“Also yesterday! I’m convinced she arranged the escape with Jim then.”
“What difference does it make?” Hermy sighed. ”Escape?no escape?Jim won’t ever escape.” Then Hermy said a queer thing, considering how she had always claimed she felt about her son-in-law and his guilt. Hermy said: “Poor Jim,” and closed her eyes.
* * *
The news arrived at ten o’clock that same night. Carter Bradford came over again, and this time he went directly to Pat Wright and took her hand. She was so astonished she forgot to snatch it away.
Carter said gently: “It’s up to you and Lola now, Pat.”
“What . . . on earth are you talking about?” asked Pat in a shrill tight voice.
“Dakin’s men have found the car Jim escaped in.”
“Found it?”
Ellery Queen rose from a dark corner and came over into the light. ”If it’s bad news, keep your voices down. Mrs. Wright’s just gone to bed, and John F. doesn’t look as if he could take any more today. Where was the car found?”
“At the bottom of a ravine off Route 478A, up in the hills. About fifty miles from here.”
“Lord,” breathed Pat, staring.
“It had crashed through the highway rail,” growled Carter, “just past a hairpin turn. The road is tricky up there. Dropped about two hundred feet?”
“And Jim?” asked Ellery.
Pat sat down in the love seat by the fireplace, looking up at Cart as if he were a judge about to pronounce doom.
“Found in the car.” Cart turned aside. ”Dead.” He turned back and looked humbly at Pat. ”So that’s the end of the case. It’s the end, Pat . . . ”
“Poor Jim,” whispered Pat.
* * *
“I want to talk to you two,” said Mr. Queen.
It was very late. But there was no time. Time had been lost in the nightmare. Hermione had heard, and Hermione had gone to pieces. Strange that the funeral of her daughter should have found her strong and the news of her son-in-law’s death weak. Perhaps it was the crushing tap after the heavy body blows. But Hermy collapsed, and Dr. Willoughby spent hours with her trying to get her to sleep. John F. was in hardly better case: he had taken to trembling, and the doctor noticed it and packed him off to bed in a guest room while Lola assisted with Hermy and Pat helped her father up the stairs . . . Now it was over, and they were both asleep, and Lola had locked herself in, and Dr. Willoughby had gone home, sagging.
“I want to talk to you two,” said Mr. Queen.
Carter was still there. He had been a bed of rock for Hermy this night. She had actually clung to him while she wept, and Mr. Queen thought this, too, was strange. And then he thought: No, this is the rock, the last rock, and Hermy clings. If she lets go, she drowns, they all drown. That is how she must feel.
And he repeated: “I want to talk to you two.”
Pat was suspended between worlds. She had been sitting beside Ellery on the porch, waiting for Carter Bradford to go home. Limply and far away. And now Carter had come out of the house, fumbling with his disreputable hat and fishing for some graceful way to negotiate the few steps of the porch and reach the haven of night shadows beyond, on the lawn.
“I don’t think there’s anything you can have to say that I’d want to hear,” said Carter huskily; but he made no further move to leave the porch.
“Ellery?don’t,” said Pat, taking his hand in the gloom.
Ellery squeezed the cold young flesh. ”I’ve got to. This man thinks he’s a martyr.
“Good night!” said Carter Bradford.
“Wait, Bradford. It’s been a difficult time and an especially difficult day. And I shan’t be in Wrightsville much longer.”
“Ellery!” Pat wailed.
“I’ve been here much too long already, Pat. Now there’s nothing to keep me?nothing at all.”
“Nothing . . . at all?”
“Spare me your tender farewells,” snapped Cart. Then he laughed sheepishly and sat down on the step near them. ”Don’t pay any attention to me, Queen. I’m in a fog these days. Sometimes I think I must be pretty much of a drip.”
Pat gaped at him. ”Cart?
“I’ve grown up a bit these past few months,” mumbled Cart.
“There’s been a heap of growing up around here these past few months,” said Mr. Queen mildly. ”How about you two being sensible and proving it?”
Pat took her hand away. ”Please, Ellery?”
“I know I’m meddling, and the lot of the meddler is hard,” sighed Mr. Queen. ”But just the same, how about it?”
“I thought you were in love with her,” said Cart gruffly.
“I am.”
“Ellery!” cried Pat. ”You never
“I’ll be in love with that funny face of yours as long as I live,” said Mr. Queen wistfully. ”It’s a lovely funny face. But the trouble is, Pat, that you’re not in love with
Pat stumbled over a word, then decided to say nothing.
“You’re in love with Cart.”
Pat sprang from the porch chair. ”What if I was! Or am! People don’t forget hurts and burns!”
“Oh, but they do,” said Mr. Queen. ”People are more forgetful than you’d think. Also, they have better sense than we sometimes give them credit for. Emulate them.”
“It’s impossible,” said Pat tightly. ”This is no time for silliness, anyway. You don’t seem to realize what’s happened to us in this town. We’re pariahs. We’ve got a whole new battle on our hands to rehabilitate ourselves. And it’s just Lola and me now to help Pop and Muth hold their heads up again. I’m not going to run out on them now, when they need me most.”
“I’d help you, Pat,” said Cart inaudibly.
“Thanks! We’ll do it on our own. Is that all, Mr. Queen?”
“There’s no hurry,” murmured Mr. Queen.
Pat stood there for a moment, then she said good-night in an angry voice and went into the house. The door huffed. Ellery and Carter sat in silence for some time.
“Queen,” said Cart at last.
“Yes, Bradford?”
“This isn’t over, is it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I have the most peculiar feeling you know something I don’t.”
“Oh,” said Mr. Queen. Then he said: “Really?”
Carter slapped his hat against his thighs. ”I won’t deny I’ve been pigheaded. Jim’s death has done something to me, though. I don’t know why it should, because it hasn’t changed the facts one iota. He’s still the only one who could have poisoned Nora’s cocktail, and he’s still the only one who had any conceivable motive to want her to die. And yet . . . I’m not so sure anymore.”
“Since when?” asked Ellery in a peculiar tone.
“Since the report came in that he was found dead.”
“Why should that make a difference?”
Carter put his head between his hands. ”Because there’s every reason to believe the car he was driving didn’t
