The Scarlet Letters

THE SCARLET LETTERS

Ellery Queen was both a famous fictional detective and the pen name of two cousins born in Brooklyn in 1905. Created by Manfred B. Lee and Frederic Dannay as an entry in a mystery-writing contest, Ellery Queen is regarded by many as the definitive American whodunit celebrity. When their first novel,
The Roman Hat Mystery
(1929), became an immediate success, the cousins gave up their business careers and took to writing dozens of novels, hundreds of radio scripts and countless short stories about the gentleman detective and writer who shared an apartment on West 87th Street with his father, Inspector Queen of the NYPD. Dannay was said to have largely produced detailed outlines of the plots, clues and characters while Lee did most of the writing. As the success of Ellery Queen grew, the character's legacy continued through radio, television and film. In 1941, the cousins founded
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
. Edited by Queen for more than forty years, the periodical is still considered one of the most influential crime fiction magazines in American history. Additionally, Queen edited a number of collections and anthologies, and his critical writings are the major works on the detective short story. Under their collective pseudonym, the cousins were given several Edgar awards by the Mystery Writers of America, including the 1960 Grand Master Award. Their novels are examples of the classic ‘fair play' whodunit mystery of the Golden Age, where plot is always paramount. Manfred B. Lee, born Manford Lepofsky, died in 1971. Frederic Dannay, born Daniel Nathan, died in 1982.

THE SCARLET LETTERS

ELLERY QUEEN

THE LANGTAIL PRESS
L
ONDON

This edition published 2013 by

The Langtail Press

www.langtailpress.com

The Scarlet Letters

Copyright © 1953 by Little, Brown and Company

Copyright renewed by Ellery Queen

ISBN 978-17-80-02166-9

It is ordered that Miss Batcheller for her

adultery shall be branded with the letter A.

–U
NKNOWN
,
Records of Maine Province
(1651)

It was around this law that Nathaniel Hawthorne wove the story of
The Scarlet Letter.

Contents

A …

Until the fourth year of their marriage, their friends considered Dirk and Martha Lawrence one of the happiest couples in New York.

The lovebirds were invariably described as “nice, interesting young people.” The temporal part of the description puzzled outsiders at first, since both were in their thirties, not the prime youth of the biologists. Besides, Martha was two years older than Dirk. But after people got to know them the description came easily. Dirk was cast in the dark, romantic mold of Bohemian garrets, and Martha had the plump, exquisite look of the pigeon aperch on the sill. That they were interesting and nice was never questioned at all. Dirk was a writer, and to non-writers–who comprised most of the Lawrences' friends–writers are curiosities from another world, like movie stars and ax-murderers. And Martha was an absolute darling–that is, she was no threat to the other women in their set.

Still, those who esteemed the Lawrences as interesting and nice would have been astonished, had they ever thought of going back over the statistics, at the amount of evidence to the contrary. There were times, especially in the third year, when Dirk was far from nice–when he lost his temper publicly at nothing visible to the human eye, or when he had had two or three Scotch old-fashioneds too many. And even a writer can become a bore when he makes a scene or gets nastily drunk. There were times when Martha was a very dull pigeon indeed; these were usually the times when Dirk was being far from nice. But no one thought of these dabs of episode as being related to a large canvas. Their only effect was to make the Lawrences seem as human as other people at a time when they were in considerable danger of being dropped for their inhuman felicity.

Ellery got to know the Lawrences through Nikki Porter. He had seen Dirk Lawrence now and then at meetings of the Mystery Writers of America, in the days when Dirk was turning out his dark, unpopular mystery novels, but they had not become friendly until Dirk married Martha Gordon. Martha and Nikki had known each other in Kansas City; when Martha came to New York to live, the two girls met again, liked what they rediscovered, and became inseparable.

Martha Gordon had come to New York not to seek her fortune but to live on it. Her mother had failed to survive Martha's birth and her father, a meat packer, had died during the war while Martha was touring the Pacific with a USO troupe–she had worked hard in dramatics at Oberlin and she was with a Little Theater group when the war broke out. Mr. Gordon had left her a great many millions of dollars.

Ellery found Martha an intelligent, sensitive girl unspoiled by her money but lonely because of it.

“When they tell me how gorgeous I am,” Martha said grimly during a bull session in the Queen apartment one night, “I point to the plank. And they all tell me.”

“You're oversuspicious,” Ellery said. “You're a darned pretty girl.”

“Et tu
, Ellery? Do you know how old I'm getting to be?”

“Don't bother looking around for a plank
here,”
said Nikki calmly. “This one runs, Martha. I know.”

“And there you are,” said Ellery. “You ought to take Nikki with you on your dates, Martha. Her judgment of men is uncanny.”

“Anyway,” said Martha, “who wants to get married? I'm going to be a Broadway star or die in the attempt.”

Martha was wrong on both counts. She failed to become a Broadway star, and she survived to meet Dirk Lawrence.

By this time Martha had worked out a technique. She lived modestly and her acquaintances were all people of moderate means. When Dirk Lawrence asked her to marry him she was working in the office of a theatrical producer at a salary of sixty dollars a week. He did not learn that his bride was a millionaire until they set up housekeeping in a third-floor walkup in the East 30s.

Ellery knew the Lawrences as well as he knew any of Nikki's friends, yet he never achieved a solid feeling about their future. The trouble, he suspected, lay not so much in Dirk's thin royalties and Martha's fat dividend checks as in Dirk's psychological economy. Dirk acted as if he had been invented by Emily Bronte–fierce, brooding, a little uncouth, and strange in sudden ways.

But it was this very quality in Dirk's nature that attracted Martha. To the little blonde wife, her big swarthy scowling husband was an uncredited genius, a great and tragic figure. The truth was, they were drawn to each other because of their oppositeness. Dirk was always preoccupied with his problems, fancied as well as real; there was not a self-centered bone in Martha's sturdy little body. He demanded, she fulfilled. He sulked, she diverted. He stormed, she soothed. He doubted, she reassured. She satisfied completely his evident needs for a worshipful ear, a bosom to lay his head on, and a pair of soft maternal arms. And Martha was happy to provide the ear, the bosom, and the arms.

It should have been a sound enough basis for a marriage, but apparently it was not. Toward the end of the third year, when the change became noticeable, they seemed unable to stay in one place.

It was usually Martha who started the running. But Ellery had noticed–on the evenings when he and Nikki did the town with the Lawrences, or went to a party, or engaged in any activity which involved mingling with other people–that Martha's flights were a sort of conditioned reflex, arising out of Dirk's threat to settle into one of his moods. Dirk's dark mouth had a trick of turning up very slightly at one corner when he was about to sulk or get angry; the appearance was of a smile, but the effect was unpleasant. At such times, whatever Martha was doing or saying was dropped immediately. She would jump up and say, “I feel like a bowl of vegetables and sour cream at Lindy's,” or whatever–Ellery felt–happened to pop into her mind at the moment. Then Dirk would pull himself out of it, and off they would go, hauling people along who could see no reason for not staying where they were.

Occasionally, however, Martha's back was turned when Dirk's mouth pulled its telltale trick. Then he would either explode with terrifying violence over some trifle or begin to drink like a camel. Those were the occasions when Martha would suddenly develop a sinus headache and have to go right home.

In the fourth year their troubles came to a head. They were seen together less and less. Dirk drank steadily.

That was the year Martha found her place in the theater. She bought a play and produced it with her own money. There were parties which Dirk did not attend. At other times he would show up at rehearsal, or accost Martha in a restaurant, and make a scene. Martha burrowed into production details, seeing no one they had known, not even Nikki. When the play failed, Martha stuck out her little jaw and began to look around for another script. What went on in their home–by this time they had taken a plush apartment on Beekman Place–was no secret to their neighbors. There were quarrels early and late, sounds of breaking furniture, wild sobs and wilder roars.

Their marriage had collapsed. And no one seemed to know why.

Nikki was as baffled as the rest of their crowd.

“I have no idea what's wrong,” she said, at Ellery's question.

“But Nikki, you're her best friend.”

“Even your best friend won't tell you,” Nikki said unhappily. “Of course, it's Dirk's fault. If only he'd stop making like Edgar Allan Poe!”

Then, one beautiful night in the early spring, Ellery and Nikki learned what was wrong with the Lawrences.

It began with a Western Union messenger. He leaned on the Queen buzzer just as Nikki was tucking Ellery's typewriter into its shroud for the day.

“It's addressed to you, handwritten,” Nikki said, coming into the study with an envelope. “And if that's not Martha Lawrence's handwriting, I'm a monkey's aunt. Why should she be writing to
you?”

“You sound like a wife,” Ellery said, jiggling the cocktail shaker. The day's dictation had not gone well and he was in no mood to be nice to anyone, especially the lone witness of his frequent exhibitions of anguish. “All right, Nikki, hand it over.”

“Don't you want me to read it to you while you make the cocktails? After all, what's a secretary for?”

“The cocktails are made.
Give me that
!”

“I don't understand,” said Nikki without rancor as Ellery tore open the envelope. “Something awful must be happening. Of course, if you'd rather I left the room …”

But the note made them both grave.

E
LLERY DEAR
–

I've tried everything I know, which apparently isn't enough. This can't go on. I need help.

I'll be on a bench in Central Park, on the main walk approaching the Mall from the 5th Ave. entrance at 72nd St., at around 9:30 tonight. If by some horrible coincidence you should see Dirk or hear from him between now and then,
don't for God's sake breathe one word about my having asked you to meet me.
He thinks I'm seeing Amy Howell at the Barbizon about a play-script.

I'll wait till 10.
Please come.

M
ARTHA

Nikki was staring at the notepaper, with its uneven scrawl. “Holy matrimony,” she said. She deliberately kicked Ellery's desk and went over to the couch and sat down. “It's past working hours, so you can act like a gentleman–if that's possible of any man. I want a drink and a cigarette … Poor Mar. This marriage was going to last a thousand years, like Hitler's Reich. You're going to meet her, aren't you?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't
know?”

“If it was a case, Nikki, of Dirk's stealing something or murdering somebody–”

“How do you know it isn't?” demanded Nikki fiercely.

“My dear child–”

“And don't ‘my dear child' me, Ellery Queen!”

“–this is chronic. It's been going on for over a year. It's simply a case of two people who started out for paradise on a raft finding the damn thing sinking under their bottoms four miles out. It happens every day. What can I do for Martha? Hold her hand? Take Dirk into St. Pat's by the seat of the pants and read him a fatherly sermon to a playback of the Wedding March?” Ellery shook his head. “The middleman in a situation like this is sure to get it in the neck.”

“Are you through driveling?”

“I'm not driveling. It's just that instinct tells me to stay out of this.”

“I ask you only one question,” Nikki said, rising so suddenly that part of her cocktail slopped over onto her last pair of nylons. “Are you going to meet Martha tonight, or aren't you?”

“But it's not fair,” protested Ellery. “She ought to go to a clergyman. I mean I haven't made up my mind.”

“Well, I have. I'm through.”

“You're what?”

“Through. I'm throwing up your pitiful little job. Get somebody else to finish your book. It's no good, anyway.”

“Nikki!” He caught her at the door. “Of course, you're right. It reeks. And I'll go.”

“Oh, it's not so bad, Ellery,” said Nikki softly. “There are some parts I think are positively brilliant …”

Ellery found Martha on a park bench in a deep shadow. He very nearly missed her, because she was all in black, including a veil. It was as if she had deliberately dressed to blend with the night.

She caught his hands as he sat down.

“Martha, you're shaking.” Ellery felt that levity might help. “Isn't that the approved opening line?”

He was wrong. Martha began to cry. She snatched her hands away and put them to her face and cried into them in a deep, dry, horrible way.

Ellery was appalled. He looked around quickly to see if anyone was watching. But the bushes behind their bench were silent and most of the people on the other benches ignored them. Tears in Central Park were no novelty to nature lovers.

“Martha, I'm sorry. I really am. Won't you tell me what's the matter? It can't be as bad as all that. Things seldom are …” He went on in this dismal vein for some time. But Martha only cried more deeply, more dryly, and more horribly.

Ellery began to wish himself elsewhere. A few nearby heads had turned with indignation, then curiosity. And a large figure in a peaked cap, swinging a nightstick, had stopped strolling to stare at them very hard.

“Something wrong, bud?” boomed the large figure.

“No, no, officer,” Ellery called loudly enough for their bench neighbors to hear, too. “We're just rehearsing a scene from our new play.” He pulled his hat brim lower.

“Yeah?” The park patrolman lumbered over quickly as heads turned everywhere within range. “When do you open? I'm sort of a confirmed theatergoer myself. Me and the wife see every show I can rustle some ducats for–”

“Next month. Broadhurst. Simply mention my name at the box office. Now if you'll excuse us–”

“Yes,
sir.
But what name?”

“Alfred Lunt,” said Ellery.

“Yessir!”
The patrolman stepped back respectfully. Then he said to Martha, “Good night, Miss Fontanne,” saluted, and marched off whistling.

Ellery said in a hurry, “Now, Martha–”

“I'll be all right in a minute, Ellery. This is so stupid of me. I hadn't the slightest intention of … It just happened …” Martha buried her face in his chest.

“Of course,” said Ellery, looking around uncomfortably. Everyone was watching the rehearsal. “You've kept this in a long time. Naturally. Now just pull yourself together, honey, and we'll have a long talk.” Ellery's left arm began to ache; Martha was jamming it against the slats. To relieve the ache he worked his arm free and draped it along the top of the bench. It touched Martha's shoulders.

“Lovers' quarrel?” said a voice.

Martha quivered.

Ellery turned.

Dirk Lawrence stood behind the bench.

Dirk's hat was plastered to one side of his head and his dark features had the fixed but pendulous set of the very drunk. The reek of whisky surrounded him. The eyes under their thick black overhang were unpleasant-looking pits.