowled. ‘Get me one, killjoy!' Jim shrugged and made for the kitchen, followed by the Judge's admonition to ‘mix up a mess of 'em, boy!' and Clarice Martin's giggle.

There was a door from the hall to the kitchen, and an archway from the kitchen to the butler's pantry; there was a dining-room door to the butler's pantry, too. Mr Ellery Queen stopped at the hall door to light a cigarette. It was half-open; he could see into the kitchen, and into the butler's pantry. Jim moved about the pantry, whistling softly as he got busy with the rye and vermouth. He had just finished filling a fresh batch of glasses with Manhattans and was reaching for the bottle of maraschino cherries when someone knocked on the back door of the kitchen. Ellery became tense; but he resisted the temptation to take his eyes off Jim's hands.

Jim left the cocktails and went to the door. ‘Lola! I thought Nora said—'

‘Jim.' Lola sounded in a hurry. ‘I had to see you—'

‘Me?' Jim seemed puzzled. ‘But Lo—'

Lola pitched her voice low; Ellery was unable to make out the words. Jim's body blocked Lola out; whatever was happening, it took only a few moments, for suddenly Lola was gone and Jim had closed the back door, crossing the kitchen a little abstractedly to return to the pantry. He plopped a cherry into each glass.

Ellery said: ‘More fixin's, Jim?' as Jim came through to the hall carrying the tray of full glasses carefully. Jim grinned, and they went into the living room together to be greeted by jubilant shouts.

‘It's almost midnight,' said Jim cheerfully. ‘Here's a drink for everyone to toast the New Year in.' And he went about the room with the tray, everyone taking a glass.

‘Come on, Nora,' said Jim. ‘One won't hurt you, and New Year's Eve doesn't come every night!'

‘But Jim, do you really think—'

‘Take this one.' He handed her one of the glasses.

‘I don't know, Jim—' began Nora doubtfully. Then she took it from him, laughing.

‘Now you be careful, Nora,' warned Hermy. ‘You know you haven't been well. Ooh! I'm
dizzy
.'

‘Souse,' said John F. gallantly, kissing Hermy's hand. She slapped him playfully.

‘Oh, one sip won't hurt me, Mother,' protested Nora.

‘Hold it!' yelled Judge Martin. ‘Here's the ol' New Year rolling in right now. Yip-ee!' And the old jurist's shout was drowned in a flood of horns and bells and noise makers coming out of the radio.

‘To the New Year!' roared John F., and they all drank, even Aunt Tabitha, Nora dutifully taking a sip and making a face, at which Jim howled with laughter and kissed her.

That was the signal for everybody to kiss everybody else, and Mr Queen, struggling to keep everything in view, found himself seized from behind by a pair of warm arms. ‘Happy New Year,' whispered Pat; and she turned him around and kissed him on the lips. For an instant the room, dim with candlelight, swam; then Mr Queen grinned and stooped for another; but Pat was snatched from his arms by Doc Willoughby, who growled: ‘How about me?' and Ellery found himself foolishly pecking the air.

‘More!' shrieked Rosemary. ‘
Nother drink!
Let's all get stinking—what the hell!' And she waved her empty glass coyly at Judge Martin. The Judge gave her a queer glance and put his arm around Clarice. Frank Lloyd drank two cocktails quickly. Jim said he had to go down to the cellar for another bottle of rye—he was all ‘out' upstairs here.

‘Where's my drink?' insisted Rosemary. ‘What kinda joint is this? New Year's an' no drinks!' She was angry. ‘Who's got a drink?' Nora was passing her, on her way to the radio. ‘Hey! Nora!
You
got a drink…!'

‘But Rosemary, I've drunk from it—'

‘I wanna drink!'

Nora made a face and gave her unfinished cocktail to Rosemary, who tossed it down like a veteran and staggered over to the sofa, where she collapsed with a silly laugh. A moment later she was fast asleep.

‘She
snores
,' said Frank Lloyd gravely. ‘The beaushous lady snores,' and he and John F. covered Rosemary with newspapers, all but her face; and then John F. recited ‘Horatius at the Bridge' with no audience whatever, until Tabitha, who was a little flushed herself, called him another old fool; whereupon John F. seized his sister and waltzed her strenuously about the room to the uncoöperative strains of a rumba. Everybody agreed that everybody was a little tight, and wasn't the new year
wonderful?
All but Mr Ellery Queen, who was again lingering at the hall door to the kitchen watching Jim Haight make cocktails.

At thirty-five minutes past midnight there was one strange cry from the living room and then an even stranger silence. 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

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 DuPré'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 hat 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.