Calamity Town

“What on earth?” said John F., staring at him.

“If you’d stop jumping around, Pat,” cried Carter, “I’d be able to concentrate on this ding-busted game!”

“Jumping around?” said Pat indignantly. ”Cart Bradford, I’ve been sitting here on the arm of Ellery’s chair all evening not saying a word!”

“If you want to play with his beautiful hair,” roared Cart, “why don’t you take him outside under the moon?”

Pat turned the machine-gun of her eyes on him. Then she said contritely to Ellery: “I’m sure you’ll forgive Cart’s bad manners. He’s really had a decent bringing-up, but associating with hardened criminals so much?”

Nora yelped.

Jim Haight stood in the archway. His Palm Beach suit hung tired and defeated; his shirt was dark with perspiration. He looked like a man who has been running at top speed in a blazing heat without purpose or plan?just running.

And Nora’s face was a cloud-torn sky.

“Nora.”

The pink in Nora’s cheeks spread and deepened until her face seemed a mirror to flames.

Nobody moved. Nobody said a word.

Nora sprang toward him. For an instant Ellery thought she meant to attack him in a spasm of fury. But then Ellery saw that Nora was not angry; she was in a panic. It was the fright of a woman who had long since surrendered hope of life to live in a suspension of life, a kind of breathing death; it was the fear of joyous rebirth.

Nora darted by Jim and skimmed up the stairs.

Jim Haight looked exultant. Then he ran after her.

And silence.

Living Statues, thought Ellery. He ran his finger between his neck and his collar; it came away dripping.

John F. and Hermy Wright were saying secretive things to each other with their eyes, as a man and woman learn to do who have lived together for thirty years.

Pat kept glaring at the empty foyer, her chest rising and falling visibly; and Carter kept glaring at Pat, as if the thing that was happening between Jim and Nora had somehow become confused in his mind with what was happening between him and Pat.

* * *

Later . . . later there were overhead sounds: the opening of a bedroom door, a slither of feet, steps on stairs.

Nora and Jim appeared in the foyer.

“We’re going to be married,” said Nora. It was as if she were a cold lamp and Jim had touched the button. She glowed from within and gave off a sort of heat.

“Right off,” said Jim. He had a deep defiant voice; it was harsher than he meant, rasped by emery strain. ”Right off!” Jim said. ”Understand?” He was scarlet from the roots of his sandy hair to the chicken skin below his formidable Adam’s apple. But he kept blinking at John F. and Hermy with a dogged, nervous bellicosity.

“Oh, Nora!” cried Pat, and she pounced and kissed Nora’s mouth and began to cry and laugh. Hermy was smiling the stiff smile of a corpse. John F. mumbled, “I’ll be dinged,” and heaved out of his chair and went to his daughter and took her hand, and he took Jim’s hand, just standing there helplessly. Carter said: “It’s high time, you two lunatics!” and slipped his arm about Pat’s waist.

Nora did not cry. She kept looking at her mother.

And then Hermy’s petrifaction broke into little pieces and she ran to Nora, pushing Pat and John F. and Carter aside. She kissed Nora and kissed Jim and said something in a hysterical tone that made no sense but seemed the right thing to say just the same.

Mr. Queen slipped out, feeling a little lonely.

Chapter 6

“Wright-Haight Nuptials Today”

Hermy planned the wedding like a general in his field tent surrounded by maps of the terrain and figures representing the accurate strength of the enemy’s forces.

While Nora and Pat were in New York shopping for Nora’s trousseau, Hermione held technical discussions with old Mr. Thomas, sexton of the First Methodist Church; horticultural conferences with Andy Birobatyan, the one-eyed Armenian florist in High Village; histrionic conversations with the Reverend Dr. Doolittle in re rehearsals and choirboy arrangements; talks with Mrs. Jones the caterer, with Mr. Graycee of the travel agency, and with John F. at the bank on intrafamiliar banking business.

But these were Quartermaster’s chores. The General Staff conversations were with the ladies of Wrightsville.

“It’s just like a movie, dear!” Hermy gushed over the telephone. ”It was nothing more than a lovers’ quarrel to begin with?Oh, yes, darling, I know what people are saying!” said Hermy coldly. ”But my Nora doesn’t have to grab anybody. I don’t suppose you recall last year how that handsome young Social Registrite from Bar Harbor . . . Of course not! Why should we have a quiet wedding? My dear, they’ll be married in church and . . . Naturally as a bride . . . Yes, to South America for six weeks . . . Oh, John is taking Jim back into the bank . . . Oh, no, dear, an officer’s position . . . Of course, darling! Do you think I’d marry my Nora off and not have you at the wedding?”

On Saturday, August thirty-first, one week after Jim’s return to Wrightsville, Jim and Nora were married by Dr. Doolittle in the First Methodist Church. John F. gave the bride away, and Carter Bradford was Jim’s best man.

After the ceremony, there was a lawn reception on the Wright grounds. Twenty Negro waiters in mess jackets served; the rum punch was prepared from the recipe John F. had brought back with him from Bermuda in 1928. Emmeline DuPre, full-blown in an organdy creation and crowned with a real rosebud tiara, skittered from group to group remarking how “well” Hermione Wright had carried off a “delicate” situation, and didn’t Jim look interesting with those purple welts under his eyes? Do you suppose he’s been drinking these three years? How romantic! Clarice Martin said rather loudly that some people were born troublemakers.

During the lawn reception Jim and Nora escaped by the service door. Ed Hotchkiss drove the bride and groom over to Slocum Township in time to catch the express. Jim and Nora were to stay overnight in New York and sail on Tuesday for Rio.

Mr. Queen, who was prowling, spied the fleeing couple as they hurried into Ed’s cab. Wet diamonds in her eyes, Nora clung to her husband’s hand. Jim looked solemn and proud; he handed his wife into the cab gingerly, as if she might bruise under less careful manipulation.

Mr. Queen also saw Frank Lloyd. Lloyd, returning from his “hunting trip” the day before the wedding, had sent a note to Hermy “regretting” that he couldn’t attend the ceremony or reception as he had to go upstate that very evening to attend a newspaper publishers’ convention in the Capital. Gladys Hemmingworth, his Society reporter, would cover the wedding for the Record. ”Please extend to Nora my very best wishes for her happiness. Yours, F. Lloyd.”

But F. Lloyd, who should have been two hundred miles away, was skulking behind a weeping willow near the grass court behind the Wright house. Mr. Queen experienced trepidation. What had Patty once said? “Frank took the whole thing pretty badly.” And Frank Lloyd was a dangerous man . . . Ellery, behind a maple, actually picked up a rock as Jim and Nora ran out of the kitchen to get into the cab.

But the weeping willow wept quietly, and as soon as the taxi disappeared, F. Lloyd left his hiding place and stamped off into the woods behind the house.