QED (18 page)

The Inspector stared. “You're kidding, Henry.”

The pharmacist shook his head. “I wish I were, Inspector.”

“But
murder
? All right, they're not your children. But the twins aren't delinquents, and no matter what a shrew Alvin's wife is, Alvin himself is a hard-working boy—”

“If you're right about this, Henry,” Ellery said, “there's a simple way to discourage murder for profit. I take it you have a will, and that Alice, Albert, and Alvin get everything?”

“Of course.”

“Then simply write a new will cutting them out. No profit, no danger, period.”

Old Brubuck shook his head. “I can't do that, Ellery. I promised their mother on her deathbed that they'd inherit. Most of what I have she left me. Her children are entitled to it when I die.”

“Drat it, Henry,” the Inspector said testily, “if you're so sure they're out to kill you, give them the money now.”

“I can't. It would bankrupt me. I'd even lose my drugstore.” Brubuck laughed bitterly. “I'm losing my mind, too! I clean forgot to take my last dose of antibiotic. Ellery, could I have a little water?”

While Ellery went for some, the Inspector said, “Blast it all, Henry, I'm afraid there's nothing I can do
before
a crime is committed. That's the law.”

“Besides which, Henry, you're holding something back,” Ellery said as he returned with a glass of water. “I know you wouldn't dream up a murder plot merely on what you've told us. There's something more definite, isn't there?”

“I can't believe it yet,” Brubuck nodded miserably. He fished a yellow-and-red capsule out of his little white box without even looking at it, and swallowed it with a sip of water. “But the fact is, some poison's been taken from a pharmaceutical cabinet in my back room.”

The druggist named the poison, and the Queens exchanged grave glances; it was lethal in very small quantities, and it brought death on the gallop.

“I know it was stolen some time during the past thirty-six hours,” Brubuck continued. “I even know which one of my stepchildren stole it, though I can't prove it.”

“Why didn't you tell us this before?” the Inspector exploded. “Which one of them stole it?”

The pharmacist said with sudden difficulty, “It … was … Al—” and stopped with a gasp.

He began to choke and claw the air. An inhuman change came over his face. His body convulsed. His knees collapsed. Then, incredibly, he was spread out on the Queens' floor like a bludgeoned beef.

“
Dead
.” The Inspector, ghastly pale, looked up from the pharmacist's corpse. “Murdered in front of our eyes! Do you smell the poison, son?”

“It was in that capsule he just swallowed.” Ellery snatched the white box from the quiet hand and opened it. It was empty. “It was his last dose, all right,” he said wildly. “Why didn't I realize—?”

“Killed him as soon as the capsule dissolved.” Inspector Queen was still dazed. “One of the three filled an empty capsule with the poison and managed to substitute it for the last antibiotic capsule in Henry's box. If he'd only lived long enough to finish the name …”

“Maybe,” Ellery said suddenly, “it doesn't matter.”

“But, son, all he got to say was ‘Al—.' He could have meant Al
ice
or Al
bert
or Al
vin
. That's only half a clue—the useless half!”

“Half a clue, dad, is better than none.”

The Inspector shot erect. “Ellery Queen, do you mean to stand here and say that Henry Brubuck drops dead at our feet, and practically as he hits the floor you know who killed him?”

Ellery said, “Yes.”

Ellery explained that while he had been in the dead man's pharmacy the previous morning, waiting for the Inspector's prescription to be filled, he had witnessed Henry Brubuck take one of his own antibiotic capsules from the box—a yellow-and-
green
capsule.

“Just now,” Ellery went on, “we both saw him swallow a yellow-and-
red
capsule from the box. Too bad Henry didn't bother to look at it—he knew there was only one left, or he'd certainly have noticed the discrepancy in color. And it all happened so fast I didn't have time to recall it.

“The question is, then: Which of Brubuck's stepchildren—he stated as a fact that he knew it was one of them—substituted a home-made yellow-and-red capsule containing poison for the last of the yellow-and-green manufactured capsules containing the antibiotic.

“Well, would a pharmacist, with a professional's knowledge of standard antibiotic preparations, have used
a different-colored capsule
when the object was to trick the victim, himself a pharmacist, into swallowing it? Hardly. Only a
non
-pharmacist could be guilty of such ignorance or oversight.

“So the poisoner can't be either of the twins, Al
ice
or Al
bert
, because both are registered pharmacists. Therefore it has to be the car salesman, Al
vin
… at the instigation, I'm afraid, of that virago he's married to.”

Anonymous Letters Dept.: Eve of the Wedding

The Mackenzie-Farnham nuptials—according to no less an authority than Violetta Billcox, Society Editor of the Wrightsville Record—were to be The Event of the summer social season. Molly Mackenzie was marrying Dr. Conklin Farnham, and nothing more important than that could be expected to happen for the rest of the year.

The bride-to-be was the daughter of the Donald Mackenzies (Wrightsville Personal Finance Corp., Country Club, Art Museum Committee, etc., etc.) and young Conk Farnham was
the
up-and-coming surgeon of Wrightsville—son of the celebrated New England internist, Dr. Farnham Farnham, who was President of the County Medical Association and Chairman of the Board of Wrightsville General Hospital. It was strictly a Skytop Road romance, for the Mackenzies' Virginia Colonial (built in 1946) was only two houses down the road from the Farnhams' redwood-and-glass Ranch-Type Modern; their back lawns embraced behind the skimpy acre of the Hallam Lucks' intervening estate.

It was to be a June wedding, of course, with the knot tied by the Bishop himself. The noted churchman was coming up from Boston especially for the ceremony, to the secret disappointment of Rev. Ernest Highmount, who had counted on the Mackenzies patronizing the local talent; in fact, Dr. Highmount had had Donald Mackenzie's half-promise to that effect. But Bea Mackenzie was as tough as the granite of the Mahoganies. Molly was her only child, and Bea had schemed and hoped for far too long to be deprived in her triumph of its full rewards. The Bishop it was going to be, with a lawn reception afterwards for one hundred and fifty-six rigidly screened guests, and catering by Del Monica's of Connhaven.

“Connhaven! I'm in business in Wrightsville, Bea,” protested Donald Mackenzie. “What's the matter with Liz Jones? Lizzie has catered every important shindig in this town for the last thirty-five years.”

“Exactly,” said Bea, patting her husband's paw. “How common can you get? Now you run along, Donald. All you have to do is pay the bills—I'll worry about everything else.”

It was Bea who solved the social “problems.” Conk was an absolute darling, but he
had
left rather a trail. There was Millie Burnett's Sandra, for instance—a large, panting girl with the disposition and intelligence of a healthy cow. Sandra was the outdoors type, and Conk had seen a great deal of her when he was wearing turtleneck sweaters—so much so that Sandra had grown stars in her eyes and Millie had bought her an outsized hope chest. Conk swore that he had never uttered a serious word to Sandra, the same being impossible; but to this day Millie Burnett spoke of him coldly.

There was also Flo Pettigrew, J.C.'s younger daughter, who had succeeded Sandra when Conk Farnham graduated from skiing parties on Bald Mountain to poetry sessions in the pines around Quetonokis Lake. Flo was pale and intense, wore her hair like the early pictures of Edna St. Vincent Millay, and was the Record's chief source of supply for love poetry; and when Conk broke their engagement she drooped like a bruised lily and wrote passionate verses to Death. Yet the Burnetts and the Pettigrews had to be invited to Molly's wedding; what was worse, Sandra and Flo were probably Molly's closest friends.

Bea solved the problem heroically: she convinced Molly that the course of wisdom was to pretend the past had never happened. Molly, who had inherited her mother's brains along with her father's good looks, had secret doubts; but she asked Sandra Burnett and Flo Pettigrew to be her bridesmaids anyway. When they accepted—Sandra with whoops and Flo very quietly—everyone was relieved but Conk Farnham.

Then Bea faced the question of what to do about Jen. Ordinarily a visiting relative from England would have given a fillip to a Wrightsville function; but Jennifer Reynolds, who was Bea's cousin and therefore her personal cross, drifted about the Mackenzie premises under such a pall of sorrow that she was bound to darken even so brilliant an occasion as Molly's wedding.

Bea gave a lot of thought to the problem of Jen. Finally she announced, “What poor Jen needs in this crisis is a
man
.”

“Oh, mother,” said Molly. “I've thrown whole he-harems at her. Jen won't
encourage
an eligible male.”

“Who?” sniffed her mother. “Dr. Flacker? Henry Granjon? All Walt Flacker knows about women is what he sees in the Maternity Pavilion. And Henry's idea of a jolly time is an evening of Canasta with his mother.” Bea's snub nose wrinkled with cleverness. “The Lord knows, with Jen's mind she won't find a challenge in any man
Wrightsville
has to offer …”

“Who's the victim?” giggled Molly.

“Well,” said her mother, not undefensively, “I
have
been trying to think up a formula for inviting Ellery Queen in from New York for the wedding …”

The last time Ellery had seen the principals, Molly had been a shy little bud at Wrightsville High and young Conklin Farnham a dedicated medical student apparently under the spell of one of the grimmer soap operas. Ellery found a full-grown radiant blossom and a hard-headed surgeon, and little opportunity to improve his acquaintanceship. For the Mackenzie house bustled with strange ladies with pins in their mouths, clanged with telephones and doorbells announcing the arrival of endless packages and cartons, and buzzed with mysterious conferences behind banged doors. Over all rose the conspiratorial laughter of Molly, Sandra Burnett, and Flo Pettigrew, occupied with whatever occupies the energies of a bride-to-be and her bridesmaids at such epic times. Occasionally Molly's groom flicked into the house in an aura of antiseptic, like a flung scalpel, bussed his bride in a dark corner, and flicked out again. Donald Mackenzie hardly showed his face; when he did, he was shooed off on some errand or other. As for Ellery's hostess, he met her at mealtimes only.

“We're neglecting you shamefully, Mr. Queen,” Bea mourned, “but it's a comfort knowing we have Jennifer to entertain you. She's so much like you—quiet and deep, and interested in the arts and things. You'll find so much in common.” And off she whisked, not neglecting to shut the door on them in her departure.

Jennifer Reynolds was a slight blond woman of thirty-four with a face whose charm looked as if it were regularly washed out in a strong bleach. It was chronically puckered, bothered by some mystery that defied solution.

There was a fragility about Mrs. Mackenzie's English cousin that made Ellery uneasy; and he was not surprised to learn that she was under the professional care of Conk Farnham's colleague, Dr. Walter Flacker, with whom young Farnham shared offices. But her fragility was more than physical. She was like a fine fabric worn to the nap and ready to fall to pieces at a touch.

One afternoon, when the bedlam was surpassing itself, Ellery drove Jennifer Reynolds up to the lake; and there, under the influence of the sun and the pines and the water peacefully lapping their drifting canoe, it all came out.

They were talking of Molly and her surgeon, and Ellery was saying what an ecstatically happy couple they seemed, and how sad it was that such bliss should be doomed to the usual corruption.

“Doomed? Corruption?” The Englishwoman looked up from her preoccupation with the ripples, startled.

“You know what I mean, Miss Reynolds. Marriages may be made in heaven, but how do they turn out?”

“Bachelor.” She laughed, and lay back in the canoe. But then she sat up again, restlessly. “How wrong you are. They're very lucky, Molly and her Conklin. Do you believe in luck, Mr. Queen?”

“To a limited extent only.”

“It's everything.” Jennifer hugged her knees, and at the same moment a cloud slid before the sun and the air rapidly chilled. “Some of us are born lucky, and some of us are not. What happens to us in life has nothing to do with what we are, or how we're brought up, or what we try to make of our lives.”

“The whole body of modern thought disagrees with you,” Ellery smiled.

“Does it?” She stared at the riffling water. “I was working at a loom by the time I was fourteen. I never had the proper things, or enough to eat, or the means to make myself attractive. I didn't grouse; I tried very hard. I educated myself under great difficulties. I suppose Beatrice has told you that I write—criticism chiefly, and chiefly in the fine arts … During the war I fell in love. He was a Navy man. His ship was torpedoed in the North Sea and went down with all hands. We were to have been married on his next leave … I picked up the pieces of my life and carried on. I had my work, and I had my family, a very poor family, Mr. Queen, with an ailing father and mother and a great many younger sisters and brothers … all of us terribly devoted to one another. And then last February my entire family was wiped out in the floods that devastated the southeast coast of England. I was the only survivor; I was in London at the time. So you see, I even had bad luck in that.”