Calamity Town

“Shoot,” said Carter.

Mr. Queen nodded. ”There’s only one question left to be answered?the most important question of all: who really poisoned Rosemary?

“The case against Jim had shown that he alone had opportunity, that he alone had motive, that he alone had control of the distribution of the cocktails and therefore was the only one who could have been positive the poisoned cocktail reached its intended victim. Further, Cart, you proved that Jim had bought rat poison and so could have had arsenic to drop into the fatal cocktail.

“All this is reasonable and, indeed, unassailable?//Jim meant to kill Nora, to whom he handed the cocktail. But now we know Jim never intended to kill Nora at all!?that the real victim from the beginning was meant to be Rosemary and only Rosemary!

“So I had to refocus my mental binoculars. Now that I knew Rosemary was the intended victim, was the case just as conclusive against Jim as when Nora was believed to be the victim?

“Well, Jim still had opportunity to poison the cocktail; with Rosemary the victim, he had infinitely greater motive; he still had a supply of arsenic available. BUT?with Rosemary the victim, did Jim control the distribution of the fatal cocktail? Remember, he handed the cocktail subsequently found to contain arsenic to Nora . . . Could he have been sure the poisoned cocktail would go to Rosemary?

“No!” cried Ellery, and his voice was suddenly like a knife. ”True, he’d handed Rosemary a cocktail previous to that last round. But that previous cocktail had not been poisoned. In that last roundonly Nora’s cocktail?the one that poisoned both Nora and Rosemary?had arsenic in it! If Jim had dropped the arsenic into the cocktail he handed Nora, how could he know that Rosemary would drink it?

“He couldn’t know. It was such an unlikely event that he couldn’t even dream it would happen . . . imagine it, or plan it, or count on it. Actually,Jim was out of the living room?if you’ll recall the facts?at the time Rosemary drank Nora’s cocktail.

“So this peripatetic mind had to query: Since Jim couldn’t be sure Rosemary would drink that poisoned cocktail, who could be sure?”

Carter Bradford and Patricia Wright were pressing against the edge of the table, still, rigid, not breathing.

Mr. Queen shrugged. ”And instantly?two minus one. Instantly. It was unbelievable, and it was sickening, and it was the only possible truth. Two minus one?one. Just one . . .

“Just one other person had opportunity to poison that cocktail, for just one other person handled it before it reached Rosemary!

“Just one other person had motive to kill Rosemary and could have utilized the rat poison for murder which Jim had bought for innocent, mice-exterminating purposes . . . perhaps at someone else’s suggestion? Remember he went back to Myron Garback’s pharmacy a second time for another tin, shortly after his first purchase of Quicko, telling Garback he had ‘mislaid’ the first tin? How do you suppose that first tin came to be ‘mislaid’? With what we now know, isn’t it evident that it wasn’t mislaid at all, but was stolen and stored away by the only other person in Jim’s house with motive to kill Rosemary?”

Mr. Queen glanced at Patricia Wright and at once closed his eyes, as if they pained him. And he stuck the cigarette into the corner of his mouth and said through his teeth: “That person could only have been the one who actually handed Rosemary the cocktail on New Year’s Eve.”

Carter Bradford licked his lips over and over.

Pat was frozen.

“I’m sorry, Pat,” said Ellery, opening his eyes. ”I’m frightfully, terribly sorry. But it’s as logical as death itself. And to give you two a chance, I had to tell you both.”

Pat said faintly: “Not Nora. Oh, not Nora!”

Chapter 30

The Second Sunday in May

“A drop too much to drink,” said Mr. Queen quickly to Gus Olesen. ”May we use your back room, Gus?”

“Sure, sure,” said Gus. ”Say, I’m sorry about this, Mr. Bradford. That’s good rum I used in those drinks. And she only had one?Andy took her second one. Lemme give you a hand?”

“We can manage her all right, thank you,” said Mr. Queen, “although 1 do think a couple of fingers of bourbon might help.”

“But if she’s sick?” began Gus, puzzled. ”Okay!”

The Old Soak stared blindly as Carter and Ellery helped Pat, whose eyes were glassy chips of agony, into Gus Olesen’s back room. They set her down on Gus’s old horsehair black leather couch; and when Gus hurried in with a glass of whisky, Carter Bradford forced her to drink. Pat choked, her eyes streaming; then she pushed the glass aside and threw herself back on the tufted leather, her face to the wall.

“She feels fine already,” said Mr. Queen reassuringly. ”Thanks, Gus. We’ll take care of Miss Wright.”

Gus went away, shaking his head and muttering that that was good rum?he didn’t serve rat poison like that chiseling grease-ball Vic Carlatti over at the Hot Spot.

Pat lay still. Carter stood over her awkwardly. Then he sat down and took her hand. Ellery saw her tanned fingers go white with pressure. He turned away and strolled over to the other side of the room to examine the traditional Bock Beer poster. There was no sound at all, anywhere.

Until he heard Pat murmur: “Ellery.”

He turned around. She was sitting up on the couch again, both her hands in Carter Bradford’s; he was holding on to them for dear life, almost as if it were he who needed comforting, not she. Ellery guessed that in those few seconds of silence a great battle had been fought, and won.

He drew a chair over to the couch and sat down facing them.

“Tell me the rest,” said Pat steadily, her eyes in his. ”Go on, Ellery. Tell me the rest.”

“It doesn’t make any difference, Patty darling,” mumbled Cart. ”Oh, you know that. You know it.”

“I know it, Cart.”

“Whatever it was, darling?she was sick. I guess she was always a neurotic, always pretty close to the borderline.”

“Yes, Cart. Tell me the rest, Ellery.”

“Pat, do you remember telling me about dropping in to Nora’s a few days after Rosemary arrived, in early November, and finding Nora ‘trapped’ in the serving pantry?”

“You mean when Nora overheard Jim and Rosemary having an argument?”

“Yes. You said you came in at the tail end and didn’t hear anything of consequence. And that Nora wouldn’t tell you what she’d overheard. You said Nora had the same kind of look on her face as that day when those three letters tumbled out of the toxicology book.”

“Yes . . . ” said Pat.

“That must have been the turning point, Pat. That must have been the time when Nora learned the whole truth?by pure accident, she learned from the lips of Jim and Rosemary themselves that Rosemary wasn’t his sister but his wife, that she herself was not legally married . . . the whole sordid story.”

Ellery examined his hands. ”It . . . unbalanced Nora. In a twinkling her whole world came tumbling down, and her moral sense and mental health with it. She faced a humiliation too sickening to be faced. And Nora was emotionally weakened by the unnatural life she’d been leading for the years between Jim’s sudden desertion and her marriage to him . . . Nora slipped over the line.”

“Over the line,” whispered Pat. Her lips were white.

“She planned to take revenge on the two people who, as her disturbed mind now saw it, had shamed her and ruined her life. She planned to kill Jim’s first wife, the hated woman who called herself Rosemary. She planned to have Jim pay for the crime by using the very tools he’d manufactured for a similar purpose years before and which were now, as if by an act of Providence, thrust into her hand. She must have worked it out slowly. But work it out