Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 90, May 1951

As Simple as ABC by Ellery Queen

This is a very old story as Queen stories go. It happened in Ellery’s salad days, when he was tossing his talents about like a Sunday chef, and a redheaded girl named Nikki Porter had just attached herself to his typewriter. But it has not staled, this story; it has an unwithering flavor which those who partook of it relish to this day. There are gourmets in America whose taste-buds leap at any concoction dated 1861–1865. To such, the mere recitation of ingredients like Bloody Angle, Minié balls, Little Mac, Tenting Tonight, the brand of General Grant’s whiskey, not to mention Father Abraham, is sufficient to start the passionate flow of juices. These are the misty-hearted to whom the Civil War is “the War” and the blue-gray armies rather more than men. Romantics, if you will; garnishers of history. But it is they who pace the lonely sentrypost by the night Potomac, they who hear the creaking of the ammunition wagons, the snap of campfires, the scream of the thin gray line and the long groan of the battlefield. They personally flee the burning hell of the Wilderness as the dead rise and twist in the flames; under lanterns, in the flickering mud, they stoop compassionately with the surgeons over quivering heaps. It is they who keep the little flags flying and the ivy ever green on the graves of the old men.

Ellery is of this company, and that is why he regards the case of the old men of Jacksburg, Pennsylvania, with particular affection.

Ellery and Nikki came upon the village of Jacksburg as people often come upon the best things, unpropitiously. They had been driving back to New York from Washington, where Ellery had done some sleuthing among the stacks of the Library of Congress. Perhaps the sight of the Potomac, Arlington’s eternal geometry, Lincoln frozen in giant sadness, brought its weight to bear upon Ellery’s decision to veer towards Gettysburg, where murder had been national. And Nikki had never been there, and May was coming to its end. There was a climate of sentiment.

They crossed the Marуland-Pennsylvania line and spent timeless hours wandering over Culp’s Hill and Seminary Ridge and Little Round Top and Spangler’s Spring among the watchful monuments. It is a place of everlasting life, where Pickett and Jeb Stuart keep charging to the sight of those with eyes to see, where the blood spills fresh if colorlessly, and the highpitched tones of a tall and ugly man still ring out over the graves. When they left, Ellery and Nikki were in a mood of wonder, unconscious of time or place, oblivious to the darkening sky and the direction in which the nose of the Duesenberg pointed. So in time they were disagreeably awakened by the alarm clock of nature. The sky had opened on their heads, drenching them to the skin instantly. From the horizon behind, them Gettysburg was a battlefield again, sending great flashes of fire through the darkness to the din of celestial cannon. Ellery stopped the car and put the top up, but the mood was drowned when he discovered that something ultimate had happened to the ignition system. They were marooned in a faraway land, Nikki moaned.

“We can’t go on in these wet clothes, Ellery!”

“Do you suggest that we stay here in them? I’ll get this crackerbox started if...” But at that moment the watery lights of a house wavered on somewhere ahead, and Ellery became cheerful again.

“At least we’ll find out where we are and how far it is to where we ought to be. Who knows? There may even be a garage.”

It was a little white house on a little swampy road marked off by a little stone fence covered with rambler rose vines, and the man who opened the door to the dripping wayfarers was little, too, little and weatherskinned and gallused, with eyes that seemed to have roots in the stones and springs of the Pennsylvania countryside. They smiled hospitably, but the smile became concern when he saw how wet they were.

“Won’t take. no for an answer,” he said in a remarkably deep voice, and he chuckled. “That’s doctor’s orders, though I expect you didn’t see my shingle — mostly overgrown with ivy. Got a change of clothing?”

“Oh, yes!” said Nikki abjectly.

Ellery, being a man, hesitated. The house looked neat, and clean, there was an enticing fire, and the rain at their backs was coming down with a roar. “Well, thank you... but if I might use your phone to call a garage—”

“You just give me the keys to your car trunk.”

“But we can’t turn your home into a tourist house—”

“It’s that, too, when the good Lord sends a wanderer my way. Now see here, this storm’s going to keep up most of the night and the roads hereabout get mighty soupy.” The little man was bustling into waterproofs and overshoes. “I’ll get Lew Bagley over at the garage to pick up your car, but for now let’s have those keys.”

So an hour later, while the elements warred outside, they were toasting safely in a pleasant little parlor, full of Dr. Martin Strong’s homemade poppy-seed twists, scrapple, and coffee. The doctor, who lived alone, was his own cook. He was also, he said with a chuckle, mayor of the village of Jacksburg, and its chief of police.

“Lot of us in the village run double harness. Bill Yoder of the hardware store’s our undertaker. Lew Bagley’s also the fire chief. Ed MacShane—”

“Jacksburger-of-all-trades you may be, Dr. Strong,” said Ellery, “but to me you’ll always be primarily the Good Samaritan.”

“Hallelujah,” said Nikki.

“And make it Doc,” said their host, “Why, it’s just selfishness on my part, Mr. Queen. We’re off the beaten track here, and you do get a hankering for a new face. I guess I know every dimple and wen on the five hundred and thirty-four in Jacksburg.”

“I don’t suppose your police chief-ship keeps you very busy.”

Doc Strong laughed. “Not any. Though last year—” His eyes puckered and he got up to poke the fire. “Did you say, Miss Porter, that Mr. Queen is sort of a detective?”

“Sort of a!” began Nikki. “Why, Dr. Strong, he’s solved some simply unbeliev—”

“My father is an inspector in the New York police department,” interrupted Ellery, curbing his new secretary’s enthusiasm with an iron glance. “I stick my nose into a case once in a while. What about last year, Doc?”

“What put me in mind of it,” said Jacksburg’s mayor thoughtfully, “was your saying you’d been to Gettysburg today. And also you being interested in crimes...” Dr. Strong said abruptly, “I’m a fool, but I’m worried.”

“Worried about what?”

“Well... Memorial Day’s tomorrow, and for the first time in my life I’m not looking forward to it. Jacksburg makes quite a fuss about Memorial Day. It’s not every village can brag about three living veterans of the Civil War.”

“Three!” exclaimed Nikki.

“Gives you an idea what the Jacksburg doctoring business is like,” grinned Doc Strong. “We run to pioneer-type women and longevity... I ought to have said we had three Civil War veterans — Caleb Atwell, ninety-seven, of the Atwell family, there are dozens of ’em in the county; Zach Bigelow, ninety-five, who lives with his grandson Andy and Andy’s wife and seven kids; and Abner Chase, ninety-four, Cissy Chase’s great-grandpa. This year we’re down to two. Caleb Atwell died last Memorial Day.”

“A,B,C,” murmured Ellery.

“What’s that?”

“I have a bookkeeper’s mind, Doc. Atwell, Bigelow, and Chase. Call it a spur-of-the-moment mnemonic system. A died last Memorial Day. Is that why you’re not looking forward to this one? В following A sort of thing?”

“Didn’t it always?” said Doc Strong with defiance. “Though I’m afraid it ain’t — isn’t as simple as all that. Maybe I better tell you how Caleb Atwell died... Every year Caleb, Zach, and Abner have been the star performers of our Memorial Day exercises, which are held at the old burying ground on the Hookers town road. The oldest—”

“That would be A. Caleb Atwell.”

“That’s right. As the oldest, Caleb always blew taps on a cracked old bugle that came from their volunteer regiment. And Zach Bigelow, as the next oldest to Caleb Atwell, he’d be the standard bearer, and Ab Chase, as the next-next oldest, he’d lay the wreath on the memorial monument in the burying ground.

“Well, last Memorial Day, while Zach was holding the regimental colors and Ab the wreath, Caleb blew taps the way he’d been doing nigh onto twenty times before. All of a sudden, in the middle of a high note, Caleb keeled over. Dropped in his tracks. Deader than church on Monday.”

“Strained himself,” said Nikki sympathetically. “But what a poetic way for a Civil War veteran to die.”

Doc Strong regarded her oddly. “Maybe,” he said. “If you like that kind of poetry.” He kicked a log, sending red sparks flying.

“But surely, Doc,” said Ellery with a smile, for he was young in those days, “surely you can’t have been suspicious about the death of a man of ninety-seven?”

“Maybe I was,” muttered their host. “Maybe I was because it so happened I’d given old Caleb a thorough physical check-up only the day before he died. I’d have staked my medical license he’d live to break a hundred and then some. Healthiest old copperhead I ever knew. Copperhead! I’m blaspheming the dead. Caleb lost an eye at Second Bull Run... I know — I’m senile. That’s what I’ve been telling myself.”

“Just what was it you suspected, Doc?” Ellery forbore to smile now, but only because of Dr. Strong’s evident distress.

“Didn’t know what to suspect,” said the country doctor shortly. “Fooled around with the notion of an autopsy, but the Atwells wouldn’t hear of it. Said I was a blame jackass to think a man of ninety-seven would die of anything but old age. I found myself agreeing with ’em. The upshot was we buried Caleb whole.”

“But Doc, at that age the human economy can go to pieces without warning like the one-hoss shay. You must have had another reason for uneasiness. A motive you knew about?”

“Well... maybe.”

“He was a rich man,” said Nikki.

“He didn’t have a pot he could call his own,” said Doc Strong. “But somebody stood to gain by his death just the same. That is, if the old yarn’s true... You see, there’s been kind of a legend in Jacksburg about those three old fellows, Mr. Queen. I first heard it when I was running around barefoot with my tail hanging out. Folks said then, and they’re still saying it, that back in ’65 Caleb and Zach and Ab, who were in the same company, found some sort of treasure.”

“Treasure...” Nikki began to cough.

“Treasure,” repeated Doc Strong doggedly. “Fetched it home to Jacksburg with them, the story goes, hid it, and swore they’d never tell a living soul where it was buried. Now there’s lots of tales like that came out of the War—” he fixed Nikki with a stern “—and glittering eye and most folks either cough or go into hysterics, but there’s something about this one I’ve always half-believed. So I’m senile on two counts. Just the same, I’ll breathe a lot easier when tomorrow’s ceremonies are over and Zach Bigelow lays Caleb Atwell’s bugle away till next year. As the oldest survivor Zach does the tootling tomorrow.”

“They hid the treasure and kept it hidden for considerably over half a century?” Ellery was smiling again. “Doesn’t strike me as a very sensible thing to do with a treasure, Doc. It’s only sensible if the treasure is imaginary. Then you don’t have to produce it.”

“The story goes,” mumbled Jacksburg’s mayor, “that they’d sworn an oath—”

“Not to touch any of it until they all died but one,” said Ellery, laughing outright now. “Last-survivor-takes-all Department. Doc, that’s the way most of these fairy tales go.” Ellery rose, yawning. “I think I hear the featherbed in that other guest room calling. Nikki, your eyeballs are hanging out. Take my advice, Doc, and follow suit. You haven’t a thing to worry about but keeping the kids quiet tomorrow while you read the Gettysburg Address!”

As it turned out, the night shared prominently in Doc Martin Strong’s Memorial Day responsibilities. Ellery and Nikki awakened to a splendid world, risen from its night’s ablutions with a shining eye and a scrubbed look; and they went downstairs within seconds of each other to find the mayor of Jacksburg puttering about the kitchen.

“Morning, morning,” said Doc Strong, welcoming but abstracted. “Just fixing things for your breakfast before catching an hour’s nap.”

“You lamb,” said Nikki. “But what a shame, Doctor. Didn’t you sleep well last night?”

“Didn’t sleep at all. Tossed around a bit and just as I was dropping off my phone rings and it’s Cissy Chase. Emergency sick call.”

“Cissy Chase.” Ellery looked at their host. “Wasn’t Chase the name you mentioned last night—?”

“Old Abner Chase’s great-granddaughter. That’s right, Mr. Queen. Cissy’s an orphan and Ab’s only kin. She’s kept house for the old fellow and taken care of him since she was ten.” Doc Strong’s shoulders sloped.

Ellery said peculiarly: “It was old Abner...?”

“I was up with Ab all night. This morning, at six thirty, he passed away.”

“On Memorial Day!” Nikki sounded like a little girl in her first experience with a fact of life.

There was a silence, fretted by the sizzling of Doc Strong’s bacon.

Ellery said at last, “What did Abner Chase die of?”

“Apoplexy.”

“A stroke?”

Doc Strong looked at him. He seemed angry. But then he shook his head. “I’m no Mayo brother, Mr. Queen, and I suppose there’s a lot about the practice of medicine I’ll never get to learn, but I do know a cerebral hemorrhage when I see one, and that’s what Ab Chase died of. In a man of ninety-four, that’s as close to natural death as you can come... No, there wasn’t any funny business in this one.”

“Except,” mumbled Ellery, “that — again — it happened on Memorial Day.”

“Man’s a contrary animal. Tell him lies and he swallows ’em whole. Give him the truth and he gags on it. Maybe the Almighty gets tired of His thankless job every once in an eon and cuts loose with a little joke.” But Doc Strong said it as if he were addressing, not them, but himself. “Any special way you like your eggs?”

“Leave the eggs to me, Doctor,” Nikki said firmly. “You go on up those stairs and get some sleep.”

“Reckon I better if I’m to do my usual dignified job today,” said the mayor of Jacksburg with a sigh. “Though Abner Chase’s death is going to make the proceedings solemner than ordinary. Bill Yoder says he’s not going to be false to an ancient and honorable profession by doing a hurry-up job undertaking Ab, and maybe that’s just as well. If we added the Chase funeral to today’s program, even old Abe’s immortal words would find it hard to compete! By the way, Mr. Queen, I talked to Lew Bagley this morning and he’ll have your car ready in an hour. Special service, seeing you’re guests of the mayor.” Doc Strong chuckled. “When you planning to leave?”

“I was intending...” Ellery stopped with a frown. Nikki regarded him with a sniffish look. She had already learned to detect the significance of certain signs peculiar to the Queen physiognomy. “I wonder,” murmured Ellery, “how Zach Bigelow’s going to take the news.”

“He’s already taken it, Mr. Queen. Stopped in at Andy Bigelow’s place on my way home. Kind of a detour, but I figured I’d better break the news to Zach early as possible.”

“Poor thing,” said Nikki. “I wonder how it feels to learn you’re the only one left.” She broke an egg.

“Can’t say Zach carried on about it,” said Doc Strong dryly. “About all he said, as I recall, was: ‘Doggone it, now who’s goin’ to lay the wreath after I toot the bugle!’ I guess when you reach the age of ninety-five, death don’t mean what it does to young squirts of sixty-three like me. What time’d you say you were leaving, Mr. Queen?”

“Nikki,” muttered Ellery, “are we in any particular hurry?”

“I don’t know. Are we?”

“Besides, it wouldn’t be patriotic. Doc, do you suppose Jacksburg would mind if a couple of New York Yanks invited themselves to your Memorial Day exercises?”

The business district of Jacksburg consisted of a single paved street bounded at one end by the sightless eye of a broken traffic signal and at the other by the twin gas pumps before Lew Bagley’s garage. In between, some stores in need of paint sunned themselves, enjoying the holiday. Red, white, and blue streamers crisscrossed the thoroughfare overhead. A few seedy frame houses, each decorated with an American flag, flanked the main street at both ends.

Ellery and Nikki found the Chase house exactly where Doc Strong had said it would be — just around the corner from Bagley’s garage, between the ivy-hidden church and the fire-house of the Jacksburg Volunteer Pump and Hose Company No. i. But the mayor’s directions were a superfluity; it was the only house with a crowded porch.

A heavy-shouldered young girl in a black Sunday dress sat in a rocker, the center of the crowd. Her nose was as red as her big hands, but she was trying to smile at the cheerful words of sympathy winged at her from all sides.

“Thanks, Mis’ Plumm... That’s right, Mr. Schmidt, I know... But he was such a spry old soul, Emerson, I can’t believe...”

“Miss Cissy Chase?”

Had the voice been that of a Confederate spy, a deeper silence could not have drowned the noise. Jacksburg eyes examined Ellery and Nikki with cold curiosity, and feet shuffled.

“My name is Queen and this is Miss Porter. We’re attending the Jacksburg Memorial Day exercises as guests of Mayor Strong—” a warming murmur, like a zephyr, passed over the porch “—and he asked us to wait here for him. I’m sorry about your great-grandfather.”

“You must have been very proud of him,” said Nikki.

“Thank you, I was. It was so sudden — Won’t you set? I mean — Do come into the house. Great-grandpa’s not here... he’s over at Bill Yoder’s...”

The girl was flustered and began to cry, and Nikki took her arm and led her into the house. Ellery lingered a moment to exchange appropriate remarks with the neighbors who, while no longer cold, were still curious; and then he followed. It was a dreary little house, with a dark and musty-smelling parlor.

“Now, now, this is no time for fussing — may I call you Cissy?” Nikki was saying soothingly. “Besides, you’re better off away from all those folks. Why, Ellery, she’s only a child!”

And a very plain child, Ellery thought, with a pinched face and empty eyes.

“I understand the parade to the burying ground is going to form outside your house, Cissy,” he said. “By the way, have Andrew Bigelow and his grandfather Zach arrived yet?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Cissy Chase dully. “It’s all like such a dream, seems like.”

“Of course it does. And you’re left alone. Haven’t you any family at all, Cissy?”

“No.”

“Isn’t there some young man—?”

Cissy shook her head bitterly. “Who’d marry me? This is the only decent dress I got, and it’s four years old. We lived on great-grandpa’s pension and what I could earn hiring out by the day. Which ain’t much, nor often. Now...”

“I’m sure you’ll find something to do,” said Nikki, very heartily.

“In Jacksburg?”

Nikki was silent.

“Cissy.” Ellery spoke casually, and she did not even look up. “Doc Strong mentioned something about a treasure. Do you know anything about it?”

“Oh, that.” Cissy shrugged. “Just what great-grandpa told me, and he hardly ever told the same story twice. But near as I was ever able to make out, one time during the War him and Caleb Atwell and Zach Bigelow got separated from the army — scouting, or foraging, or something. It was down South somewhere, and they spent the night in an old empty mansion that was half-burned down. Next morning they went through the ruins to see what they could pick up, and buried in the cellar they found the treasure. A big fortune in money, great-grandpa said. They were afraid to take it with them, so they buried it in the same place in the cellar and made a map of the location and after the War they went back, the three of ’em, and dug it up again. Then they made the pact.”

“Oh, yes,” said Ellery. “The pact.”

“Swore they’d hold onto the treasure till only one of them remained alive, I don’t know why, then the last one was to get it all. Leastways, that’s how great-grandpa told it.”

“Did he ever say how much of a fortune it was?”

Cissy laughed. “Couple of hundred thousand dollars. I ain’t saying great-grandpa was cracked, but you know how an old man gets.”

“Did he ever give you a hint as to where he and Caleb and Zach hid the money after they got it back North?”

“No, he’d just slap his knee and wink at me.”

“Maybe,” said Ellery suddenly, “maybe there’s something to that yarn after all.”

Nikki stared. “But Ellery, you said—! Cissy, did you hear that?”

But Cissy only drooped. “If there is, it’s all Zach Bigelow’s now.”

Then Doc Strong came in, fresh as a daisy in a pressed blue suit and a stiff collar and a bow tie, and a great many other people came in, too. Ellery and Nikki surrendered Cissy Chase to Jacksburg.

“If there’s anything to the story,” Nikki whispered to Ellery, “and if Mayor Strong is right, then that old scoundrel Bigelow’s been murdering his friends to get the money!”

“After all these years, Nikki? At the age of ninety-five?” Ellery shook his head.

“But then what—?”

“I don’t know.” And Ellery fell silent. But his glance went to Doc Strong and waited; and when the little mayor happened to look their way, Ellery caught his eye and took him aside and whispered in his ear...

The procession — nearly every car in Jacksburg, Doc Strong announced proudly, over a hundred of them — got under way at exactly two o’clock.

Nikki had been embarrassed but not surprised to find herself being handed into the leading car, an old but brightly polished touring job contributed for the occasion by Lew Bagley; and the moment Nikki spied the ancient, doddering head under the Union army hat in the front seat she detected the fine Italian whisper of her employer. Zach Bigelow held his papery frame fiercely if shakily erect between the driver and a powerful red-necked man with a brutal face who, Nikki surmised, was the old man’s grandson, Andy Bigelow. Nikki looked back, peering around the flapping folds of the flag stuck in the corner of the car. Cissy Chase was in the second car in a black veil, weeping on a stout woman’s shoulder. So the female Yankee from New York sat back between Ellery and Mayor Strong, against the bank of flowers in which the flag was set, and glared at the necks of the two Bigelows, having long since taken sides in this matter. And when Doc Strong made the introductions, Nikki barely nodded to Jacksburg’s sole survivor of the Grand Army of the Republic, and then only in acknowledgment of his historic importance.

Ellery, however, was all deference and cordiality, even to the brute grandson. He leaned forward.

“How do I address your grandfather, Mr. Bigelow?”

“Gramp’s a general,” said Andy Bigelow loudly. “Ain’t you, Gramp?” He beamed at the ancient, but Zach Bigelow was staring proudly ahead, holding fast to something in a rotted musette bag on his lap. “Went through the War a private,” the grandson confided, “but he don’t like to talk about that.”

“General Bigelow—”

“That’s his deef ear,” said the grandson. “Try the other one.”

“General Bigelow!”

“Hey?” The old man turned his trembling head, glaring. “Speak up, bub. Ye’re mumblin’.”

“General Bigelow,” shouted Ellery, “now that all the money is yours, what will you do with it?”

“Hey? Money?”

“The treasure, Gramp,” roared Andy Bigelow. “They’ve even heard about it in New York. What you goin’ to do with it, he wants to know?”

“Does, does he?” Old Zach sounded grimly amused. “Can’t talk, Andy. Hurts m’ neck.”

“How much does it amount to, General?” cried Ellery.

Old Zach eyed him. “Mighty nosy, ain’t ye?” Then he cackled. “Last time we counted it — Caleb, Ab, and me — came to nigh on a million dollars. Yes, sir, one million dollars.” The old man’s left eye, startlingly, drooped. “Goin’ to be a big surprise to the smart-alecks and the doubtin’ Thomases. You wait an’ see.”

“According to Cissy,” Nikki murmured to Doc Strong, “Abner Chase said it was only two hundred thousand.”

“Zach makes it more every time he talks about it,” said the mayor.

“I heard ye, Martin Strong!” yelled Zach Bigelow, swiveling his twig of a neck so suddenly that Nikki winced, expecting it to snap. “You wait! I’ll show ye, ye durn whippersnapper, who’s a lot o’ wind!”

“Now, Zach,” said Doc Strong pacifyinglу. “Save your wind for that bugle.”

Zach Bigelow cackled and clutched the musette bag in his lap, glaring ahead in triumph, as if he had scored a great victory.

Ellery said no more. Oddly, he kept staring not at old Zach but at Andy Bigelow, who sat beside his grandfather grinning at invisible audiences along the empty countryside as if he, too, had won — or was on his way to winning — a triumph.

The sun was hot. Men shucked their coats and women fanned themselves with handkerchiefs.

“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated...”

Children dodged among the graves, pursued by shushing mothers. On most of the graves were fresh flowers.

“...that from these honored dead...”

Little American flags protruded from the graves, too.

“...gave the last full measure of devotion...”

Doc Martin Strong’s voice was deep and sure, not at all like the voice of that tall ugly man, who had spoken the same words apologetically.

“...that these dead shall not have died in vain...”

Doc was standing on the pedestal of the Civil War Monument, which was decorated with flags and bunting and faced the weathered stone ranks like a commander in full-dress.

“...that this nation, under God...”

A color guard of the American Legion, Jacksburg Post, stood at attention between the mayor and the people. A file of Legionnaires carrying old Sharps rifles faced the graves.

“...and that government of the people...”

Beside the mayor, disdaining the wrestler’s shoulder of his simian grandson, stood General Zach Bigelow. Straight as the barrel of a Sharps, musette bag held tightly.

“...shall not perish from the earth”

The old man nodded impatiently. He began to fumble with the bag.

“Comp’ny! Present — arms!”

“Go ahead, Gramp!” Andy Bigelow bellowed.

The old man muttered. He was having difficulty extricating the bugle from the bag.

“Here, lemme give ye a hand!”

“Let the old man alone, Andy,” said the mayor of Jacksburg quietly. “We’re in no hurry.”

Finally the bugle was free. It was an old army bugle, as old as Zach Bigelow, dented and scarred.

The old man raised it to his lips.

Now his hands were not shaking.

Now even the children were quiet.

And the old man began to play taps.

It could hardly have been called playing. He blew, and out of the bugle’s bell came cracked sounds. And sometimes he blew and no sounds came out at all. Then the veins of his neck swelled and his face turned to burning bark. Or he sucked at the mouthpiece, in and out, to clear it of his spittle. But still he blew, and the trees in the burying ground nodded in the warm breeze, and the people stood at attention, listening, as if the butchery of sound were sweet music.

And then, suddenly, the butchery faltered. Old Zach Bigelow stood with bulging eyes. The bugle fell to the pedestal with a tinny clatter.

For an instant everything seemed to stop — the slight movements of the children, the breathing of the people.

Then into the vacuum rushed a murmur of horror, and Nikki unbelievingly opened the eyes which she had shut to glimpse the last of Jacksburg’s G.A.R. veterans crumpling to the feet of Doc Strong and Andy Bigelow...

“You were right the first time, Doc,” Ellery said.

They were in Andy Bigelow’s house, where old Zach’s body had been taken from the cemetery. The house was full of chittering women and scampering children, but in this room there were only a few, and they talked in low tones. The old man was laid out on a settee with a patchwork quilt over him. Doc Strong sat in a rocker beside the body.

“It’s my fault,” he mumbled. “I didn’t examine Caleb’s mouth last year. I didn’t examine the mouthpiece of the bugle. It’s my fault.”

Ellery soothed him. “It’s not an easy poison to spot, Doc, as you know. And after all, the whole thing was so ludicrous. You’d have caught it in autopsy, but the Atwells laughed you out of it.”

“They’re all gone. All three.” Doc Strong looked up fiercely. “Who poisoned that bugle?”

“God Almighty, don’t look at me,” said Andy Bigelow. “Anybody could of, Doc.”

“Anybody, Andy?” the mayor cried. “When Caleb Atwell died, Zach took the bugle and it’s been in this house for a year!”

“Anybody could of,” said Bigelow stubbornly. “The bugle was hangin’ over the fireplace and anybody could of snuck in durin’ the night... Anyway, it wasn’t here before old Caleb died; he had it up to last Memorial Day. Who poisoned it in his house?”

“We won’t get anywhere on this tack, Doc,” Ellery murmured. “Bigelow. Did your grandfather ever let on where that Civil War treasure is?”

“Suppose he did,” The man licked his lips, blinking, as if he had been surprised into the half-admission. “What’s it to you?”

“That money is behind the murders, Bigelow.”

“Don’t know nothin’ about that. Anyway, nobody’s got no right to that money but me.” Andy Bigelow spread his thick chest. “When Ab Chase died, Gramp was the last survivor. That money was Zach Bigelow’s. I’m his next o’ kin, so now it’s mine!”

“You know where it’s hid, Andy.” Doc was on his feet, eyes glittering.

“I ain’t talkin’. Git outen my house!”

“I’m the law in Jacksburg, too, Andy,” Doc said softly. “This is a murder case. Where’s that money?”

Bigelow laughed.

“You didn’t know, Bigelow, did you?” said Ellery.

“Course not.” He laughed again. “See, Doc? He’s on your side, and he says I don’t know, too.”

“That is,” said Ellery, “until a few minutes ago.”

Bigelow’s grin faded. “What are ye talkin’ about?”

“Zach Bigelow wrote a message this morning, immediately after Doc Strong told him about Abner Chase’s death.”

Bigelow’s face went ashen.

“And your grandfather sealed the message in an envelope—”

“Who told ye that?” yelled Bigelow.

“One of your children. And the first thing you did when we got home from the burying ground with your grandfather’s corpse was to sneak up to the old man’s bedroom. Hand it over.”

Bigelow made two fists. Then he laughed again. “All right, I’ll let ye see it. Hell, I’ll let ye dig the money up for me! Why not? It’s mine by law. Here, read it. See? He wrote my name on the envelope!”

And so he had. And the message in the envelope was also written in ink, in the same wavering hand:

“In Caleb’s coffin,” choked Doc Strong.

Ellery’s face was impassive. “How soon can you get an exhumation order, Doc?”

“Right now,” exclaimed Doc. “I’m also deputy coroner of this district!”

And they took some men and they went back to the old burying ground, and in the darkening day they dug up the remains of Caleb Atwell and they opened the casket and found, on the corpse’s knees, a flattish box of iron with a hasp but no lock. And while two strong men held Andy Bigelow to keep him from hurling himself at the crumbling coffin, Doctor-Mayor-Chief-of-Police-Deputy-Coroner Martin Strong held his breath and raised the lid of the box.

And it was crammed to the brim with moldy bills.

In Confederate money.

No one said anything for some time, not even Andy Bigelow.

Then Ellery said, “It stood to reason. They found it buried in the cellar of an old Southern mansion — would it be Northern greenbacks? When they dug it up again after the War and brought it up to Jacksburg they probably had some faint hope that it might have some value. When they realized it was worthless, they decided to have some fun with it. This has been a private joke of those three old rascals since, roughly, 1865. When Caleb died last Memorial Day, Abner and Zach probably decided that, as the first of the trio to go, Caleb ought to have the honor of being custodian of their Confederate treasure in perpetuity. So one of them managed to slip the iron box into the coffin before the lid was screwed on. Zach’s note bequeathing his ‘fortune’ to his ‘beloved grandson’ — in view of what I’ve seen of his beloved grandson today — was the old fellow’s final joke.”

Everybody chuckled; but the corpse-stared mirthlessly and the silence fell again, to be broken by a weak curse from Andy Bigelow, and Doc Strong’s puzzled: “But Mr. Queen, that doesn’t explain the murders.”

“Well, now, Doc, it does,” said Ellery; and then he said in a very different tone: “Suppose we put old Caleb back the way we found him, for your re-exhumation later for autopsy, Doc — and then we’ll close the book on your Memorial Day murders.”

Ellery closed the book in town, in the dusk, on the porch of Cissy Chase’s house, which was central and convenient for everybody. Ellery and Nikki and Doc Strong and Cissy and Andy Bigelow — still clutching the iron box dazedly — were on the porch, and Lew Bagley and Bill Yoder and everyone else in Jacksburg, it seemed, stood about on the lawn and sidewalk, listening. And there was a touch of sadness to the soft twilight air, for something vital and exciting in the life of the village had come to an end.

“There’s no trick to this,” began Ellery, “and no joke, either, even though the men who were murdered were so old that death had grown tired waiting for them. The answer is as simple as the initials of their last names. Who knew that the supposed fortune was in Confederate money and therefore worthless? Only the three old men. One or another of the three would hardly have planned the deaths of the other two for possession of some scraps of valueless paper. So the murderer has to be someone who believed the fortune was legitimate and who — since until today there was no clue to the money’s hiding place — knew he could claim it legally.

“Now, of course, that last-survivor-take-all business was pure moon-shine, invented by Caleb, Zach, and Abner for their own amusement and the mystification of the community. But the would-be murderer didn’t know that. The would-be murderer went on the assumption that the whole story was true, or he wouldn’t have planned murder in the first place.

“Who would be able to claim the fortune legally if the last of the three old men — the survivor who presumably came into possession of the fortune on the deaths of the other two — died in his turn?”

“Last survivor’s heir,” said Doc Strong, and he rose.

“And who is the last survivor’s heir?”

“Zach Bigelow’s grandson, Andy.” And the little mayor of Jacksburg stared hard at Bigelow, and a grumbling sound came from the people below, and Bigelow shrank against the wall behind Cissy, as if to seek her protection. But Cissy moved away.

“You thought the fortune was real,” Cissy said scornfully, “so you killed Caleb Atwell and my great-grandpa so your grandfather’d be the last survivor so you could kill him and get the fortune.”

“That’s it, Ellery,” cried Nikki.

“Unfortunately, Nikki, that’s not it at all. You all refer to Zach Bigelow as the last survivor—”

“Well, he was,” said Nikki.

“How could he not be?” said Doc Strong. “Caleb and Abner died first—”

“Literally, that’s true,” said Ellery, “but what you’ve all forgotten is that Zach Bigelow was the last survivor only by accident. When Abner Chase died early this morning, was it through poisoning, or some other violent means? No, Doc, you were absolutely positive he’d died of a simple cerebral hemorrhage — not by violence, but a natural death. Don’t you see that if Abner Chase hadn’t died a natural death early this morning, he’d still be alive this evening? Zach Bigelow would have put that bugle to his lips this afternoon, just as he did, just as Caleb Atwell did a year ago... and at this moment Abner Chase would have been the last survivor.

“And who was Abner Chase’s only living heir, the girl who would have fallen heir to Abner’s ‘fortune’ when, in time, or through her assistance, he joined his cronies in the great bivouac on the other side?

“You lied to me, Cissy,” said Ellery to the shrinking girl in his grip, as a horror very like the horror of the burying ground in the afternoon came over the crowd of mesmerized Jacksburgers. “You pretended you didn’t believe the story of the fortune. But that was only after your great-grandfather had inconsiderately died of a stroke just a few hours before old Zach would have died of poisoning, and you couldn’t inherit that great, great fortune, anyway!”