Pat kicked a twig. Her hands were trembling. Then she sprang off the stump. ”I feel like a skunk,” she moaned. ”But what else can we do?”
* * *
“I doubt if we’ll find anything,” said Ellery as Pat let him into Nora’s house with her duplicate key. ”Jim locked the door when he ran upstairs. He didn’t want to be caught doing . . . whatever it was he did.”
“You think he destroyed the letter?”
“Afraid so. But we’ll have a look, anyway.”
In Jim’s study, Pat set her back against the door. She looked ill.
Ellery sniffed. And went directly to the fireplace. It was clean except for a small mound of ash.
“He burned it!” said Pat.
“But not thoroughly enough.”
“Ellery, you’ve found something!”
“A scrap that wasn’t consumed by the fire.”
Pat flew across the room. Ellery was examining a scrap of charred paper very carefully.
“Part of the envelope?”
“The flap. Return address. But the address has been burned off. Only thing left is the sender’s name.”
Pat read: “ ‘Rosemary Haight.’ Jim’s sister.” Her eyes widened. ”Jim’s sister, Rosemary! Ellery, the one he wrote those three letters to about Nora!”
“It’s possible that¯” Ellery did not finish.
“You were going to say it’s possible there was a first letter we didn’t find, because he’d already sent it! And that this is the remains of his sister’s answer.”
“Yes.” Ellery tucked the burnt scrap away in his wallet. ”But on second thought I’m not so sure. Why should his sister’s reply bother him so much, if that’s what it is? No, Patty, this is something different, something new.”
“But what?”
“That,” said Mr. Queen, “is what we’ve got to find out.” He took her arm, looking about. ”Let’s get out of here.”
* * *
That night they were all sitting on the Wright porch watching the wind blow the leaves across the lawn. John F. and Jim were debating the presidential campaign with some heat, while Hermy anxiously appeased and Nora and Pat listened like mice. Ellery sat by himself in a corner, smoking.
“John, you know I don’t like these political arguments!” said Hermy. ”Goodness, you men get so hot under the collar¯”
John F. grunted. ”Jim, there’s dictatorship coming in this country, you mark my words¯”
Jim grinned. ”And you’ll eat ‘em . . . A// right, Mother!” Then he said casually: “Oh, by the way, darling, I got a letter from my sister, Rosemary, this morning. Forgot to tell you.”
“Yes?” Nora’s tone was bright. ”How nice. What does she write, dear?”
Pat drifted toward Ellery and in the darkness sat down at his feet. He put his hand on her neck; it was clammy.
“The usual stuff. She does say she’d like to meet you¯all of you.”
“Well, I should think so!” said Hermy. ”I’m very anxious to meet your sister, Jim. Is she coming out for a visit?”
“Well . . . I was thinking of asking her, but¯”
“Now, Jim,” said Nora. ”You know I’ve asked you dozens of times to invite Rosemary to Wrightsville.”
“Then it’s all right with you, Nor?” asked Jim quickly.
“All right!” Nora laughed. ”What’s the matter with you? Give me her address, and I’ll drop her a note tonight.”
“Don’t bother, darling. I’ll write her myself.”
When they were alone, a half hour later, Pat said to Ellery: “Nora was scared.”
“Yes. It’s a poser.” Ellery circled his knees with his arms. ”Of course, the letter that stirred Jim up this morning was the same letter he just said he got from his sister.”
“Ellery, Jim’s holding something back.”
“No question about it.”
“If his sister, Rosemary, just wrote about wanting to come out for a visit, or anything as trivial as that . . . why did Jim burn her letter?”
Mr. Queen kept the silence for a long time. Finally he mumbled: “Go to bed, Patty. I want to think.”
* * *
On November the eighth, four days after Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been elected to the Presidency of the United States for a third term, Jim Haight’s sister came to Wrightsville.
Chapter 10
Jim and the Fleshpot
“Miss Rosemary Haight,” wrote Gladys Hemmingworth in the Society column of the Wrightsville Record, “was strikingly accoutered in a na-turel French suede traveling suit with sleeveless jerkin to match, a dashing jacket of platinum-fox fur topped with the jauntiest fox-trimmed archery hat of forest green, and green suede wedgies and bag . . . ”
Mr. Ellery Queen happened to be taking a walk that morning . . . to the Wrightsville station. So he saw Rosemary Haight get off the train at the head of a safari bearing luggage and pose for a moment, in the sun, like a movie actress. He saw her trip over to Jim and kiss him, and turn to Nora with animation and embrace her, presenting a spruce cheek; and Mr. Queen also saw the two women laugh and chatter as Jim and the safari picked up the visitor’s impedimenta and made for Jim’s car.
And Mr. Queen’s weather eye clouded over.
That night, at Nora’s, he had an opportunity to test his first barometric impression.
And he decided that Rosemary Haight was no bucolic maiden on an exciting journey; that she was pure metropolis, insolent and bored and trying to conceal both. Also, she was menacingly attractive. Hermy, Pat, and Nora disliked her instantly; Ellery could tell that from the extreme politeness with which they treated her. As for John F., he was charmed, spryly gallant. Hermy reproached him in the silent language of the eye.
And Ellery spent a troubled night trying to put Miss Rosemary Haight together in the larger puzzle and not succeeding.
* * *
Jim was busy at the bank these days and, rather with relief, Ellery thought, left the problem of entertaining his sister to Nora. Dutifully Nora drove Rosemary about the countryside, showing her the “sights.” It was a little difficult for Nora to sustain the charming-hostess illusion, Pat confided in Ellery, since Rosemary had a supercilious attitude toward everything and wondered “how in heaven’s name you can be happy in such a dull place, Mrs. H!”
Then there was the gauntlet of the town’s ladies to run . . . teas for the guest, very correct with hats on in the house and white gloves, an ambitious mah-jongg party, a wiener roast on the lawn one moonlit night, a church social . . .
The ladies were cold. Emmeline DuPre said Rosemary Haight had a streak of “commerce,” whatever that was, Clarice Martin thought her clothes too “you-know,” and Mrs. Mackenzie at the Country Club said she was a born bitch and look at those silly men drooling at her!
The Wright women found themselves constrained to defend her, which was hard, considering that secretly they agreed to the truth of all the charges.
“I wish she’d leave,” said Pat to Ellery a few days after Rosemary’s arrival. ”Isn’t that a horrid thing to say? But I do. And now she’s sent for her trunks!”
“But I thought she didn’t like it here.”
“That’s what I can’t understand, either. Nora says it was supposed to be a ‘flying’ visit, but Rosemary acts as if she means to dig in for the winter. And Nora can’t very well discourage her.”
“What’s Jim say?”
“Nothing to Nora, but”¯Pat lowered her voice and looked around¯”apparently he’s said something to Rosemary, because I happened in just this morning and there was Nora trapped in the serving pantry while Jim and Rosemary, who evidently thought Nora was upstairs, were having an argument in the dining room. That woman has a temper!”