Calamity Town

by Ellery Queen

  A.¯To Lola Wright.

  Q.¯Tell us the circumstances of your giving Miss Lola Wright this check for a hundred dollars, please.

  A.¯I sort of feel funny about . . . I mean, I can’t help if . . . Well, last day of the year, I was just cleaning up at my office in High Village when Lola come in. Said she was in a bad spot, and she’d known me all her life, and could I let her have a hundred dollars. I saw she was worried¯

  Q.¯Just tell us what she said and you said.

  A.¯Well, that’s all, I guess. I gave it to her. Oh, yes. She asked for cash. I said 1 didn’t have any cash to spare, and it was past banking hours, so I’d give her a check. She said: “Well, if it can’t be helped, it can’t be helped.” So I made out a check, she said thanks, and that’s all. Can I go now?

  Q.¯Did Miss Wright tell you what she wanted the money for?

  A.¯No, sir, and I didn’t ask her.

  The check was placed in evidence, and when Judge Martin, who had been about to demand the deletion of all J.C.’s remarks, turned the check over and saw what was written on the other side, he blanched and bit his lip. Then he waved his hand magnanimously and declined to cross-examine.

  J.C. stumbled and almost fell, he was so anxious to get off the stand. He sent Hermy a sickly smile. His face was steaming, and he kept swabbing it.

  * * *

  Lola Wright was nervous as she took the oath; but her gaze was defiant, and it made Carter Bradford flush.

  He showed her the check in evidence.

  “Miss Wright, what did you do with this check when you received it from J. C. Pettigrew on December thirty-first last?”

  “I put it in my purse,” said Lola. There were titters. But Judge Martin frowned, so Lola sat up straighten

  “Yes, I know,” said Carter, “but to whom did you give it?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Foolish girl, thought Ellery. He’s got you. Don’t make things worse by being difficult.

  Bradford held the check up before her. ”Miss Wright, perhaps this will refresh your memory. Read the endorsement on the back, please.”

  Lola swallowed. Then she said in a low voice: “ ‘James Haight.’ “

  At the defense table James Haight unaccountably seized that instant to smile. It was the weariest smile imaginable. Then he sank into apathy again.

  “Can you explain how James Haight’s endorsement appears on a check you borrowed from J. C. Pettigrew?”

  “I gave it to Jim.”

  “When?”

  “That same night.”

  “Where?”

  “At the house of my sister Nora.”

  “At the house of your sister Nora. Have you heard the testimony here to the effect that you were not present at the house of your sister Nora during the New Year’s Eve party?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, were you or weren’t you?”

  There was something in Bradford’s voice that was a little cruel, and Pat writhed in her seat in front of the rail, her lips saying: “I hate you!” almost aloud.

  “I did stop at the house for a few minutes, but I wasn’t at the party.”

  “I see. Were you invited to the party?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t go?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Judge Martin objected, and Judge Newbold sustained him. Bradford smiled.

  “Did anyone see you but your brother-in-law, the defendant?”

  “No. I went around to the back door of the kitchen.”

  “Then did you know Jim Haight was in the kitchen?” asked Carter Bradford quickly.

  Lola grew pink. ”Yes. I hung around outside in the backyard till I saw, through the kitchen window, that Jim came in. He disappeared in the butler’s pantry, and I thought there might be someone with him. But after a few minutes I decided he was alone, and knocked. Jim came out of the pantry to the kitchen door, and we talked.”

  “About what, Miss Wright?”

  Lola glanced at Judge Martin in a confused way. He made as if to rise, then sank back.

  “I gave Jim the check.”

  Ellery was leaning far forward. So that had been Lola’s mission! He had not been able to overhear, or see, what had passed between Jim and Lola at the back door of Nora’s kitchen that night.

  “You gave him the check,” said Bradford courteously. ”Miss Wright, did the defendant ask you to give him money?”

  “No!”

  Ellery smiled grimly. Liar¯of the genus white.

  “But didn’t you borrow the hundred dollars from Mr. Pettigrew for the purpose of giving it to the defendant?”

  “Yes,” said Lola coolly. ”Only it was in repayment of a debt I owed Jim. I owe everybody, you see¯chronic borrower. I’d borrowed from Jim some time before, so I paid him back, that’s all.”

  And Ellery recalled that night when he had trailed Jim to Lola’s apartment in Low Village, and how Jim had drunkenly demanded money and Lola had said she didn’t have any . . . Only it wasn’t true that on New Year’s Eve, Lola had repaid a “debt.” Lola had made a donation to Nora’s happiness.

  “You borrowed from Pettigrew to pay Haight?” asked Carter, raising his eyebrows. {Laughter.)

  “The witness has answered,” said Judge Eli.

  Bradford waved. ”Miss Wright, did Haight ask you for the money you say you owed him?”

  Lola said, too quickly: “No, he didn’t.”

  “You just decided suddenly, on the last day of the year, that you’d better pay him back¯without any suggestion from him?”

  Objection. Argument. At it again.

  “Miss Wright, you have only a small income, have you not?” Objection. Argument. Heat now. Judge Newbold excused the jury. Bradford said sternly to Judge Newbold: “Your Honor, it is important to the People to show that this witness, herself in badly reduced circumstances, was nevertheless somehow induced by the defendant to get money for him, thus indicating his basic character, how desperate he was for money¯all part of the People’s case to show his gain motive for the poisoning.”

  The jury was brought back. Bradford went at Lola once more, with savage persistence. Feathers flew again; but when it was over, the jury was convinced of Bradford’s point, juries being notoriously unable to forget what judges instruct them to forget.

  But Judge Martin was not beaten. On cross-examination, he sailed in almost with joy.

  “Miss Wright,” said the old lawyer, “you have testified in direct examination that on the night of New Year’s Eve last you called at the back door of your sister’s house. What time was that visit, do you recall?”

  “Yes. I looked at my wristwatch, because I had a¯a party of my own to go to in town. It was just before midnight¯fifteen minutes before the New Year was rung in.”

  “You also testified that you saw your brother-in-law go into the butler’s pantry, and after a moment or two you knocked and he came out to you, and you talked. Where exactly did that conversation take place?”

  “At the back door of the kitchen.”

  “What did you say to Jim?”

  “I asked him what he was doing, and he said he was just finishing mixing a lot of Manhattan cocktails for the crowd. He’d about got to the maraschino cherries when I knocked, he said. Then I told him about the check¯”

  “Did you see the cocktails he referred to?”

  The room rustled like an agitated aviary, and Carter Bradford leaned forward, frowning. This was important¯this was the time the poisoning must have taken place. After that ripple of sound, the courtroom was very still.

  “No,” said Lola. ”Jim had come from the direction of the pantry to answer the door, so I know that’s where he’d been mixing the cocktails. From where I was standing, at the back door, I couldn’t see into the pantry. So of course I couldn’t see the cocktails, either.”

  “Ah! Miss Wright, had someone sneaked into the kitchen from the main hall or the dining room while you and Mr. Haig
ht were talking at the back door, would you have been able to see that person?”

  “No. The door from the dining room doesn’t open into the kitchen; it leads directly into the pantry. And while the door from the hall does open into the kitchen and is visible from the back door, I couldn’t see it, because Jim was standing in front of me, blocking my view.”

  “In other words, Miss Wright, while you and Mr. Haight were talking¯Mr. Haight with his back to the rest of the kitchen, you unable to see most of the kitchen because he was blocking your view¯someone could have slipped into the kitchen through the hall door, crossed to the pantry, and retraced his steps without either of you being aware of what had happened or who it had been?”

  “That’s correct, Judge.”

  “Or someone could have entered the pantry through the dining room during that period, and neither you nor Mr. Haight could have seen him?”

  “Of course we couldn’t have seen him. I told you that the pantry is out of sight of¯”

  “How long did this conversation at the back door take?”

  “Oh, five minutes, I should think.”

  “That will be all, thank you,” said the Judge triumphantly.

  Carter Bradford climbed to his feet for a redirect examination. The courtroom was whispering, the jury looked thoughtful, and Carter’s hair looked excited. But he was very considerate in manner and tone.

  “Miss Wright, I know this is painful for you, but we must get this story of yours straight. Did anyone enter the pantry either through the kitchen or the dining room while you were conversing at the back door with Jim Haight?”

  “I don’t know. I merely said someone could have, and we wouldn’t have known the difference.”

  “Then you can’t really say that someone did?”

  “I can’t say someone did, but by the same token I can’t say someone didn’t. As a matter of fact, it might very easily have happened.”

  “But you didn’t see anyone enter the pantry, and you did see Jim Haight come out of the pantry?”

  “Yes, but¯”

  “And you saw Jim Haight go back into the pantry?”

  “No such thing,” said Lola with asperity. ”I turned around and went away, leaving Jim at the door!”

  “That’s all,” said Carter softly; he even tried to help her off the stand, but Lola drew herself up and went back to her chair haughtily.

  “I should like,” said Carter to the Court, “to recall one of my previous witnesses. Frank Lloyd.”

  As the bailiff bellowed: “Frank Lloyd to the stand!” Mr. Ellery Queen said to himself: “The build-up.”

  Lloyd’s cheeks were yellow, as if something were rotting his blood. He shuffled to the stand, unkempt, slovenly, tight-mouthed. He looked once at Jim Haight, not ten feet away from him. Then he looked away, but there was evil in his green eyes.

  He was on the stand only a few minutes. The substance of his testimony, surgically excised by Bradford, was that he now recalled an important fact which he had forgotten in his previous testimony. Jim Haight had not been the only one out of the living room during the time he was mixing the last batch of cocktails before midnight. There had been one other.

  Q.¯And who was that, Mr. Lloyd?

  A.¯A guest of the Wrights’. Ellery Smith.

  You clever animal, thought Ellery admiringly. And now I’m the animal, and I’m trapped . . . What to do?

  Q.¯Mr. Smith left the room directly after the defendant?

  A.¯Yes. He didn’t return until Haight came back with the tray of cocktails and started passing them around.

  This is it, thought Mr. Queen.

  Carter Bradford turned around and looked directly into Ellery’s eyes.

  “I call,” said Cart with a snap in his voice, “Ellery Smith.”

  Chapter 24

  Ellery Smith to the Stand

  As Mr. Ellery Queen left his seat, and crossed the courtroom foreground, and took the oath, and sat down in the witness chair, his mind was not occupied with Prosecutor Bradford’s unuttered questions or his own unut-tered answers.

  He was reasonably certain what questions Bradford intended to ask, and he was positive what answers he would give. Bradford knew, or guessed, from the scene opened up to him by Frank Lloyd’s delayed recollection, what part the mysterious Mr. ”Smith” had played that bitter night. So one question would lead to another, and suspicion would become certainty, and sooner or later the whole story would have to come out. It never occurred to Ellery that he might frankly lie. Not because he was a saint, or a moralist, or afraid of consequences; but because his whole training had been in the search for truth, and he knew that whereas murder will not necessarily out, the truth must. So it was more practical to tell the truth than to tell the lie. Moreover, people expected you to lie in court, and therein lay a great advantage, if only you were clever enough to seize it.

  No, Mr. Queen’s thoughts were occupied with another question altogether. And that was: How turn the truth, so damning to Jim Haight on its face, to Jim Haight’s advantage? That would be a shrewd blow, if only it could be delivered; and it would have the additional strength of unexpectedness, for surely young Bradford would never anticipate what he himself, now, on the stand, could not even imagine.

  So Mr. Queen sat waiting, his brain not deigning to worry, but flexing itself, exploring, dipping into its deepest pockets, examining all the things he knew for a hint, a clue, a road to follow.

  Another conviction crept into his consciousness as he answered the first few routine questions about his name and occupation and connection with the Wright family, and so on; and it arose from Carter Bradford himself.

  Bradford was disciplining his tongue, speaking impersonally; but there was a bitterness about his speech that was not part of the words he was uttering. Cart was remembering that this lean and quiet-eyed man theoretically at his mercy was, in a sense, an author of more than books¯he was the author of Mr. Bradford’s romantic troubles, too.

  Patty’s personality shimmered between them, and Mr. Queen remarked it with satisfaction; it was another advantage he held over his inquisitor. For Patty blinded young Mr. Bradford’s eyes and drugged his quite respectable intelligence. Mr. Queen noted the advantage and tucked it away and returned to his work of concentration while the uppermost forces of his mind paid attention to the audible questions.

  And suddenly he saw how he could make the truth work for Jim Haight!

  He almost chuckled as he leaned back and gave his whole mind to the man before him. The very first pertinent question reassured him¯Bradford was on the trail, his tongue hanging out.

  “Do you recollect, Mr. Smith, that we found the three letters in the defendant’s handwriting as a result of Mrs. Haight’s hysterical belief that you had told us about them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you also recall two unsuccessful attempts on my part that day to find out from you what you knew about the letters?”

  “Quite well.”

  Bradford said softly: “Mr. Smith, today you are on the witness stand, under oath to tell the whole truth. I now ask you: Did you know of the existence of those three letters before Chief Dakin found them in the defendant’s house?”

  And Ellery said: “Yes, I did.”

  Bradford was surprised, almost suspicious.

  “When did you first learn about them?”

  Ellery told him, and Bradford’s surprise turned into satisfaction.

  “Under what circumstances?” This was a rapped question, tinged with contempt. Ellery answered meekly.

  “Then you knew Mrs. Haight was in danger from her husband?”

  “Not at all. I knew there were three letters saying so by implication.”

  “Well, did you or did you not believe the defendant wrote those letters?”

  Judge Martin made as if to object, but Mr. Queen caught the Judge’s eye and shook his head ever so slightly.

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Didn’t Miss Patricia Wr
ight identify her brother-in-law’s handwriting for you, as you just testified?”

  Miss Patricia Wright, sitting fifteen feet away, looked murder at them both impartially.

  “She did. But that did not make it so.”

  “Did you check up yourself?”

  “Yes. But I don’t pretend to be a handwriting expert.”

  “But you must have come to some conclusion, Mr. Smith?”

  “Objection!” shouted Judge Martin, unable to contain himself. ”His conclusion.”

  “Strike out the question,” directed Judge Newbold.

  Bradford smiled. ”You also examined the volume belonging to the defendant, Edgcomb’s Toxicology, particularly pages seventy-one and seventy-two, devoted to arsenic, with certain sentences underlined in red crayon?”

  “I did.”

  “You knew from the red-crayon underlining in the book that if a crime were going to be committed, death by arsenic poisoning was indicated?”

  “We could quarrel about the distinction between certainty and probability,” replied Mr. Queen sadly, “but to save argument¯let’s say I knew; yes.”

  “It seems to me, Your Honor,” said Eli Martin in a bored voice, “that this is an entirely improper line of questioning.”

  “How so, Counsel?” inquired Judge Newbold.

  “Because Mr. Smith’s thoughts and conclusions, whether certainties, probabilities, doubts, or anything else, have no conceivable bearing upon the facts at issue.”

  Bradford smiled again, and when Judge Newbold asked him to limit his questions to events and conversations, he nodded carelessly, as if it did not matter.

  “Mr. Smith, were you aware that the third letter of the series talked about the ‘death’ of Mrs. Haight as if it had occurred on New Year’s Eve?”

  “Yes.”

  “During the New Year’s Eve party under examination, did you keep following the defendant out of the living room?”

  “I did.”

  “You were keeping an eye on him all evening?”

  “Yes.”

  “You watched him mix cocktails in the pantry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now do you recall the last time before midnight the defendant mixed cocktails?”