The Murderer is a Fox by Ellery Queen Read Free Book Online

The Murderer is a Fox

    Ellery
Queen

    PART
ONE

    The
Fox Cubs

    chapter
1

    "What
time is it now, Talbot?" Emily Fox asked her husband— As
if she had never asked the question before.

    "Now
Emily," sighed Talbot Fox. The Atlantic Stater doesn't pull in
for a good ten minutes yet."

    Linda
sat squeezed between her foster-parents in the special touring car
the Wrightsville Committee on Welcomes had provided for the occasion.
The small bloodless oval of her face wore a formidable smile, like
the daguerreotype of Daddy Talbot's maternal great-grandmother on the
baby grand in the Fox parlor. But Linda did not feel formidable; she
felt weak inside, as if she were waiting for an operation.

    As
perhaps in a way she was.

    The
sun—co-operative star!—tickled the limbs of the throng
heaving in and about the squatty, venerable Wrightsville Station . .
. Lin's whole plain little world, all packaged for this moment.
Mother Emily tormenting her corsage of baby orchids, a gift from Andy
Birobatyan of the Wrightsville Florist Shop, who had contributed all
the floral decorations for the Official Reception Lunch which was to
be held later in the Grand
    Ballroom
of the Hollis Hotel, in the Square. Daddy Tal trying not to steal
glances at his wristwatch. The slicked-up Selectmen chattering
politics, crops, and conversion. The American Legion Band milling
around in their newly dry-cleaned uniforms, tossing the sun from
their silver helmets like the prize bulls at the Slocum State Fair.
One-toothed Gabby Warrum yelling from the doorway of the
stationmaster's office at the swarm of yah-yahing kids with dusty
feet shoving one another about on the handtrucks. Mrs. Bradford, nee Patricia Wright, Chairman of the Committee on Events, hurrying down
the platform, flinging retorts right and left, on her way to confer
with some official or other about a last-minute change in the line of
march. Miss Dolores Aikin, Chief Librarian of the Carnegie Library
and unofficial genealogist of Wrightsville's first families, standing
on tiptoe on the edge of the platform, pen and foolscap in hand,
anxiously scanning the country toward Wrightsville Junction, whence
the hero's train should soon appear. Emmeline DuPre, who earned her
livelihood by giving Dancing and Dramatic Lessons to the youth of the
Wrightsville gentry, darting from group to group having a field day.
Miss Gladys Hemmingworth. Society Editor of Frank Lloyd's Record ,
waggling her perpetual pencil decorously aloft to catch the eye of
the Chairman of the Committee on Welcomes, Hermione Wright, wife of
John F. Wright, whose great-great-great-great-something Jezreel had
founded Wrightsville in 1702.

    Old Soak
Anderson tottered to the doorway of Phil's Diner next to the Station,
waving two little American flags.

    All for
Davy.

    Directly
above Linda's head hung a long banner which stretched from Station
eaves across the tracks to the water tower.

    WELCOME
HOME CAPTAIN DAVY FOX!!
    WRIGHTSVILLE
IS PROUD OF YOU!

    Are you?
    How
times changed.

    Davy Fox
hadn't always been a hero. Davy Fox hadn't always been "just"
a Wrightsville boy, such as you could find on any street corner in
Low Village, or in any big house on the Hill. They hadn't formed
committees for Davy then ... at least, not welcoming
committees.

    Something
memorializing and fixative about the scene around her turned Linda's
thoughts backwards.

    Davy Fox
hadn't lived in the Talbot Fox house . . . then. Davy had lived in
that house next door. It was only later—on that never-forgotten
day when Mother Emily locked herself in her bedroom and Daddy Tal
stumbled about the house with a hunted look and Linda wasn't allowed
to leave the playroom—it was only later that Davy came to live
with his aunt and uncle and the little girl they had taken from the
Slocum Orphanage five years before.

    That
coming across two lawns, his hand in his uncle's, a small boy of ten
in torn knickers marched from one house to another while