Planetsky unlocked another door, locked it carefully behind them.
“Is there a doctor about?” asked Ellery unexpectedly.
Planetsky scratched his ear and opined that if Mr. Queen was feelin’ sick . . .
“Is there?”
“Well, sure. We got an infirmary here. Young Ed Crosby?that’s Ivor Crosby the farmer’s son?he’s on duty right now.”
“Tell Dr. Crosby I may need him in a very little while.”
The keeper looked Ellery over suspiciously, shrugged, unlocked the cell door, locked it again, and shuffled away.
Jim was lying on his bunk, hands crossed behind his head, examining the graph of sky blue beyond bars. He had shaved, Ellery noted; his clean shirt was open at the throat; he seemed at peace.
“Jim?”
Jim turned his head. ”Oh, hello, there,” he said. ”Happy Easter.”
“Jim?” began Ellery again, frowning.
Jim swung his feet to the concrete floor and sat up to grip the edge of his bunk with both hands. No peace now. Fear. And that was strange . . . No, logical. When you came to think of it. When you
“Something’s wrong,” said Jim. He jumped to his feet. ”Something’s wrong!”
Ellery grimaced. This was the punishment for trespassing. This was the pain reserved for meddlers.
“I’m all for you, Jim?”
“What is it?” Jim made a fist.
“You’ve got a great deal of courage, Jim?”
Jim stared. ”She’s . . . It’s Nora.”
“Jim, Nora’s dead.”
Jim stared, his mouth open.
“I’ve just come from the hospital. The baby is all right. A girl. Premature delivery. Instruments. Nora was too weak. She didn’t come out of it. No pain. She just died, Jim.”
Jim’s lips came together. He turned around and went back to his bunk and turned around again and sat down, his hands reaching the bunk before he reached it.
“Naturally, the family . . . John F. asked me to tell you, Jim. They’re all home now, taking care of Hermione. John F. said to tell you he’s terribly sorry, Jim.”
Stupid, thought Ellery. A stupid speech. But then he was usually the observer, not a participant. How did one go about drawing the agony out of a stab to the heart? Killing without hurting?for as much as a second? It was a branch of the art of violence with which Mr. Queen was unacquainted.
He sat helplessly on the contraption which concealed Wright County’s arrangement for the physical welfare of its prisoners, and thought of symbolism.
“If there’s anything I can do?”
That wasn’t merely stupid, thought Ellery angrily; that was vicious. Anything he could do! Knowing what was going on in Jim’s mind!
Ellery got up and said: “Now, Jim. Now wait a minute, Jim?”
But Jim was at the bars like a great monkey, gripping two of them, his thin face pressed as hard between two adjacent ones as if he meant to force his head through and drag his body after it.
“Let me out of here!” he kept shouting. ”Let me out of here! Damn all of you! I’ve got to get to Nora! Let me out of here!”
He panted and strained, his teeth digging into his lower lip and his eyes hot and his temples bulging with vessels.
“Let me out of here!” he screamed.
A white froth sprang up at the corners of his mouth.
When Dr. Crosby arrived with a black bag and a shaking Keeper Planetsky to open the door for him, Jim Haight was flat on his back on the floor and Mr. Queen knelt on Jim’s chest holding Jim’s arms down, hard, and yet gently, too.
Jim was still screaming, but the words made no sense.
Dr. Crosby took one look and grabbed a hypodermic.
* * *
Twin Hill is a pleasant place in the spring. There’s Bald Mountain off to the north, almost always wearing a white cap on its green shoulders, like some remote Friar Tuck; there’s the woods part in the gulley of the Twins, where boys go hunting woodchuck and jackrabbit and occasionally scare up a wild deer; and there are the Twins themselves, two identical humps of hill all densely populated with the dead.
The east Twin has the newer cemeteries?the Poor Farm burial ground pretty far down, in the scrub, the old Jewish cemetery, and the Catholic cemetery; these are “new” because not a headstone in the lot bears a date earlier than 1805.
But the west Twin has the really old cemeteries of the Protestant denominations, and there you can see, at the very bald spot of the west Twin, the family plot of the Wrights, the first Wright’s tomb?Jezreel Wright’s?in its mathematical center. Of course, the Founder’s grave is not exposed to the elements?that wind off Bald Mountain does things to grass and topsoil. John F.’s grandfather had built a large mausoleum over the grave?handsome it is, too, finest Vermont granite, white as Patty Wright’s teeth. But inside there’s the original grave with its little stick of headstone; and if you look sharp, you can still make out the scratches on the stone?the Founder’s name, a hopeful quotation from the Book of Revelation, and the date 1723.
The Wright family plot hogs pretty nearly the whole top of the west Twin. The Founder, who seems to have had a nice judgment in all business matters, staked out enough dead land for his seed and his seed’s seed to last for eternity. As if he had faith that the Wrights would live and die in Wrightsville unto Judgment Day.
The rest of the cemetery, and the other burial grounds, simply took what was left. And that was all right with everyone, for after all didn’t the Founder found? Besides, it made a sort of showplace. Wrightsvillians were forever hauling outlanders up to Twin Hill, halfway to Slocum Township, to exhibit the Founder’s grave and the Wright plot. It was one of the “sights.”
The automobile road ended at the gate of the cemetery, not far from the boundary of the Wright family plot. From the gate you walked?a peaceful walk under trees so old you wondered they didn’t lie down and ask to be buried themselves out of plain weariness. But they just kept growing old and droopier. Except in spring. Then the green hair began sprouting from their hard black skins with a sly fertility, as if death were a great joke.
Maybe the graves so lush and thick all over the hillside had something to do with it.
Services for Nora?on Tuesday, April the fifteenth?were private. Dr. Doolittle uttered a few words in the chapel of Willis Stone’s Eternal Rest Mortuary, on Upper Whistling Avenue in High Village. Only the family and a few friends were present?Mr. Queen, Judge and Clarice Martin, Dr. Willoughby, and some of John F.’s people from the bank. Frank Lloyd was seen skulking about the edge of the group, straining for a glimpse of the pure, still profile in the copper casket. He looked as if he had not taken his clothes off for a week or slept during that time. When Hermy’s eye rested on him, he shrank and disappeared . . . Perhaps twenty mourners in all.
Hermy was fine. She sat up straight in her new black, eyes steady, listening to Dr. Doolittle; and when they all filed past the bier for a last look at Nora, she merely grew a little paler and blinked. She didn’t cry. Pat said it was because she was all cried out. John F. was a crumpled, red-nosed little derelict. Lola had to take him by the hand and lead him away from the casket to let Mr. Stone put the head section in place.
Nora had looked very calm and young. She was dressed in her wedding gown.
Just before they went out to the funeral cars, Pat slipped into Mr. Stone’s office. When she came back, she said: “I just called the hospital. Baby’s fine. She’s growing in that incubator like a little vegetable.”
Pat’s lips danced, and Mr. Queen put his arm about her.
* * *
Looking back on it, Ellery saw the finer points of Jim’s psychology. But that was after the event. Beforehand it was impossible to tell, because Jim acted his part perfectly. He fooled them all, including Ellery.
