“Call Doc Willoughby, somebody!”
Ellery and Jim reached the upper floor together, Jim looking around like a wild man. But Ellery was already pounding on the bathroom door.
“Nora!” Jim shouted. ”Open the door! What’s the matter with you?”
Then Pat got there, and the others.
“Dr. Willoughby will be right over,” said Lola. ”Where is she? Get out of here, you men!”
“Has she gone crazy?” gasped Rosemary.
“Break the door down!” commanded Pat. ”Ellery, break it down! Jim?Pop?help him!”
“Out of the way, Jim,” said Ellery. ”You’re a bloody nuisance!”
But at the first impact Nora screamed.
“If anyone comes in here, I’ll?I’ll . . .
Hermy was making mewing sounds, like a sick cat, and John F. kept saying: “Now, Hermy. Now, Hermy. Now, Hermy.”
At the third assault the door gave. Ellery catapulted into the bathroom and pounced. Nora was leaning over the basin, trembling, weak, greenish, swallowing huge spoonfuls of milk of magnesia. She turned a queerly triumphant look on him as she slumped, fainting, into his arms.
But later, when she came to in her bed, there was a scene.
“I feel like a?like an animal in a zoo! Please, Mother?get everybody out of here!”
They all left except Mrs. Wright and Jim. Ellery heard Nora from the upper-hall landing. Her tone was stridulant; the words piled on one another.
“No, no, no! I
“But dearest,” wailed Hermy, “Dr. Willoughby?surely the doctor who brought you into the world?”
“If that old?old goat comes near me,” screamed Nora, “I’ll do something desperate! I’ll commit suicide! I’ll jump out the window!”
“Nora,” groaned Jim.
“Get out of here! Mother, you, too!”
Pat and Lola went to the bedroom door and called their mother urgently. ”Mother, she’s hysterical. Let her alone?she’ll calm down.” Hermy crept out, followed by Jim, who was red about the eyes and seemed bewildered.
They heard Nora gagging inside. And crying.
When Dr. Willoughby arrived, breathless, John F. said it was a mistake and sent him away.
* * *
Ellery softly closed his door. But he knew before he turned on the light that someone was in the room.
He pressed the switch and said: “Pat?”
Pat lay on his bed in a cramped curl. There was a damp spot on the pillow, near her face.
“I’ve been waiting up for you.” Pat blinked in the light. ”What time is it?”
“Past midnight.” Ellery switched the light off and sat down beside her. ”How is Nora?”
“She says she’s fine. I guess she’ll be all right.” Pat was silent for a moment. ”Where did
“Ed Hotchkiss drove me over to Connhaven.”
“Connhaven! That’s seventy-five miles.” Pat sat up abruptly. ”Ellery, what did you do?”
“I took the contents of Nora’s plate over to a research laboratory. Connhaven has a good one, I discovered. And . . . ” He paused. ”As you say, it’s seventy-five miles?from Wrightsville.”
“Did you-did they??”
“They found nothing.”
“Then maybe?”
Ellery got off the bed and began to walk up and down in the dark room. ”Maybe anything. The cocktails. The soup. The hors d’oeuvres. It was a long shot; I knew it wouldn’t work out. Wherever she got it, though, it was in her food or drink. Arsenic. All the symptoms. Lucky she remembered to swallow milk of magnesia?it’s an emergency antidote for arsenic poisoning.”
“And today is . . . Thanksgiving Day,” said Pat stiffly. ”Jim’s letter to Rosemary?dated November twenty- eighth . . . today. ‘My wife is sick.’
“Whoa, Patty. You’ve been doing fine . . . It could be a coincidence.”
“You think so?”
“It may have been a sudden attack of indigestion. Nora’s in a dither. She’s read the letters, she’s seen that passage about arsenic in the toxicology book?it may all be psychological.”
“Yes . . . ”
“Our imaginations may be running away with us. At any rate, there’s time. If a pattern exists, this is just the beginning.”
“Yes . . . ”
“Pat, I promise you:
“Oh, Ellery.” She came to him in the darkness and buried her face in his coat. ”I’m so glad you’re here . . . ”
“Get out of my bedroom,” said Mr. Queen tenderly, “before your pa comes at me with a shotgun.”
Chapter 12
Christmas: The Second Warning
The first snows fell. Breaths steamed in the valleys. Hermy was busy planning her Christmas baskets for the Poor Farm. Up in the hills skis were flashing, and boys watched restlessly for the ponds to freeze.
But Nora . . .
Nora and Jim were enigmas. Nora recovered from her Thanksgiving Day “indisposition,” a little paler, a little thinner, a little more nervous, but self-possessed. But occasionally she seemed frightened, and she would not talk. To anyone.
Her mother tried.
“Nora, what’s wrong? You can tell me?”
“Nothing. What’s the matter with everybody?”
“But Jim’s drinking, dear. It’s all over town,” groaned Hermy. ”It’s getting to be a?a national disgrace! And you and Jim
Nora set her small mouth. ”Mother, you’ll simply have to let me run my own life.”
“Your father’s worried?”
“I’m sorry, Mother. It’s my life.”
“Is it Rosemary who’s causing all these arguments? She’s always taking Jim off and whispering to him. How long is she going to stay with you? Nora darling, I’m your mother. You can confide in your mother?”
But Nora ran away, crying.
Pat was aging visibly.
“Ellery, the three letters . . . they’re still in Nora’s hatbox in her closet. I looked last night. I couldn’t help it.”
“I know,” sighed Ellery.
“You’ve been keeping tabs, too?”
“Yes. Patty, she’s been rereading them. They show signs of being handled?”
“But why won’t Nor face the truth?” cried Pat. ”She knows that November twenty-eighth marked the first attack?that first letter told her so! Yet she won’t have the doctor, she won’t take any steps to defend herself, she refuses help . . . 1 can’t understand her!”
“Maybe,” said Ellery carefully, “Nora’s afraid to face the scandal.”
