Calamity Town

inside the railing the Wrights turned stone-faced.

“Now, Mr. Smith, did you see the defendant return to the pantry after Lola Wright left?”

“I did.”

“What did he do?”

“He dropped a maraschino cherry from the bottle into each cocktail, using a small ivory pick. He picked up the tray in both hands and carefully walked through the kitchen toward the door at which I was standing. I acted casual, and we went into the living room together, where he immediately began distributing the glasses to the family and guests.”

“On his walk from the pantry to the living room with the tray, did anyone approach him except yourself?”

“No one.”

Ellery waited for the next question with equanimity. He saw the triumph gather in Bradford’s eyes.

“Mr. Smith, wasn’t there something else you saw happen in that pantry?”

“No.”

“Nothing else happened?”

“Nothing else.”

“Have you told us everything you saw?”

“Everything.”

“Didn ‘t you see the defendant drop a white powder into one of those cocktails? “

“No,” said Mr. Queen. ”I saw nothing of the sort.”

“Then on the trip from the pantry to the living room?”

“Both Mr. Haight’s hands were busy holding the tray. He dropped no foreign substance of any kind into any of the cocktails at any time during their preparation or while he carried the tray into the living room.”

And then there was an undercurrent jabber in the room, and the Wrights glanced at one another with relief while Judge Martin wiped his face and Carter Bradford sneered almost with sound.

“Perhaps you turned your head for two seconds?”

“My eyes were on that tray of cocktails continuously.”

“You didn’t look away for even a second, eh?”

“For even a second,” said Mr. Queen regretfully, as if he wished he had, just to please Mr. Bradford.

Mr. Bradford grinned at the jury?man to man?and at least five jurors grinned back. Sure, what could you expect? A friend of the Wrights’. And then everybody in town knew why Cart Bradford had stopped seeing Pat Wright. This Smith bird had a case on Patty Wright. So . . .

“And you didn’t see Jim Haight drop arsenic into one of those cocktails?” insisted Mr. Bradford, smiling broadly now.

“At the risk of seeming a bore,” replied Mr. Queen with courtesy, “no, I did not.” But he knew he had lost with the jury; they didn’t believe him.

He knew it, and while the Wrights didn’t know it yet, Judge Martin did; the old gentleman was beginning to sweat again. Only Jim Haight sat unmoved, unchanged, wrapped in a shroud.

“Well, then, Mr. Smith, answer this question: Did you see anyone else who had the opportunity to poison one of those cocktails?”

Mr. Queen gathered himself; but before he could reply, Bradford snapped: “In fact, did you see anyone else who did poison one of those cocktails?anyone other than the defendant?”

“I saw no one else, but?”

“In other words, Mr. Smith,” cried Bradford, “the defendant James Haight was not only in the best position, but he was in the only position, to poison that cocktail?”

“No,” said Mr. Smith. And then he smiled.

You asked for it, he thought, and I’m giving it to you. The only trouble is, I’m giving it to myself, too, and that’s foolishness. He sighed and wondered what his father, Inspector Queen, no doubt reading about the case in the New York papers and conjecturing who Ellery Smith was, would have to say when he discovered Mr. ”Smith’s” identity and read about this act of puerile bravado.

Carter Bradford looked blank. Then he shouted: “Are you aware that this is perjury, Smith? You just testified that no one else entered the pantry! No one approached the defendant while he was carrying the cocktails into the living room! Allow me to repeat a question or two. Did anyone approach the defendant during his walk to the living room with the tray?”

“No,” said Mr. Queen patiently.

“Did someone else enter the pantry while the defendant was talking to Lola Wright at the back door?”

“No.”

Bradford was almost speechless. ”But you just said?! Smith, who but James Haight could have poisoned one of those cocktails, by your own testimony?”

Judge Martin was on his feet, but before he could get the word “Objection” out of his mouth, Ellery said calmly: “I could.”

There was a wholesale gasp before him and then a stricken silence. So he went on: “You see, it would have been the work often seconds for me to slip from behind the door of the hall, cross the few feet of kitchen to the pantry unobserved by Jim or Lola at the back door, drop arsenic into one of the cocktails, return the same way . . . ”

And there was Babel all over again, and Mr. Queen looked down upon the noisemakers from the highest point of his tower, smiling benignly.

He was thinking: It’s full of holes, but it’s the best a man can do on short notice with the material at hand.

* * *

Over the shouting, and Judge Newbold’s gavel, and the rush of reporters, Carter Bradford bellowed in triumph: “Well, DID you poison that cocktail, Smith? “

There were several instants of quiet again, during which Judge Martin’s voice was heard to say feebly: “I object?” and Mr. Queen’s voice topped the Judge’s by adding neatly: “On constitutional grounds?”

Then hell broke loose, and Judge Newbold broke his gavel off at the head, and roared to the bailiff to clear the damn courtroom, and then he hog-called a recess until the next morning and practically ran into his chambers, where it is presumed he applied vinegar compresses to his forehead.

Chapter 25

The Singular Request of Miss Patricia Wright

By the next morning several changes had taken place.

Wrightsville’s attention was temporarily transferred from one Jim Haight to one Ellery Smith.

Frank Lloyd’s newspaper came out with a blary edition reporting the sensational facts of Mr. Smith’s testimony; and an editorial which said, in part:

The bombshell of Mr. Smith’s testimony yesterday turns out to be a dud. There is no possible case against this man. Smith had no possible motive. He had not known Nora or James Haight or any of the Wrights before he came to Wrightsville last August. He has had practically no contact with Mrs. Haight, and less than that with Rosemary Haight. Whatever his reason for the quixotic nature of his farcical testimony yesterday?and Prosecutor Bradford is to be censured for his handling of the witness, who obviously led him on?it means nothing. Even if Smith were the only other person aside from Jim Haight who could have poisoned the fatal cocktail on New Year’s Eve, he could not possibly have been sure that that one poisoned cocktail would reach Nora Haight, whereas Jim Haight could have and, in effect, did. Nor could Smith have written the three letters, which are indisputably in the handwriting of James Haight. Wrightsville and the jury can only conclude that what happened yesterday was either a desperate gesture of friendliness on Smith’s part or a cynical bid for newspaper space by a writer who is using Wrightsville as a guinea pig.