Nora began to cry in her hands.
“I love him,” she sobbed. ”I’ve always loved Jim. I’ll never believe he’d want to kill me. Never. Never!”
“But the facts, Nora?” said Ellery wearily.
“Oh, the facts!” She took her hands away; her wet eyes were blazing.
“What do I care about the facts? A woman
“And the three letters, Nora? The letters in Jim’s handwriting announcing your illness, your . . . death?”
“He didn’t write them!”
“But Nora darling,” said Pat, “Jim’s handwriting?”
“Forged.” Nora was panting now. ”Haven’t you ever heard of forgery? They were forged!”
“And the threat against you we heard him make, that day I told you about, when he was drunk?” asked Ellery.
“He wasn’t responsible!”
No tears now. She was fighting. Ellery went over the whole damning case with her; she fought back. Not with counter-facts. With faith. With an adamant, frightening faith. And at the end Ellery was arguing with two women, and he had no ally.
“But you don’t reason?” he exploded, throwing up his hands. Then he smiled. ”What do you want me to do? I’m softheaded, but I’ll do it.”
“Don’t say anything about these things to the police!”
“All right, I won’t.”
Nora sank back, closing her eyes.
Pat kissed her and then signaled to Ellery.
But Ellery shook his head. ”I know you’re pretty well pooped, Nora,” he said kindly, “but as long as I’m becoming an accessory, I’m entitled to your full confidence.”
“Anything,” said Nora tiredly.
“Why did Jim run out on you that first time? Three years ago, just before you were to be married, when Jim left Wrightsville?”
Pat looked at her sister anxiously.
“That.” Nora was surprised. ”That wasn’t anything. It couldn’t have anything to do?”
“Nevertheless, I’d like to know.”
“You’d have to know Jim. When we met and fell in love and all, I didn’t realize just how independent Jim was. I didn’t see anything wrong in-well, accepting help from Father until Jim got on his feet. We’d argue about it for hours. Jim kept saying he wanted me to live on his cashier’s salary.”
“I remember those battles,” murmured Pat, “but I didn’t dream they were so?”
“I didn’t take them seriously enough, either. When Mother told me Father was putting up the little house and furnishing it for us as a wedding gift, I thought I’d keep it a surprise for Jim. So I didn’t tell him until the day before the wedding. He got furious.”
“I see.”
“He said he’d already rented a cottage on the other side of town for fifty dollars a month?it was all we’d be able to afford, he said; we’d just have to learn to live on what he earned.” Nora sighed. ”I suppose I lost my temper, too. We . . . had a fight. A bad one. And then Jim ran away. That’s all.” She looked up. ”That’s really all. I never told Father or Mother or anyone about it. Having Jim run out on me just because of a thing like that?”
“Jim never wrote to you?”
“Not once. And I . . . thought I’d die. The whole town was talking . . . Then Jim came back, and we both admitted what fools we’d been, and here we are.”
So from the very first it had been the house, thought Ellery. Queer! Wherever he turned in this case, the house was there. Calamity House . . . Ellery began to feel that the reporter who had invented the phrase was gifted with second sight.
“And these quarrels you and Jim have been having since your marriage?”
Nora winced. ”Money. He’s been asking for money. And my cameo, and other things . . . But that’s just temporary,” she said quickly. ”He’s been gambling at that roadhouse on Route 16?1 suppose every man goes through a phase like that?”
“Nora, what can you tell me about Rosemary Haight?”
“Not a thing. I know she’s dead, and it sounds an awful thing to say, but . . . I didn’t like her. At all.”
“Amen,” said Patty grimly.
“Can’t say I was smitten myself,” murmured Ellery. ”But I mean?do you know anything about her that might tie her in with . . . well, the letters, Jim’s conduct, the whole puzzle?”
Nora said tightly: “Jim wouldn’t talk about her. But I know what I felt. She was
“Well, she was,” said Ellery briskly, “and you’re tired, Nora. Thanks. You’d have been wholly justified in telling me to mind my own business about all this.”
Nora squeezed his hand, and he left as Pat went into the bathroom to wet a towel for her sister’s head.
Nothing. Utter nothing. And tomorrow the inquest!
Chapter 16
The Aramean
Coroner Salemson was nervous about the whole thing. Any audience more numerous than three paralyzed his vocal cords; and it is a matter of public record that the only time the Coroner opened his mouth at Town Meeting except for breathing purposes?he had asthma?was one year when J. C. Pettigrew reared up and demanded to know why the office of Coroner shouldn’t be voted out of existence?Chic Salemson hadn’t had a corpus to justify his salary in his nine years’ tenure. And then all the Coroner could stammer was: “But suppose!”
And so now, at last, there was a corpus.
But a corpus meant an inquest, and that meant the Coroner had to sit up there in Judge Martin’s court (borrowed from the County for the occasion) and preside; and that meant talk, and lots of it, before hundreds of glittering Wrightsville eyes?not to mention the eyes of Chief Dakin and Prosecutor Bradford and County Sheriff Gilfant and Lord knows who.
To make matters worse, there was John F. Wright. To think of the exalted Name linked nastily with a murder weakened the Coroner’s knees; John F. was his household god.
So as Coroner Salemson rapped feebly for order in the jammed courtroom, he was a nervous, miserable, and desperate man. And all through the selection of the Coroner’s Jury he became more nervous, and more miserable, and more desperate, until finally his nervousness and misery were swallowed by his desperation, and he saw what he must do to cut his ordeal short and save?if saving was possible?the honor of the Wright name.
To say that the old Coroner sabotaged the testimony deliberately would be unjust to the best horseshoe pitcher in Wright County. No, it was just that from the first the Coroner was convinced no one named Wright, or connected with anyone named Wright, could possibly have had the least pink or brownish stain on his conscience. So obviously it was either all a monstrous mistake, or the poor woman committed suicide or something, and strike this out, and that’s just
Chief Dakin and Prosecutor Bradford immediately retired to Bradford’s office for another conference, the Wrights sped home thankfully, and Coroner Salemson fled to his twelve-room ancestral home in the Junction, where he locked himself in with trembling hands and got drunk on an old bottle of gooseberry wine left over from his orphaned niece Eppie’s wedding to old man Simpson’s son Zachariah in 1934.
Gently, gently, into one neat six-foot hole in the ground.
