Calamity Town

“Don’t you realize? Every last awful thing that’s happened?happened on a holiday! Here’s Easter Sunday?and Nora’s on the operating table. When was Jim arrested? On St. Valentine’s Day! When did Rosemary die, and Nora get so badly poisoned? On New Year’s Eve! And Nora was sick?poisoned?on Christmas Day, and before that on Thanksgiving Day . . . ”

Mr. Queen was looking at Pat as if she had pointed out that two plus two adds up to five. ”No. On that point I’m convinced. It’s been bothering me for weeks. But it’s coincidence. Can’t be anything else. No, Patty . . . ”

“Even the way it started,” cried Patty. ”It started on Hallowe’en! Remember?” She stared at the cigarette in her fingers; it was pulpy ruin now. ”If we’d never found those three letters in that toxicology book, everything might have been different, Ellery. Don’t shake your head. It might!”

“Maybe you’re right,” muttered Ellery. ”I’m shaking my head at my own stupidity?” A formless something took possession of his mind in a little leap, like a struck spark. He had experienced that sensation once more?how long ago it seemed!?but now the same thing happened. The spark died; and he was left with a cold, exasperating ash which told nothing.

“You talk about coincidence,” said Pat shrilly. ”All right, call it that. I don’t care what you call it. Coincidence, or fate, or just rotten luck. But if Nora hadn’t accidentally dropped those books we were moving that Hal-lowe’en, the three letters wouldn’t have tumbled out and they’d probably be in the book still.”

Mr. Queen was about to point out that the peril to Nora had lain not in the letters but in their author; but again a spark leaped, and died, and so he held his tongue.

“For that matter,” Pat sighed, “if the most trivial thing had happened differently that day, maybe none of this would have come about. If Nora and I hadn’t decided to fix up Jim’s new study?if we hadn’t opened that box of books!”

“Box of books?” said Ellery blankly.

“I brought the crate up myself from the cellar, where Ed Hotchkiss had put it when he cabbed Jim’s stuff over from the railroad station after Jim and Nora got back from their honeymoon. Suppose I hadn’t opened that box with a hammer and screwdriver? Suppose I hadn’t been able to find a screwdriver? Or suppose I’d waited a week, a day, even another hour . . . Ellery, what’s the matter?”

For Mr. Queen was standing over her like the judgment of the Lord, a terrible wrath on his face; and Patty was so alarmed she shrank back against the window.

“Do you mean to sit there and tell me,” said Mr. Queen in an awful quietude, “that those books?the armful of books Nora dropped?those books were not the books usually standing on the living-room shelves?” He shook her, and she winced at the pressure of his fingers on her shoulder. ”Pat, answer me! You and Nora weren’t merely transferring books from the living-room bookshelves to the new shelves in Jim’s study upstairs? You’re sure the books came from that box in the cellar?”

“Of course I’m sure,” said Pat shakily. ”What’s the matter with you? A nailed box. I opened it myself. Why, just a few minutes before you came in that evening, I’d lugged the empty wooden box back to the cellar, with the tools and wrapping paper and mess of bent nails?”

“It’s . . . fantastic,” said Ellery.

One hand groped for the rocker near Pat. He sat down, heavily.

Pat was bewildered. ”But I don’t get it, Ellery. Why all the dramatics? What difference can it make?”

Mr. Queen did not answer at once. He just sat there, pale and growing perceptibly paler, nibbling his nails. And the fine lines about his mouth deepened and became hard, and there appeared in his silvery eyes a baffled something that he concealed very quickly?almost as quickly as it showed itself.

“What difference?” He licked his lips.

“Ellery!” Pat was shaking him now. ”Don’t act so mysterious! What’s wrong? Tell me!”

“Wait a minute.” She stared at him and waited.

He just sat.

Then he muttered: “If I’d only known. But I couldn’t have . . . Fate. The fate that brought me into that room five minutes late. The fate that kept you from telling me all these months. The fate that concealed the essential fact!”

“But Ellery?”

“Dr. Willoughby!”

They ran across the waiting room. Dr. Willoughby had just blundered in. He was in his surgical gown and cap, his face mask around his throat like a scarf.

There was blood on his gown and none in his cheeks.

“Milo?” quavered Hermione.

“Well, well?” croaked John F.

“For God’s sake, Doc!” cried Lola.

Pat rushed up to grab the old man’s thick arm.

“Well,” said Dr. Willoughby in a hoarse voice, and he stopped.

Then he smiled the saddest smile and put his arm around Hermy’s shoulder, quite dwarfing her. ”Nora’s given you a real Easter present . . . Grandma.”

“Grandma,” whispered Hermy.

“The baby!” cried Pat. ”It’s all right?”

“Fine, fine, Patricia. A perfect little baby girl. Oh, she’s very tiny?she’ll need the incubator?but with proper care she’ll be all right in a few weeks.”

“But Nora,” panted Hermy. ”My Nora.”

“How is Nora, Milo?” demanded John F.

“Is she out of it?” Lola asked.

“Does she know?” cried Pat. ”Oh, Nor must be so happy!”

Dr. Willoughby glanced down at his gown, began to fumble at the spot where Nora’s blood had splattered.

“Damn it all,” he said. His lips were quivering.

Hermione screamed.

“Gropper and I?we did all we could. We couldn’t help it. We worked over her like beavers. But she was carrying too big a load. John, don’t look at me that way . . . ”

The doctor waved his arms wildly.

“Milo?” began John F. in a faint voice.

“She’s dead, that’s all!”

He ran out of the waiting room.

PART SIX

Chapter 28

The Tragedy on Twin Hill

He was looking at the old elms before the new Courthouse. The old was being reborn in multitudes of little green teeth on brown gums of branches; and the new already showed weather streaks in its granite, like varicose veins.

There is sadness, too, in spring, thought Mr. Ellery Queen.

He stepped into the cool shadows of the Courthouse lobby and was borne aloft.

“No time for visitors to be visitin’,” said Wally Planetsky sternly. Then he said: “Oh. You’re that friend of Patty Wright’s. It’s a hell of a way to be spendin’ the Easter Sunday, Mr. Queen.”

“How true,” said Mr. Queen. The keeper unlocked an iron door, and they trudged together into the jail. ”How is he?”

“Never saw such a man for keepin’ his trap shut. You’d think he’d taken a vow.”

“Perhaps,” sighed Mr. Queen, “he has . . . Anyone been in today to see him?”

“Just that newspaperwoman. Miss Roberts.”