The Murderer is a Fox Read Free Page B

not kill your
mother, son,"

    It sounded like a man
stating a truth. There was no slightest timbre of falsity. A simple
and direct and—yes—hopeless statement of fact. Or was it
the quintessence of cleverness? The man, thought Ellery, is either
the victim of the foulest circumstances, or an astounding actor.

    "All right," said
Ellery; his voice told nothing of his thoughts. Then here's my
program. I'm going to spend a few days examining the court records of
the trial. Then we'll all get together in the house next door and
retrace every step of the events of a dozen years ago. Every action,
every statement, every remembered thought as far as possible. I
propose to
    pull time back. Maybe in
making history repeat itself we can get it to shout something now
that it only whispered then, or was silent about altogether.

    "There are certain
dangerous implications in what I'm trying to do here. The people
involved are very few in number. And tied to one another by blood or
marriage. If Bayard Fox is innocent, as he claims to be, then we may
be faced with a most unpleasant situation."

    It was unnecessary' to
belabor the point. Their eyes mirrored the possibilities.

    "One thing more."
Ellery smiled at Davy and Linda. These two young people have a
tremendous stake in this investigation. They were virtually babies
when Jessica Fox died. It isn't fair or right that they should be
made to suffer as adults for someone's duplicity when they were
children. I'm not saying there was duplicity; I just don't know. But
if there was, I warn you now—I'll follow this through till I
comer the truth. No matter
    where it leads. No matter
whom it hurts.

    "Is that clear? To
everyone?"

    No one replied; no one had
to.

    "Thank you," said
Ellery, with a smile. "And now I've got to get busy with those
trial records."

    PART TWO

    chapter 8

    Fox-Love

    The next morning, having a
half hour before his appointment with Prosecutor Hendrix, Ellery
renewed his acquaintance with Wrightsville.

    It hasn't changed much, he
thought as he roamed about High Village. Some new stores; a busy new
City Parking Lot abutting Jezreel Lane, behind the Post Office and
the Five-and-Dime; Andy Birobatyan's Florist Shop in the Professional
Building adjoining the Kelton on Washington Street wore a
different-colored paint; Dr. Emil Poffenberger's dental offices had
disappeared; the Hollis Hotel displayed a new marquee, very elegant;
    in store windows on Lower
Main and along Upper Whistling Avenue hung banners boasting one or
two or three blue stars. But behind the plate-glass front of the Wrightsville Record, where Lower Main fed into the Square,
Ellery could spy old Phinny Baker shining up the presses, as of yore;
Al Brown was serving New York College Ices in the ice-cream parlor
next to Louie Cahan's Bijou to boys and girls of Wrightsville High,
as if he had never stopped; and in the Square, which was round,
Founder Jezreel Wright still brooded over the stone horse trough, his
nose and arms decorated with bird-droppings and his verdigrised back
set against John F. Wright's Wrightsville National Bank on the
northern arc of the Square—adjoining the grounds of the
red-brick Town Hall, where State Street began.

    It was very like the
Wrightsville Ellery had known; it must be, he perceived, very like
the Wrightsville Jessica Fox had known.

    Ellery strolled up State
Street under the venerable trees. He passed Town Hall and glanced
across the street to the Carnegie Library: Was Miss Aikin still
enthroned there, he wondered, behind the stuffed eagle and the
moth-eaten owl? And then he reached the "new" county
courthouse. It did not look so new now: the granite was dingy and the
bronze letters over the Doric columns were in need of polishing, the
broad flat steps were a little down at the heel. But the bars on the
top-floor windows, where the County Jail was, looked the same; and
for an imaginative moment Ellery almost saw Jim Haight's tortured
face glaring