Calamity Town (29 page)

‘You talk about coincidence,' said Pat shrilly. ‘All right, call it that. I don't care what you call it. Coincidence, or fate, or just rotten luck. But if Nora hadn't accidentally dropped those books we were moving that Hallowe'en, the three letters wouldn't have tumbled out and they'd probably be in the book still.'

Mr Queen was about to point out that the peril to Nora had lain not in the letters but in their author; but again a spark leaped, and died, and so he held his tongue.

‘For that matter,' Pat sighed, ‘if the most trivial thing had happened differently that day, maybe none of this would have come about. If Nora and I hadn't decided to fix up Jim's new study—if we hadn't opened that box of books!'

‘
Box
of books?' said Ellery blankly.

‘I brought the crate up myself from the cellar, where Ed Hotchkiss had put it when he cabbed Jim's stuff over from the railroad station after Jim and Nora got back from their honeymoon. Suppose I hadn't opened that box with a hammer and screwdriver? Suppose I hadn't been able to
find
a screwdriver? Or suppose I'd waited a week, a day, even another hour…Ellery, what's the matter?'

For Mr Queen was standing over her like the judgment of the Lord, a terrible wrath on his face, and Patty was so alarmed she shrank back against the window. ‘Do you mean to sit there and tell me,' said Mr Queen in an awful quietude, ‘that those books—the armful of books Nora dropped—those books were
not
the books usually standing on the living-room shelves?' He shook her, and she winced at the pressure of his fingers on her shoulder. ‘Pat, answer me! You and Nora weren't merely transferring books from the living-room bookshelves to the new shelves in Jim's study upstairs? You're
sure
the books came from that box in the cellar?'

‘Of course I'm sure,' said Pat shakily. ‘What's the matter with you? A nailed box. I opened it myself. Why, just a few minutes before you came in that evening I'd lugged the empty wooden box back to the cellar, with the tools and wrapping paper and mess of bent nails—'

‘It's…fantastic,' said Ellery. One hand groped for the rocker near Pat. He sat down, heavily.

Pat was bewildered. ‘But I don't get it, Ellery. Why all the dramatics? What difference can it make?'

Mr Queen did not answer at once. He just sat there, pale, and growing perceptibly paler, nibbling his nails. And the fine lines about his mouth deepened and became hard, and there appeared in his silvery eyes a baffled something that he concealed very quickly—almost as quickly as it showed itself. ‘What difference?' He licked his lips.

‘Ellery!' Pat was shaking
him
now. ‘Don't act so mysterious! What's wrong? Tell me!'

‘Wait a minute.' She stared at him, and waited. He just sat. Then he muttered: ‘If I'd only
known
. But I couldn't have…Fate. The fate that brought me into that room five minutes late. The fate that kept you from telling me all these months. The fate that concealed the essential fact!'

‘But Ellery—'

‘Dr Willoughby!'

They ran across the waiting room. Dr Willoughby had just blundered in. He was in his surgical gown and cap, his face mask around his throat like a scarf. There was blood on his gown, and none in his cheeks.

‘Milo?' quavered Hermione. ‘Well, well?' croaked John F. ‘For God's sake, Doc!' cried Lola. Pat rushed up to grab the old man's thick arm.

‘Well,' said Dr Willoughby in a hoarse voice, and he stopped. Then he smiled the saddest smile and put his arm around Hermy's shoulder, quite dwarfing her. ‘Nora's given you a real Easter present…Grandma.'

‘Grandma,' whispered Hermy.

‘The baby!' cried Pat. ‘It's all
right?
'

‘Fine, fine, Patricia. A perfect little baby girl. Oh, she's very tiny—she'll need the incubator—but with proper care she'll be all right in a few weeks.'

‘But Nora,' panted Hermy. ‘My Nora.'

‘How is Nora, Milo?' demanded John F.

‘Is she out of it?' Lola asked.

‘Does she know?' cried Pat. ‘Oh. Nor must be so happy!'

Dr Willoughby glanced down at his gown, began to fumble at the spot where Nora's blood had splattered. ‘Damn it all,' he said. His lips were quivering. Hermione screamed.

‘Gropper and I—we did all we could. We couldn't help it. We worked over her like beavers. But she was carrying too big a load. John, don't look at me that way…' The doctor waved his arms wildly.

‘Milo—' began John F. in a faint voice.

‘She's dead, that's all!'

He ran out of the waiting room.

Part Six

28

The Tragedy on Twin Hill

He was looking at the old elms before the new Courthouse. The old was being reborn in multitudes of little green teeth on brown gums of branches; and the new already showed weather streaks in its granite, like varicose veins. There is sadness, too, in spring, thought Mr Ellery Queen. He stepped into the cool shadows of the Courthouse lobby and was borne aloft.

‘No time for visitors to be visitin',' said Wally Planetsky sternly. Then he said: ‘Oh. You're that friend of Patty Wright's. It's a hell of a way to be spendin' the Easter Sunday, Mr Queen.'

‘How true,' said Mr Queen. The keeper unlocked an iron door, and they trudged together into the jail. ‘How is he?'

‘Never saw such a man for keepin' his trap shut. You'd think he'd taken a vow.'

‘Perhaps,' sighed Mr Queen, ‘he has…Anyone been in today to see him?'

‘Just that newspaper woman, Miss Roberts.' Planetsky unlocked another door, locked it carefully behind them.

‘Is there a doctor about?' asked Ellery unexpectedly.

Planetsky scratched his ear and opined that if Mr Queen was feelin' sick…

‘Is there?'

‘Well, sure. We got an infirmary here. Young Ed Crosby—that's Ivor Crosby the farmer's son—he's on duty right now.'

‘Tell Dr Crosby I may need him in a very little while.'

The keeper looked Ellery over suspiciously, shrugged, unlocked the cell door, locked it again, and shuffled away. Jim was lying on his bunk, hands crossed behind his head, examining the graph of sky blue beyond the bars. He had shaved, Ellery noted; his clean shirt was open at the throat; he seemed at peace.

‘Jim?'

Jim turned his head. ‘Oh, hello, there,' he said. ‘Happy Easter.'

‘Jim—' began Ellery again, frowning.

Jim swung his feet to the concrete floor and sat up to grip the edge of his bunk with both hands. No peace now. Fear. And that was strange…No, logical! When you came to think of it. When you
knew
. ‘Something's wrong,' said Jim. He jumped to his feet. ‘Something's wrong!'

Ellery grimaced. This was the punishment for trespassing. This was the pain reserved for meddlers. ‘I'm all for you, Jim—'

‘What is it?' Jim made a fist.

‘You've got a great deal of courage, Jim—'

Jim stared. ‘She's…It's Nora.'

‘Jim, Nora's dead.' Jim stared, his mouth open. ‘I've just come from the hospital. The baby is all right. A girl. Premature delivery. Instruments. Nora was too weak. She didn't come out of it. No pain. She just died, Jim.'

Jim's lips came together. He turned around and went back to his bunk and turned around again and sat down, his hands reaching the bunk before he reached it.

‘Naturally the family…John F. asked me to tell you, Jim. They're all home now, taking care of Hermione. John F. said to tell you he's terribly sorry, Jim.'

Stupid, thought Ellery. A stupid speech. But then he was usually the observer, not a participant. How did one go about drawing the agony out of a stab to the heart? Killing without hurting—for as much as a second? It was a branch of the art of violence with which Mr Queen was unacquainted. He sat helplessly on the contraption which concealed Wright County's arrangement for the physical welfare of its prisoners, and thought of symbolism. ‘If there's anything I can do—'

That wasn't merely stupid, thought Ellery angrily; that was vicious. Anything he could do! Knowing what was going on in Jim's mind! Ellery got up and said: ‘Now Jim. Now wait a minute, Jim—'

But Jim was at the bars like a great monkey, gripping two of them, his thin face pressed as hard between two adjacent ones as if he meant to force his head through and drag his body after it. ‘Let me out of here!' he kept shouting. ‘Let me out of here! Damn all of you! I've got to get to Nora! Let me out of here!' He panted and strained, his teeth digging into his lower lip and his eyes hot and his temples bulging with vessels. ‘Let me out of here!' he screamed. A white froth sprang up at the corners of his mouth.

When Dr Crosby arrived with a black bag and a shaking Keeper Planetsky to open the door for him, Jim Haight was flat on his back on the floor and Mr Queen knelt on Jim's chest holding Jim's arms down, hard, and yet gently, too. Jim was still screaming, but the words made no sense. Dr Crosby took one look and grabbed a hypodermic.

Twin Hill is a pleasant place in the spring. There's Bald Mountain off to the north, almost always wearing a white cap on its green shoulders, like some remote Friar Tuck; there's the woods part in the gulley of the Twins, where boys go hunting woodchuck and jack rabbit and occasionally scare up a wild deer; and there are the Twins themselves, two identical humps of hill all densely populated with the dead.

The east Twin has the newer cemeteries—the Poor Farm burial ground pretty far down, in the scrub, the old Jewish cemetery, and the Catholic cemetery; these are ‘new' because not a headstone in the lot bears a date earlier than 1805.

But the west Twin has the really old cemeteries of the Protestant denominations, and there you can see, at the very bald spot of the west Twin, the family plot of the Wrights, the first Wright tomb—Jezreel Wright's—in its mathematical center. Of course, the Founder's grave is not exposed to the elements—the wind off Bald Mountain does things to grass and topsoil. John F.'s grandfather had built a large mausoleum over the grave—handsome it is, too, finest Vermont granite, white as Patty Wright's teeth. But inside there's the original grave with its little stick of headstone, and if you look sharp you can still make out the scratches on the stone—the Founder's name, a hopeful quotation from the Book of Revelation, and the date 1723.

The Wright family plot hogs pretty nearly the whole top of the west Twin. The Founder, who seems to have had a nice judgment in all business matters, staked out enough dead land for his seed and his seed's seed to last for eternity. As if he had faith that the Wrights would live and die in Wrightsville unto Judgment Day. The rest of the cemetery, and the other burial grounds, simply took what was left. And that was all right with everyone, for after all didn't the Founder found? Besides, it made a sort of show place. Wrightsvillians were forever hauling outlanders up to Twin Hill, halfway to Slocum Township, to exhibit the Founder's grave and the Wright plot. It was one of the ‘sights.'

The automobile road ended at the gate of the cemetery, not far from the boundary of the Wright family plot. From the gate you walked—a peaceful walk under trees so old you wondered they didn't lie down and ask to be buried themselves out of plain weariness. But they just kept growing old and droopier. Except in spring. Then the green hair began sprouting from their hard black skins with a sly fertility, as if death were a great joke. Maybe the graves so lush and thick all over the hillside had something to do with it.

Services for Nora—on Tuesday, April the fifteenth—were private. Dr Doolittle uttered a few words in the chapel of Willis Stone's Eternal Rest Mortuary, on Upper Whistling Avenue in High Village. Only the family and a few friends were present—Mr Queen, Judge and Clarice Martin, Dr Willoughby, and some of John F.'s people from the bank. Frank Lloyd was seen skulking about the edge of the group, straining for a glimpse of the pure still profile in the copper casket. He looked as if he had not taken his clothes off for a week, or slept during that time. When Hermy's eye rested on him, he shrank and disappeared…Perhaps twenty mourners in all.

Hermy was fine. She sat up straight in her new black, eyes steady, listening to Dr Doolittle; and when they all filed past the bier for a last look at Nora, she merely grew a little paler, and blinked. She didn't cry. Pat said it was because she was all cried out. John F. was a crumpled, red-nosed little derelict. Lola had to take him by the hand and lead him away from the casket to let Mr Stone put the head section in place. Nora had looked very calm and young. She was dressed in her wedding gown. Just before they went out to the funeral cars, Pat slipped into Mr Stone's office. When she came back she said: ‘I just called the hospital. Baby's fine. She's growing in that incubator like a little vegetable.' Pat's lips danced, and Mr Queen put his arm about her.

Looking back on it, Ellery saw the finer points of Jim's psychology. But that was after the event. Beforehand it was impossible to tell, because Jim acted his part perfectly. He fooled them all, including Ellery.

Jim came to the cemetery between two detectives, like an animated sandwich. He was ‘all right.' Very little different from the Jim who had sat in the courtroom—altogether different from the Jim Ellery had sat upon in the cell. There was a whole despair about him so enveloping that he had poise, and self-control, even dignity. He marched along steadily between his two guards, ignoring them, looking neither to right nor to left, on the path under the aged trees up to the top of the hill where the newly turned earth gaped, like a wound, to receive Nora. The cars had been left near the gate.

Most of Wrightsville watched from a decent distance—let us give them that. But they were there, silent and curious; only occasionally someone whispered, or a forefinger told a story.