Calamity Town

What’s her name? Rosalie? Rose-Marie?

They say she was a glamour girl. The one they’re burying?the one Jim Haight poisoned by mistake?his sister . . . Who says Jim Haight . . . ? Why, it was right there in the Record only yesterday! Didn’t you read it? Frank Lloyd didn’t say so, just like that; but you know if you read between the lines . . . Sure, Frank’s sore. Sweet on Nora Wright, Frank was, and Jim Haight cut him out. Never did like Haight. Kind of cold proposition?couldn’t look you in the eye, ‘pears to me . . . So he was the one, huh? Why don’t they arrest him?

That’s what I’d like to know!

Ashes to ashes . . . 

Think there’s dirty work going on?

Wouldn’t be bowled over! Cart Bradford and that Patricia Wright started necking years ago. That’s Haight’s sister-in-law.

Aaah, the rich always get away with murder.

Nobody’s getting away with murder in Wrightsville! Not if we have to take the law?

Gently, gently . . .

Rosemary Haight was buried in East Twin Hill Cemetery, not (people were quick to remark) in West Twin Hill Cemetery, where the Wrights had interred their dead for two hundred-odd years. The transaction was negotiated by John Fowler Wright, acting for his son-in-law James Haight, and Peter Callendar, sales manager of the Twin Hill Eternity Estates, Inc., selling price sixty dollars. John F. handed Jim the deed to the grave in silence as they drove back from the funeral.

The next morning Mr. Queen, rising early for purposes of his own, saw the words “Wife Killer” printed in red school chalk on the sidewalk before Calamity House.

He erased them.

* * *

“Morning,” said Myron Garback of the High Village Pharmacy.

“Morning, Mr. Garback,” said Mr. Queen, frowning. ”I’ve got a problem. I’ve rented a house; and there’s a small greenhouse in the garden?found vegetables growing there, by George! In January!”

“Yes?” said Myron blankly.

“Well, now, I’m mighty fond of homegrown tomatoes; and there’s a fine tomato plant or two in my greenhouse, only the plant’s overrun with some kind of round little bug?”

“Mmmm. Yellowish?”

“That’s right. With black stripes on their wings. At least,” said Mr. Queen helplessly, “I think they’re black.”

“Eating the leaves, are they?”

“That’s just what the pests are doing, Mr. Garback!”

Myron smiled indulgently. ”Doryphora decemlineata. Pardon me. I like to show off my Latin. Sometimes known as the potato beetle, more commonly called potato bug.”

“So that’s all they are,” said Mr. Queen with disappointment. ”Potato bugs! Dory?what?”

Myron waved his hand. ”It doesn’t matter. I suppose you’ll want something to discourage them, eh?”

“Permanently,” said Mr. Queen with a murderous scowl.

Myron bustled off and returned with a small tin carton, which he began to wrap in the High Village Pharmacy’s distinctive pink-striped wrapping paper. ”This’11 do the trick!”

“What’s in it that discourages them?” asked Mr. Queen.

“Arsenic?arsenious oxid. About fifty percent. Technically . . . ” Myron paused. ”I mean, strictly speaking, it’s copper aceto-arsenite in this preparation, but it’s the arsenic that slaughters ‘em.” He tied the package, and Mr. Queen handed him a five-dollar bill. Myron turned to the cash register. ”Want to be careful with that stuff, of course. It’s poisonous.”

“I certainly hope so!” exclaimed Mr. Queen.

“And five,” said Myron. ”Thank you. Call again.”

“Arsenic, arsenic,” said Mr. Queen loquaciously. ”Say, isn’t that the stuff I was reading about in the Record? I mean that murder case? Some woman swallowed it in a cocktail at a New Year’s Eve party?”

“Yes,” said the pharmacist. He gave Ellery a sharp look and turned away, presenting his graying nape and heavy shoulders to his customer.

“Wonder where they got it,” said Mr. Queen nosily, leaning on the counter again. ”You’d need a prescription, wouldn’t you, from a doctor?”

“Not necessarily.” It seemed to Ellery that Pharmacist Garback’s voice took on an edge. ”You didn’t need one just now! There’s arsenic in a lot of commercial preparations.” He fussed with some cartons on the shaving- preparations shelf.

“But if a druggist did sell a person arsenic without a prescription?”

Myron Garback turned about hotly. ”They won’t find anything wrong with my records! That’s what I told Dakin, and the only way Mr. Haight could have got it would have been when he bought?”

“Yes?” asked Ellery, breathing not at all.

Myron bit his lip. ”Excuse me, sir,” he said. ”I really mustn’t talk about it.” Then he looked startled. ”Wait a minute!” he exclaimed. ”Aren’t you the man who??”

“No, indeed,” said Mr. Queen hastily. ”Good morning!” And he hurried out.

So it had been Garback’s pharmacy. A something. A trail. And Dakin had picked it up. Quietly. They were working on Jim Haight?quietly.

* * *

Ellery struck out across the slippery cobbles of the Square toward the bus stop near the Hollis Hotel. An iced wind was whistling, and he put up his overcoat collar and half-turned to protect his face. As he turned, he noticed a car pull into a parking space on the other side of the Square. The tall figure of Jim Haight got out and strode quickly toward the Wrightsville National Bank.

Five small boys with strapped books swinging over their shoulders spied Jim and began to troop after him.

Ellery stopped, fascinated.

They were evidently jeering Jim, because Jim stopped, turned, and said something to them with an angry gesture. The boys backed off, and Jim turned away.

Ellery shouted.

One of the boys had picked up a stone.

He threw it, hard.

Jim went down on his face.

Ellery began to run across the Square. But others had seen the attack; and by the time he reached the other side of the Square, Jim was surrounded by a crowd. The boys had vanished.

“Let me through, please!”

Jim was dazed. His hat had fallen off. Blood oozed from a dark stain on his sandy hair.

“Poisoner!” said a fat woman. ”That’s him?that’s the poisoner!”

“Wife killer!”

“Why don’t they arrest him?”

“What kind of law have we got in this town, anyway?”

“He ought to be strung up!”

A small dark man kicked Jim’s hat. A woman with doughy cheeks jumped at Jim, screaming.

“Stop that!” growled Ellery. He cuffed the small man aside, stepped between the woman and Jim, and said hastily: “Out of this, Jim. Come on!”

“What hit me?” asked Jim. His eyes were glassy. ”My head?”

“Lynch the dirty bastard!”