Double Double
Edition: First
Series: Dell No. 2140
Publisher: Dell Publishing
Published: September, 1965
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 256
Subjects: Mystery; Thriller
Genres: Fiction
First sentence: Tuesday, April 4
Ellery had thought he was through with Wrightsville. He > had even developed a nostalgia about it, like the man who looks back on his boyhood home through the filtering lens of a sentimental eye. He liked to say that, although he was born in New York City, Wrightsville was his spiritual birthplace—a town of complacent elms, wandering cobbles, and crooked sidestreets nestled in the lap of a farmers' valley and leaning against the motherly abdomen of one of New England's most matriarchal mountain ranges. Here it was always forest green or immaculate with snow. Orderly fields to look at, spiced air to breathe, the unfolding satisfaction of the hills. The whole place glittered in his memory like a diamond, or an emerald.
Never a ruby, because the blood color was uncomfortably close to the mark.
The envelope cast a ruby glow.
Ellery examined it again, not touching its contents.
It was a long envelope of flawed slick bluish paper, the correspondence offering of every five-and-ten cent store in America. This one, he felt sure, came from the stationery counter of the High Village Five-and-Dime. A few doors away dozed J. C. Pettigrew, Real Estate, and at the Five-and-Dime's Upper Whistling side glared Miss Sally's Tea Roome, where the ladies of Wrightsville's haut monde forgathered daily to sample Miss Sally's celebrated caloric specialty, Pineapple Marshmallow Nut Mousse. O Wrightsville! If you sighted due west along Lower Main from the entrance of the Five-and-Dime you could just make out the...
Description: Child's Play?
The game had started when the village miser died of a heart attack, a bankrupt business-man committed suicide and the town drunk fell off a cliff—dead sober. Then Ellery Queen found himself reciting a nursery rhyme:
Rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief; Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief . . .
By the time the count reached "merchant" the game had become obvious, but the player was another question— until Ellery found himself next on the list.
Funny thing was, only one person in town had ever called him "Chief." Her name was Rima and she was a tough match ... for any man.
I
Rima Anderson's father had just been murdered. She sat in Ellery Queen's apartment looking like a frightened child dressed up in her mother's clothing.
Her skirt had ridden up well over her knees and, in spite of himself, Ellery reached over to pull it down.
"Why did you do that?" she asked quite innocently. 'Because my knees are ugly?"
'Because they're not," he answered.
"Then why cover them?"
Rima was about as naive as an untamed animal. .. and as wild. If this case had looked like an impenetrable problem, it seemed child's play after Ellery Queen came up against the dead man's daughter.
Notes: ASIN: B000TYZEY4