Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 120, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 733 & 734, September/October 2002

Constant Hearses by Edward D. Hoch

Benedict Arnold figures so frequently as an antagonist in the cases of Edward D. Hoch’s Revolutionary War era sleuth Alexander Swift that he’s beginning to take on the character of Swift’s nemesis. In real life, Arnold’s role in the Revolutionary War was more complicated; prior to his treachery he fought heroically for the American side in several crucial battles. We probably haven’t seen the last of Arnold’s entanglements with the clever Swift...

During George Washington’s second term as President of the United States, it was not uncommon for Alexander Swift to visit him at Mount Vernon. The plantation, situated atop a hill overlooking the Potomac River, was always a lively place. On this sunny afternoon in late October of 1793, he found the President on the second floor of his round barn where horses sometimes walked in circles, threshing wheat.

“Isn’t it a bit late in the season for threshing, Mr. President?” he asked.

“Alex! How good it is to see you! Stay by the stairs. I’m coming right down.” When they reached the barn’s main floor, he answered Swift’s question. “The threshing season is over, but there is always the cleanup in preparation for winter. Tell me, how goes progress on the Patowmack Canal?”

In the years following the Revolution, Washington had become president of the Potomac Navigation Company, hiring Swift as one of his assistants. After his election to the highest office in the new nation, Washington had resigned from the canal company, but Swift stayed on. He lived with his wife Molly and their eight-year-old son in Maryland. President Washington still took an interest in the canal company and asked about its progress whenever they were together.

“Progress is slow,” he admitted, “but we’re coming along.”

“Will I live to see it completed?”

“I don’t know that either of us will,” Swift answered with a smile. “But we’re certainly trying. I hope our new capital in the District of Columbia is finished sooner than the canal.”

“I hope so, too. I laid the cornerstone for the Capitol building on a sunny day a few weeks ago, but the President’s House still has only a foundation. I will never live there.”

“If you are elected to a third term...”

Washington held up his hand. “No, no! Tell me, how are Molly and George?”

“Fine, sir, both of them.” Washington had been especially pleased when they named their son after him.

The President turned serious as they walked toward the house. “I have summoned you here on an important matter.”

“Not Benedict Arnold again?”

“Not directly, though there may be some connection. He’s back in London with his family, and not faring too well, from what I hear. There is, at the moment, a much more immediate problem. I’m sure you are aware of what is happening in Philadelphia.”

“The plague of yellow fever! The newspaper accounts are terrible.”

Washington nodded. “It started among the sailors and grog sellers on the waterfront back in August. Poor Hamilton almost died of it, and many in the government are stricken. When I agreed to move the capital from New York to Philadelphia, I never dreamed of anything like this happening. I left the city as planned on September tenth, to spend time here until Congress reconvenes on December second. Now I am seriously considering moving the session to Germantown or some other location. Alex, we have nearly five thousand known dead in a city of fifty-five thousand. And they died a horrible death, with that yellowish skin color and black vomit. I saw many of them myself before I came here in September.”

They’d entered the big house and Martha Washington greeted Swift warmly. She was a small woman, barely five feet tall, with dark hair and a gentle manner. “It is good to see you again, Alex,” she said, inquiring about his wife and son.

“Patsy,” Washington asked, for that was what he called her, “could Joshua bring us some tea on the back porch?”

“I’ll see to it at once.”

Seated next to the President in one of the rocking chairs overlooking the Potomac, Swift felt at peace with the world. He knew, however, that the President had summoned him for a serious purpose. “I want to help however I can, sir, but of course I am not a medical man. I know nothing of the disease or how it is spread.”

“Nor does anyone else, although there is a feeling that the French colonists who fled Haiti in late July might have brought it with them to our shores. Certainly it has been a bad summer in our nation’s capital. Philadelphia has been hotter, drier, and dustier than anyone can remember, with an amazing number of flies and mosquitos adding to the discomfort. Only now is there some relief with the coming of a light frost, but still the death toll from the fever climbs.” He was silent for a moment, and then added, “One of our Pennsylvania congressmen died of it just two weeks ago.”

“Who would that be?”

“Clayton Emory. Did you know him?”

“I don’t believe so.”

Washington sighed. “Here is the problem, Swift, and what I am about to tell you must go no further.”

“Certainly not.”

“Emory was fifty-eight years old and a widower. He lived alone in a small row house that was filled with papers from his military service and from various positions he held in the colonial government. Last week, when members of his family started to clean the house out, they made a surprising discovery in one of the boxes — a large quantity of British currency, all in five-pound notes drawn on the Bank of England.”

“How much is a large quantity?”

“Seventy-eight envelopes of one hundred notes each. Thirty-nine thousand pounds in all.”

“That’s a great deal of money.”

“A small fortune,” Washington agreed. “I take only twenty-five thousand dollars a year, hardly enough for the expenses incurred while serving as President. That is a bit over six thousand pounds. The money hidden in Emory’s house is more than I will collect during my first six years in office.”

“Are these banknotes still legal currency?”

“They are in England.”

“Where did they come from?” Swift asked, taking a sip of tea.

“I want you to find out. The family notified the Treasury Department of their find, and with Hamilton still in a weakened condition I was contacted directly by post.”

“You mentioned this might involve Benedict Arnold indirectly. What did you mean by that?”

Washington closed his eyes for a moment, then said, “Before West Point, when Arnold was still military governor of Philadelphia, Emory served under him. I ask myself if it is possible Emory, too, was a traitor, receiving money from Arnold.”

Swift sat up straighter in his chair. “Do you believe that?”

“No, not really. But I want you to find a better explanation for me. What was he doing with all that hidden British currency, twelve years after the war ended?”

It was Alexander Swift’s first visit to the new nation’s capital since Washington’s reelection to a second term. With construction in the District of Columbia moving slowly, the President and Congress would have to endure Philadelphia for another few years. Right now, with the yellow fever still raging and the city’s streets almost empty, Swift felt a chill of apprehension. He was aware that until recently even some post riders refused to enter the city. He’d faced death many times, during the Revolution and after, but always from a human foe.

Washington had suggested he go first to the dead man’s home, one of the row houses along Chestnut Street, not far from City Hall and the State House, and within blocks of the President’s own residence. When he reached the house, he noticed a handbill affixed to a tree near the street. It was a poem titled “Pestilence,” and had been written by Philip Freneau, editor of the National Gazette. The first stanza read:

As he read through the rest of it, a wagon trundled by. From the stench of it, he knew there were bodies beneath the canvas covering. Constant hearses, indeed.

Tying his horse to a hitching post, he rapped smartly on the closed door. After a few moments it was opened by a young woman who wore a gauze scarf across her mouth and nose. “There has been death here,” she told him. “You’d best be gone.”

Quickly he introduced himself. “I am Alexander Swift, sent here as a special representative of President Washington.”

“Oh!” She stepped aside. “Come in, then, if you dare. The yellow-fever germs might still be loose. We don’t know how it’s spread.”

“You are...?”

“Oh, sorry! I’m Amanda Emory, the congressman’s granddaughter. Here, wrap this gauze around your face. It might offer some protection.”

She was a pert young woman with blond curls, perhaps still in her late teens. He took the gauze as she had instructed, though he doubted that it offered much in the way of protection. “I didn’t realize he had a granddaughter this grown up. Your father must be Jonathan Emory.”

“Yes, he is. He, too, had the fever, but he is resting now and seems better.”

“It was you who found the hidden money?”

She nodded. He followed her into the small bedroom at the rear of the house. Wooden boxes full of papers were stacked on the floor, apparently in an attempt to organize them for ultimate removal. While she showed him the closet he started to sit on the dead man’s bed and then thought better of it. The bedclothes had been removed, but the mattress was old and soiled with the scent of death. “It was right here, in this box. My father was very ill at the time and I could not ask him what to do.”

“Who is your family doctor?”

“It was Dr. Shippen until he fled the city at the end of August,” she replied with a trace of bitterness in her voice. “He was one of the best doctors at Pennsylvania Hospital. Since my grandfather fell ill in mid October we’ve had Dr. Bradley.”

Swift nodded. Benedict Arnold’s wife was Peggy Shippen. Her father was a judge and the doctor was a cousin. Swift remembered him faintly from Arnold’s wedding, which he’d attended as Washington’s representative. He would be in his late fifties now, and obviously not the bravest of men. “I’ve heard of Bradley,” he told her. “I understand he’s a good man.”

“Not good enough to save my grandfather, but perhaps no one would have been. In those last days I was here as often as I could be, cleaning up his vomit, trying to make him as comfortable as possible. I pray Dr. Bradley can do better with my father’s illness.”

“You have no fear for yourself?”

“What good would it do? The fever is all around us, everywhere along the waterfront and in the eastern half of the city. You either flee or pray, those are the only two options.”

“President Washington is concerned about the convening of Congress in a few weeks. It may be moved to Germantown.”

“The frosts have helped a bit,” she told him. “In a few weeks the worst might be over.”

“I have heard the summer was bad.”

She put a hand to her forehead. “The heat, the mosquitos everywhere, I don’t know how anyone survived it. They have tried everything to stamp it out, even firing cannons in the streets of the city in the belief that gunpowder could combat the disease. There is little solace to be found, even in religion. All but one of our Catholic priests and many of our ministers have been infected themselves.”

“Tell me about the money.”

“My father was in no shape to clean out the house, and my mother has been tending to him night and day. I told them I would get a start on it, clearing out those boxes of old papers from his closet. It was there I found the five-pound notes, in seventy-eight envelopes. I brought my mother over the next morning to see them, and she was fearful we would be arrested if we did not report our discovery. Mother contacted a clerk at the Treasury Department, one of the few not suffering from the yellow fever, and brought the money to him.”

Swift nodded. “With Secretary Hamilton still weak from the fever, President Washington was notified directly.”

“I... I cannot believe my grandfather would be involved in anything criminal or treasonous.”

“We have no reason to believe he was so involved,” Swift replied, trying to reassure her. “You did the correct thing by turning in the money immediately, but now I must speak with your father. Is he well enough to receive me?”

“He seems better today. Let me close up here and I will take you to him.”

The Emory house was but a few blocks away, on Ninth Street, and Swift walked there with Amanda Emory, leading his horse behind him. “The yellow fever has changed this city so much,” she told him. “Sometimes we feel the rest of the nation has cut us off completely. People here stay indoors and avoid contact even with their closest neighbors. A man next-door to us died of the fever and was buried before we ever knew it. We only learned of my grandfather’s death because Dr. Bradley had been calling on him daily and I always arranged to be there when he came, to let him in. That day we arrived together and went inside to find Grandfather dead.”

At the Emory house they found that the doctor had arrived to minister to Amanda’s father. Bradley was a slim man whose dour expression seemed to mirror the everyday horrors he was witnessing. “Jonathan is progressing well,” he told Amanda, motioning toward her father, who was seated in a rocking chair with a pillow behind him. “I wish I could say the same for my other patients.”

Alexander Swift introduced himself. “The President is especially interested in the death of Congressman Emory. Can you tell me anything about it, Doctor?”

“He lingered for weeks, which gave me some hope that we might save him. I visited daily, and the ladies looked after him in the evenings. When the end came, it surprised me by its suddenness.”

“I was there during the day when the doctor came, and Mother and I went there at dinnertime, at least until my father, too, fell ill with the disease. Then I went alone,” Amanda explained. “It was terrible for Grandfather, being by himself overnight, but there was no space for him at Pennsylvania Hospital or anywhere else. We did the best we could.”

Swift turned his attention to the dead man’s son. “How are you coming along?”

Jonathan Emory, a man still in his late thirties, nodded and gave a weak smile. “Better than my father, I hope. Abby and Amanda had me to nurse as well as him. But I will pull through. I know I will. Already there is talk that I may fill my father’s congressional seat until next year’s election.”

“You must get back on your feet before you make any plans,” the doctor told him, and his daughter quickly agreed.

Abby Emory came downstairs at that moment. “You should have told me we had a visitor, Amanda.” Though probably still in her thirties, the woman was pale and gaunt.

“I am reluctant to intrude at such a time,” Swift said. “President Washington is most concerned about the large quantity of banknotes found in Congressman Emory’s home. Can any of you offer an explanation?”

“What’s this?” Doctor Bradley asked.

“Nothing that need concern you,” Abby Emory said. “Let me show you out, Doctor.”

“I’m sorry,” Swift apologized when the doctor had departed. “I assumed he knew about it.”

Jonathan Emory sat up a bit straighter in his chair. “He is not the family friend that Dr. Shippen was. Unfortunately, Shippen fled the city at his first opportunity. Dr. Bradley took over his files and his patients. We must content ourselves with him. It is scandalous that so few doctors remained here after the outbreak.”

“You all must know Dr. Shippen’s relationship to the young Peggy Shippen who married the traitor Benedict Arnold. Some members of the Shippen family were Loyalists opposed to the Revolution. It is possible one of them, perhaps even Dr. Shippen himself, attempted to bribe the congressman.”

“Impossible!” Jonathan Emory told him with a trace of anger in his voice. “No one was more loyal to the new nation than my father.”

“Have you any other explanation for all this money in British currency?”

“No,” he admitted, then turned to his wife. “Do you think Crouchman might know?”

“Well...” She hesitated, considering the idea.

“Who is Crouchman?” Swift asked.

“He was on Clayton’s congressional staff” Abby Emory explained. “Houghton Crouchman. He used to call on him a few nights a week, even when Congress wasn’t in session. But we’ve heard nothing from him since my father-in-law’s death. We sent a message to him by runner and received no reply. For all we know he might be stricken with the yellow fever himself.”

“Can you give me his address?”

She produced a number on Vine Street, some distance away. Swift took his leave, promising to inform them if he learned anything.

The ride to Vine Street was anything but pleasant. Whenever a wagon passed him bound for the cemetery, the odor from it made Swift’s horse rear up in fright. Though the air was cooler and clearer now, the city was still awaiting the killing frost that everyone prayed would bring an end to the suffering. On Vine Street a few people were out, one woman in front of the house where Crouchman resided. When Swift asked after Congressman Emory’s staff assistant, the woman informed him that Mrs. Crouchman had been a recent victim of the yellow fever and Crouchman himself had not been seen in a couple of days.

Swift went up the steps and tried the door. It was the sort that needed a key to lock or unlock it, but it swung open when he pressed down on the latch and pushed.

The inside parlor was neat and formal, as befitting a congressman’s aide. “Mr. Crouchman,” he called out, but no one answered. The house appeared to be empty. He made his way through the downstairs rooms and decided that Crouchman had probably fled the city following the death of his wife.

Still, there were some pieces of moldy bread on the kitchen table that did not jibe with the neatness in the other rooms. Swift doubted that Crouchman would have left it like this. He went out to the hall and climbed the stairs to the second floor. He saw at once that the master bedroom was occupied. A man was bundled up with blankets in the bed, his eyes closed. “Mr. Crouchman?” he said again.

As he moved closer to the bed he saw the yellow skin, and realized that the man was dead, struck down by the same terrible plague that had taken his wife. The bedclothes around his neck were dark with dried blood. Swift assumed it was from the hemorrhaging that often accompanied the disease, and he braced himself as he carefully lifted the blanket. Then he saw that Crouchman’s throat had been savagely cut.

Someone had taken the trouble to murder a dying man.

Swift wanted desperately to relay the news to President Washington, but the mail out of the city was only just returning to some form of normalcy. For all he knew, the President might already be riding north to inspect Germantown as a possible site for the congressional session. He went instead to the high constable’s office, identified himself as the President’s representative, and reported the discovery of the slain man. He knew there was unlikely to be any sort of investigation. At a time when thousands were dying, little notice would be taken of a murder victim who would have died anyway in a matter of days.

Swift returned to the Emory household and told Jonathan, Abby, and their daughter Amanda what he’d discovered. He was a bit surprised to find Jonathan Emory out of his rocking chair and moving around the house. “I am feeling much better today,” he said. “The worst of it seems to be over. But I cannot understand about poor Crouchman. He was not the sort to make enemies. Is there any possibility he killed himself in despair over his illness?”

Swift shook his head. “His arms were beneath the blanket, and there was no weapon. Someone did it to him, someone who couldn’t risk letting the disease run its course.”

“How long had he been dead?” Amanda asked.

“I’m not a good judge of that, but certainly no more than a couple of days. A neighbor saw him recently.”

She let out her breath. “That’s a relief.”

He could almost read her thoughts. “You feared your grandfather might be somehow involved.”

“The money. I don’t know what to think.” She shook her head as if trying to clear it. “Crouchman was on my grandfather’s staff. If any money was given to him, Crouchman might have known about it.”

“That’s nonsense!” her father stormed. “Your grandfather never took a bribe from anyone! He was an honest man, one of our new nation’s true patriots. You have to believe that, Mr. Swift.”

“Still, Crouchman’s death might well be linked to the money. Did your father have other staff members with whom I could speak?”

Emory exchanged glances with his wife, and it was she who answered. “There is no harm in saying it. Since his wife’s death two years ago, Clayton has been friendly with a woman named Mrs. Langtree. So far as we know, they are good friends only. She is not a staff member, of course, but if you can find her you might speak with her.”

“Do you think the money might have belonged to her?”

“I doubt it. Her husband was a minister before he died. It’s not an occupation that brings in a great deal of money, certainly not in British pounds.”

“Where might I find her?”

“We have no idea,” her husband answered. “We haven’t seen the woman in months.”

“I heard she was helping out at the Pennsylvania Hospital,” Amanda said.

Once again Swift ventured into the streets, as the sun began to dip low on the western horizon. The Pennsylvania Hospital was located on Eighth Street in a park area between Spruce and Pine. Usually peaceful, it had come to represent all the pain and hopelessness of the city. Since it was overcrowded, present inmates had to be protected by barring the admission of lonely or homeless people who had no one left to care for them. The blocks around the hospital were crowded with these poor souls. Some lay dying in doorways and alleys, without hope.

The man at the admissions desk told him that Mrs. Langtree was somewhere in the hospital, but he knew not where. It took Swift a half-hour to find her, ministering to plague-ridden children in one of the hospital wards. “My name is Alex Swift,” he told her as she stood up at the sound of her name. “President Washington has asked me to look into the circumstances surrounding the unfortunate death of Congressman Emory.”

She was an attractive woman in her forties, with bags under her eyes testifying to many sleepless nights tending the sick. “I can tell you as much about this poor child as I can about the congressman. The yellow fever is no respecter of age or class.”

“You were friendly with him before he died?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “We were two lonely people who enjoyed each other’s company. There was nothing untoward about it.”

“I’m sure not. Might I ask you about his finances? Did he have a quantity of cash on hand?”

She soothed the sick child’s brow with a damp cloth, taking a moment before she answered. “I don’t understand your question, Mr. Swift. Clayton was not a wealthy man. He’d had some business success in his younger days, but lately he was devoting himself to his duties in the Congress.”

“Let me be frank with you, Mrs. Langtree. A quantity of British currency was found among his papers after his death. Did you have any knowledge of this?”

“Certainly not! If you are implying that he was somehow in league with the British Loyalists, you are quite mistaken. No one was more loyal to our new nation than Clayton.”

“Might a member of his congressional staff, such as Houghton Crouchman, have knowledge of it?”

“I assure you there is nothing to have knowledge of! Certainly Crouchman was a valued assistant, and he called on Clayton during his illness. I understand he himself has now fallen ill with the disease.”

“Worse than that. His body was found earlier this day.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, perhaps in silent prayer. “Is there no end to this plague? Must it destroy our entire city?”

“Crouchman suffered from the yellow fever, but that was not what killed him. His throat was cut as he lay in his bed.”

“Who would do such a ghastly thing?”

“I do not know,” Swift admitted. “But my task is to find out. I know that some city residents do not bother to lock their doors at night. Was Crouchman one of those?”

“No. I visited him with Clayton on more than one occasion and his door was always locked.”

“I understand that Dr. Shippen was Clayton’s physician.”

She nodded. “And Crouchman’s, too, until the good doctor fled the city.”

“What can you tell me about Shippen?”

The ill child had fallen into a peaceful sleep, and Mrs. Langtree felt she could leave him. “Let us walk for a bit, Mr. Swift, and I will tell you what little I know. Dr. Shippen is a highly regarded physician and medical educator. During the Revolution he was chief of the medical department of the Continental Army.”

“A man beyond reproach until he fled the city in the face of the plague.”

“Well, not quite beyond reproach. His predecessor in the position charged him with bad faith, and he was later court-martialed for financial irregularities in office. However, he was acquitted of the charges.”

“Yet he tended to members of Congress?”

“There was no solid proof of wrongdoing against him, and he was always a good doctor.”

“His cousin Peggy married Benedict Arnold.”

“I know that. They are in England now.”

“And Shippen fled the city in late August?”

“After a meeting of physicians on August twenty-fifth. He has not yet returned.”

Swift was grateful for her help. “You have been of great assistance. Please continue with the fine work you’re doing here.”

“I am only trying to keep them alive.”

Night had fallen on the plague-ridden city. Riding through the almost deserted streets, Swift could feel a decided chill in the air. There would be a frost this night, perhaps a killing one. It was hard for him to believe that he had been there only a single day, moving through these dangerous streets, encountering the healthy and the dying and the dead.

The hospital office had told him that Dr. Bradley had gone home for the night. When Swift showed his warrant from President Washington, they gave him the doctor’s address. It proved to be a modest home on Beech Street, near the Schuylkill River and well away from the worst plague areas.

It was the doctor himself who answered the door, looking grim. “I have worked all day, sir. I cannot go on another call tonight, no matter the circumstances.”

“We met earlier,” Swift reminded him. “At the Emory house.”

“Oh yes. Mr. Swift?”

“Alexander Swift. May I come in?”

“Certainly. I am alone here. My wife and children have been sent to the country until the plague passes. Please have a seat.”

“I must tell you that another of your patients has succumbed. Houghton Crouchman, assistant to Congressman Emory.”

“I am indeed sorry to hear that. He was a good man, as was Emory himself. May I offer you a bit of wine?”

“Thank you, no. I have come on a matter of government business.”

“And what would that be?”

“The matter of seventy-eight envelopes of British currency found among the papers of the late Clayton Emory.”

Dr. Bradley showed surprise. “Is that so? Where did they come from?”

“From the British, almost certainly. Otherwise the money would have been in some form of colonial or United States currency. But it was the number of separate envelopes that told me what I really wanted to know.”

“Seventy-eight? What does that tell you?”

“Separate envelopes, separate payments. Seventy-eight payments of five hundred pounds each. Our Revolution began with the battles of Lexington and Concord, and Paul Revere’s ride, in April, seventeen seventy-five. It ended, for all practical purposes, with Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown in October of seventeen eighty-one, seventy-eight months later.”

“The British were paying someone a monthly fee—”

“A large monthly fee, which ended only after the situation became hopeless with the surrender. An agent, a spy, a traitor, call him what you will.”

“And this money went to Clayton Emory?”

Swift shook his head. “No, for two reasons. First, the British would hardly be paying that sort of money, month after month, to someone who was a mere private soldier in the Continental Army. And second, Emory was not in a position financially to merely let those envelopes pile up. He would have found a way to spend the money, at least in the beginning when Philadelphia was still in British hands.”

“Then who did these payments go to?”

“Most likely it was Dr. Shippen. He held the important position of chief of the medical department with the Continental Army, he wouldn’t have had to spend the money immediately because of his other income, and he came from a family of known Loyalists. He’d also been in trouble before, and was acquitted at a court-martial.”

Dr. Bradley expressed puzzlement over that. “But if the money went to Shippen, how did it end up in Clayton Emory’s closet?”

“I believe you put it there, Bradley, just as I believe you murdered Houghton Crouchman.”

“That’s insane!” the doctor sputtered.

“Is it? If we agree that Shippen received the money originally, someone had to take it to Emory’s house, someone who knew he’d be too sick to go rummaging through his boxes and accidentally find it. Could it have been Shippen himself? No, because he fled from the city in late August, and Emory wasn’t stricken with the fever until October. But who else might have come across the envelopes full of money, no doubt hidden somewhere in Shippen’s own files? You, Dr. Bradley, who took over Shippen’s files and patients after he fled. Once you’d discovered it, you surmised that the money was gained illicitly and determined to have it for yourself. When Shippen discovered it missing he could hardly report it to the authorities without implicating himself. Yet you couldn’t take a chance on hiding it here, where some member of your family might discover it. So you took it, perhaps a dozen envelopes at a time, to Clayton Emory’s home. You’d seen the boxes of papers stacked in his closet and you knew it was a perfect temporary hiding place. Even though his granddaughter was usually present when you called, it was easy enough to hide the envelopes while she was out of the room and Emory was dozing. Only he died unexpectedly. You told me yourself you were surprised by the suddenness of his death. You had no chance to remove the money when you and Amanda discovered his body, and soon after that she found the money herself. I had already deduced this much before you admitted a few minutes ago that you knew the money was in Emory’s closet. The family hadn’t mentioned the money’s location in your presence. You could only have known because you put it there.”

“What has any of this to do with Crouchman’s killing?”

“I believe he found out about you somehow. You were treating him, too, and you feared he might say something about the money before he died. You couldn’t take that chance. His front door was unlocked although he always locked it. The killer didn’t enter with a key or he would have relocked the door as he departed.

“I asked myself why a sick man, living alone, in bed much of the time, would leave his front door unlocked, and the answer came to me at once. It was so his doctor could enter and minister to him.”

Dr. Bradley’s face twisted in despair. “He called on Emory one day while I was in the closet. He saw nothing, but I feared when he heard about the money he would remember that. It wasn’t really murder. He had only days to live anyway.”

“That will be for a jury to decide.”

He stared down at the floor, then lifted his gaze to Swift. “Do you see the yellow in my eyes, and on my skin? These are symptoms of the fever. A jury of the Lord has already convicted me.”

Bradley was one of the last to die, some weeks later. Early Sunday morning, November tenth, President Washington rode alone into the city from Germantown. Alexander Swift met him and they rode together through the clean and quiet streets of Philadelphia. The first heavy frosts of winter still hung in the air.

“It is clear,” Washington decided. “The air seems healthy now. The Congress will convene here as scheduled.”

“The frost has done it,” Swift observed. “The mosquitos are all dead and many of the birds have departed.”

“And thanks to you, the mystery of Congressman Emory’s hidden money has been solved.”

Swift nodded. “It is ironic that Dr. Shippen, the cause of it all, will return to his former position at the hospital, while Dr. Bradley, who stayed to help the dying, is paying with his life.”

“Bradley is guilty, too,” the President reminded him. “And at least Shippen has lost all seventy-eight months of his ill-gotten wealth. He will not be retiring to England as he no doubt planned.”

“We can only hope that the yellow fever will not come upon us again.”

“Someday there will be a cure,” Washington predicted. “There are better days coming, for Philadelphia and for the nation.”