Calendar of Crime

The Adventure of The Emperor’s Dice

When Caligula became emperor of the world he nominated Incitatus his consul, Incitatus being his horse. On evidence such as this, the grandson of Tiberius is considered by historians to have been crazy. The conclusion is questionable. Consuls in Caligula’s day exercised high criminal jurisdiction; obviously, a man could turn his back on his horse. There have been appointments, and not only in Roman history, far less astute.

We are told, too, that Caligula had his adopted son, Lucius, murdered; that he commanded citizens who displeased him to enter the arena; that at the imperial gaming tables this legatee of Tiberius’s mighty treasury played with crooked dice; and so on. That these are the historical facts seems indubitable, but do the facts warrant the historians’ conclusions? We have already disposed of the episode of the praetorian horse. As for Lucius, by Tiberius’s will he was Caligula’s co-heir; and an emperor who murders his co-heir before his co-heir can murder him may be considered of nervous temperament, or overcautious, but he is certainly not irrational. Turning one’s enemies into gladiators combines private interest with the public pleasure and is the sign of a political, not a psychotic, mind. And while loading one’s dice is indefensible on moral grounds, there is no denying the fact that the practice reduces the odds against the dicer.

In short, far from being a lunatic, Caligula was a man of uncommon sense; demonstrating what was to be proved, namely, Caveat lector.

We now leap nineteen centuries.

It was the time of the vernal equinox, or thereabout; in fine, the last day of the third month of the Queenian calendar, and a night of portents it was, speaking in wind, thunder, and rain. Even so, Mark Haggard’s voice could be heard above the uproar. Haggard was driving a leaky station wagon along the Connecticut road with the hands of a charioteer, sawing away at the wheel and roaring oaths against the turbulent heavens as if he were Martius himself. The Queens and Nikki Porter could only embrace one another damply and pray for midnight and the rise of a saner moon.

Ellery did not pine for Connecticut weekends at unmapped homes occupied by unexplored persons. He had too cartographic a memory of hosts floating about in seas of alcohol or, as happened with equal frequency, forty-eight becalmed hours of Canasta. But the Inspector appeared sentimental about this one.

“Haven’t seen Mark, Tracy, or Malvina Haggard since their dad kicked off ten years ago,” the Inspector had said, “and I hadn’t much contact with Jim’s children before that except when they were little. But if they’ve turned out anything like Jim or Cora...”

“They rarely do,” Ellery had said nastily. “Anyway, did Mark Haggard have to include me in?”

“Jim and I went through the police academy together, son. I was Jim Haggard’s best man when he married Cora Maloney in—yep, 1911, just forty years ago. I can see the big lug now,” said the Inspector mistily, “standing in front of the preacher in his monkey suit... Cora buried Jim in that suit, Ellery.”

“Hadn’t he gained any weight? But I still don’t see why—”

“Ellery’s too lofty to mix with ordinary folks, Inspector,” Nikki had put in gently. “Too much of a brain, you know. It gets so bored. Besides, he knows I can’t go unless he does—”

“All right!” howled Ellery; and so here they were, and he hoped they were both thoroughly satisfied.

It had begun with a train that was late, a whistle-stop station that was wrong, no taxi service, and an hour’s wait in splashy darkness. Then their host found them, and even the Inspector began to look as if he regretted the whole thing. Haggard was a staring man with a week’s black stubble, given to sudden convulsions of laughter, and he drove like a madman.

“Can’t tell you how happy I was to hear from you, Mark,” said the old gentleman, bouncing and hanging on to his denture. “I feel like a heel having neglected your mother so long. It’ll be good seeing Cora again.”

“In hell,” screamed Mark Haggard, rocketing over a patch of ice left over from the last snowfall.

“What did you say, Mark?”

“Ma’s in hell!”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear it,” the Inspector said confusedly. “I mean, when did she—?”

“Two years ago.”

“But not in the hot place,” muttered the Inspector. “Not Cora.”

Mark Haggard laughed. “You didn’t know her. You don’t know any of us.”

“Yes, people change,” sighed the Inspector. Then he tried to sound chatty again. “I remember when your father resigned from the Force, Mark. Your mother was against it. But he’d inherited all that money, and I guess it went to his head.”

“What makes you think his head was any different before, Inspector? He was crazy. We’re all crazy!”

Ellery thought that was an extremely bright remark.

“Is it much further, Mark?” asked the old gentleman desperately.

“Yes, I’m so very wet,” said Nikki in a gay voice.

“Threw money around like a maniac,” said Mark Haggard angrily. “The great collector! Who did he think he was—Rosenbach?”

“Books?” asked Ellery, rousing himself.

“My father? He could hardly read. Gambling collection! Crummy old roulette wheels, medieval playing cards, ancient dice—junk filled the whole Gun Room.—Get over on your side of the road, you—!”

“Sounds like a—harmless enough—hobby,” said Nikki jouncily. The other car was lost in the weeping night. Lightning showed them Haggard’s face. Nikki closed her eyes.

“Harmless?” chortled their host. “Nothing about our family is harmless. Including the ancestral dump that Pop inherited from Uncle Jonas.”

“I suppose,” said Nikki, keeping her eyes shut, “you live in a haunted house, Mr. Haggard?”

“Yes!” said Mark Haggard gleefully.

Nikki screeched. But it was only another icy drop pelting the side of her neck.

“Any ghost I know?” asked the Inspector wittily.

“It’s the ghost of an unsolved murder mystery.”

“Murder mystery!”

“Unsolved?” said Ellery.

“The house was then occupied by a family of five,” chuckled their chauffeur, “a father, a mother, and three grown children. The two sons were bugs on hunting and they had a regular arsenal. One night the father’s body was found in the Gun Room. He’d been shot to death. It couldn’t have been suicide, the servants were away, and from the physical evidence an outside murderer was out of the question. It had to be someone in the house that night, and the only ones in the house that night were the mother and the three grown children. Revolting, hey?”

Ellery stirred.

“Humor him!” whispered Nikki.

“Mark’s just making this up,” said Inspector Queen heartily. “Mark, I’m soaked to the hide. Have you lost your way?”

Haggard laughed again. But then he hurled the station wagon around another car, cursing, and Ellery shuddered. “And the best part of it was that nobody ever suspected the father’d been murdered. Not even the police.”

“You see?” said the Inspector in a beamy voice. “Fairy tales. Mark, get there!”

“But keep talking,” said Ellery. “Just how was the murder concealed?”

“Simplest thing in the world. One of the sons was a medical doctor and the other was an undertaker. The son who was a doctor made out a false death certificate and the son who was an undertaker prepared the body for burial.” Haggard’s laugh mingled with the rain and the thunder. “So murder didn’t out after all. And it won’t unless somebody can read those three clues.”

“Oh, there were clues,” said Ellery.

“This has gone far enough,” said the Inspector sharply. “Are you sure, Mark, you’re not driving around in circles?” He peered through a window, but they might have been crossing the Styx.

“What were they, Mark?”

“Ellery,” moaned Nikki.

“The bullet which killed the father came from a .38 revolver. There were two .38 revolvers in the Gun Room. So the two .38s were clues—”

“Ballistics checkup,” mumbled the Inspector.

“Oh, no,” chuckled Mark Haggard. “The bullet passed right through the body and smashed against the bricks of the fireplace. And both guns had been cleaned after the murder.”

“And the third clue?”

“You’ll love it, Ellery. It was found by the sons in their father’s hand.”

“Oh? What was it?”

“A pair of dice. Very famous bones they are, too, bloody as hell.” And Haggard laughed and laughed.

After a moment Ellery said, “All this happened... when did you say, Mark?”

“I didn’t. Ten years ago.”

“Ten—!” The Inspector checked himself.

“Would you care to see the two revolvers and the dice?”

“Do you have them?”

“Oh, yes,” said Mark. “In a wooden box at home.”

“Now that’s going too far!” exploded the Inspector. “Mark, either stop this foolishness or turn around and drive us back to the railroad station!”

Mark Haggard laughed again. The lightning flashed, and for a photographic instant they saw his lumpish eyes, the blueness about the black stubble, the dance of his hands on the wheel.

Ellery heard Nikki’s teeth. “M-Mister Haggard,” she chattered, “what do you and your brother d-do for a living?”

“Tracy is a physician,” Haggard cried, “and I’m an undertaker.” The station wagon slid to a cascading stop, throwing them violently forward. Mark Haggard sprang into the darkness, and from the darkness they heard him shout, “Get out, get out, we’re here!” like some demon commanding them to his pleasure.

This was the beginning of an historic night... darkest history. They could make out nothing of the house, but a porch creaked underfoot and things banged somewhere gleefully. Ellery could feel the revolt in Nikki as she held on to him. Mark Haggard’s right fist crashed repeatedly against an invisible door.

“Damn you, Malvina, open the door! Why’d you lock it?”

A creature in a white negligee of the flowing drapery variety stood there, holding aloft in her left hand—Nikki giggled something about a lefthanded Statue of Liberty—a candle in a black candlestick. The face behind the candle was blanker than her robe. Only the eyes had life, a peering kind of life.

“I’m glad you’ve come back, Mark,” she said in a perfectly lifeless voice. “The lights went out and then a hot flash followed me all over the house. Wherever I went, it was hot, and it burned, Mark, it burned me. Why did the lights go out?”

“Hot what?” muttered the Inspector.

Haggard tried a wall switch. “Power failure—!”

“It burns, Mark,” his sister intoned.

“Malvina, these are some people visiting us. Give me that candle! I’ll get a couple of flashlights.” Mark Haggard’s right hand seized the candlestick and the flame darted off, leaving them in darkness, with the white-robed woman.

“Malvina, you remember me, don’t you?” The Inspector might have been wheedling a child. “Your father’s friend? Richard Queen?”

“No.” That was all she said, in the toneless tones; after that inhuman sound, no one said anything. They shivered in the dark among their weekend bags, waiting dully for Mark Haggard’s return. The house was deathly cold, with a dampness that attacked like acid.

Mark returned in another rage. “No lights, no heat, no dinner prepared, Tracy gone out on a sick call, servants off somewhere—Malvina! Where the devil are Bessie and Connors?”

“They left. They were going to kill me. I chased them with a kitchen knife and they ran away. And Tracy went away, too. My own brother a doctor, and he doesn’t care that the hot flashes burn me...” They heard a horrible snuffing, and they realized the creature was crying.

Mark thrust a flashlight into Ellery’s hand, wielding his own in crazy swoops that touched bare floors, shrouded furniture, his weeping sister. “Stop it or you’ll have another fit—” She had it, on the floor, writhing like a frying soul, and screaming, screaming. “—! If Tracy hadn’t — No! I’ll handle her alone. Go to your rooms—head of the stairs. You’ll find some bread and a can of sardines in the kitchen—”

“Couldn’t eat a thing,” mumbled Inspector Queen. “Wet clothes... go to bed...”

But Haggard was gone, running with his sister in his arms, her draperies trailing, the beam of light painting wild parabolas on the darkness. The Inspector said simply, “We’d better get dry, rest awhile, and then clear out.”

“How about now?” said Nikki. “I sometimes enjoy being wet, and I’m not the least bit tired. I’m sure we could call a cab—”

“While a ten-year-old unsolved murder drifts around the premises crying for its mate?” Ellery glanced up into the black hole of the staircase, his jaw out. “I’m sticking the weekend.”

Inspector Queen was stretched on one of the icy twin beds, and Nikki whimpered in the bedroom beyond—she had promised hysterics at the suggestion that in the interests of propriety the communicating door be shut—when the men’s door burst open and light invaded the room. From the other room Nikki squealed, and the Inspector heaved twelve inches toward the ceiling. Ellery dropped a shoe, definitely.

But it was only Mark Haggard, grinning. He was carrying an electric lantern in one hand and a battered old wooden box the size of a cigar humidor in the other. “The clues to the murder,” he chuckled. “Old Mark Elephant!” He slammed the box down on the highboy nearest the door.

Haggard kept looking at Ellery, teeth glittering from the underbrush of stubble. The Inspector scrambled out of bed in his nightshirt as Ellery slowly opened the box.

Two rusty revolvers, Colt .38s, nested in the box. On them lay a small squarish case that looked like gold.

“The dice,” said Mark Haggard, smiling. “Open it.”

“Hold the light higher,” Ellery said. His father craned over his shoulder.

Two crystalline red dice incised in gold sparkled up at them from a bed of purple velvet.

“They look like jewels,” exclaimed the Inspector.

“That’s what they are,” said Mark. “Square-cut rubies with pure gold dots inset. These dice are almost as old as the Christian era. Supposed to have been the personal property of the Roman emperor Caligula. We gave them to Pop for his gambling collection.”

“This inscription in the case?” Ellery squinted. “Hold the lantern up a bit, Mark... To Dad, from Mark, Malvina, and Tracy, on His Ruby Wedding Anniversary. In what way, Mark, were these dice a clue to—?”

But Haggard was gone in the arctic night of the hall.

The Inspector heard the sounds first. He reached across the abyss between their beds and touched Ellery on the shoulder. It was a little past three. Ellery awoke instantly.

“Ellery. Listen.”

It was still raining, jungle music by a thousand drums. The wind slammed a shutter somewhere. In the next room Nikki’s bedsprings complained as she turned desperately over.

Then Ellery heard a floorboard give way and in the same moment ghastly lightning made the bedroom spring alive. A man was standing at the highboy, his right hand reaching for the box Mark Haggard had brought to the room a few hours before. With the first crack of thunder Ellery jumped out of bed and hurled himself across the room. His shoulder hit the intruder below the knees and the man toppled with a cry, striking his head against the highboy.

Ellery sat on him.

“Tracy Haggard!” Inspector Queen leaned over them, trying to hold the beam of his flash steady. From the other room Nikki was wailing, “What was that? What happened?” Dr. Haggard was a small, neat, graying man with a clever face; when his eyes opened they were pale and rather glassy. “This is a fine way to meet again after all these years, Tracy,” growled the Inspector. “What’s the idea of playing sneak thief in your own house?”

“Mark’s box of clues, Dad,” murmured Ellery. “Apparently when Tracy Haggard got home, he learned that his brother had blabbed to us about the ten-year-old murder and left the clues in here. He’s tried to get them back and dispose of them before we can dig too deeply into the crime.”

“I don’t know why I didn’t destroy those guns and dice years ago,” said Dr. Tracy Haggard, calmly enough. “Ellery—you are Ellery, aren’t you? — would you mind removing the derrière from my alimentary canal? You’re not exactly a featherweight.”

“Then it’s true.” Ellery did not stir.

“And I attended Jim’s funeral and never suspected,” said Inspector Queen bitterly. “Tracy, which one of you shot your father? And for God’s sake, why?”

“I don’t know the answer to either question, Inspector. It’s been unholy hell... the four of us living together all these years, knowing one of us did it... It sent Mother to her grave.” Tracy Haggard tried to rise, failed, and hardened his stomach muscles. “I’m glad she’s dead and out of it. And I suppose you saw what it’s done to Malvina and Mark. Mark was always a little batty, but Malvina had a promising career in the theater when this happened and she cracked.”

“What’s going on in there?” shrieked Nikki.

“Dr. Haggard, your brother made no bones about the murder of your father,” said Ellery. “Does Mark want the truth to come out?”

“When Mother died,” said Tracy Haggard coolly, “the three of us split the income of a very large trust fund. By will, if there were only two of us, the income would be that much greater per individual. Mark is always broke—gambling mostly. Does that answer your question?”

“Won’t anybody talk?” howled Nikki. “I can’t come in there!”

“That’s why he asked us up here, is it?” snarled the Inspector. “To pin Jim’s death on you or Malvina. Mark must feel pretty safe...”

“We’re going to try to oblige your brother, Doctor.” Ellery got off his host and reached for the box of clues.

Dr. Haggard rose, tight-lipped. “In the middle of the night?”

“Dad, get a robe on and throw me mine... Why, yes, Doctor. Would you take us to the room where your father was shot to death?”

They trooped downstairs to the nervous accompaniment of the electric lantern, Ellery hugging the box, Nikki in a woolly robe and scuffs insisting that death would be instantaneous if she were to stay upstairs alone. Toward the rear of the main hall Tracy Haggard paused before a heavy door.

“Understandably, none of us ever goes in here. Nothing’s been touched since the night of the crime.” Dr. Haggard unlocked the door, threw it open, and stepped aside. “I might add,” he said dryly, “that neither Mark nor I has done any hunting since... at least with any of these weapons.”

The walls of the Gun Room flanking the one door were hung with racks of shotguns, rifles, and small arms. On the other walls were cases containing James Haggard’s gambling collection, and a great many larger gambling objects were grouped about the room. A thick coat of dust covered everything.

“Just where was your father’s body found?” Ellery murmured.

“Seated behind that desk.”

The desk was an elaborate production of inlaid woods, with gunstock-shaped legs and a sheathing of hammered gunmetal. A matching chair with a braided leather seat stood behind it.

“Was he facing this door, Dr. Haggard?”

“Squarely.”

“The only door, notice,” snapped Inspector Queen, “so the odds are the killer stood in the doorway when he fired the shot. Just one shot, Tracy?”

“Just one shot.”

Ellery opened Mark’s box and removed the two rusty revolvers. “I see the gunracks are numbered. In which rack, Doctor, were these .38s normally kept?”

“This one came from the rack immediately to the right of the door.”

“To the right of the door, Doctor? You’re positive?”

“Yes, this rack numbered 1. The other .38 was kept in the rack immediately to the left of the door. This one here, the rack numbered 6.”

“Gun Exhibit A, right of door, rack number 1. Gun Exhibit B, left of door, rack number 6.” Ellery frowned. “And it must have been done by one of those two guns, Mark said... These ruby dice, Doctor—what did they have to do with the murder?”

“Caligula’s dice? We found them in Dad’s hand.”

“In his hand?” exclaimed Nikki. “I didn’t really believe your brother when he said that—”

“My examination of his body indicated that he lingered a few minutes before dying. You’ll notice that one of the wall cases behind the chair is open and empty. That’s where the Emperor’s Dice, as Dad used to call them, were displayed. When the shooter left, Dad must have managed to reach up, open the case, and take out the ruby dice. Then he died.”

“But why would he do a thing like that?” asked Nikki.

“Dad had police training. He was leaving a clue to his killer’s identity. But we never could figure out whom the dice indicated. They’d been a gift from all three of us.”

“Seems like an awfully peculiar anniversary gift to one’s parents,” Nikki said coldly.

“The dice were for Dad. We gave Mother a ruby pendant.”

“Well, I don’t get it,” the Inspector said irritably. “Clues, ruby dice, emperors! Ellery, can you make anything out of this hash?”

“Let’s hope he won’t,” said Dr. Haggard. “I could kill Mark for this stunt...”

“The way you killed your father, Dr. Haggard?” asked Nikki.

Tracy Haggard smiled. “Shows how insidious Mark’s little propaganda scheme is.” He shrugged and disappeared in the black hall.

The Inspector and Nikki were staring into the darkness when Ellery said abruptly, “You and Nikki go to bed.”

“What are you going to do?” asked his father.

“Stay down here,” said Ellery, rolling the historic dice between his palms, “until I throw a natural.”

Malvina Haggard screamed on and off for the remainder of the night, and the angry voices of the brothers raised in bitter argument penetrated to the Gun Room, but from that room there was no sound but the sound of rattling bones, as if the bimillennial ghost of the gambling emperor himself had returned to dice with Ellery. And finally, at the first smudge of the cold and streaming dawn, the sound stopped, and Ellery came upstairs and methodically roused the household, inviting them all—even the demented woman—to join him on the scene of the old crime. Something in his manner quieted Malvina, and she drifted downstairs with the others docilely.

They took places about the desk in the dusty Gun Room, Mark viciously alive, Malvina somnolent, the doctor suspended watchfully, and Nikki and Inspector Queen trying to contain their excitement.

“The case,” announced Ellery, “is solved.”

Mark laughed.

“Damn you, Mark!” That was his brother.

Malvina began to croon a wailing tune, smiling.

“I’ve been throwing these ruby dice for hours,” continued Ellery, “with the most surprising result.” He shook the dice briskly in his cupped right hand and rolled them out on the desk.

“Nine,” said Tracy Haggard. “What’s surprising about that?”

“Not merely nine, Dr. Haggard. A 3 and a 6.”

“Well, that’s nine!”

“Temper, Tracy,” laughed Mark. Ellery rolled again.

“Eleven. Remarkable!”

“Not merely eleven, Dr. Haggard—a 5 and a 6.” And Ellery rolled a third time. “And there’s seven—a 1 and a 6. Never fails.”

“What never fails?” asked Nikki.

“The 6, my pet. I’ve made several hundred rolls while you were tossing around upstairs, and while one of these dice behaves with self-respecting variability, the other comes up 6 every time.”

“Crooked! Loaded!” said Inspector Queen. “Who’d you say these dice used to belong to?”

“According to Mark, to Gaius Caesar, better known as Caligula, Emperor of Rome from 37 to 41 A.D. And it may well be true, because Caligula was one of history’s most distinguished dicing cheats.”

“And what does all this mean to you, Ellery?” asked Mark Haggard softly.

“Your father left these dice as a clue to the one of you who shot him. There are two dice, there were two .38 revolvers. Theory: The dice were meant by your father to refer to those two revolvers. But we now find that one of these dice is ‘loaded’ — your word, Dad—while the other is not. Conclusion: Jim Haggard meant to convey the message that the murderer loaded one of these revolvers.”

“Wonderful,” said Mark Haggard.

“Ridiculous,” said Tracy Haggard. “Of course he loaded one of them! But which one?”

Malvina Haggard kept smiling and crooning her little tune, keeping time with her sharp white fingers.

“The loaded die,” explained Ellery, “always turns up at the number 6, and one of the revolvers comes from a gunrack numbered 6. It seems obvious that the revolver associated with the number 6 was the one the murderer ‘loaded’... in other words, the one he chose to fire the fatal bullet into Jim Haggard.”

“And a fat lot of good that does you,” sneered Tracy Haggard. “How can knowing which of the two .38s killed Dad possibly tell you which one of us murdered him?”

“In which direction in relation to the door,” inquired Ellery, “is rack number 6 located?”

“The rack to the left of the doorway,” the Inspector said slowly. “To the left...”

“Killer opens door, to his right is a rack with a .38, to his left a rack with a .38. We now know he chose the .38 from the lefthand rack. What kind of person, when he has a choice of either side, automatically chooses an object to his left side? Why, a lefthanded person, of course. And that pins the murder on...” Ellery stopped.

“Just marvelous,” gloated the Inspector. “How this boy of mine comes through! Eh, Nikki?”

“Every time!” said Nikki worshipfully.

“And that pins the job on which one, son?” The old gentleman rubbed his palms together.

“It was supposed to pin the crime on Malvina,” said Ellery, “who held the candle prominently aloft in her left hand when she greeted us—as commented upon by Miss Nikki Porter, aloud—whereas the brothers conscientiously demonstrated by various actions during the night that they’re both righthanded. Unfortunately, gentlemen and ladies, I’m going to prove a disappointment to you. Aside from a number of tremendous, not to say laughable, improbabilities in the plot, there was one enormous flaw.”

“Plot? Flaw?” spluttered Inspector Queen.

The brothers glared. Even Malvina’s clouded intelligence seemed shocked to clarity by Ellery’s tone.

“I was told,” murmured Ellery, “that the ruby dice were a gift to Jim Haggard on the occasion of Mr. and Mrs. Haggard’s ruby wedding anniversary—”

“Sure they were, Ellery,” said the Inspector. “You saw the inscription in the case yourself!”

“And you told me, Dad, that you’d been best man at your old friend Jim Haggard’s wedding forty years ago. You even mentioned the date — 1911.”

“Yes, but I don’t see,” began his father doubtfully.

“You don’t? How long ago was Jim Haggard murdered?”

“Ten years ago, Ellery,” said Nikki. “That’s what they said.”

“Married forty years ago, died ten years ago—so Jim Haggard could have been married no longer than thirty years at the time of his death. But ruby weddings commemorate which anniversary? Don’t strain yourselves—ruby wedding is the fortieth. I must therefore inquire,” said Ellery politely, “how Mr. and Mrs. Haggard could have been presented with gifts commemorating forty years of marriage if when Mr. Haggard died he’d only been married thirty years. No answer being forthcoming, I must conclude the the error in mathematics lies in the figures surrounding Mr. Haggard’s ‘death’; and this is confirmed by the dice, which these two innocent eyes saw in their gold case, dear children, proving that your parents celebrated an anniversary this very year. So I’m delighted to announce—as if you didn’t know it—that your parents are very much alive, my friends, and that the whole thing has been a hoax! You lied, Mark. You lied, Tracy. And Malvina, your performance as Ophelia completely vindicates Mark’s judgment that you had a promising career on the stage.

“And you, my worthy father.” Inspector Queen started. “You ought to apply for an Equity card yourself! Didn’t you tell me emotionally that you attended Jim Haggard’s funeral ten years ago? So you’re one of this gang, too... and so are you, Nikki, with your screams and your squeals and the dramatic way in which you pointed out for my benefit the crucial fact that Malvina is lefthanded.”

There was a vast silence in Jim Haggard’s Gun Room.

“All cooked up,” said Ellery cheerfully. “The wild night ride, the prevailing lunacy, the lights that atmospherically failed, the carefully deposited dust in the Gun Room, and all the rest of it—cooked up by my own father, in collusion with his precious pals, the Haggard family! Object: Apparently to lead me to deduce, from the herrings strewn across the trail, that Malvina killed her father. Then Jim Haggard could pop out of whatever closet he’s skulking in with dear Cora and show me up for the gullible fathead I presumably am. My own father! Not to mention my faithful amanuensis. Reason totters and whimpers: Why? I restored her to her throne when I remembered the date.”

Ellery grinned. “Yesterday was the last day of March. Which makes today,” and Ellery applied his outspread hand to the end of his nose and, using his thumb as a pivot, gently waved his celebrated fingers in their petrified direction, “April Fool!”