Calamity Town (32 page)

‘A box of books?' muttered Carter.

‘That box of books, Cart, had been part of Jim's luggage which he'd shipped from New York to Wrightsville when he came back to Wrightsville to make up with Nora. He'd checked it at the Wrightsville station, Cart. It was at the station all the time Jim and Nora were away on their honeymoon; it was brought to the new house only on their return, stored down in the cellar, and on Hallowe'en Pat found that box still intact, still nailed up, still unopened. That was the fact I hadn't known—the kernel fact, the acorn fact, that told me the truth.'

‘But how, Ellery?' asked Pat, feeling her head.

‘You'll see in a moment, honey. All the time, I'd assumed that the books I saw you and Nora handling were merely being transferred from the living-room bookshelves to Jim's new study upstairs. I thought they were
house books
, books of Jim's and Nora's that had been in the house for some time. It was a natural assumption—I saw no box on the living-room floor, no nails—'

‘I'd emptied the box and taken the box, nails, and tools down to the cellar just before you came in,' said Pat. ‘I told you that in the hospital that day.'

‘Too late,' growled Ellery. ‘When I came in, I saw no evidence of such a thing. And I'm no clairvoyant.'

‘But what's the point?' frowned Carter Bradford.

‘One of the books in the wooden box Patty opened that Hallowe'en,' said Ellery, ‘was Jim's copy of Edgcomb's
Toxicology
.'

Cart's jaw dropped. ‘The marked passage about arsenic!'

‘Not only that, but it was from between two pages of that volume that the three letters fell out.'

This time Cart said nothing. And Pat was looking at Ellery with deep quotation marks between her eyebrows.

‘Now, since the box had been nailed up in New York and sent to General Delivery, Wrightsville, where it was held, and the toxicology book with the letters in it was found by us directly after the box was unpacked—the letters fell out as Nora dropped an armful of books quite by accident—then the conclusion is absolutely inescapable:
Jim could not possibly have written those three letters in Wrightsville
. And when I saw that I saw the whole thing. The letters
must
have been written by Jim in New York—
before
he returned to Wrightsville to ask Nora for the second time to marry him,
before
he knew that Nora would accept him after his desertion of her and his three-year absence!'

‘Yes,' mumbled Carter Bradford.

‘But don't you see?' cried Ellery. ‘How can we now state with such fatuous certainty that the sickness and death Jim predicted for his ‘wife' in those three letters
referred to Nora?
True, Nora was Jim's wife when the letters were found,
but she was NOT his wife, nor could Jim have known she would BE his wife, when he originally wrote them!
'

He stopped and, even though it was cool in Gus Olesen's taproom, he dried his face with a handkerchief and took a long pull at his glass. At the next table, Mr Anderson snored.

Pat gasped: ‘But Ellery, if those three letters didn't refer to Nora, then the whole thing—the whole thing—'

‘Let me tell it my way,' said Mr Queen in a harsh voice. ‘Once doubt is raised that the “wife” mentioned in the three letters was Nora, then two facts that before seemed irrelevant simply shout to be noticed. One is that the letters bore
incomplete dates
. That is, they marked the month, and the day of the month,
but not the year
. So the three holidays—Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's—which Jim had written down on the successive letters as marking the dates of his “wife's” illness, more serious illness, and finally death, might have been the similar dates of one, two, or even three years before! Not 1940 at all but 1939, or 1938, or 1937…

‘And the second fact, of course, was that not once did any of the letters refer to
the name Nora;
the references were consistently to
“my wife.”

‘If Jim wrote those letters in New York—before his marriage to Nora, before he even knew Nora would marry him—then Jim could not have been writing about
Nora's
illness or
Nora's
death. And if we can't believe this—an assumption we all took for granted from the beginning of the case—then the whole structure which postulated
Nora
as Jim's intended poison victim collapses.'

‘This is incredible,' muttered Carter. ‘Incredible.'

‘I'm confused,' moaned Patty. ‘You mean—'

‘I mean,' said Mr Queen, ‘that Nora was never threatened, Nora was never in danger…
Nora was never meant to be murdered
.'

Pat shook her head violently, and groped for her glass. ‘But that opens up a whole new field of speculation!' exclaimed Carter. ‘If Nora wasn't meant to be murdered—ever, at all—'

‘What are the facts?' argued Ellery. ‘A woman did die on New Year's Eve: Rosemary Haight. When we thought Nora was the intended victim, we said Rosemary died by accident. But now that we know Nora
wasn't
the intended victim, surely it follows that Rosemary did
NOT
die by accident—
that Rosemary was meant to be murdered from the beginning?
'

‘Rosemary was meant to be murdered from the beginning,' repeated Pat slowly, as if the words were in a language she didn't understand.

‘But Queen—' protested Bradford.

‘I know, I know,' sighed Ellery ‘It raises tremendous difficulties and objections. But with Nora eliminated as the intended victim, it's the only logical explanation for the crime. So we've got to accept it as our new premise. Rosemary was
meant
to be murdered. Immediately I asked myself, Did the three letters have anything to do with Rosemary's death? Superficially, no. The letters referred to the death of Jim's wife—'

‘And Rosemary was Jim's sister,' said Pat with a frown.

‘Yes, and besides Rosemary had shown no signs of the illnesses predicted for Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. Moreover, since the three letters can now be interpreted as two or three years old or more, they no longer appear necessarily criminal. They can merely refer to the natural death of a previous wife of Jim's—not Nora, but
a first wife whom Jim married in New York
and who died there some New Year's Day between the time Jim ran out on Nora and the time he came back to marry Nora.'

‘But Jim never said anything about a first wife,' objected Pat.

‘That wouldn't prove he hadn't had one,' said Cart.

‘No,' nodded Ellery. ‘So it all might have been perfectly innocent. Except for two highly significant and suspicious factors: first, that the letters were written but never mailed, as if no death
had
occurred in New York; and second, that a woman did actually die in Wrightsville on New Year's Day of 1941, as written by Jim in his third and last letter a long time before it happened. Coincidence? My gorge rises at the very notion. No, I saw that there must be
some
connection between Rosemary's death and the three letters Jim wrote—he did write them, of course; poor Judge Eli Martin's attempt to cast doubt on their authenticity during the trial was a brave but transparent act of desperation.'

Mr Anderson woke up, looking annoyed. But Gus Olesen shook his head. Mr Anderson tottered over to the bar. ‘“Landlord,'” he leered, ‘“fill the flowing bowl until it does run over!”'

‘We don't serve in bowls, and besides, Andy, you've had enough,' said Gus reprovingly. Mr Anderson began to weep, his head on the bar; and after a few sobs, he fell asleep again.

‘What connection,' continued Mr Queen thoughtfully, ‘is possible between Rosemary Haight's death and the three letters Jim Haight wrote long, long before? And with this question,' he said, ‘we come to the heart of the problem. For with Rosemary the intended victim all along, the use of the three letters can be interpreted as a stupendous blind, a clever deception,
a psychological smoke-screen to conceal the truth from the authorities!
Isn't that what happened? Didn't you and Dakin, Bradford, instantly dismiss Rosemary's death as a factor and concentrate on Nora as the intended victim? But that was just what Rosemary's murderer would want you to do! You ignored the actual victim to look for murder motives against the ostensible victim. And so you built your case around Jim, who was the only person who could possibly have poisoned
Nora
, and never for an instant sought the real criminal—
the person with the motive and opportunity to poison Rosemary
.'

Pat was by now so bewildered that she gave herself up wholly to listening. But Carter Bradford was following with a savage intentness, hunched over the table and never taking his eyes from Ellery's face. ‘Go on!' he said. ‘Go on, Queen!'

‘Let's go back,' said Mr Queen, lighting a cigarette. ‘We now know Jim's three letters referred to a hidden, a never-mentioned, a first wife. If this woman died on New Year's Day two or three years ago, why didn't Jim mail the letters to his sister? More important than that, why didn't he disclose the fact to you or Dakin when he was arrested? Why didn't Jim tell Judge Martin, his attorney, that the letters didn't mean Nora, for use as a possible defense in his trial? For if the first wife were in all truth dead, it would have been a simple matter to corroborate—the attending physician's affidavit, the death certificate, a dozen things.
But Jim kept his mouth shut
. He didn't by so much as a sober word indicate that he'd married another woman between the time he and Nora broke up almost four years ago and the time he returned to Wrightsville to marry her. Why? Why Jim's mysterious silence on this point?'

‘Maybe,' said Pat with a shiver, ‘because he'd actually planned and carried out the murder of his first wife.'

‘Then why didn't he mail the letters to his sister?' argued Cart. ‘Since he'd presumably written them for that eventuality?'

‘Ah,' said Mr Queen. ‘The very counterpoint. So I said to myself: Is it possible that the murder Jim had planned of his first wife
did not take place at the time it was supposed to?
'

‘You mean she was alive when Jim came back to Wrightsville?' gasped Pat.

‘Not merely alive,' said Mr Queen; he slowly ground out the butt of his cigarette in an ash tray. ‘She followed Jim here.'

‘The first
wife?
' Carter gaped.

‘She came to
Wrightsville?
' cried Pat.

‘Yes, but not as Jim's first wife. Not as Jim's any-wife.'

‘Then who—?'

‘
She came to Wrightsville
,' said Ellery, ‘
as Jim's sister
.'

Mr Anderson came to life at the bar, and began: ‘Landlord—!'

‘Go home,' said Gus, shaking his head.

‘Mead! Nepenthe!' implored Mr Anderson.

‘We don't carry that stuff,' said Gus.

‘As Jim's sister,' whispered Pat. ‘The woman Jim introduced to us as his sister Rosemary
wasn't his sister at all?
She was his
wife?
'

‘Yes.' Ellery motioned to Gus Olesen. But Gus had the second round ready. Mr Anderson followed the tray with gleaming eyes. And no one spoke until Gus returned to the bar.

‘But Queen,' said Carter, dazed, ‘how in hell can you know
that?
'

‘Well, whose word have we that the woman who called herself Rosemary Haight was Jim Haight's sister?' demanded Ellery. ‘Only the word of Jim and Rosemary, and they're both dead…However, that's not how I know she was his first wife. I know that because I know who really killed her. And knowing who really killed her, it just isn't possible for Rosemary to have been Jim Haight's sister. The only person she could have been, the only person against whom the murderer had motive, was Jim's first wife; as you'll see.'

‘But Ellery,' said Pat, ‘didn't you tell me yourself that day, by comparing the woman's handwriting on Steve Polaris's trucking receipt with the handwriting on the flap of the letter Jim received from “Rosemary Haight,” that that proved the woman
was
Jim's sister?'

‘I was wrong,' said Mr Queen, frowning. ‘I was stupidly wrong. All that the two signatures proved, really, was that
the same woman had written them both
. That meant only that the woman who showed up here was the same woman who wrote Jim that letter which disturbed him so. I was misled by the fact that on the envelope she had signed the name “Rosemary Haight.” Well, she was just using that name. I was wrong, I was stupid, and you should have caught me up, Patty. Let's drink!'

‘But if the woman who was poisoned New Year's Eve was Jim's first wife,' protested Carter, ‘why didn't Jim's real sister come forward after the murder? Lord knows the case had enough publicity!'

‘If he had a sister,' mumbled Patty. ‘If he had one!'

‘Oh, he had a sister,' said Ellery wearily. ‘Otherwise, why should he have written those letters to one? When he originally penned them, in planning the murder of his then-wife—the murder he didn't pull off—he expected those letters to give him an appearance of innocence. He expected to send them to his real sister, Rosemary Haight. It would have to be a genuine sister to stand the searchlight of a murder investigation, or he'd really be in a mess. So Jim had a sister, all right.'

‘But the papers!' said Pat. ‘Cart's right, Ellery. The papers were full of news about “Rosemary Haight, sister of James Haight,” and how she
died
here in Wrightsville. If Jim had a real sister Rosemary, surely she'd have come lickety-split to Wrightsville to expose the mistake?'

‘Not necessarily. But the fact is—Jim's sister
did
come to Wrightsville, Patty. Whether she came to expose the mistake I can't say; but certainly, after she'd had a talk with her brother Jim, she decided to say nothing about her true identity. I suppose Jim made her promise to keep quiet. And she'd kept that promise.'