Nora made a face and gave her unfinished cocktail to Rosemary, who tossed it down like a veteran and staggered over to the sofa, where she collapsed with a silly laugh. A moment later she was fast asleep.
“She
Everybody agreed that everybody was a little tight, and wasn’t the new year
All but Mr. Ellery Queen, who was again lingering at the hall door to the kitchen watching Jim Haight make cocktails.
At thirty-five minutes past midnight, there was one strange cry from the living room and then an even stranger silence.
Jim was coming out of the kitchen with a tray, and Ellery said to him: “That’s a banshee, at least. What are they up to now?” And the two men hurried to the living room.
Dr. Willoughby was stooped over Rosemary Haight, who was still lying on the sofa half-covered with newspapers.
There was a tiny, sharp prickle in Mr. Queen’s heart.
Doc Willoughby straightened up. He was ashen.
“John.” The old doctor wet his lips with his tongue.
John F. said stupidly: “Milo, for jiminy sake. The girl’s passed out. She’s been . . . sick, like other drunks. You don’t have to act and look as if?”
Dr. Willoughby said: “She’s dead, John.”
Pat, who had been the banshee, sank into a chair as if all the strength had suddenly gone out of her.
And for the space of several heartbeats the memory of the sound of the word “dead” in Dr. Willoughby’s cracked bass darted about the room, in and out of corners and through still minds, and it made no sense.
“Dead?” said Ellery hoarsely. ”A . . . heart attack. Doctor?”
“I think,” said the doctor stiffly, “arsenic.”
Nora screamed and fell over in a faint, striking her head on the floor with a thud. As Carter Bradford came briskly in.
Saying: “Tried to get here earlier?where’s Pat??Happy New Year, everybody . . .
* * *
“Did you give it to her?” asked Ellery Queen, outside the door of Nora’s bedroom. He looked a little shrunken; and his nose was pinched and pointy, like a thorn.
“No doubt about it,” croaked Dr. Willoughby. ”Yes, Smith. I gave it to her . . . Nora was poisoned, too.” He blinked at Ellery. ”How did you happen to have ferric hydroxid on you? It’s the accepted antidote for arsenic poisoning.”
Ellery said curtly: “I’m a magician. Haven’t you heard?” and went downstairs.
The face was covered with newspapers now.
Frank Lloyd was looking down at the papers.
Carter Bradford and Judge Martin were conferring in hoarse low tones.
Jim Haight sat in a chair shaking his head in an annoyed way, as if he wanted to clear it but could not.
The others were upstairs with Nora.
“How is she?” said Jim. ”Nora?”
“Sick.” Ellery paused just inside the living room.
Bradford and the Judge stopped talking. Frank Lloyd, however, continued to read the newspapers covering the body.
“But luckily,” said Ellery, “Nora took only a sip or two of that last cocktail. She’s pretty sick, but Dr. Willoughby thinks she’ll pull through all right.”
He sat down in the chair nearest the foyer and lit a cigarette.
“Then it was the cocktail?” said Carter Bradford in an unbelieving voice. ”But of course. Both women drank of the same glass?both were poisoned by the same poison.” His voice rose. ”But that cocktail was Nora’s!
Frank Lloyd said, still without turning: “Carter, stop making speeches. You irk the hell out of me.”
“Don’t be hasty, Carter,” said Judge Martin in a very old voice.
But Carter said stridently: “That poisoned cocktail was meant to kill Nora. And
“Cock Robin,” said the newspaper publisher. ”Go way, Sherlock Holmes.”
“I did,” said Jim. ”I did, I guess.” He looked around at them. ”That’s a queer one, isn’t it?”
“Queer one!” Young Bradford’s face was livid. He went over and yanked Jim out of the chair by his collar. ”You damn murderer! You tried to poison your own wife and by pure accident got your sister instead!”
Jim gaped at him.
“Carter,” said Judge Martin feebly.
Carter let go, and Jim fell back, still gaping.
“What can I do?” asked the Wright County Prosecutor in a strangled voice.
He went to the phone in the foyer, stumbling past Mr. Queen’s frozen knees, and asked for Chief Dakin at Police Headquarters.
PART THREE
Chapter 14
Hangover
The hill was still celebrating when Chief Dakin hopped out of his rattletrap to run up the wet flags of the Haight walk under the stars of 1941. Emmeline DuPre’s house was dark, and old Amos Bluefield’s?the Bluefield house bore the marks of mourning in the black smudges of its window shades. But all the others?the Livingstons’, the F. Henry Minikins’, the Dr. Emil Poffenbergers’, the Granjons’, and the rest?were alive with lights and the faint cries of merriment.
Chief Dakin nodded: it was just as well. Nobody would notice that anything was wrong.
Dakin was a thin, flapping countryman with light dead eyes bisected by a Yankee nose. He looked like an old terrapin until you saw that his mouth was the mouth of a poet. Nobody ever noticed that in Wrightsville except Patricia Wright and, possibly, Mrs. Dakin, to whom the Chief combined the best features of Abraham Lincoln and God.
Dakin’s passionate baritone led Mr. Bishop’s choir at the First Congregational Church on West Livesey Street in High Village each Sunday. Being a temperance man, and having his woman, the Chief would chuckle, what was there left in life but song? And, in fact, Dakin was interrupted by Prosecutor Bradford’s telephone call in the midst of an “at-home” New Year’s Eve carol fest.
“Poison,” said Dakin soberly to Carter Bradford over the body of Rosemary Haight. ”Now I wonder if folks don’t overdo this New Year celebrating. What kind of poison. Doc?”
Dr. Willoughby said: “Arsenic. Some compound. I can’t tell you which.”
“Rat-killer, hey?” Then the Chief said slowly: “I figure this kind of puts our Prosecutor in a spot, hey, Cart?”
“Awkward as hell! These people are my friends.” Bradford was shaking. ”Dakin, take charge, for God’s sake.”
“Sure, Cart,” said Chief Dakin, blinking his light eyes at Frank Lloyd. ”Hi, Mr. Lloyd.”
“Hi yourself,” said Lloyd. ”Now can I go peddle my papers?”
“Frank, I told you?” began Carter peevishly.
