“How about the unequal distribution of brains?” Benedict retorted. “From what I’ve read about you and the Glory Guild case, not to m-mention all those other mental miracles you bring off, you’re a second cousin of Einstein’s.” Something in Ellery’s face drove the banter from Benedict’s voice. “Have I said s-something?”
“Ellery’s fagged,” his father said quickly. “The Guild case was a tough one, and just before that he’d been on a round-the-world research trip in some far-out places where there’s no charge for the bedbugs or trots, and that took the starch out of his hide. As a matter of fact, I’ve some vacation time coming, and we were thinking of taking off for a couple of weeks of peace and quiet somewhere.”
“Ask Johnny,” Marsh said. “He knows all the places, especially the ones that aren’t listed.”
“No, thanks,” Ellery said. “Not Johnny’s places.”
“You’ve got the w’ong idea about me, Ellery,” Benedict protested. “What’s today?”
“Monday.”
“No, the date.”
“March twenty-third.”
“Well, just before I flew to London — on the nineteenth, if you want to check — I was in Valencia for the Festival of St. Joseph. W-wild? Before that I attended the Vienna Spring Fair, and before that — the third, I think — I was in Tokyo for the dollie festival. How’s that? C-cultural, wouldn’t you say? Non-wastrel? Al, am I bragging again?”
“Brag on, Johnny,” Marsh said. “That kind of self-puff helps your image. God knows it can use help.”
Ellery remarked, “Dad and I were thinking of something less, ah, elaborate.”
“Fresh air, long walks, fishing,” Inspector Queen said. “Ever go fishing, Mr. Benedict? I mean in a mountain stream all by your lone, with a rod that didn’t cost three hundred dollars? The simple pleasures of the poor, that’s what we’re after.”
“Then you may call me Doc, Inspector, because I have just the prescription for you both.” Benedict glanced at Marsh. “Are you with it, Al?”
“Ahead of you,” Marsh chuckled. “A rowboat gets you a cabin cruiser Ellery doesn’t know.”
“Know?” Ellery said. “Know what?”
“I own a place up in New England,” Johnny Benedict said, “that very few people are aware I h-have. Not a bit doggy, plenty of w-woods, an unpolluted stream stocked with you name it — and I’ve fished it with a spruce pole I cut and trimmed myself, Inspector, and had splendid luck — and a guest cottage about a quarter of a mile from the main h-house that’s as private as one of d-dear Ari’s deals. It’s all terribly heimisch, Ellery, and I know you and your f-father would enjoy it. You’re welcome to use the cottage for as long as you like. I give you my oath no one will bother you.”
“Well,” Ellery began, “I don’t know what to say...”
“I do,” the Inspector said promptly. “Thank you!”
“I mean, where in New England?”
Benedict and Marsh exchanged amused glances again. “Smallish town,” Benedict said. “Doubt if you’ve heard of it, Ellery. Of no c-consequence whatsoever. W’ightsville.”
“Wightsville?” Ellery stopped. “Wrightsville? You, Johnny? Own property up there?”
“For years and years.”
“But I never knew!”
“Told you. I’ve kept it top-hush. Bought it through a dummy, just so I could have a place to let my hair d-down when I want to get away from it all, which is oftener than you’d think.”
“I’m sorry, Johnny,” Ellery said, beating his breast. “I’ve been an absolute stinker.”
“It’s modest — bourgeois, in fact. Down my great-grandfather’s alley. He w-was a carpenter, by the way.”
“But why Wrightsville, of all places?”
Benedict grinned. “You’ve advertised it enough.”
“Well, I swan. Wrightsville happens to be my personal prescription for what periodically ails me.”
“As if he didn’t know,” Marsh said. “He’s followed your adventures, Ellery, the way Marcus Antonius followed Caesar’s. Johnny’s especially keen on your Wrightsville yarns. Keeps checking them for mistakes.”
“This, gentlemen, is going to be the resumption of a beautiful friendship,” Ellery said. “You sure we wouldn’t be putting you out, Johnny?”
They went through the time-honored ritual of protest and reassurance, shook hands all around, and that evening a messenger brought an envelope that contained two keys and a scribbled note:
“Dear Sour-Puss: The smaller key is to the guest house. The other unlocks the main house, in case you want to get in there for something — grub, booze, clothing, whatever, it’s always stocked. (So is the guest house, by the way, though not so bountifully.) Use anything you need or want from either place. Nobody’s up there now (I have no live-in caretaker, though an old character named Morris Hunker comes out from town occasionally to keep an eye on things), and judging from the foul mood you were in today you need all the healing solitude my retreat in Wrightsville can provide. Bonne chance, and don’t grouch your old man — he looks as if he can use some peace, too.
Fondly,
P.S.: I may come up there soon myself. But I won’t bother you. Not unless you want to be bothered.”
The Queens set down at Wrightsville Airport a few minutes past noon the next day.
The trouble with Wrightsville — and Wrightsville had developed trouble, in Ellery’s view — was that it had perfidiously kept step with the twentieth century.
Where his favorite small town was concerned Ellery was a mossback conservative, practically a reactionary. He was all for Thursday night band concerts in Memorial Park, with the peanut and popcorn whistles chirping tweet-tweet like excited birds, the streets lined with gawky boys ogling self-conscious girls and people from the outlying farms in town in their town-meetin’ best; and Saturday the marketing day, with the black-red mills of Low Village shut down and High Village commerce swinging.
He felt a special attachment for the Square (which was round), with its periphery of two-story frame buildings (except for the Hollis Hotel, which towered five stories, and Upham House, a three-and-attic Revolutionary-era inn); in its mathematical center the time-treated memorial to Jezreel Wright, who had founded Wrightsville on an abandoned Indian site in 1701 — a bronze statue long since turned to verdigris and festooned with so many bird droppings it looked like a modern sculpture, and at its feet a trough which had watered half a dozen generations of Wrightsville horseflesh. The Square was like a wheel with five spokes leading from its hub: State Street, Lower Main, Washington, Lincoln, Upper Dade; the grandest of these being State with its honor guard of century-old trees, the repository of the gilt-domed red-brick Town Hall and the County Court House building (how many times had he walked up the alley to the side entrance that opened into the Wrightsville police department!), the Carnegie Library across the street (where it was still possible to find books by Henty, Richard Harding Davis, and Joseph Hergesheimer!), the Chamber of Commerce building, the Wrightsville Light & Power Company, and the Northern State Telephone Company; and far from least, at the State Street entrance to Memorial Park, the Our Boys Memorial and the American Legion bandstand. About the Square in those days had been displayed some of the finest fruit of Wrightsville’s heritage — the tiny gold John F. Wright, Pres. on the dusty windows of the Wrightsville National Bank, the old Bluefield Store, the “Minikin Road” on the street marker visible from the corner window of the Bon Ton, and half a dozen other names passed down from the founding families.