Ellery Queen
The Scarlet Letters
It is ordered that Miss Batcheller for her
adultery shall be branded with the letter A.
It was around this law that Nathaniel Hawthorne wove the story of The Scarlet Letter.
A...
Until the fourth year of their marriage, their friends considered Dirk and Martha Lawrence one of the happiest couples in New York.
The lovebirds were invariably described as “nice, interesting young people.” The temporal part of the description puzzled outsiders at first, since both were in their thirties, not the prime youth of the biologists. Besides, Martha was two years older than Dirk. But after people got to know them the description came easily. Dirk was cast in the dark, romantic mold of Bohemian garrets, and Martha had the plump, exquisite look of the pigeon aperch on the sill. That they were interesting and nice was never questioned at all. Dirk was a writer, and to non-writers — who comprised most of the Lawrences’ friends — writers are curiosities from another world, like movie stars and ax-murderers. And Martha was an absolute darling — that is, she was no threat to the other women in their set.
Still, those who esteemed the Lawrences as interesting and nice would have been astonished, had they ever thought of going back over the statistics, at the amount of evidence to the contrary. There were times, especially in the third year, when Dirk was far from nice — when he lost his temper publicly at nothing visible to the human eye, or when he had had two or three Scotch old-fashioneds too many. And even a writer can become a bore when he makes a scene or gets nastily drunk. There were times when Martha was a very dull pigeon indeed; these were usually the times when Dirk was being far from nice. But no one thought of these dabs of episode as being related to a large canvas. Their only effect was to make the Lawrences seem as human as other people at a time when they were in considerable danger of being dropped for their inhuman felicity.
Ellery got to know the Lawrences through Nikki Porter. He had seen Dirk Lawrence now and then at meetings of the Mystery Writers of America, in the days when Dirk was turning out his dark, unpopular mystery novels, but they had not become friendly until Dirk married Martha Gordon. Martha and Nikki had known each other in Kansas City; when Martha came to New York to live, the two girls met again, liked what they rediscovered, and became inseparable.
Martha Gordon had come to New York not to seek her fortune but to live on it. Her mother had failed to survive Martha’s birth and her father, a meat packer, had died during the war while Martha was touring the Pacific with a USO troupe — she had worked hard in dramatics at Oberlin and she was with a Little Theater group when the war broke out. Mr. Gordon had left her a great many millions of dollars.
Ellery found Martha an intelligent, sensitive girl unspoiled by her money but lonely because of it.
“When they tell me how gorgeous I am,” Martha said grimly during a bull session in the Queen apartment one night, “I point to the plank. And they all tell me.”
“You’re oversuspicious,” Ellery said. “You’re a darned pretty girl.”
“Et tu, Ellery? Do you know how old I’m getting to be?”
“Don’t bother looking around for a plank here,” said Nikki calmly. “This one runs, Martha. I know.”
“And there you are,” said Ellery. “You ought to take Nikki with you on your dates, Martha. Her judgment of men is uncanny.”
“Anyway,” said Martha, “who wants to get married? I’m going to be a Broadway star or die in the attempt.”
Martha was wrong on both counts. She failed to become a Broadway star, and she survived to meet Dirk Lawrence.
By this time Martha had worked out a technique. She lived modestly and her acquaintances were all people of moderate means. When Dirk Lawrence asked her to marry him she was working in the office of a theatrical producer at a salary of sixty dollars a week. He did not learn that his bride was a millionaire until they set up housekeeping in a third-floor walkup in the East 30s.
Ellery knew the Lawrences as well as he knew any of Nikki’s friends, yet he never achieved a solid feeling about their future. The trouble, he suspected, lay not so much in Dirk’s thin royalties and Martha’s fat dividend checks as in Dirk’s psychological economy. Dirk acted as if he had been invented by Emily Bronte — fierce, brooding, a little uncouth, and strange in sudden ways.
But it was this very quality in Dirk’s nature that attracted Martha. To the little blonde wife, her big swarthy scowling husband was an uncredited genius, a great and tragic figure. The truth was, they were drawn to each other because of their oppositeness. Dirk was always preoccupied with his problems, fancied as well as real; there was not a self-centered bone in Martha’s sturdy little body. He demanded, she fulfilled. He sulked, she diverted. He stormed, she soothed. He doubted, she reassured. She satisfied completely his evident needs for a worshipful ear, a bosom to lay his head on, and a pair of soft maternal arms. And Martha was happy to provide the ear, the bosom, and the arms.
It should have been a sound enough basis for a marriage, but apparently it was not. Toward the end of the third year, when the change became noticeable, they seemed unable to stay in one place.
It was usually Martha who started the running. But Ellery had noticed — on the evenings when he and Nikki did the town with the Lawrences, or went to a party, or engaged in any activity which involved mingling with other people — that Martha’s flights were a sort of conditioned reflex, arising out of Dirk’s threat to settle into one of his moods. Dirk’s dark mouth had a trick of turning up very slightly at one corner when he was about to sulk or get angry; the appearance was of a smile, but the effect was unpleasant. At such times, whatever Martha was doing or saying was dropped immediately. She would jump up and say, “I feel like a bowl of vegetables and sour cream at Lindy’s,” or whatever — Ellery felt — happened to pop into her mind at the moment. Then Dirk would pull himself out of it, and off they would go, hauling people along who could see no reason for not staying where they were.
Occasionally, however, Martha’s back was turned when Dirk’s mouth pulled its telltale trick. Then he would either explode with terrifying violence over some trifle or begin to drink like a camel. Those were the occasions when Martha would suddenly develop a sinus headache and have to go right home.
In the fourth year their troubles came to a head. They were seen together less and less. Dirk drank steadily.
That was the year Martha found her place in the theater. She bought a play and produced it with her own money. There were parties which Dirk did not attend. At other times he would show up at rehearsal, or accost Martha in a restaurant, and make a scene. Martha burrowed into production details, seeing no one they had known, not even Nikki. When the play failed, Martha stuck out her little jaw and began to look around for another script. What went on in their home — by this time they had taken a plush apartment on Beekman Place — was no secret to their neighbors. There were quarrels early and late, sounds of breaking furniture, wild sobs and wilder roars.
Their marriage had collapsed. And no one seemed to know why.
Nikki was as baffled as the rest of their crowd.
“I have no idea what’s wrong,” she said, at Ellery’s question.
“But Nikki, you’re her best friend.”
“Even your best friend won’t tell you,” Nikki said unhappily. “Of course, it’s Dirk’s fault. If only he’d stop making like Edgar Allan Poe!”