“Please do. I’m as curious to see you as you are to see me.”
Ellery touched the light switch.
She was curled up in a corner of the slide-swing blinking at him from behind the streaming veil of her cigarette. The dove suede of her slacks was tight over her thighs; a cashmere sweater molded her breasts boldly. Ellery gathered a full-armed impression of earthiness, overripe, and growing bitter.
She laughed, a little nervously he thought, and flipped her cigarette over the porch rail into the darkness.
“You may turn off the light now, Mr. Smith. I’m a fright; and besides, I shouldn’t want to embarrass my family by making them aware I’m in their immediate neighborhood.”
Ellery obediently switched off the porch light. ”Then you’re Lola Wright.” The one who had eloped and come back divorced. The daughter the Wrights never mentioned.
“As if you didn’t know!” Lola Wright laughed again, and it turned into a hiccup. ”Excuse
Ellery chuckled. ”I’ve heard the vile slanders.”
“I was all prepared to hate your guts, from the kowtowing that’s been going on, but you’re all right. Shake!” The swing creaked, and steps shuffled to the tune of an unsteady laugh, and then the moist heat of her hand warmed his neck as she groped. He gripped her arms to save her from falling.
“Here,” he said. ”You should have stopped at number six.”
She placed her palms against his starched shirt and pushed strongly. ”Whoa, Geronimo! The man’ll think li’l Lola’s stinko.” He heard her totter back to the swing, and its creak. ”Well, Mr. Famous Author Smith, and what do you think of us all? Pygmies and giants, sweet and sour, snaggle-toothed and slick-magazine ads?good material for a book, eh?”
“Elegant.”
“You’ve come to the right place.” Lola Wright lit another cigarette; the flame trembled. ”Wrightsville! Gossipy, malicious, intolerant . . . the great American slob. More dirty linen to the square inch of backyard than New York or Marseilles.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” argued Mr. Queen. ”I’ve spent a lot of loose time prowling, and it seems a pretty nice place to me.”
“Nice!” She laughed. ”Don’t get me started. I was born here. It’s wormy and damp?a breeding place of nastiness.”
“Then why,” murmured Mr. Queen, “did you come back to it?”
The red tip of her cigarette waxed three times in rapid succession. ”None of your business. Like my family?”
“Immensely. You resemble your sister Patricia. Same physical glow, too.”
“Only Patty’s young, and my light’s going out.” Lola Wright mused for a moment. ”I suppose you’d have to be polite to an old bag named Wright. Look, Brother Smith. I don’t know why you came to Wrightsville, but if you’re going to be palsy with my kin, you’ll hear a lot about little Lola eventually, and . . . well . . . I don’t give a damn what Wrightsville thinks of me, but an alien . . . that’s different. Good grief! I still have vanity!”
“I haven’t heard anything about you from your family.”
“No?” He heard her laugh again. ”I feel like baring my bosom tonight. You’ll hear I drink. True. I learned it from?I learned it. You’ll hear I’m seen in all the awful places in town, and what’s worse,
She stopped.
“How about a drink?” asked Ellery.
“Not now. I don’t blame my mother. She’s narrow, like the rest of them; her social position is her whole life. But if I’d play according to her rules, she’d still take me back. She’s got spunk, I’ll give her that. Well, I won’t play. It’s my life, and to hell with rules! Understand?” She laughed once more. ”Say you understand. Go on. Say it.”
“I understand,” Ellery said.
She was quiet. Then she said: “I’m boring you. Good night.”
“I want to see you again.”
“No. Good-bye.”
Her shoes scraped the invisible porch floor. Ellery turned on the light again. She put up her arm to hide her eyes.
“Well, then, I’ll see you home, Miss Wright.”
“Thanks, no. I’m?”
She stopped.
Patricia Wright’s gay voice called from the darkness below: “Ellery? May I come up and have a good-night cigarette with you? Carter’s gone home and I saw your porch light?” Pat stopped, too.
The two sisters stared at each other.
“Hel/o, Lola!” cried Pat. She vaulted up the steps and kissed Lola vigorously. ”Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”
Mr. Queen put the light out again very quickly. But he had time to see how Lola clung?briefly?to her taller, younger sister.
“Lay off, Snuffles,” he heard Lola say in a muffled voice. ”You’re mussing my hairdo.”
“And that’s a fact,” said Pat cheerfully. ”You know, Ellery, this sister of mine is the most attractive girl ever to come out of Wrightsville. And she insists on hiding her light under frumpy old slacks!”
“You’re a darling, Pats,” said Lola, “but don’t try so hard. It’s no dice, and you know it.”
Pat said miserably: “Lo dear . . . why don’t you come back?”
“I think,” remarked Mr. Queen, “I’ll walk down to that hydrangea bush and see how it’s making out.”
“Don’t,” said Lola. ”I’m going now. I really am.”
“Lola!” Pat’s voice was damp.
“You see, Mr. Smith? Snuffles. She was always snuffling as a brat. Pat, now stop it. This is old hat for us two.”
“I’m all right.” Pat blew her nose in the darkness. ”I’ll drive home with you.”
“No, Patsy. Night, Mr. Smith.”
“Good night.”
“And I’ve changed my mind. Come over and have a drink with me any time you like. Night, Snuffy!”
And Lola was gone.
When the last rattle of Lola’s 1932 coupe died, Pat said in a murmur: “Lo lives in a two-room hole down in Low Village, near the Machine Shop. She wouldn’t take alimony from her husband, who was a rat till the day he died, and she won’t accept money from Pop. Those clothes she wears?six years old. Part of her trousseau. She supports herself by giving piano lessons to Low Village hopefuls at fifty cents a throw.”
“Pat, why does she stay in Wrightsville? What brought her back after her divorce?”
“Don’t salmon or elephants or something come back to their birthplace . . . to die? Sometimes I think it’s almost as if Lola’s . . . hiding.” Pat’s silk taffeta rustled suddenly. ”You make me talk and talk. Good night, Ellery.”
“Night, Pat.”
Mr. Queen stared into the dark night for a long time.
Yes, it was taking shape. He’d been lucky. The makings were here, rich and bloody. But the crime?the crime. Where was it?
Or had it already occurred?
Ellery went to bed in Calamity House with a sense of events past, present, and future.
* * *
On the afternoon of Sunday, August twenty-fifth, nearly three weeks from the day of Ellery’s arrival in Wrightsville, he was smoking a postprandial cigarette on his porch and enjoying the improbable sunset when Ed Hotchkiss’s taxicab charged up the Hill and squealed to a stop before the Wright house next door.
