Something in Ellery’s gaze seemed to penetrate her hysteria, and Nora broke off with a gasp, swaying against Dr. Willoughby, an enormous new fear leaping into her eyes. She looked quickly at Dakin, at Bradford, saw the astonishment, then the flash of exultation. And she backed up against the broad chest of the doctor and froze there, her hand to her mouth, sick with realization.
“What letters?” demanded Dakin.
“Nora, what letters?” cried Bradford.
“No! I didn’t mean?”
Carter ran over to her and seized her hand. ”Nora!
“No,” groaned Nora.
“You’ve got to tell me! If there are letters, you’re concealing evidence?”
“Mr. Smith! What do you know about this?” demanded Chief Dakin.
“Letters?” Ellery looked astonished, and shook his head.
Pat rose and pushed Bradford. He staggered back. ”You let Nora alone,” said Pat in a passionate voice. ”You Judas!”
Her violence kindled an answering violence. ”You’re not going to presume upon my friendship! Dakin, search this house and the house next door!”
“Should have done it long ago, Cart,” said the Chief mildly. ”If you hadn’t been so blamed set?” He disappeared.
“Carter,” said John F. in very low tones, “you’re never to come here again. Do you understand?”
Bradford looked as if he were going to cry.
And Nora collapsed in Dr. Willoughby’s arms with a moan like a sick cat.
* * *
With Bradford’s frigid permission Nora was taken upstairs to her bedroom by Dr. Willoughby. Hermy and Pat hurried along with them, helpless and harried.
“Smith.” Bradford did not turn.
“Save your breath,” advised Mr. Queen politely.
“I know it’s no use, but I’ve got to warn you?if you’re contributing to the suppression of evidence . . . ”
“Evidence?” echoed Mr. Queen, as if he had never heard the word before.
“Those letters!”
“What
Cart spun around, his mouth working. ”You’ve been in my way ever since you came here,” he said hoarsely. ”You’ve wormed your way into this house, alienated Pat from me?”
“Here, here,” said Ellery kindly. ”Mind your verbs.”
Cart stopped, his hands two fists. Ellery went to the window. Chief Dakin was deep in conversation with little Dick Gobbin, the patrolman, on the Haight porch . . . The two policemen went into the house.
Fifteen minutes later Messrs. Queen and Bradford were still standing in the same positions.
Pat came in with a noise.
Her face shocked them.
She went directly to Ellery. ”The most awful thing’s happened.” And she burst into tears.
“Pat! For heaven’s sake!”
“Nora?Nora is?” Pat’s voice blurred and shook.
Dr. Willoughby said from the doorway: “Bradford?”
“What’s happened?” asked Bradford tensely.
And then Chief Dakin came in, unknowing, and his face was like a mask. He was carrying Nora’s hatbox and the fat tan book with the neat gilt title, Edgcomb’s
Dakin stopped. ”Happened?” he asked quickly. ”What’s this?”
Dr. Willoughby said: “Nora Haight is going to have a baby. In about five months.”
And then there was no sound at all but Pat’s exhausted sobs against Ellery’s chest.
“No . . . ” said Bradford in a wincing voice. ”That’s . . . too much.” And with a queer begging gesture toward Chief of Police Dakin he stumbled out. They heard the front door slam.
“I won’t be responsible for Mrs. Haight’s life,” said Dr. Willoughby harshly, “if she’s put through any more scenes like the one just now. You can call in Wright County’s whole medical fraternity to confirm what I just said. She’s pregnant, in an extremely nervous condition; she has a naturally delicate constitution to begin with?”
“Look, Doc,” said Dakin, “it ain’t my fault if?”
“Oh, go to hell,” said Dr. Willoughby. They heard him climbing furiously back up the stairs.
Dakin stood still in the middle of the room, Nora’s hatbox in one hand and Jim’s book on poisons in the other.
Then he sighed and said: “But it
“All right, Dakin,” said Ellery. His arms tightened about Pat.
“These three letters,” said Dakin doggedly. ”They practically make our case. And finding ‘em in Mrs. Haight’s closet . . . Looks mighty odd to me. I don’t get this?”
Pat cried: “Doesn’t that convince you? Would Nora have kept those letters if she thought Jim was trying to poison her? Are you all so stupid?”
“So you did know about the letters,” said the Chief, blinking. ”I see. And you’re in on this, too, Mr. Smith. Not that I blame you. I got a family, too, and it’s good to be loyal to friends. I got nothing against Jim Haight, or you Wrights . . . But I got to find the facts. If Jim Haight’s innocent, he’ll be acquitted, never you worry . . . ”
“Go away, please,” said Ellery.
Dakin shrugged and left the house, taking his evidence with him. He looked angry and bitter.
At eleven o’clock that morning, February fourteenth, the day of St. Valentine, when all Wrightsville was giggling over comic cards and chewing candy out of heart-shaped boxes, Chief of Police Dakin returned to 460 Hill Drive with Patrolman Charles Brady, nodded to Patrolman Dick Gobbin, and Patrolman Dick Gobbin knocked on the front door.
When there was no answer, they went in.
They found Jim Haight snoring on the living-room sofa in a mess of cigarette butts, dirty glasses, and half- empty whisky bottles.
Dakin shook Jim, not ungently, and finally Jim snorted. His eyes were all red and glassy.
“Hunh?”
“James Haight,” said Dakin, holding out a blue-backed paper, “I hereby arrest you on the charge of the attempted murder of Nora Wright Haight and the murder of Rosemary Haight.”
Jim screwed up his eyes, as if he could not see well.
Then he reddened all over his face. He shouted: “No!”
“Better come without a fuss,” said Dakin; and he walked out with a quick, relieved step.
Charles Brady said later to the reporters at the Courthouse: “Seemed like Haight just caved in. Never saw anything like it. You could just see the fella sort of fold up, in pieces, like a contraption. I says to Dick Gobbin: ‘Better take that side of him, Dick, he’s gonna collapse,’ but Jim Haight, he just made a kind of shoving motion at Dick, and I’ll be doggone if he don’t start to laugh?all folded up! An’ he says, so you could hardly hear him through the laughin’?an’ let me tell you fellas, the stink of booze was enough to send you higher’n a kite?he says: ‘Don’t tell my wife.’ And he comes along nice and quiet. Now wasn’t that a crazy thing for a fella to say who’s just been arrested for murder? ‘Don’t tell my wife.’ Facin’ a murder rap an’ thinkin’ of sparin’ his wife’s feelin’s! How could anybody keep it from her, anyway? Don’t tell my wife! I tell you the fella’s a nut.”
All Patrolman Gobbin said was: “G-o-b-b-i-n. That’s right, fellas. Hey, this’ll give my kids a real kick!”
PART FOUR
Chapter 19
