Calamity Town

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Ellery Queen stood knee-deep in luggage on the Wrightsville station platform and thought: This makes me an admiral. Admiral Columbus.

The station was a squatty affair of black-red brick. On a rusty hand truck under the eaves, two small boys in torn blue overalls swung their dirty legs and chewed gum in unison, staring at him without expression.

The gravel about the station was peppered with horse droppings. Cramped two-story frame houses and little stoop-shouldered shops with a cracker-barrel look huddled to one side of the tracks¯the city side, for up a steep street paved with square cobbles, Mr. Queen could see taller structures beyond and the fat behind of a retreating bus.

To the other side of the station, there were merely a garage, an ex-trolley labeled phil’s diner, and a smithy with a neon sign. The rest was verdure and delight.

Country looks good, by jake, murmurs Mr. Queen enthusiastically. Green and yellow. Straw colors. And sky of blue and clouds of white¯bluer blue and whiter white than he recalled ever having seen before.

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