Calamity Town

“Nowhere in particular,” said Ellery vaguely, turning the car south and beginning to drive toward Wrightsville Junction.

“But tell me! What brings you back to Wrightsville? It must be us?couldn’t be anyone else! How’s the novel?”

“Finished.”

“Oh, grand! Ellery, you never let me read a word of it. How does it end?”

“That,” said Mr. Queen, “is one of my reasons for coming back to Wrightsville.”

“What do you mean?”

“The end,” he grinned. ”I’ve ended it, but it’s always easy to change the last chapter?at least, certain elements not directly concerned with mystery plot. You might be of help there.”

“Me? But I’d love to! And-oh, Ellery. What am I thinking of? I haven’t thanked you for that magnificent gift you sent me from New York. And those wonderful things you sent Muth, and Pop, and Lola. Oh, Ellery, you shouldn’t have. We didn’t do anything that?”

“Oh, bosh. Seeing much of Cart Bradford lately?”

Pat examined her fingernails. ”Oh, Cart’s been around.”

“And Jim’s funeral?”

“We buried him next to Nora.”

“Well!” said Ellery. ”You know, I feel a thirst coming on. How about stopping in somewhere for a long one, Patty?”

“All right,” said Pat moodily.

“Isn’t that Gus Olesen’s Roadside Tavern up ahead? By gosh, it is!”

Pat glanced at him, but Ellery grinned and stopped the car before the tavern, and helped her out, at which she grimaced and said men in Wrightsville didn’t do things like that, and Ellery grinned again, which made Pat laugh; and they walked into Gus Olesen’s cool place arm in arm, laughing together; and Ellery walked her right up to the table where Carter Bradford sat waiting in a coil of knots, and said: “Here she is, Bradford. C.O.D.”

* * *

“Pat,” said Cart, his palms flat on the table. ”Cart!” cried Pat.

“Good morrow, good morrow,” chanted a cracked voice; and Mr. Queen saw old Anderson the Soak, seated at a nearby table with a fistful of dollar bills in one hand and a row of empty whisky glasses before him.

“Good morrow to you, Mr. Anderson,” said Mr. Queen; and while he nodded and smiled at Mr. Anderson, things were happening at the table; so that when he turned back, there was Pat, seated, and Carter seated, and they were glaring at each other across the table. So Mr. Queen sat down, too, and said to Gus Olesen: “Use your imagination, Gus.” Gus scratched his head and got busy behind the bar. ”Ellery”?Pat’s eyes were troubled?”you tricked me into coming here with you.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d come, untricked,” murmured Mr. Queen. ”/ asked Queen to come back to Wrightsville, Pat,” said Cart hoarsely. ”He said he’d?Pat, I’ve tried to see you. I’ve tried to make you understand that we can wipe the past out, that I’m in love with you and always was and always will be, and that I want to marry you more than anything in the world?”

“Let’s not discuss that anymore,” said Pat. She began making pleats in the skirt of the tablecloth.

Carter seized a tall glass Gus set down before him; and Pat did, too, with a sort of gratitude for the diversion; and they sat in silence for a while, drinking and not looking at each other.

At his table old Anderson had risen, one hand on the cloth to steady himself, and he was chanting:

“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars,

And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,

And the tree toad is a chef-d’oeuvre of the highest, And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven?”

“Siddown, Mr. Anderson,” said Gus Olesen gently. ”You’re rockin’ the boat.”

“Whitman,” said Mr. Queen, looking around. ”And very apt.” Old Anderson leered, and went on:

“And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,

And the cow, crunching with depressed head, surpasses any statue,

And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels!”

And with a courtly bow the Old Soak sat down again and began to pound out rhythms on the table. ”I was a poet!” he shouted. His lips waggled. ”And 1-look at me now . . . ”

“Yes,” said Mr. Queen thoughtfully. ”That’s very true indeed.”

“Here’s your poison!” said Gus at the next table, slopping a glass of whisky before Mr. Anderson. Then Gus looked very guilty and, avoiding the startled eyes of Pat, went quickly behind his bar and hid himself in a copy of Frank Lloyd’s Record.

Mr. Anderson drank, murmuring to himself in his gullet. ”Pat,” said Mr. Queen, “I came back here today to tell you and Carter who was really responsible for the crimes Jim Haight was charged with.”

“Oh,” said Patty, and she sucked in her breath.

“There are miracles in the human mind, too. You told me something in the hospital waiting room the day Nora died?one little acorn fact?and it grew into a tall tree in my mind.”

“ ‘And a mouse,’ “ shouted Mr. Anderson exultantly, “ ‘is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels!’ “

Pat whispered: “Then it wasn’t Jim after all . . . Ellery, no! Don’t! Please! No!”

“Yes,” said Ellery gently. ”That thing is standing between you and Cart. It’s a question mark that would outlive you both. I want to erase it and put a period in its place. Then the chapter will be closed, and you and Cart can look each other in the eye again with some sort of abiding faith.” He sipped his drink, frowning. ”I hope!”

“You hope?” muttered Cart. ”The truth,” said Ellery soberly, “is unpleasant.”

“Ellery!” cried Pat.

“But you’re not children, either of you. Don’t delude yourselves. It would stand between you even if you married . . . the uncertainty of it, the not-knowing, the doubt and the night-and-day question. It’s what’s keeping you apart and what has kept you apart. Yes, the truth is unpleasant. But at least it is the truth, and if you know the truth, you have knowledge; and if you have knowledge, you can make a decision with durability . . . Pat, this is surgery. It’s cut the tumor out or die. Shall I operate?”

Mr. Anderson was singing “Under the Greenwood Tree” in a soft croak, beating time with his empty whisky glass.

Patty sat up perfectly straight, her hands clasped about her glass. ”Go ahead . . . Doctor.”

And Cart took a long swallow and nodded.

* * *

Mr. Queen sighed.

“Do you recall, Pat, telling me in the hospital about the time I came into Nora’s house?last Hallowe’en?and found you and Nora transferring books from the living room to Jim’s new study upstairs?” Pat nodded wordlessly. ”And what did you tell me? That the books you and Nora were lugging upstairs you had just removed from a nailed box. That you’d gone down into the cellar just a few minutes before I dropped in, seen the box of books down there all nailed up, exactly as Ed Hotchkiss had left it when he cabbed it from the station weeks and weeks before . . . seen the box intact and opened it yourself.”

“A box of books?” muttered Carter.

“That box of books, Cart, had been part of Jim’s luggage which he’d shipped from New York to Wrightsville when he came back to Wrightsville to make up with Nora. He’d checked it at the Wrightsville station, Cart. It was at the station all the time Jim and Nora were away on their honeymoon; it was brought to the new house only on their return, stored down in the cellar, and on Hallowe’en, Pat found that box still intact, still nailed up, stilled unopened. That was the fact I hadn’t known?the kernel fact, the acorn fact, that told me the truth.”

“But how, Ellery?” asked Pat, feeling her head.

“You’ll see in a moment, honey. All the time, I’d assumed that the books I saw you and Nora handling were merely being transferred from the living-room bookshelves to Jim’s new study upstairs. I thought they