Calamity Town

wanted you on our side. I wanted you to help, not hurt!”

Cart ground his teeth together.

“You’ve said you love me,” cried Pat. ”How could you love me and still?” Horrified, she heard her own voice break and found herself sobbing. ”The whole town’s against us. They stoned Jim. They’re slinging mud at us. Wrightsville, Cart! A Wright founded this town. We were all born here?not only us kids, but Pop and Muth and Aunt Tabitha and the Bluefields and . . . I’m not the spoiled brat you used to neck in the back of your lizzie at the Grove in Wrightsville Junction on Saturday nights! The whole world’s gone to pot, Cart. I’ve grown old watching it. Oh, Cart, I’ve no pride left?no defenses. Say you’ll help me! I’m afraid!”

She hid her face, giving up the emotional battle. Nothing made any sense?what she’d just said, what she was thinking. Everything was drowning, gasping, struggling in tears.

“Pat,” said Cart miserably, “I can’t. I just can’t.”

That did it. She was drowned now, dead, but there was a sort of vicious other-life that made her spring from the chair and scream at him.

“You’re nothing but a selfish, scheming politician! You’re willing to see Jim die, and Pop, and Mother, and Nora, and me, and everyone suffer, just to further your own career! Oh, this is an important case. Dozens of New York and Chicago and Boston reporters to hang on your every word! Your name and photo?Young Public Prosecutor Bradford?brilliant?says this?my duty is?yes?no?off the record . . . You’re a hateful, shallow publicity hound!”

“I’ve gone all through this in my mind, Pat,” Cart replied with a queer lack of resentment. ”I suppose I can’t expect you to see it my way?”

Pat laughed. ”Insult to injury!”

“If I don’t do this job?if I resign or step out?someone else will. Someone who might be a lot less fair to Jim. If I prosecute, Pat, you can be sure Jim will get a square deal?”

She ran out.

And there, on the side of the corridor opposite the Prosecutor’s door, waiting patiently, was Mr. Queen.

“Oh, Ellery!”

Ellery said gently: “Come home.”

Chapter 21

Vox Pops

“Ave, Caesar!” wrote Roberta Roberts at the head of her column under the dateline of March fifteenth.

He who is about to be tried for his life finds even the fates against him. Jim Haight’s trial begins on the Ides of March before Judge Lysander Newbold in Wright County Courthouse, Part II, Wrightsville, U.S.A. This is chance, or subtlety . . . Kid Vox is popping furiously, and it is the impression of cooler heads that the young man going on trial here for the murder of Rosemary Haight and the attempted murder of Nora Wright Haight is being prepared to make a Roman holiday.

And so it seemed.

From the beginning there was a muttering undertone that was chilling. Chief of Police Dakin expressed himself privately to the persistent press as “mighty relieved” that his prisoner didn’t have to be carted through the streets of Wrightsville to reach the place of his inquisition, since the County Jail and the County Courthouse were in the same building.

People were in such an ugly temper you would have imagined their hatred of the alleged poisoner to be inspired by the fiercest loyalty to the Wrights.

But this was odd, because they were equally ugly toward the Wrights. Dakin had to assign two county detectives to escort the family to and from the Courthouse. Even so, jeering boys threw stones, the tires of their cars were slashed mysteriously and the paint scratched with nasty words; seven unsigned letters of the “threat” variety were delivered by a nervous Postman Bailey in one day alone. Silent, John F. Wright turned them over to Dakin’s office; and Patrolman Brady himself caught the Old Soak, Anderson, standing precariously in the middle of the Wright lawn in bright daylight, declaiming not too aptly to the unresponding house Mark Antony’s speech from Act III, Scene I of Julius Caesar. Charlie Brady hauled Mr. Anderson to the town lockup hastily, while Mr. Anderson kept yelling: “O parm me thou blee’n’ piece of earth that I am meek an’ zhentle with theshe?hup!?bushers!”

Hermy and John F. began to look beaten. In court, the family sat together, in a sort of phalanx, with stiff necks if pale faces; only occasionally Hermy smiled rather pointedly in the direction of Jim Haight, and then turned to sniff and glare at the jammed courtroom and toss her head, as if to say: “Yes, we’re all in this together, you miserable rubbernecks!”

There had been a great deal of mumbling about the impropriety of Carter Bradford’s prosecuting the case. In an acid editorial Frank Lloyd put the Record on record as “disapproving.” True, unlike Judge Eli Martin, Bradford had arrived at the fatal New Year’s Eve party after the poisoning of Nora and Rosemary, so he was not involved either as participant or as witness. But Lloyd pointed out that “our young, talented, but sometimes emotional Prosecutor has long been friendly with the Wright family, especially one member of it; and although we understand this friendship has ceased as of the night of the crime, we still question the ability of Mr. Bradford to prosecute this case without bias. Something should be done about it.”

Interviewed on this point before the opening of the trial, Mr. Bradford snapped: “This isn’t Chicago or New York. We have a close-knit community here, where everybody knows everybody else. My conduct during the trial will answer the Record’s libelous insinuations. Jim Haight will get from Wright County a forthright, impartial prosecution based solely upon the evidence. That’s all, gentlemen!”

Judge Lysander Newbold was an elderly man, a bachelor, greatly respected throughout the state as a jurist and trout fisherman.

He was a square, squat, bony man who always sat on the Bench with his black-fringed skull sunk so deeply between his shoulders that it seemed an outgrowth of his chest.

His voice was dry and careless; he had the habit, when on the Bench, of playing absently with his gavel, as if it were a fishing rod; and he never laughed.

Judge Newbold had no friends, no associates, and no commitments except to God, country, Bench, and the trout season.

Everybody said with a sort of relieved piety that “Judge Newbold is just about the best judge this case could have.” Some even thought he was too good. But they were the ones who were muttering.

Roberta Roberts baptized these grumblers “the Jimhaighters.”

* * *

It took several days to select a jury, and during these days Mr. Ellery Queen kept watching only two persons in the courtroom?Judge Eli Martin, defense counsel, and Carter Bradford, Prosecutor.

And it soon became evident that this would be a war between young courage and old experience. Bradford was working under a strain. He held himself in one piece, like a casting; there was a dogged something about him that met the eye with defiance and yet a sort of shame. Ellery saw early that he was competent. He knew his townspeople, too. But he was speaking too quietly, and occasionally his voice cracked.

Judge Martin was superb. He did not make the mistake of patronizing young Bradford, even subtly; that would have swung the people over to the prosecution. Instead, he was most respectful of Bradford’s comments. Once, returning to their places from a low-voiced colloquy before Judge Newbold, the old man was seen to put his hand affectionately on Carter’s shoulder for just an instant. The gesture said: You’re a good boy; we like each other; we are both interested in the same thing?justice; and we are equally matched. This is all very sad, but necessary. The People are in good hands.

The People rather liked it. There were whispers of approval. And some were heard to say: After all, old Eli Martin?he did quit his job on the Bench to defend Haight. Can’t get around that! Must be