“This,” said Carter hoarsely, “is damnable.”
Ellery sipped his drink and then lit a fresh cigarette, frowning at the incandescent end for some time. ”It gets more difficult to tell, too,” he murmured at last. ”Jim paid and paid, and borrowed money everywhere to keep the evil tongue of that woman from telling the awful truth which would have unbalanced Nora or killed her.”
Pat was close to tears. ”It’s a wonder poor Jim didn’t embezzle funds at Pop’s bank!”
“And in drunken rages Jim swore that he’d ‘get rid of her’¯that he’d ‘kill her’¯and made it plain that he was speaking of his ‘wife.’ Of course he was. He was speaking of the only legal wife he had¯the woman calling herself Rosemary Haight and posing as his sister. When Jim foolishly made those alcoholic threats, he never meant Nora at all”
“But it seems to me,” muttered Cart, “that when he was arrested, facing a conviction, to keep quietthen¯”
“I’m afraid,” replied Mr. Queen with a sad smile, “that Jim in his way was a great man. He was willing to die to make up to Nora for what he had done to her. And the only way he could make up to her was to pass out in silence. He unquestionably swore his real sister, Roberta Roberts, to secrecy. For to have told you and Chief Dakin the truth, Cart, Jim would have had to reveal Rosemary’s true identity, and that meant revealing the whole story of his previous marriage to her, the divorce-that-wasn’t-a-divorce, and consequently Nora’s status as a pregnant, yet unmarried, woman. Besides, revealing the truth wouldn’t have done him any good, anyway. For Jim had infinitely more motive to murder Rosemary than to murder Nora. No, he decided the best course was to carry the whole sickening story with him to the grave.”
Pat was crying openly now.
“And,” muttered Mr. Queen, “Jim had still another reason for keeping quiet. The biggest reason of all. A heroic, an epic, reason. I wonder if you two have any idea what it is.”
They stared at him, at each other.
“No,” sighed Mr. Queen, “I suppose you wouldn’t. The truth is so staggeringly simple that we see right through it, as if it were a pane of glass. It’s two-plus-two, or rather two-minus-one; and those are the most difficult calculations of all.”
A bulbous organ the color of fresh blood appeared over his shoulder, and they saw that it was only Mr. Anderson’s wonderful nose.
“O vita, misero longa! felici brevis!” croaked Mr. Anderson. ”Friends, heed the wisdom of the ancients . . . I suppose you are wondering how I, poor wretch, am well-provided with lucre this heaven-sent day. Well, I am a remittance man, as they say, and my ship has touched port today. Felici brevis/” And he started to fumble for Patty’s glass.
“Why don’t you go over there in the corner and shut up, Andy?” shouted Cart.
“Sir,” said Mr. Anderson, going away with Pat’s glass, “ ‘the sands are number’d that make up my life; Here must I stay, and here my life must end.’ “ He sat down at his table and drank quickly.
“Ellery, you can’t stop now!” said Pat.
“Are you two prepared to hear the truth?”
Pat looked at Carter, and Carter looked at Pat. He reached across the table and took her hand.
“Shoot,” said Carter.
Mr. Queen nodded. ”There’s only one question left to be answered¯the most important question of alclass="underline" 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¯”