nun’s flat in Low Village, and Nora being better, Pat assumed the task of cooking Jim’s meals and straightening Nora’s house.
On Thursday, February thirteenth, Dr. Willoughby said that Nora could get out of bed.
There was much joy in the household. Ludie baked a gargantuan lemon-meringue pie, Nora’s favorite; John F. came home early from the bank with a double armful of American Beauty roses (and where he got them, in Wrightsville, in February, he refused to say!); Pat stretched as if she were cramped and then washed her hair and did her nails, murmuring things like: “My God! How I’ve let myself go!” Hermy turned the radio on for the first time in weeks to hear the war news . . . It was like coming out of a restless sleep to find yourself safely awake.
Nora wanted to see Jim instantly; but Hermione refused to let her out of the house?”The first day, dear! Are you insane?”?and so Nora phoned next door. After a while she hung up, helplessly; there was no answer.
“Maybe he’s gone out for a walk or something,” said Pat.
“I’m sure that’s what it is, Nora,” said Hermy, fussing over Nora’s hair. Hermy did not say that Jim was in the house that very moment?she had just glimpsed his gray face pressed against the Venetian blinds of the master bedroom.
“I know!” said Nora, with a little excitement; and she telephoned Ben Danzig. ”Mr. Danzig, send me the biggest, most expensive Valentine you’ve got. Right away!”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Ben; and in a half hour it was all over town that Nora Haight was all right again. Sending Valentines!
It was a gorgeous thing, quilted in pink satin and bordered with real lace, framing numerous fat Cupids and sweet with St. Valentine sentiment?Ben Danzig’s most exclusive number, 99A.
Nora addressed the envelope herself, and licked the stamp and affixed it, and sent Ellery out to mail it. She was almost gay. Mr. Queen, playing Hermes to Eros, dropped the Valentine in the box at the bottom of the Hill with the uncomfortable feeling of a man who watches a battered pugilist getting to his knees after the fourth knockdown.
In the mail Friday morning there was no Valentine for Nora.
“I’m going over there,” she said firmly. ”This is silly. Jim’s sulking. He thinks the whole world’s against him. I’m going?”
Ludie came in, very stiff and scared, and said: “It’s that Chief Dakin and Mr. Bradford, Miss Hermy.”
“Dakin!” The color left Hermy’s girlish cheeks. ”For . . . me, Ludie?”
“Says he wants to be seeing Miss Nora.”
Nora said: “Me?” in a quivery voice.
John F. rose from the breakfast table. ”I’ll handle this!” They went into the living room.
Mr. Queen left his eggs and ran upstairs. Pat yawned “Whozit?” when he rapped on her door.
“Come downstairs!”
“Whaffor?” He heard her yawn again. ”Come in, come in.” Ellery merely opened the door. Pat was bunched under the bedclothes, looking rosy and mussed and young again.
“Dakin and Bradford. To see Nora. I think this is it.”
“Oh!” Panic. But only for a moment. ”Throw me my robe, like a darling. It’s arctic in here.” Ellery handed it to her, turned to walk out. ”Wait for me in the hall, Ellery. I mean?I want to go downstairs with you.”
Pat joined him in three minutes. She held onto his arm all the way downstairs.
As they came in, Chief Dakin was saying: “Course, Mrs. Haight, you understand I’ve got to cover the whole ground. I’d told Doc Willoughby to let me know when you’d be up and about?”
“So kind of you,” said Nora.
She was frightened almost out of her wits. You could see it. Her figure had a wooden stillness, and she looked from Dakin to Bradford and back again like a puppet being jerked by invisible hands.
“Hello,” said Pat grimly. ”Isn’t it early for a social call, Mr. Dakin?”
Dakin shrugged. Bradford regarded her with a furious misery. He seemed thinner, almost emaciated.
“Sit down and be quiet, baby,” said Hermione faintly.
“I don’t know what you can expect Nora to tell you,” said John F. frigidly. ”Patricia, sit down!”
“Patricia?” said Pat. She sat down. ”Patricia” was a bad sign. John F. hadn’t called her Patricia in such a formal voice since the last time he’d used his old-fashioned razor strop on her bottom, and that had been many many years ago. Pat contrived to grasp Nora’s hand.
She did not look at Bradford once; and after that first unhappy glance, Bradford did not look at her.
Dakin nodded pleasantly to Ellery. ”Glad to see you, Mr. Smith. Now if we’re all set?Cart, did you want to say somethin’?”
“Yes!” exploded Cart. ”I wanted to say that I’m in an impossible position. I wanted to say?” He made a helpless gesture and stared out the window at the snow-covered lawn.
“Now, Mrs. Haight,” said Dakin, blinking at Nora, “would you mind telling us just what happened New Year’s Eve as you saw it? I’ve got everybody else’s story?”
“Mind? Why should I mind?” It came out froggy, and Nora cleared her throat. And began to talk shrilly and rapidly, making rapid little meaningless signs with her free hand. ”But I can’t really tell you anything. I mean, all that I saw?”
“When your husband came around to you with the tray of cocktails, didn’t he sort of pick out one special glass for you? I mean, didn’t you want to take one glass and he fixed it so you took another?”
“How can I remember a thing like that?” asked Nora indignantly. ”And that’s a?a nasty implication!”
“Mrs. Haight.” The Chief’s voice was suddenly chilly. ”Did your husband ever try to poison you before New Year’s Eve?”
Nora snatched her hand from Pat’s and jumped up. ”No!”
“Nora dear,” began Pat, “you mustn’t get excited?”
“You’re sure, Mrs. Haight?” insisted Dakin.
“Of course I’m sure!”
“There’s nothing you can tell us about the fights you and Mr. Haight been having?”
“Fights!” Nora was livid now. ”I suppose it’s that horrible DuPre creature?or?”
The “or” was so odd even Carter Bradford turned from the window. Nora had uttered the word with a sudden sickish emphasis and glared directly at Ellery. Dakin and Bradford glanced quickly at him, and Pat looked terrified. Mr. and Mrs. Wright were hopelessly lost.
“Or what, Mrs. Haight?” asked Dakin.
“Nothing. Nothing! Why don’t you let Jim alone?” Nora was crying hysterically now. ”All of you!”
Dr. Willoughby came in with his big man’s light step; Ludie’s face, white and anxious, peered over his shoulder, then vanished.
“Nora,” he said with concern, “crying again? Dakin, I warned you?”
“Can’t help it, Doc,” said the Chief with dignity. ”I got my job to do, and I’m doing it. Mrs. Haight, if there’s nothing you can tell us that helps your husband?”
“He didn’t do it, I tell you!”
“Nora,” said Dr. Willoughby insistently.
“Then I’m afraid we got to do it, Mrs. Haight.”
“Do what, for heaven’s sake?”
“Arrest your husband.”
“Arrest?Jim?” Nora began to laugh, her hands in her hair. Dr. Willoughby tried to take her hands in his, but she pushed him away. Behind the glasses her pupils were dilated. ”But you can’t arrest Jim! He didn’t do anything! You haven’t a thing on him?!”
“We’ve got plenty on him,” said Chief Dakin.
“I’m sorry, Nora,” mumbled Carter Bradford. ”It’s true.”
“Plenty on him,” whispered Nora. Then she screamed at Pat: “I knew too many people knew about it! That’s what comes of taking strangers into the house!”
“Nora!” gasped Pat. ”Darling . . . ”
“Wait a moment, Nora,” began Ellery.
“Don’t
