Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 47, No. 4. Whole No. 269, April 1966

Ellery Queen Mum Is the Word

It began with a double celebration — the birth of the New Year and the 70th birthday of Godfrey Mumford, famous throughout the horticultural world as a breeder of chrysanthemums. But happy as the double occasion was, there were ominous, deeply disturbing overtones.

If only the others had known, they might have been forewarned... For Ellery had come back to Wrightsville — one of his spur-of-the-moment visits to the town he loved so much, to the New England town where he had experienced some of his greatest triumphs — and greatest failures; and it was no secret (especially to Chief of Police Newby) that Ellery Queen was Wrightsville’s perennial jinx. Whenever Ellery came to Wrightsville, evil came out of its lair...

The Chrysanthemum Case proved no exception. Indeed, it proved to be one of the most perplexing mysteries in Ellery’s career — a crime whose investigation made the “great detective” think he was Ellery in Blunderland; and to add the ultimate grotesquerie, the case offered the “last word” in bizarre and fantastic clues, the “last word” in baffling and frustrating “dying messages.”

A brand-new short novel never before published anywhere...

December 31, 1964

The birthday of the new year and the old man became a fact at midnight. The double anniversary was celebrated in the high-ceilinged drawing room of Godfrey Mumford’s louse in Wrightsville with certain overtones not in the tradition. Indeed, in accepting the offerings of his family and his friend, old Godfrey would have been well advised to recall the warning against gift-bearing Greeks (although there had never been a Greek in Wrightsville, at least none of Godfrey’s acquaintance; the nearest to one had been Andy Birobatyan, the florist who was of Armenian descent; Andy had shared the celebrated Mumford green thumb until the usual act of God had severed it).

The first Greek to come forward with her gift was Ellen Mumford Nash. Having gone through three American husbands, Godfrey’s daughter had just returned from England, where she was in the fifth year of a record run with number four, an Egyptologist connected with the British Museum — the prodigal daughter home for a visit, her nostrils flaring as if she smelled something unpleasant.

Nevertheless, Ellen said sweetly to her father, “Much happiness, darling. I do hope you find these useful.”

As it developed, the hope was extravagant. Her gift to him was a gold-plated cigarette case and lighter. Godfrey Mumford had given up smoking in 1952.

Christopher’s turn came next. A little less than 30 years before, Christopher had followed Ellen into the world by a little less than 30 minutes. (Their father had never allowed himself to be embittered by the fact that their birth had killed their mother, although he had had occasional reason to reflect on the poor exchange.)

Ellen, observing her twin over the champagne they were all sharing, was amused by his performance. How well he did the loving-son bit! With such talent it seemed remarkable that dear Chris had never risen above summer stock and walk-ons off Broadway. The reason, of course, was that he had never worked very hard at his chosen profession; but then he had never worked very hard at anything.

“A real swinger of a birthday, father,” Christopher was saying with passionate fondness. “And a hundred more to come.”

“I’ll settle for one at a time, son. Thanks very much.” Godfrey’s hair was gray but still vigorous; his big body tended toward gauntness now, but after 70 years he carried himself straight as a dancer. He was examining a silver-handled walking stick. “It’s really handsome.”

Christopher sidled stage right, smiling sincerely; and Godfrey set the stick aside and turned to the middle-aged woman standing by. She was small, on the dumpling side; the hands holding the gift had the stub nails and rough skin of habitual housework. Her face under the snowy hair lay quiet as a New England winter garden.

“You shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble, Mum,” the old man protested, “with the work you have to do around here.”

“Goodness, Godfrey, it was no trouble. I wish it could have been more.”

“I’m trying to remember the last time I had a hand-knit sweater.” Godfrey’s voice was gruff as he fingered it. “It’s just what I need to wear to the greenhouse these days. When on earth did you find the time?”

The sun came through to shine on the garden. “It’s not very elegant, Godfrey, but it will keep you warm.”

It was 28 years since Margaret Caswell had come to Wrightsville to nurse her sister Louise — Godfrey’s wife — in Louise’s fatal illness. In that time she had brought into the world a child of her own, buried her husband, become “Mum” to the three children growing up in the household — Godfrey’s two and her one — and planned (she had recently figured it out) more than 30,000 meals. Well, Godfrey Mumford had earned her devotion; he had been a second father to her child.

She sometimes felt that Godfrey loved her Joanne more than his own twins; she felt it now, in the drawing room. For Godfrey was holding in his hands a leather desk set decorated with gold-leaf chrysanthemums, and his shrewd blue eyes were glittering like January ice. The set was the gift of Joanne, who was watching him with a smile.

“You’re uncanny, Jo,” Godfrey said. “It’s taking advantage of an old man. This is beautiful.”

Jo’s smile turned to laughter. “With most men it’s supposed to be done with steak and potatoes. You’re a pushover for chrysanthemums. It’s very simple.”

“I suppose people think I’m very simple. A senile delinquent,” Godfrey said softly.

A frail little man with a heavy crop of eyebrows above very bright eyes hooted at this. He was Godfrey Mumford’s oldest friend, Wolcott Thorp, who had formerly taught anthropology at Merrimac University in Connhaven. For the past few years Thorp had been serving as curator of the Merrimac University Museum, where he had been developing his special interest, the cultural anthropology of West Africa.

“I’ll contribute to your delinquency, too,” Wolcott Thorp chuckled. “Here’s something, Godfrey, that will help you waste your declining years.”

“Why, it’s a first edition of an Eighteenth Century work on mums!” Godfrey devoured the title page. “Wolcott, this is magnificent.”

The old man clutched the tome. Only Jo Caswell sensed the weariness in his big body. To Wrightsville and the horticultural world he was the breeder of the celebrated Mumford’s Majestic Mum, a double bloom on a single stem; he was a member of the Chrysanthemum Society of America and of chrysanthemum clubs in England, France, and Japan; his correspondence with fellow breeders and aficionados encompassed the globe. To Jo he was a gentle, kind, and troubled man, and he was dear to her heart.

“I’m grateful for all these kindnesses,” Godfrey Mumford said. “It’s a pity my response has to be to give you bad news. It’s the wrong occasion, but I don’t know when I’ll have you all together under this roof again. Forgive me for what I’m about to tell you.”

His daughter Ellen had an instinct for the quality and degree of trouble. By the flare of her nostrils she had sensed that what was coming was bad news indeed.

“Father—” she began.

But her father stopped her. “Let me tell this without interruption, Ellen. It’s hard enough... When I retired in 1954, my estate was worth about five million dollars; the distribution in my will was based on that figure. Since that time, as you all know, I’ve pretty well neglected everything else in experimenting with the blending and hybridizing of mums.”

Godfrey paused, took a deep breath. “I recently found out that I’m a fool. Or maybe it was fated. Anyway, the result is the same.”

He glanced at the old book in his hands as if surprised to find it still there. Then he set it carefully on the coffee table and sat down on the crewel-fringed couch.

“I had put all my financial affairs in the hands of Truslow Addison’s law firm. Where I made my mistake was in sticking with the status quo when Tru died and his son took over the practice. I should have known better. You remember, Christopher, what a wild youngster Tru Junior was—”

“Yes,” said Christopher Mumford. “Father, you don’t mean—”

“I’m afraid so,” the old man said. “After young Tru died in that auto accident last May, the affairs of the law firm were found to be like a basket of broken eggs. You couldn’t even make an omelet of them. Some of the funds in his trust he had simply gambled away; the rest vanished because of bad business judgment, stupid speculations, investments without rhyme or reason...”

His voice trailed away, and after a while the silence was cracked by the voice of Ellen Mumford Nash. Her slim and elegant figure was stiff with outrage.

“Are you saying, father, that you’re without a shilling?”

Behind her Christopher made an abrupt move, extending his arm in, a sort of forensic gesture, as if he were trying to argue away a legal point that threatened his whole case.

“You’re joking, father. It can’t be that bad. There’s got to be something left out of so much loot.”

“Hear me out,” his father said heavily. “By liquidating assets I’ve managed to pay off all the creditors. This house and the property are mortgaged; there’s not very much equity. I have an old annuity that will let Mum and Joanne and me live here decently, but on my death the income from it stops. I’ll have to cut down my mums operation—”

Ellen broke in, bitter as the cold outside. “Damn your mums! If you’d stuck to growing seeds, the way you started, father, none of this would have happened. Left without a farthing! After all these years.”

Godfrey had gone pale at her curse; otherwise his face showed nothing. He had apparently prepared himself well for the ordeal. “Your brother was right in one respect, Ellen. There is something valuable left — something that no one’s known about. I want to show it to you.”

Mumford rose and went over to the wall behind him. He pushed aside an oil painting of a vaseful of chrysanthemums, exposing a square-doored wall safe. His silent audience heard the faint clicking — more like a swishing — of a dial. He removed something, shut the door of the safe, and came back.

Ellen’s breath came out in a whinny.

Her father’s hand was holding up a magnificent pendant.

“You’ll recall,” the old man said, “that on my retirement I took a trip to the Far East to bone up on Oriental mums. Well, while I was in Japan I managed to get my hands on this beauty. I paid nowhere near what it’s worth, although it cost me a lot of money. How could I pass this up? There are records authenticating it as a royal gift from the Emperor Komei, father of Meiji. It’s known as the Imperial Pendant.”

The gold links of the chain were exquisitely carved in the shape of tiny, intricate chrysanthemums; the pendant itself was a chrysanthemum, with an enormous diamond in the center surrounded by sixteen diamond petals. The superb gems, deep yellow in color, gathered the light in the room and cast it back in a shattering explosion.

“These stones are perfectly matched. The Emperor’s agents searched the world to find enough of these rare yellow diamonds to complete the pendant. As a group, they’re unique.”

Ellen Nash’s eyes, as hard as the gems, became slitted. She had never heard of Emperor Komei or the Imperial Pendant, but she was not invulnerable to beauty, especially when it had a high market value.

“Father, that must be worth a fortune.”

“Believe it or not, it’s been appraised at a million dollars.” There was an arpeggio of gasps; and the warmth in Godfrey Mumford’s voice expired, as if his pleasure had been chilled suddenly. “Well, you’ve seen it, so I’ll put it back in the safe.”

“For God’s sake, father,” cried Christopher, “not in a dinky little home safe! Why don’t you put it in a bank vault?”

“Because I like to take it out every once in a while and look at it, son. I’ve had it here for a long time, and no one’s stolen it yet. By the way, I’m the only one who knows the combination of the safe. I suppose I ought to leave a record of it, in case anything happens to me.”

“I should think so!” said Ellen.

Godfrey’s expression did not change. “I’ll take care of it, Ellen.”

He returned to the wall safe. When he faced them again, the painting hung in place and his hands were empty.

“So there’s what’s left of my estate,” he said. “A piece of historic jewelry worth a million dollars.” His fine face saddened now, as if he had reached the limit of self-discipline. “Wolcott, my old will included a bequest to you of a hundred thousand dollars to finance that expedition to West Africa you’ve always talked about.”

“I know, Godfrey, I know,” said Thorp.

“Now, when I die, I’m afraid your legacy will be only one-fifth that.”

Wolcott Thorp made a face. “I’m getting too old for expeditions. Do we have to talk about these things?”

He said this in a mutter, as if the whole subject were painful to him. Godfrey Mumford turned mercifully to Margaret Caswell.

“Mum, I originally planned a bequest to you and Joanne of a quarter of a million dollar trust fund. Well, I’m not going to make you suffer for my mistake after giving me half your lifetime, at least any more than I can help. The inheritance tax will cut down the pie, but my new will takes ample care of you in a revised trust. I wanted you and Jo to know that.”

He turned to Ellen and Christopher. “What’s left, of course, will go to you children share and share alike. It isn’t what I’d planned, and I know it won’t be what you expected, but you’ll have to make the best of it. I’m sorry.”

“So,” said Ellen with a little snap of her jaws, “am I.”

“Oh, shut up, Ellen,” her brother said.

And there was a silence.

It was broken by Joanne. “Well!

Shall we drink a toast to the birthday boy?” And she made for the rest of the champagne she had ordered from Dune MacLean in the Square (which was round), in High Village, leaving behind her a definitely dismal New Year’s Eve party.

January 1, 1965

Christopher Mumford was suffering from an unfamiliar malady — some sort of malfunction of the glands, as he diagnosed it. His mood had changed overnight. He gulped a mouthful of air as cold and clean and heady as Joanne’s night-before champagne, and blew it out with a happy snort, like a horse. Even the thought of his many creditors failed to depress him.

“What a scrumbumptious day!” he exulted. “What an absolutely virgin way to start the year! Let’s mosey on up to the woods beyond the greenhouse. I’ll race you, Jo — what do you say?”

Joanne giggled. “Don’t be a chump. You’d fall flat on your tunkus after twenty yards. You’re in pitiful physical condition, Chris, and you know it. Dissipated, is what.”

“You’re right, of course. As dissipated as father’s estate,” said Christopher cheerfully.

“You could still repair the damage.”

“Gyms make me dizzy. No, it’s hopeless.”

“Nothing is hopeless unless you make it so.”

“Beware! Little Coz is mounting her pulpit! I warn you, Jo, for some ridiculous reason I’m higher than the Mahoganies this morning. You simply can’t spoil it.”

“I don’t want to. I like to see you happy. It’s such a welcome change.”

“Right again. In pursuance whereof, and since New Year’s Day is the time for resolutions, I hereby resolve to restrict my coffin-nail intake, ration my poison-slupping, and consort only with incorruptible virgins, starting with you.”

“How do you know I’m, well, incorruptible?”

“By me you are,” said Christopher. “I ought to know. I’ve tried enough times.”

“And that’s a fact,” said Jo in a rather grim tone. But then she laughed, and he laughed, too.

They skirted the big glasshouse, whose panes cast into the hard bright air a fireworks of sparks, and went on across a carpet of dead grass toward a noble stand of evergreens.

Christopher was happily conscious of Joanne beside him. Her stride was long and free, a no-nonsense sort of locomotion that managed to emphasize her secondary sex characteristics, which were notable. And not even the wool stockings and the thick-soled walking shoes could spoil as captivating a pair of legs as his connoisseur’s eye had ever studied.

“You implied that I’m different when I’m happy,” Christopher said.

“You certainly are.”

“Well, I’ve been feeling different this morning, and I couldn’t figure it. Now I can. I’m not different — I’m the same old rounder I’ve always been. What I am is, I’m responding to a fresh stimulus. You, Cousin. It’s you who spell the difference.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Jo.

“Oh, before this I’ve gone through the battlefield maneuvers with you, but I didn’t actually notice you. You know what I mean?”

“I’m getting a clue,” said Jo warily.

“But now I am. I mean I’m noticing you, Cousin. In the aggregate, as it were, not merely here and there. Am I communicating? What does it mean?”

“It means you’re bored, and you’ve decided to make a little time to while away your boredom.”

“Not at all. Suddenly you’ve turned into a marvelously desirable piece of goods.”

“And you’re the susceptible buyer.”

“Not the way you mean. You forget that I make my way boards-treading. I’m used to desirable women — the theater is lousy with them. So much so that I’ve been in danger of turning monk.”

“Then why are you tickling my hand?”

“Because I’ve decided against celibacy. With your permission I’ll go further. I’ll put my arm around you.”

“Permission denied. I’ve been through that maneuver before with you, and it leads to a major battle. We’ll sit here on this log for a while and rest. Then we’ll go back.”

They sat. It was cold. They sat closer — for warmth, Joanne told herself.

“Gosh, it’s wonderful,” breathed Christopher in little puffs, like smoke.

“What’s wonderful?”

“How things change. When we were kids I thought you were the world’s biggest stinker.”

“I couldn’t stand you, either. There are times when I still can’t. Like last night.”

“Last night? Why, I was a model of deportment!”

“You don’t know your father well, do you?”

“Father? As well as anybody.”

“Your gift to him didn’t show it. Nor Ellen’s — Uncle Godfrey hasn’t smoked in years. And you gave him a cane, for heaven’s sake! Don’t you realize Uncle Godfrey’s too proud to use a cane? He’d never admit dependence that way.”

Christopher Mumford had to admit to himself that her indictment was justified. He had bought the walking stick (on credit) without any real consideration of his father’s needs or wants.

“You’re right,” he sighed. “What with handling father’s correspondence and puttering around after him in the greenhouse, you’ve come to know him better than his own children.”

They went on sitting on the log and holding hands. Jo had to hold his hands very firmly.

January 3

Breakfast was not a ritual at the Mumfords’, but a certain deference was customarily shown to the head of the house. Family and guests, barring illness or improbably late hours the night before, were encouraged to present themselves promptly at 9:00, which was the time Godfrey Mumford invariably appeared.

Christopher, still floating in his euphoria, came downstairs a good 20 minutes ahead of schedule. He was astonished to find his distaff counterpart in the breakfast room before him. Ellen, the one member of the family traditionally AWOL from the morning meal, on this morning was lounging in a spot of sunshine with a cup of Margaret Caswell’s rich coffee in her hand.

“I knew it, I knew it,” Christopher said. “A day for miracles. Imagine finding you on your feet at this proletarian hour.”

Ellen glared at him through the aromatic steam. “What makes you so cheerful of late? It’s disgusting.”

“Something rare has entered my life. As the ecclesiastical arm puts it, I have been uplifted in spirit.”

Ellen sniffed. “You? Confessing to a tardy conversion? It would be too simply dreary.”

“Hell, no, nothing so primitive.” Chris spread himself over a chair and inhaled deeply of the delicious smells from the kitchen. “Although God knows neither of us has much to be cheerful about, I grant you.”

“That’s why I was hoping to catch you alone before breakfast.” Ellen’s tone expressed her resentment of the radical recourse forced upon her. “You may not realize it, Chris, but you’ve been pretty slimy lately. Is the sisterly eye mistaken, or aren’t you being awfully attentive to our little country cousin? You aren’t casting her for a role in some dirty drama you’re working on, are you?”

“Don’t be foul,” said Christopher shortly. “And Jo’s no yokel. Just because she hasn’t had the advantage of living in London and acquiring a vocabulary of British clichés—”

“Bless my soul and whiskers.” The saccharine in Ellen’s smile was chemically combined with acid. “Lord Ironpants has suddenly developed a tender spot.”

“Never mind. Just what did you want to talk about?”

“Father’s performance the other night. What did you think of it?”

“Top hole, pip-pip, stiff upper, and all that.”

“Do you suppose he was telling the whole truth?”

“Father? Of course. You know father isn’t capable of a deliberate deception.”

“I wonder,” said Ellen thoughtfully.

“Don’t be silly. He was giving it to us straight.”

“Aren’t you being terribly indifferent to it all? In my opinion, it’s no trifle having your inheritance reduced from millions to thousands by your father’s stupidity and the venality of some crooked solicitor. There must be something we can do about it.”

“Sure — grin and bear it. It isn’t as if we’ll have to go on relief, Ellen. There ought to be several hundred thou’ at least to be divided between us after taxes. In the parlance of Wrightsville, that ain’t hay.”

“It ‘ain’t’ five million, either. Honestly, I’m so furious with father I could spit!”

Christopher grinned. Ellen’s rage made her almost human. “Chin up, old girl,” he said, not unfondly. “It’s the Empiah tradition, y’know.”

“Oh, go to hell! I don’t know why I bother to discuss anything with you.”

Jo Caswell entered the breakfast room at that moment, looking lusciously slim and young in a heather wool dress, and bringing in with her, Christopher was prepared to swear, a personal escort of sunshine. He immediately quit the natural variety for Jo’s peculiar radiance; and Ellen, finding herself a crowd, withdrew disdainfully to the other end of the table.

Jo’s mother, starchily aproned, appeared in the doorway from the kitchen. “Is Godfrey down?”

“Not yet, Mum,” Jo said.

“That’s funny. It’s a quarter past nine by the kitchen clock. He’s always on time.”

Ellen snapped, “Obviously, he’s sometimes not.”

Worry lines were showing between Mum’s faded eyes. “In all the years I’ve been here, your father’s never been late for his breakfast except when he was ill.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Mum,” said Jo, “he’s probably gone out to the greenhouse and lost track of the time. It isn’t as if it were two in the afternoon.”

But Mum Caswell shook her head stubbornly. “I’m going to look in his room.”

“What a bloody bore.” Ellen’s impatience turned nasty. “What about my breakfast? Am I expected to get it myself?”

“Perish the thought!” said Christopher, anticipating Jo.

Nevertheless, Mum hurried out. Ellen brandished her empty coffee cup, ready to behead the peasant who had failed to refill it. Christopher appeased his hunger by devouring Joanne, who was trying valiantly not to let her dislike for Ellen show.

Silence poured.

Until the cry from upstairs.

It was a cry raucous with urgency and terror. And then it became a shriek, and the shriek repeated itself.

Joanne bolted for the doorway and vanished, Christopher at her heels. Ellen trailed behind, her face a curious study in dread and hope.

She came on the others midway up the staircase. Her aunt was clinging to the banister, her dumpling features the color of old dough. She managed a jerky thumb-up gesture, and Jo and Christopher sprang past her and disappeared in the upstairs hall. In a moment Jo was back alone, running down the stairs, past her mother, past Ellen.

“I’ve got to phone the doctor,” Jo panted. “Ellen, please take care of mother.”

“But what’s the matter?” demanded Ellen. “Is it father? Has something happened to him?”

“Yes...” Jo flew for the phone. Ellen, ascending with an arm around Margaret Caswell’s waist, heard the dial clacking, and then Joanne’s urgent voice: “Dr. Farnham? Jo Caswell at the Mumford place. Uncle Godfrey’s had a stroke, I think. Can you come right away?”

Dr. Conklin Farnham took the stairs two at a time. Mum, still dough-faced but recovered from the first shock, had insisted on returning to her brother-in-law’s bedside; the doctor found her there. Christopher and Ellen, acting like trespassers, hung about in the hall outside their father’s room, Joanne with them. They waited without words.

When Dr. Farnham emerged, his shoulders elevated in a chilling shrug. “He’s had a stroke, all right. He’s paralyzed.”

“Poor pop,” said Christopher. He had not called his father that in twenty years. “What’s the prognosis, Doctor?”

“It depends on a number of things, most of them unpredictable.”

“Any chance of a recovery from the paralysis, Dr. Farnham?” Joanne asked in a tight voice.

“The paralysis will gradually lift, but just how soon or how completely I can’t say. It all depends on the extent of the damage. He ought to be in the hospital, but we’re absolutely jammed just now, not a bed available, even in the wards. And I’d rather not risk the long jaunt up to Connhaven on these winter roads. So it looks like a home job, at least for now. He’ll need nurses—”

“How about me?” asked Margaret Caswell, materializing in the doorway.

“Well.” The doctor seemed doubtful. “I know you’ve done your share of patient-care, Mrs. Caswell, but in a case like this... Although it’s true we haven’t got an R.N. available right now, either...”

“I’ve taken care of Godfrey for over a quarter of a century,” Mum Caswell said, with the obstinacy she showed in all matters pertaining to Godfrey Mumford. “I can take care of him now.”

January 4–5

The first 48 hours after a cerebral thrombosis, Dr. Farnham told them, were the critical ones, which was all Mum had to hear. For the next two days and nights she neither took her clothes off nor slept; nor was there anything Joanne could do or say to move her from Godfrey Mumford’s bedside, not even for ten minutes.

When the crisis was over, and the patient had survived — and was even making, according to the doctor, a sensational recovery — Jo and Ellen were finally able to pry Mum out of the sickroom and get her to lie down for a few hours. She fell asleep smiling triumphantly, as if she had scored a hand-to-hand victory over the Grim Reaper.

Wolcott Thorp, apprised by Christopher of the stroke, drove down from Connhaven on the night of the fifth, looking like a miniature Russian in his old-fashioned greatcoat and astrakhan hat.

“Godfrey’s all right, isn’t he? He’s going to live?”

They reassured him; and he sank into a chair in the foyer, beside the little table with the silver salver on it. “All my old friends are going,” he mumbled. He was so pale that Joanne got him some brandy. “And those of us who survive feel guilty and overjoyed at the same time. What swine people are...”

It was some time before he was able to go upstairs and look in on the patient, who was being tended again by Margaret Caswell. For ten minutes Thorp chattered to his friend with desperate animation, as Godfrey stared helplessly back at him; until, clearing his throat repeatedly as if he himself had developed a paralysis, Thorp allowed Mum to shoo him out.

“It’s too much to have to watch,” Thorp told Jo and the twins downstairs. “I’m too big a coward to sit there while he struggles with that paralysis. The way he tried to talk! I’m going home.”

“But you can’t, Uncle Wolcott,” said Jo, giving him the courtesy title she had used since childhood. “It’s started to snow, and the report on the radio is that it’s going to be a heavy one. I’m not going to let you take that long drive back over slippery roads. The plows won’t even have had time to go over them.”

“But Joanne,” said the old curator weakly, “I have a huge day tomorrow at the Museum. And really, I’d rather—”

“I don’t care what you’d rather. You’re not leaving this house tonight, and that’s that.”

“Jo’s right, you know,” Christopher put in. “Anyway, Uncle Wolcott, you don’t stand a chance. This is the new Joanne. Look at that chin, will you?”

“You look at it,” said his sister Ellen. “Oh, hell, why did I ever come home? Who’s for a snack?”

January 6

The snow had fallen through half the night. From the kitchen window Christopher could look out across the white earth, an old bed with fresh sheets, past the glasshouse to the woods, where the conifers stood green among the sleeping nudes.

From behind him came a rattle of pans and the homely hiss of bacon; all around him, creeping like woodsmoke, lay warmth. Making the sounds and evoking the smells was Joanne; when her mother had turned nurse, Jo had taken over the housekeeping and cooking chores. Chris had promptly given himself the KP assignment for breakfast.

It was not a morning for fantasy; the day was too clear, the smells too real — it should have happened on a black night, with wind tearing at the house to an accompaniment of creaks. But, as Jo and Chris later agreed over clutched hands, perhaps that was what made it so creepy — the dreadful nightmare striking on a crisp morning to the smell of frying bacon.

For at the very instant that Christopher turned away from the window with a wisecrack about to part his lips — at the very instant that he opened his mouth — he screamed. Or so it seemed. But it was a fantastic coincidence of timing. The scream was hysterically feminine and originated upstairs. It was repeated and repeated in a wild fusillade.

Jo stood fixed at the kitchen range with the long fork in her hand; then she cried, “Mother!” and flung the fork down and ran for the doorway as if the kitchen had burst into flames. And Chris ran after her.

In the hallway stood Wolcott Thorp, one leg raised like an elderly stork, caught in the act of putting on his galoshes in preparation for his return to Connhaven. The curator was gaping at the staircase. At the top of the flight sagged Margaret Caswell, hanging on to the banister with one hand, while her other hand clawed at her throat.

And as she saw Jo and Christopher, Mum screeched, “He’s dead, he’s dead,” and began to topple, ever so slowly, as in a film, so that Joanne, streaking past old Thorp, was able to catch her just before she could tumble. And Christopher followed, bounding up the stairs. He collided with his sister on the landing-

“What is it?” yelled Ellen; she was in a hastily donned robe. “What in God’s name has happened now?”

“It must be father.” Christopher dodged around her, shouting over his shoulder, “Come on, Ellen! I may need help.”

In the hall below, activated at last, Wolcott Thorp hopped for the phone, one unhooked galosh flapping. He found Dr. Farnham’s number jotted on a pad for ready reference and dialed it. The doctor, located at Wrightsville General Hospital, where he was making his morning rounds, would come at once. Thorp hung up, stared for a moment at the telephone, then dialed Operator.

“Operator,” he said, swallowing. “Get me the police.”

Chief of Police Anselm Newby cradled the phone cautiously, as if it might respond to rougher treatment by snapping at him, like a dog. He inclined his almost delicate frame over his desk and fixed bleak eyes, of an inorganic blue, on his visitor. The visitor, relaxing on the back on his neck, had the sudden feeling that he was unwelcome, which was ridiculous.

“Ellery,” said Chief Newby, “why the hell don’t you stay in New York?”

Ellery slid erect, blinking. “I beg your pardon?”

“Where you belong,” said the Chief in a rancorous tone. “Go home, will you?”

A manifest injustice. Home, thought Ellery, is where the heart is, and for many years he had had a special coronary weakness for Wrightsville. He had arrived in town only yesterday on one of his spur-of-the-moment visits; and, of course, the very first thing this morning he had sought out the Chief in police headquarters at the County Court House Building.

“What,” Ellery inquired, “brings this on? Here we were, wallowing in remembrance of things past, warm as a pair of tea cosies. In a moment I become persona non grata. It’s obviously the telephone call. What’s happened?”

“Damn it, Ellery, every time you come to Wrightsville a major crime is committed.”

Ellery sighed. It was not the first time he had been so indicted. Before Newby’s tenure there had been the salty old Yankee, Chief Dakin, with his sorrowful accusations. It’s a continuing curse, he thought, that’s what it is.

“Who is it this time?”

“They’ve just found Godfrey Mumford. That was a friend of his, Wolcott Thorp, on the phone, to notify me of Mumford’s murder.”

“Old Mumford? The Chrysanthemum King?”

“That’s the one. I suppose there’s nothing I can do but invite you along. Are you available?”

Mr. Q, rising slowly, was available, if with reluctance. His Wrightsville triumphs invariably left an aftertaste of ashes.

“Let’s go,” said Wrightsville’s perennial hoodoo.

Christopher, dressed for the snow, blundered on Joanne on his way to the front door. She was crouched on the second step of the staircase, hugging her knees. Jo had not cried, but her eyes were pink with pain.

“You need fresh air,” prescribed Christopher. “How about it?”

“No, Chris. I don’t feel like it.”

“I’m just trundling around the house.”

“What for?”

“Come see.”

He held out his hand. After a moment she took it and pulled herself up. “I’ll get my things on.”

Hand in hand they trudged around the house, leaving a double perimeter of footprints in the deep snow. Eventually they came back to where they had started.

“Did you notice?” Christopher asked darkly.

“Notice? What?”

“The snow.”

“I could hardly not notice it,” said Joanne. “I got some in the top of one of my boots.”

“Tracks.”

“What?”

“There aren’t any.”

“There are, too,” said Jo. “A double set. We just made them.”

“Exactly.”

“Oh, stop talking like a character in a book,” Joe said crossly. “What are you driving at?”

“We left a double set of footprints,” said Christopher. “Just now. But nobody else left any. Where are the tracks of the murderer?”

“Oh,” said Jo; and it was a chilled, even a tremulous “Oh” — like a little icicle preparing to fall to bits.

They stood there looking at each other, Jo shivering, like a scared and forlorn child.

He opened his arms. She crept into them.

It was Ellen who answered the door. She had used the short wait to recover her poise; she had, so to speak, raised the Union Jack. Chief Anselm Newby stepped in, followed by Ellery.

“You’re the Chief Constable,” Ellen said. “The last time I was in Wrightsville, Dakin was Constable.”

Newby received this intelligence with a displeasure that even Ellen Nash recognized. In Anse Newby’s glossary, constables were exceedingly small potatoes, found in tiny, dying New England villages.

“Chief of Police,” he corrected her. Professionally he used a quiet voice, with an occasional whiplash overtone. He evidently felt that this was such an occasion, for his correction flicked out at her, leaving a visible mark. “The name is Newby. This is Ellery Queen, and he’s not a constable, either. Who are you?”

“Mrs. Nash — Ellen Mumford Nash, Mr. Mumford’s daughter,” said Ellen hastily. “I’ve been visiting over the holidays from England.” This last she uttered in a defiant, even arrogant, tone, as if invoking the never-setting sun. It made Newby examine her with his mineral eyes.

The tension Ellery detected under the woman’s gloss was clearly shared by the group huddled in the entrance hall behind her. His glance sorted them out with the automatic ease of much practice. The handsome young fellow was obviously the brother of the constable-oriented Anglophile, and he was (just as obviously) feeling proprietary about the grave and lovely girl whose elbow he gripped. Ellery became aware of a familiar pang. What quality in Wrightsville is this, he thought, that it must cast in every murder melodrama at least one ingenue with a special talent for touching the heart?

His glance passed on to the snow-haired lady, fallen in with exhaustion; and to the little elderly gentleman with the jungle eyebrows and the musty aura of old things, undoubtedly the Wolcott Thorp who had announced the finding of the body to Anse Newby over the phone. Newby, it appeared, knew Thorp; they shook hands, Thorp absently, as if his thoughts were elsewhere — upstairs, in fact, as indeed they were.

When the Chief introduced Ellery, it turned out that some of them had heard of him. He would have preferred anonymity. But this was almost always the toe he stubbed in stumbling over a skeleton in some Wrightsville closet.

“Rodge and Joan Fowler were talking about you only a few weeks ago,” Joanne murmured. “To listen to them, Mr. Queen, you’re a cross between a bulldog and a bloodhound when it comes to — things like this. You remember, Chris, how they raved.”

“I certainly do,” Christopher said gloomily. He said nothing more, and Ellery looked at him. But all Ellery said was, “Oh, you know the Fowlers?” Then he was being introduced to Ellen.

“That Queen,” said Ellen. Ellery could have sworn, from the way her nostrils flared, that he was giving off unsocial odors. And she said nothing more.

“Well,” the Chief of Police said in a rubbing-the-hands tone of voice, “where’s the body? And did anybody notify a doctor?”

“I did, just before I telephoned you,” Wolcott Thorp said. “He’s waiting in Godfrey’s bedroom.”

“Before we go up,” suggested Ellery — and they all started — “would you people mind telling us how the body was found, and so on? To fill us in.”

They told their stories in detail up to the point of the call to headquarters.

Newby nodded. “That’s clear enough. Let’s go.”

So they went upstairs, Margaret Caswell leading the way, followed by Newby and Ellery, with the others straggling behind.

The old man was lying on the floor beside his bed. He lay on his back, his eyes fixed in the disconcerting stare of death. The front of his pajama coat was clotted with the seepage from the knife wound in his chest. There had been very little bleeding. A black-handled knife trimmed in what looked like nickel protruded from the region of his heart.

“Hello, Conk,” Ellery said to the doctor, but looking at the corpse.

“Ellery,” Dr. Farnham exclaimed. “When did you get to town?”

“Last night. Just in time, as usual.” Ellery was still looking at the dead man. “How’s Molly?”

“Blooming—”

“Never mind Old Home Week,” said Newby irritably. “What’s your educated guess, Doctor, as to the time he got it?”

“Between four and five a.m., I’d say. A good spell after the snow stopped, if that’s what you’re thinking of.”

“Speaking of the snow,” said Ellery, looking up. “Who made that double set of tracks around the house I noticed on driving up?”

“Joanne and I,” said Christopher from between his teeth.

“Oh? When did you make them, Mr. Mumford?”

“This morning.”

“You and Miss Caswell walked all around the house?”

“Yes.”

“Did you notice any tracks in the snow other than those you and Miss Caswell were making?” After a moment Ellery said, “Mr. Mumford?”

“No.”

“Not anywhere around the house?”

“No!”

“Thank you,” Ellery said. “I could remark that that’s very helpful, but I can understand that you ladies and gentlemen may have a different point of view. It means no one entered or left the house after the snow stopped falling. It means the murder was committed by someone in the house — someone, moreover, who’s still here.”

“That’s what it means, all right,” said Chief Newby with undisguised satisfaction. He was inching carefully about the room, his bleak glance putting a touch of frost on everything.

“That was intelligent of you, Chris,” Ellen Nash said viciously. “So now we’re all under suspicion. What a bloody farce!”

“You’ve got the wrong category, I’m afraid,” her brother said morosely. “As one of us, I suppose, is going to find out.”

There was a dreary moment. Jo’s fresh face held a look of complete incredulity, as if the full meaning of the trackless snow had just now struck home. Ellen was staring over at her recumbent father, her expression saying that it was all his fault. Margaret Caswell leaned against the door, her lips moving without a sound. Christopher took out a pack of cigarettes, held it awkwardly for a moment, then put it back in his pocket. Wolcott Thorp mumbled something about the absolute impossibility of it all; his tone said he wished he were back in his museum among the relics of the legitimately dead.

“The knife,” Ellery said. He was looking down again at Godfrey Mumford’s torso. “The fact that the killer left it behind, Newby, undoubtedly means that it’s useless as a clue. If it had any fingerprints on it, they probably were wiped off.”

“We’ll dust the room and knife for prints, anyway,” said the Chief. “Don’t any of you come any further than that doorway... Not that it’s going to do us any good, as you say, Ellery. You people — I take it you’ve all been in this bedroom in the last day or so at one time or another?” He shrugged at their nods.

“By the way,” Ellery said, “I haven’t seen one of these old-fashioned jackknives in years. Does anyone recognize it? Mrs. Caswell?”

“It’s Godfrey’s,” Mum said stiffly. “He kept it on the writing desk there. It was one of his prized possessions. He’d had it from childhood.”

“He never carried it around with him?”

“I’ve never seen it anywhere but on his desk. He was very sentimental about it... He used it as a letter opener.”

“I have a boyhood artifact or two myself that I’m inclined to treasure. Did everyone know this, Mrs. Caswell?”

“Everyone in the household—” She stopped with a squeak of her breath — like, Ellery thought, a screech of brakes. But he pretended not to notice. Instead, he knelt to pick something up from the floor beside the body.

“What’s that?” demanded Chief Newby.

“It’s a memo pad,” Dr. Farnham said unexpectedly. “It was kept on the night table at my suggestion for notations of temperature, time of medications, and so on. It apparently fell off the table when Mr. Mumford toppled from the bed; he must have jostled the table. When I got here the pad was lying on the body. I threw it aside in making my examination.”

“Then it doesn’t mean anything,” the Chief began; but Ellery, back on his feet, staring at the top sheet of the pad, said, “I disagree. Unless... Conk, did Mr. Mumford regain any mobility since his stroke?”

“Quite a bit,” replied Dr. Farnham. “He was making a far better and faster recovery than I expected.”

“Then this pad explains why he fell out of bed in the first place, Newby — why, with that knife wound, he didn’t simply die where he lay after being struck.”

“How do you figure that? You know how they’ll thrash around sometimes when they’re dying. What does the pad have to do with it?”

“The pad,” said Ellery, “has this to do with it: after his murderer left him, thinking he was dead, Godfrey Mumford somehow found the strength to raise himself to a sitting position, reach over to the night table, pick up the pencil and pad — you’ll find the pencil under the bed, along with the top sheet of the pad containing the medical notations, where they must have fallen when he dropped them — and blockprinted a message. The dying message, Newby, on this pad.”

“What dying message?” Newby pounced. “Let me see that! Had he recovered enough from the paralysis, Doc, to be able to write?”

“With considerable effort, Chief, yes.”

The dead man’s message consisted of one word, and Newby pronounced it again, like a contestant in a spelling bee.

“MUM,” he read. “Capital M, capital U, capital M — MUM.”

In the silence, fantasy crept. It made no sense of the normal sort at all.

MUM.

“What on earth could Godfrey have meant?” Wolcott Thorp exclaimed. “What a queer thing to write when he was dying!”

“Queer, Mr. Thorp,” Ellery said, “is the exact word.”

“I don’t think so,” said the Chief with a grin. “It won’t do, Ellery. I don’t say I always believe what’s in front of my nose, but if there’s a simple explanation, why duck it? Everybody in town knows that Mrs. Caswell here is called Mum, and has been for over twenty-five years. If Godfrey meant to name his killer, then it’s a cinch this thing on the pad refers to her. No embroidery, Ellery — it’s open and shut.”

“What... what rot!” Joanne cried, jumping to her mother’s side. “Mother loved Uncle Godfrey. You know what you are, Chief Newby? You’re a... you’re a nitwit! Isn’t he, Mr. Queen?”

“I would like to think about it,” said Mr. Queen, staring at the pad.

January 9

It is a fact that must be recorded, at whatever peril to his reputation, that Mr. Queen had achieved in Wrightsville the status of a professional house guest. In more than two decades he had proved a miserably meager source of revenue to the Hollis Hotel. No sooner did he check in, it seemed, than he was checking out again. Let it be said in his defense that this was not the result of parsimony. It was simply because of his flair for entangling himself in Wrightsville’s private lives and, as a consequence, being invited to Wrightsville’s relevant private homes.

The invitation to move over to the Mumfords’ was extended by an unhilarious Christopher at the iron plea of Joanne. Jo’s motive was transparent enough; Ellery was not sufficiently vain to suppose it had anything to do with moonlight and roses. With Chief Newby breathing down her mother’s neck, Jo had sensed an ally; she wanted Ellery not only on her side morally, but physically at hand.

Which explains why, on the morning of January ninth, Ellery settled his account at the checkout desk of the Hollis and, lugging his suitcases like ballast on either side, tacked briskly toward the northwest arc of the Square. Crossing Upper Dade Street, he luffed past the Wrightsville National Bank, Town Hall, and the Our Boys Memorial at the entrance to Memorial Park, and finally made the side entrance of the County Court House Building. In police headquarters he paused long enough to register his change of address with Chief Newby, who received the announcement with an unenthusiastic nod.

“Any luck with the fingerprinting, by the way?” Ellery asked.

“All kinds of it. We found everybody’s fingerprints in the bedroom. But not a one on the jackknife. Wiped clean, all right.” Newby scowled. “Who’d have thought a nice little housekeeper like Mum Caswell would have the know-how to remove her prints or wear gloves?”

“If you’re so certain she killed Mumford, why don’t you make the pinch?”

“On what evidence? That MUM message?” The Chief threw up his hands. “Imagine the corned-beef hash a defense lawyer would make of that in court. Ellery, find something for me in that house, will you?”

“I’ll do my best,” said Ellery. “Although it may not turn out to be for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m concerned with the truth, Anse. You’re merely concerned with the facts,” said Ellery.

And he left — before Newby could reply.

Ellery commandeered a taxicab driven, to his surprise, by someone he did not recognize, and was trundled off (after circling the Square) back up broad-bottomed State Street to the oldest part of town, where the houses were black-shuttered pre-Colonials well set back on rolling lawns in the shade of centuries-old trees. And soon he was ringing the chimes-doorbell of the Mumford mansion.

It was the day after Mumford’s funeral, and the big house was still haunted. The old man’s presence seemed to linger in the sight and scent of his precious chrysanthemums, which in lesser greenhouses bore their blooms from late August to December.

Joanne let him in with a glad little cry.

She established him in a tall-ceilinged bedroom upstairs with a tester bed and a beautiful Duncan Phyfe highboy that he instantaneously coveted. But he was made melancholy by the vase of two-headed mums that Jo had set on the night table, and he soon descended in search of fleshlier company.

He found Jo, Ellen, and Christopher in the library, and it became clear at once that the exercise of his peculiar gifts, at least as far as Ellen Nash was concerned, was her charge for his lodging.

“I’m not going to dignify for one moment the absurd conclusion that one of us murdered father,” Ellen said. “He was done in by some maniac, or tramp or something—”

“The snow,” her brother said damply.

“To hell with the snow! What I’m interested in is that father left a million dollars’ worth of pendant in his wall safe, and I want that safe opened.”

“Pendant?” said Ellery. “What pendant?”

So Christopher told him all about the New Year’s Eve party, and what Godfrey Mumford had told them, and how he had exhibited the Imperial Pendant to them and then returned it to the safe.

“And he also told us,” Christopher concluded, “that he was the only one who knew the safe combination. He said he was going to make a note of the combination for us. But we haven’t looked for it yet.”

“I have,” said Ellen, “and I can’t find it. So that your stay here won’t be a complete waste of time, Mr. Queen, why not show us how Superman detects? A little thing like finding a safe combination should barely test your reputation.”

“Do we have to worry about the pendant now?” asked Jo.

“It shouldn’t take too long, Miss Caswell,” said Ellery. To himself he was saying: maybe a million dollars’ worth of jewelry has something to do with where Godfrey’s boyhood knife had finally rested.

Searches were Ellery’s forte, but this one defeated him. Trailed by relatives of the deceased, he squandered the rest of the morning looking in obvious places. But unlike Poe’s purloined letter, the combination of the safe was nowhere to be found.

They took time out for lunch and an inventory of the unlikelier places, and the afternoon passed in exhausting this inventory. Then time out again, and over dinner a round-table discussion of other possibilities, however remote. Mr. Queen’s fame as a sleuth clearly underwent reappraisal by at least one conferee present. And Mr. Queen himself grew visibly more quiet.

After dinner Ellen returned to the search of the files she had already ransacked once. Ellery, reminding himself bravely in the face of his failure that there was, after all, more than one way to flay a kitty, took Christopher aside.

“I’m prompted,” Ellery announced, “to go directly to the source of the problem — namely, to the safe itself. Can you show me where the blamed thing is?”

“What do you have in mind?” asked Christopher. “Nitro?”

“Nothing so common. A bit of fiddling with the dial, a la Jimmy Valentine.”

“Who’s he?”

Ellery said sadly, “Never mind.”

Christopher led him to the drawing room and, turning on the lights, went to the chrysanthemum painting on the wall and pushed it aside. Ellery began to flex his fingers like a violin virtuoso before a recital.

He studied the thing. The safe door was about ten inches square and in the middle was a rotating dial about six inches in diameter. Etched into the circumference of the dial were 26 evenly spaced notches numbered in sequence from 1 to 26. Around the dial Ellery saw a narrow immovable ring or collar in the top of which was set a single unnumbered notch — the notch used for aligning the numbers of the combination when opening the safe.

In the center of the dial was a bulky knob, about half the diameter of the dial itself, and on the knob was etched the manufacturer’s trademark — an outline of the god of metal-working, Vulcan; around the rim of the knob appeared the manufacturer’s name and address: VULCAN SAFE & LOCK COMPANY, INC., NEW HAVEN, CONN.

The safe door was locked. Ellery duly fiddled with the dial, ear cocked a la Jimmy Valentine. Nothing happened — at least, to the safe door. What did happen was the entrance into the drawing room of Ellen, in a sort of half excitement, trailed by a disdainful Joanne.

“Ah, the ladies,” said Ellery, trying to cover up his chagrin. “And have you found the combination to this stubborn little brute?”

“No,” Ellen said, “but we’ve found this. Maybe it’ll tell you something.”

Ellery took the sheet of paper. It was a bill of sale for the wall safe.

“Dated nine years ago.” He pinched his nose, which was itching. “Must have been ordered just after he got back from that trip to the Orient you told me about, when he acquired the Imperial Pendant. Especially ordered, then, to be the repository of the pendant. Invoice tallies — same name and address of manufacturer; terse description, ‘Wall safe per order.’ ”

“That’s it,” said Christopher. “No doubt about it.”

“Is it important, Mr. Queen?” asked Jo, in spite of herself.

“It could be mighty important, Miss Caswell. While I have fiddled and burned, you may have discovered a treasure.”

“Then you have better eyes than I,” said Ellen. “Anyway, where do we go from here?”

“Patience, Mrs. Nash. Chris, I want you to take a trip to New Haven. Check out the safe company and learn everything you can about this particular model — details of the original order, any special instructions accompanying the order — and, yes, check the price, which seems very high to me. Also, the Vulcan Company may have the combination on file, which would simplify matters. If they don’t, hire one of their experts to come back with you, in case we have to force the safe.

“Meanwhile, you girls keep searching for a record of the combination. Cover every room in the house. Not excluding the greenhouse.”

January 11

Christopher’s return taxi from the Wrightsville airport produced a clamor. Jo flew into the foyer from the direction of the kitchen, followed by Mum; Ellen descended from upstairs in jumps. Ellery, a lonely stag, was meandering among the red spruce and birch outside; and Joanne, booted and mackinawed, was dispatched to fetch him.

Assembled in the drawing room, they saw from Christopher’s expression that he was no courier of good news.

“Briefly,” Christopher told them, “the Vulcan Safe and Lock Company, Inc. no longer exists. The plant and all its files were destroyed by a fire in 1958. The firm never went back into business. Fellow sufferers, I return to your bosoms with nothing — not a clue, not a record of anything connected with the purchase of the safe.”

“The high price,” Ellery asked, frowning. “Did you remember to check the price?”

“Right. I did. And you were. Right, I mean. The price father paid was just about twice what safes of similar size and type were bringing the year he ordered it. It’s funny that father would let himself be skinned that way. He may have been careless about his lawyer, but he was a good enough businessman, after all, to have made millions in packaged seeds before he went chrysanthemum-happy.”

“There was nothing wrong with your father’s business sense, Chris,” said Ellery. “Nothing at all.” And his eyes promptly went into hiding.

Ellen, who held a more cynical view of her late sire, was clearly of the opinion that the father’s simplicity had been passed on to his son. “Didn’t you at least bring back a safe expert to open the bloody thing?”

“No, but I got in touch with another New Haven safe outfit, and they’ll send a man up as soon as I phone them.”

“Then do it. Put through a trunk call right now. What kind of fool are you?”

Christopher’s ears had turned a lovely magenta. “And you, sister mine, you’re a greedy little devil. You’re so hot to lay your hands on that pendant that you’ve lost the few decent instincts you used to have. You’ve waited this long, can’t you wait another couple of days? Father’s hardly settled in his grave.”

“Please,” murmured Mum.

“Please!” cried Jo.

His reflections disturbed by the sibling colloquy, Ellery roused himself. “It may not be necessary to call in anybody. Your father left a dying message — MUM. Chief Newby is positive that Godfrey was leaving a clue to his killer’s identity — Mum Caswell here. But if Godfrey meant to identify his murderer, why did he choose to write MUM? MUM can mean a great many different things, which I shan’t go into now; but, as an identification, it’s an ambiguity. Had he wanted to accuse Mrs. Caswell, he could simply have written down her initials, MC. If he’d meant to accuse Joanne or Mr. Thorp — JC or WT. One of his children? ‘Son’ or ‘daughter’— or their initials. Any one of which would have been specific and unmistakable.

“I choose to proceed, then,” Ellery went on, “on the assumption that Godfrey, in writing MUM, did not mean his killer.

“Now. What had he promised to leave for you? The combination of the safe containing the only considerable asset in his estate. So his dying message may have been meant to be the safe combination. If so, the theory can be tested.”

Going to the painting, he pushed it aside. Entranced, they trooped after him.

“Study this dial for a moment,” Ellery said. “What do you see? Twenty-six numbered notches. And what does twenty-six suggest? The number of letters in the alphabet!

“So let’s translate M-U-M into numbers. M is the thirteenth letter of the alphabet, U the twenty-first. Safe combination: 13-21-13. Now first we twirl the dial a few revolutions — to clear the action, so to speak. Then we turn to 13 and set it directly under the alignment notch — there. Next we turn the dial to the right — we’ll try that direction first — and align the 21. And now to the left — usually the directions alternate — back to 13.”

Ellery paused. The crucial instant was at hand. There was no movement behind him, not even a breath.

He took hold of the knob and pulled, gently.

The thick, heavy door of the safe swung open.

A shout of triumph went up — and died as if guillotined.

The safe was empty. Utterly. No pendant, no jewel box, not even a scrap of paper.

Later that day, true to his commitment, Ellery visited Anse Newby at police headquarters and reported the opening of the safe, including its emptiness.

“So what have you accomplished?” the Chief growled. “Somebody killed the old man, opened the safe, swiped the pendant. That doesn’t knock my theory over. It just gives us the motive.”

“You think so?” Ellery squeezed his lower lip. “I don’t. According to everyone’s testimony, Godfrey told them he was the only one who knew the combination. Did one of them figure out the M-U-M combination before I did and beat me to the safe? Possible, but I consider it unlikely, if you’ll pardon the self-puff. It takes experienced follow-through thinking to make the jump from M-U-M to 13-21-13.”

“All right, try this,” argued Newby. “Somebody sneaked downstairs in the middle of that night and got lucky.”

“I don’t believe in that sort of luck. Anyway, it would call on one of them to be a mighty good actor.”

“One of them is an actor.”

“But, I gather, not a good one.” “Or maybe she—”

“Let’s keep it a neutral ‘he’.”

“—maybe he forced old Godfrey to tell him the combination before sinking the knife into him.”

“Even less likely. Everyone knew that Godfrey’s paralysis included his speaking apparatus, which even in a good recovery is usually the last to come back, if it comes back at all. Certainly no one could bank on the old man’s being able to talk suddenly. Did the killer order Godfrey to write the combination down, under threat of the knife? Even so, Godfrey would have been a fool to do it; his daughter notwithstanding, he seems to have been very far from a fool. He’d have known he was a goner the moment he wrote it.

“I’ll admit,” scowled Ellery, “that all these unlikelihoods don’t make for exclusive conclusions. But they do accumulate a certain mass, and the weight of them convinces me that the killer put Mumford out of his misery simply to hurry up the inheritance of the pendant, not to steal it; that the killer then left, and Mumford wrote M-U-M on his own.”

“You talk all-fired pretty,” said Chief Newby with a grin. “There’s only one thing.”

“And that is?”

“If the killer didn’t swipe the pendant, where is it?”

“That,” Ellery nodded morosely, “is Bingo.”

“I don’t mean to high-hat my betters,” twanged Newby, “but you have to admit you’ve got a tendency to bypass the obvious. All right, you hit on M-U-M as Godfrey’s 13-21-13 safe combination. But why does that have to have anything to do with his reason for writing MUM on the pad? He was a bug on mums, so it was natural for him to use M-U-M as the combination. But he could have meant something entirely different when he wrote M-U-M on the pad. I still say he was fingering his murderer. And when you have a suspect around who’s actually known as M-U-M, and called Mum, what more do you want?”

“Mum Caswell isn’t the only obvious referent.”

“Come again?”

Ellery’s reasoning organ, needled by a phrase Newby had used, was busy with its embroidery.

“A bug on mums, you say. My point is, it’s absolutely bizarre and incredible that MUM should have been his dying message. MUM is the symbol of the man who wrote it. He was a famous horticulturist specializing in mums. Everything about the man said MUM, from the flowers in his greenhouse to the oil paintings and prints and sculptures and intaglios and jewelry and Lord knows what else of them throughout the place. MUM was Mumford’s trademark: a mum on his stationery, as I’ve taken the trouble to check; also on his wallet, and on his car, and in wrought iron over the front entrance. The moldings and doorknobs are all decorated with carved mums. And did you notice that his shirts sport an embroidered mum instead of his monogram? Also, if you’ll pardon me, there’s the irony of the knife that took his life, Godfrey’s boyhood knife. How many times, allow me to wonder, did little Goddie Mumford play mumblety-peg with it?”

At this terminal extravagance — this spacecraft leap into whimsy — the Chief could not avoid a groan. Ellery rose, undismayed.

“It’s that kind of case, Newby. And by the way, there’s one line of investigation I haven’t followed through yet. The search for that safe combination sidetracked me. I’ll look into it tomorrow morning.”

January 12

Having strained his prerogatives as a houseguest by arranging to borrow one of the Mumford cars, Ellery came downstairs the next morning before anyone else was up; and as he was passing the table in the foyer something caught his eye. There was a letter on the silver salver.

Being the world’s nosiest noonan, Mr. Q paused to look it over. The dime-store envelope was unstamped, unpostmarked, and addressed in a childishly disguised scrawl.

The envelope read: To Ellery.

He was surprised and delighted — surprised because the letter was so totally unexpected, delighted because he was in great need of a new point of inquiry. He tore open the envelope and removed from it a sheet of cheap notepaper.

The handwriting of the message was similarly disguised:

There was no signature.

Was this a new development? Hardly. All it did was obfuscate the mystification. The letter was from a not too uncommon type — the garrulous murderer; but what was he, Ellery, supposed to “know”? Whatever it was, he ardently wished he knew it.

He began to chew on the problem. After a while he began to look more cheerful. Obviously, his supposed knowledge was dangerous to the murderer. A yeast was therefore at work in the brew. Fear — the killer’s fear — might produce a heady potion on which the killer would choke.

Ellery slipped the letter into his pocket and left the house.

He drove the station wagon to Connhaven, where he made for the Merrimac campus. Here he sought out the university museum. In the main office of the tomblike building he found waiting for him — he had telephoned ahead for the appointment — Wolcott Thorp.

“You have me all atwitter, Mr. Queen.” The curator touched Ellery’s hand with his papery paw. “And not entirely at ease. I assume you’re working on poor Godfrey’s murder. Why me?”

“You’re a suspect,” Ellery pointed out.

“Of course!” And Thorp hastened to add, “Aren’t we all? If I’m acting guilty, it’s human nature.”

“That’s the trouble, or one of them.” Ellery smiled. “I’m familiar with the psychology of guilt by confrontation, even of the innocent. But that’s not what I’m here for, so stop worrying. A museum to me is what the circus is to small boys. Do you have time to show me around yours?”

“Oh, yes!” Thorp began to beam.

“I’m curious about your particular field. It’s West Africa, isn’t it?”

The beam became sheer sunshine. “My friend,” said Wolcott Thorp, “come with me! No, this way...”

For the next hour Ellery was the beneficiary of the man’s genuine erudition. Ellery’s interest was by no means simulated. He had a deep-rooted feeling for antiquity and anthropology (what was it but detection of a different kind?), and he was fascinated by the artifacts Thorp showed him from what had been western Sudan and the district of Kayes on the Senegal — idols and tutelary gods, fetishes, masks, charms, headdresses of pompons used by the Mandingos to ward off the powers of evil.

Happily inundated with information, Ellery finally interrupted the curator’s flow long enough to ask for a sheet of paper on which to make notes. The curator obliged with a piece of museum stationery; and Ellery, preparing to notate, forced himself back from the dark tribalisms of Africa.

The inscription on the museum letterhead was arranged in two lines. The top line was simply the initials of the museum; the line below spelled out the full name: Merrimac University Museum.

The top line... MUM.

Thorp had excused himself for a moment; and folding the paper, clean of unnoted notes, Ellery took from his pocket the anonymous letter he had picked up from the salver that morning. He was about to insert the museum letterhead into the envelope when his attention was caught by the envelope’s scrawled salutation.

To Ellery.

No, that was wrong!

To was correct enough, as he had read it, but not Ellery. The final letter had a long tail on it; this tail had been the cause of his mistaken reading. On re-examination the ry was not an ry at all; it was a straggle-tailed n.

To Ellen.

It was Ellen who knew something dangerous to the killer.

It was Ellen who was being threatened.

Wolcott Throp, returning, was astounded to see his visitor clap a hand to his head, jam a letter into his pocket, and dart out without so much as a fare-thee-well.

Crouched over the wheel of the station wagon, Ellery roared back to Wrightsville and the Mumford house, cursing every impediment that forced him to slacken speed. He left the car in the driveway and clattered past an alarmed Margaret Caswell and up the stairs in the longest leaps his long legs could manage.

He burst into Ellen’s room.

Ellen, propped up on a chaise longue by a picture window in some flowing garment that might have been designed for a painting by Gainsborough, was sipping hot chocolate from what could only have been — even in his agitation Ellery noticed it — a bone-china mustache cup.

“Am I supposed to be flattered, Mr. Queen,” asked Ellen in a her-Ladyship-is-not-amused sort of voice, “by your boorish intrusion?”

“Beg pardon,” panted Ellery. “I thought you might be dead.”

Her Wedgwood eyes blued further. She set the antique cup down on an end table. “Did you say dead?”

He extended the anonymous letter. “Read this.”

“What is it?”

“It’s for you. I found it on the salver this morning and opened it by mistake, thinking it was addressed to me. I’m thankful I did. And you may be, too, before we’re finished.”

She took the letter and read it swiftly. The paper slipped from her hand, struck the edge of the chaise, and fluttered to the floor.

“What does it mean?” she whispered. “I don’t understand.”

“I think you do.” Ellery stooped over her. “You know something dangerous to your father’s murderer, and your father’s murderer knows you know it. Ellen, tell me what it is, for the sake of your own safety. Think! What do you know that would explain a threat like this?”

He read in her eyes the immediate qualification of her terror. A slyness crept into them, and the lids slid halfway down.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s foolhardy of you to hold it back. We have a murderer on our hands and he’s getting edgy. Tell me, Ellen.”

“There’s nothing to tell. I know nothing.” She turned away. “Now will you please leave? I’m not exactly dressed for entertaining.”

Ellery retrieved the note and left, damning all idiots. In addition to his other commitments he would now have to undertake the thankless task of acting as the woman’s watchdog.

What was Ellen concealing?

Christopher, sighting the pale sun over the top of a pine, recited the opening lines of Snowbound.

“Whittier,” he explained. “I still have a childish fondness for the old boy.”

Joanne laughed, a sound of sleigh bells. “Delivered like a pro. Bravo.”

“Not really. A pro gets fairly steady employment.”

“You could, too, if you tried. Really tried.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

“You know something? So do I. But only when I’m with you.”

“I’m glad.”

“Enough to cleave to my bosom?”

“I don’t quite know,” said Joanne cautiously, “how to take that, Chris.”

“Take it as an interim proposal. I don’t want to tie you up in knots until I’ve made it all the way. You make me feel life-size, Jo. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I need you.”

Jo smiled, but inside. She slipped a little mittened hand into his glove, and they strolled toward the pines and the pale sun.

Wolcott Thorp came down from the university and Chief Newby drove over from headquarters after dinner, both at Ellery’s invitation.

“What’s up?” Newby asked Ellery, aside. “Have you come up with something?”

“Have you?” asked Ellery.

“Not a damn thing. I’m not the Wizard of Oz, the way you’re supposed to be. No miracles yet?”

“No miracles, I’m afraid.”

“Then what’s cooking tonight?”

“A mess. I’m going to fling it at them, and see who runs for the mop — if any.”

They joined the others in the drawing room.

“I’ve taken the liberty of asking Chief Newby to drop by,” Ellery began, “because we need, I think, to redefine our position. Especially in reference to the dying message.

“When Chief Newby and I first found M-U-M on the scene, we made the natural assumption that Godfrey Mumford had left it as a clue to his killer’s identity. Further thought compromised this theory, at least as far as I was concerned. The clue had so many possible interpretations that I shifted to the theory that it meant the safe combination. That worked out fine but accomplished nothing. I opened the safe, and the safe proved to be empty.”

Ellery paused, seeming to wing far off. But his vision was in focus, and he could see nothing in their faces but attentiveness and bafflement.

“Now, after thinking it over again, I’ve changed my mind again,” he went on. “If Godfrey had wanted to leave the combination, all he had to write down was 13-21-13. It would have been almost as easy to write as M-U-M, and there would have been no chance of its being misunderstood. So now I’ve gone back to the original theory, which Newby has never abandoned — namely, that the message points to the murderer’s identity. If so, to whom?”

He paused again; and most of his captive audience waited in varying stages of nervousness for revelation.

“The Chief,” said Ellery, with a side-glance at Mrs. Caswell, who alone seemed unmoved, “is convinced of that identity. And, of course, from a strictly logical point of view, it is certainly possible.”

“It is certainly stuff,” said Mum; then pulled her head back in like a turtle.

“If it’s stuff, Mrs. Caswell,” smiled Ellery, “what’s coming is pure moonshine. Yet — who knows? I’m not going to turn my back on a theory simply because it sounds like something out of Lewis Carroll. Bear with me.

“From the beginning this case has exhibited a remarkable series of what I have to call, for want of a more elegant term, ‘doubles.’

“For example, there have been at least four ‘doubles’ connected with the murdered man: Godfrey had developed a famous chrysanthemum with a double blossom on one stem; the party he gave was to celebrate a double event, New Year’s Eve and his seventieth birthday; his wall safe cost about double what it should have cost; and his children, Ellen and Christopher, are twins — another double.

“Further, let’s not overlook the most significant double in the case: the double mystery of who killed Godfrey and what happened to the Imperial Pendant.

“What’s more, we can go on through a great many more doubles. Because, if you interpret the dying message as a clue to the killer, each of you has at least two connections with MUM.

“For instance, Ellen.” Ellen gave a visible start. “One, her maiden name was Mumford — first syllable, Mum. Second, she’s married to an Egyptologist. Egyptology connotes pyramids, the Sphinx — and mummies.”

Ellen reacted with a double sort of sound, like a jeer crossed with a neigh. “Rubbish! Nonsense!”

“It is, isn’t it? Yet this thing gets curiouser and curiouser. Take Christopher. Again, the first syllable of Mumford. And second, Chris, your profession.”

“My profession?” asked Christopher, puzzled. “I’m an actor.”

“And what are other words for actor? Player, performer, thespian, trouper... mummer.”

Christopher’s handsome face reddened; he seemed torn between the impulse to laugh and the need to fume. As a compromise he simply threw up his hands.

Chief Newby was looking embarrassed. “Are you serious, Ellery?”

“Why, I don’t know whether I am or not,” said Ellery gravely. “I’m just trying it on for size. You’re next, Mr. Thorp.”

The elderly curator immediately looked frightened. “I? How do I fit in?”

“First, the initials of the museum as they appear on your stationery: Merrimac University Museum — M-U-M. Second, your special interest in the culture of West Africa and its artifacts: fetishes, masks, charms, talismans — oh, and pompons.”

“I fail,” said Thorp coldly, “to see the connection.”

“The pompon is a variety of chrysanthemum. And if you want still another cross-reference, Mr. Thorp, there’s a phrase to describe your special field. Surely you know it?”

Here Thorp’s erudition was apparently wanting. He shook his head.

“Mumbo jumbo,” Ellery solemnly told him.

Thorp looked astonished. Then he chuckled. “How true. In fact, the very words come from the language of the Klassonke, a Mandingo tribe. What a quaint coincidence!”

“Yes,” said Ellery; and the way he said it re-established the mood the museum man’s laughter was shattering. “And Mrs. Caswell. I remind you again that Chief Newby has all along thought the dying message points to you. Mum Caswell.”

Margaret Caswell’s features took on the slightest pallor. “I hardly think this is the time to be playing games, Mr. Queen. But — all right, I’ll play, too. You said that each of us has at least two connections with Godfrey’s word on that pad. What’s the other one of mine?”

Ellery’s tone was positively apologetic. “I’ve noticed that you’re fond of beer, Mrs. Caswell, particularly German beer. One of the best-known of the German beers is called mum.”

And this at last brought Joanne to her feet, her little hands clenched. Her anger gave her a charming dimension.

“At first this was plain ridiculous,” stormed Jo. “Now it’s... it’s criminally asinine! Are you purposely making fun of us? And if I may ask a silly question — and no doubt I’ll get a pair of silly answers — what are my two connections with MUM?”

“There,” mourned Ellery, “you have me, Jo. I haven’t been able to spot one connection, let alone two.”

“Quite amusing, I’m sure,” Ellen said. “Meanwhile, we’re neglecting the important thing. What happened to the pendant?”

All Christopher’s dissatisfaction with the Queen performance burst out at finding a target he felt free to attack. “Important thing,” he cried. “I can’t make head or tail of what’s going on here, but don’t you consider it important to find out who killed father, Ellen? Aren’t you concerned with anything but that damned pendant? You make me feel like a ghoul!”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Ellen said to her twin. “You’re nothing so impressive as a ghoul, Chris. What you are is a bloody ass.”

He turned his back on his sister; and regal as a Borgia, she stalked from the room. From the stairway her complaint came to them distinctly: “You’d think father would have installed a lift instead of making us climb these antediluvian stairs.”

“Yes, your Majesty!” yelled Christopher.

While Mr. Q murmured to Chief Newby, “Ellery in Blunderland. Through the Magnifying Glass...”

“What are you,” snarled the Chief of Police, grabbing his coat and hat, “a nut or something?”

January 13

The one morning of the week when Ellen could be relied on to come down for breakfast was Sunday. Invariably she descended to a kipper and a slice of dry toast (except on communion days), after which, trailing High Church clouds of glory, she strode off to join her Anglican co-wor-shipers.

It was therefore a matter of remark that on this particular Sunday morning she failed to appear.

It was especially remarkable to Ellery, who had been barred by the proprieties from passing the night guarding her bedside. Enlisting Margaret Caswell’s chaperonage, he rushed upstairs, kicked open the unlocked door, and dashed in.

Ellen was still in bed. He listened frantically to her breathing; he took her pulse; he shook her, shouting in her ear. Then he damned her perversity and the unlocked door, which was an example of it.

“Phone Conk Farnham!” he bellowed at Mrs. Caswell.

There followed a scene of chaos, not without its absurdity, like an old Mack Sennett comedy. Its climax came when, for the umpteenth time in ten days, Dr. Farnham arrived on the run with his little black bag. It was surely Conk’s opinion, thought Ellery, that he was hopelessly trapped in the antics of a houseful of lunatics.

“Sleeping pills,” the doctor said. “Slight overdose. No need for treatment; she didn’t take enough. She’ll come out of it by herself soon — in fact, she’s coming out of it now.”

“This must be it on the night table,” Ellery mumbled.

“What?”

“The medium of the pills.”

A cup of scummy cold chocolate sat there, almost full.

“That’s it, all right,” said Dr. Farnham, after tasting it. “It’s loaded. If she’d swallowed the whole cupful, Ellery, she’d have been done for.”

“When will she be able to talk?”

“As soon as she’s all the way out.”

Ellery snapped his fingers. “Excuse me, Conk!” he said, and dashed past Mrs. Caswell and tore down the stairs. In the breakfast room, silent and glum, sat Jo and Chris and Wolcott Thorp.

“How’s Ellen?” Chris asked, half rising.

“Sit down. She’s all right. This time. Now we can start worrying about next time.”

“Next time?”

“Somebody slipped a lethal overdose of sleeping pills in her hot chocolate before she went to bed last night — unless you’re prepared to argue that Ellen is the type who would attempt suicide, which in my book she definitely is not. Anyway, she took only a few sips, thereby surviving. But whoever tried to kill her may try another time, and my guess is the time will be sooner than later. So let’s not dawdle. Who knows who prepared the hot chocolate last night?”

“I do,” said Joanne. “She prepared it herself. I was in the kitchen with her.”

“All the time she was fixing it?”

“No, I left before she did.”

“Anyone else in the kitchen at the time, or near it?”

“Not I,” said Christopher promptly, wiping his brow, which for some reason was damp. “If I ever give way to one of my homicidal impulses toward Ellen, I’ll use something sure, like cyanide.”

But no one smiled.

“You, Mr. Thorp?” asked Ellery, fixing the curator with a glittering eye.

“Not I,” said the little man, stuttering.

“Had anyone gone up to bed?”

“I don’t think so,” said Jo, her eyes worried. “No, I’m sure no one had. It was just after we finished that crazy farce of yours in the drawing room — when Ellen pranced out, I mean. A few minutes later she came downstairs again to prepare her chocolate. All the rest of us were still here. Don’t you remember?”

“No, because I was seeing Chief Newby out, and we talked outside for a few minutes before he drove off. Unfortunately I share the general weakness of being unable to be in two places at the same time. Did Ellen go directly upstairs with her chocolate?”

“I can answer that,” said Christopher. “I’d gone to the library to lick my wounds, and Ellen came in for a book to read in bed, she said. She wasn’t there more than two or three minutes. She took one of yours, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Maybe that’s why she fell asleep so soon,” said Jo with a little snapcrackle-pop in her voice.

“Even that,” said Ellery with a bow, “is not impossible. In any event, she must have left her cup standing in the kitchen for those two or three minutes.”

“I guess so,” said Christopher. “It would also seem that we were all milling around, with opportunity to dodge into the kitchen and tamper with it, allowing for a healthy lie or two. Take your pick, Mr. Queen. In my own defense I can only say I didn’t do it.”

“Nor,” stuttered little Wolcott Thorp, “did I.”

“It looks,” said Jo, “as if you’ll have to make the most of what you have.”

“Which,” snapped Ellery, “is precious little.”

And he left them to go back upstairs, where he found Dr. Farnham preparing to depart. Ellen was awake, propped up against the headboard, looking not hung over at all. What she did look like was hostile and furtive.

Ellery went to work.

But his most tried techniques, running from the sympathetic plea to the horrendous warning, failed to budge her. Her brush with death seemed to have left her only the more doggedly crouched over whatever secret she was concealing.

The most Ellery could pry out of her was the admission that she had bought sleeping pills herself from a local “chemist,” on the prescription of another doctor in town whom she did not name. Finally, slipping down in the bed, she turned her face to the wall and refused to answer any more of his questions whatsoever.

Checkmated, Ellery withdrew, leaving Mrs. Caswell on guard.

Someone else, he thought, was at the moment sharing his frustration. The agent of the sleeping pills.

The dinner conversation had gaps. Ellery pushed the food around on his plate. Ellen attempted a show of Empire fortitude, but the attempt was sorry, and he suspected that she had come down to the dinner table only because of the creepy isolation of her bedroom.

Margaret Caswell sat in a tense posture that suggested listening, as for the baying of bloodhounds. Christopher and Joanne sought reassurance in eloquent eye examination of each other. Wolcott Thorp tried to stimulate a discussion of some recent Fulah acquisitions by the museum, but no one listened even politely, and he too fell under the spell of the pervasive gloom.

They were about to leave the dinner table when the doorbell rang with an angry chime. Ellery leaped to life.

“Chief Newby,” he said. “I’ll let him in, if no one minds. Please go to the drawing room — all of you. We’re going to get on with this lethal nonsense and make something of it if it takes all night.”

He hurried to the front door. Newby hurled his hat and overcoat on a tapestried chair but pointedly failed to remove his overshoes, as if announcing that at the first sound of jabberwocky he intended to exit.

They joined the others in the drawing room, and Newby said, “All right, Ellery, get on with it.”

“Let’s begin,” Ellery said, “with a fact. The fact that you, Ellen, are in imminent danger. What we don’t know, and must know, is why. It’s something only you can tell us, and I suggest you do so before it’s too late. I remind you that the murderer of your father is here in this room, listening and watching.”

Four pairs of eyes shifted from Ellen immediately, but they came right back again.

Ellen’s lips remained drawn down at the corners, like a scar. “I told you — I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re afraid, of course. But do you think you’re going to buy immunity with silence? A murderer needs to sleep at night, too, and his best assurance of peace of mind is your permanent removal. So talk while you still can.”

“It’s my job to warn you, Mrs. Nash,” Chief Newby put in sourly, “that if you’re holding back evidence, you’re committing a crime. How much trouble do you want to be in?”

But Ellen fixed her eyes on the fists in her lap.

“All right,” said Ellery, and his tone was so odd that even Ellen stirred. “If you won’t talk, I will.

“Let’s start all over again. What did Godfrey mean by writing M-U-M? Ignore what I’ve said before about it. I’ve now come to a final conclusion.

“A man clear-headed enough to leave a dying message is clear-headed enough to avoid ambiguity. Since MUM involved most of you — and in more ways than one, far-fetched as most of them are — then I have to conclude that Godfrey did not intend MUM to indicate the identity of his murderer.

“Consequently, once more I have to go back to what Godfrey did promise to leave you — the combination of his safe.”

“But you went through all that,” exploded Newby. “And it washed out — the safe was empty.”

“Not a complete washout, Newby. I translated MUM into numbers because of the twenty-six numbers on the dial, and that proved correct as far as it went. But what if it didn’t go far enough? Remember the doubles? One was that the safe cost Godfrey about double what it should have. What if there was a good, solid, practical reason for that double cost? Suppose there’s more to that safe than meets the eye — some feature that cost the extra money. Double cost... how about double safe?”

That brought their mouths open, and he continued swiftly. “If it was a double safe, there would be two combinations. One would work by the numbers 13-21-13, as it does, and would open the orthodox safe. The other combination would open another safe! — which obviously must be contained within the safe, making an inner, smaller safe. And suppose — since that’s the word Godfrey wrote down just before he died — suppose that not only is MUM the combination for the outer safe, but MUM is also the combination for the inner safe One MUM translating into numbers, the second remaining exactly what it is — a word of three letters.”

“But there aren’t any letters on the dial,” protested Newby.

“Right. But remember what’s etched on the rim of the knob? The name and address of the manufacturer: VULCAN SAFE & LOCK COMPANY, INC., NEW HAVEN, CONN. And you’ll note that, contained in those words, are an M and a U!

“Shall we try it?”

Ellery went over to the oil painting and slid it to one side. He revolved the dial a few times, then turned it until the M of COMPANY lay directly under the alignment notch; then he turned right to the U of VULCAN, aligning that, then left, back to the M of COMPANY.

He pulled on the knob.

The safe door did not swing open. Instead, the knob came out in his hand! And behind the knob, within the thickness of the safe door, where the tumblers and mechanism lay, appeared a small compartment — a safe within a safe. And in the compartment, flashing like a minor sun surrounded by sixteen glowing planets, was the Imperial Pendant.

“Alagazam,” Ellery said softly, holding it aloft so that the light, from the old-fashioned crystal chandelier blazed from the pendant in a thousand coruscations. “When Mr. Mumford put the necklace away, his back must have been to you, and it was a broad back. It was into the knob-safe that he put this, not into the regular one. That’s why he probably never bothered to put the pendant in a bank vault, Christopher. Even if someone tried to burgle this safe, could he dream that the real safe was behind the knob? It was, if you’ll excuse the pun, very safe indeed. Here, Newby, I imagine you’d better take charge of this until the will is probated and certain other matters are cleared up.”

And Ellery tossed the pendant to Newby, while the others’ heads moved in unison, like the heads of spectators at a tennis match.

“Q.E.D.,” said Ellery. “One half of our mystery is solved. It remains only to solve the other half.

“Who killed Godfrey Mumford?”

He faced them with such fierceness that they all shrank back.

“I’ve known since yesterday morning who the murderer is,” Ellery said. “There wasn’t a chance, by the way, that he’d take off — not so long as the pendant was missing. It was the finding of the pendant that was holding me up, too.

“I want you all to look at this letter from the murderer to Ellen. Examine it carefully.”

He took it from his pocket and handed it to Chief Newby, who looked it over, scowled, and passed it on.

When it came back to him from Thorp, the last to read it, Ellery could detect nothing but blankness on any face.

“You don’t see it?”

“Come on, Ellery,” Newby rasped. “So I’m as blind as the rest and you’ve got the eyes of a chicken hawk. What’s the point?”

“The point is the date.”

“The date?”

“The date at the top. 12/1/65.”

“Why, that’s wrong,” said Jo suddenly. “It’s January, not December.”

“Correct. The letter was left on the salver the morning of January twelfth — 1/12/65. The writer reversed the numerals for the month and day. Why? In the United States we write the month numeral first, always, then the day numeral. It’s in England that they do it the opposite way.

“Who in this household has been living in England for years? Who uses the Anglicism ‘trunk call’ for ‘long distance’? Who says ‘lift’ for ‘elevator,’ ‘Chief Constable’ for ‘Chief of Police’, ‘chemist’ instead of ‘druggist’ or ‘pharmacist’?

“Ellen, of course. Ellen, who wrote this ‘threatening’ letter to herself.”

Ellen was glaring at Ellery as if he had turned into a monster from outer space. “No! I didn’t!”

But Ellery ignored her. “And why should Ellen have written a threatening letter to herself? Well, what was the effect the letter produced? It made her look as though she were next in line to be murdered — by implication, therefore, innocent of the killing of Godfrey.

“This was doubly indicated by the clumsy poisoning attempt on herself — an evident phony. She never meant to drink more than a few sips. The whole hot chocolate episode was designed to make that ‘threat’ look good.”

Now his eyes found Ellen’s and locked.

“Why should you want to make yourself look innocent, Ellen? The innocent don’t have to make themselves look innocent. Only the guilty—”

“Are you accusing we?” Ellen shrieked. “Of stabbing my own father to death?” She looked about wildly. “Chris, Jo — you can’t believe — Mum!”

But Ellery drove ahead without mercy. “The clue points directly to you, Ellen, and only to you. Of course, if you’ve anything to say that puts a different complexion on all this, I advise you to say it now.”

Ellery kept her gaze pinned down like a butterfly specimen. She began to tremble. And as she did so, he suddenly said in the kindest of voices, “Don’t be afraid any more, Ellen. You see, I know what you know. All I want you to do is to speak out, to tell us what you know.”

And she did, her story rushing out. “I was up the night father was murdered — couldn’t sleep for some reason. It was long past midnight. While I was in the upstairs hall, on my way down to the kitchen for a snack... I happened to see somebody sneak out of father’s room. I was sure he saw me. I was afraid to tell...”

“And who was it you saw, Ellen?”

“It was... it was...” And her arm shot out — “...it was Wolcott Thorp!”

Ellery went early to his room, packed his suitcases, and slipped like the Arab silently away, leaving behind a bread-and-butter note. He did not check back in to the Hollis, the savor having gone out of Wrightsville; but he had a couple of hours to kill before plane time, and he killed them, appropriately, at police headquarters.

“Ellery!” Chief Newby greeted him, rising and seizing his hand. “I was hoping you’d drop in. I never did get to thank you properly. That was a slick scene you put on last night. You told a real whopper.”

“I may have told,” said Ellery soberly, “several.”

“You said you knew what Ellen knew.”

“Oh, that. Yes, of course. But I had to get her to talk; I was reasonably certain that was what she was holding back. And that letter business—”

“Did you really think she wrote that letter?”

“Not for a moment. Except for psychos, murderers don’t admit their killings — even in disguised handwritings — at a time when they’re not even suspected. And Ellen’s Britishness was so blatant that anyone could have used the British dating system to frame her. So although I knew she hadn’t written that threatening letter to herself, I accused her of it last night to frighten her into putting the finger on Thorp.

“Thorp, of course, was the one who wrote the letter. He counted on my spotting the Anglicism and pinning it on Ellen for the reason I gave — that double whammy about if-she-wants-us-to-think-she’s innocent-she-must-be-guilty. And if I hadn’t spotted it, he could always have called it to my attention.

“It may even be that Thorp originally designed the frame-up letter to be used by him in the event Ellen did talk and accused him of what she’d seen. The trouble was, even when Ellen kept her mouth shut, Thorp had second thoughts. That poisoned chocolate business wasn’t an attempt on Ellen’s part to make herself look innocent, as I mendaciously suggested last night in putting the pressure on her; it was a genuine attempt by Thorp to shut her mouth before she could open it. He expected us — if it had succeeded — to accept it as a suicide-confession.”

“Incidentally,” said the Chief, “you said you knew it was Thorp—”

“A slight exaggeration. I had reason to suspect Thorp, but I had no proof — not an iota; and I was afraid another attack on Ellen might succeed.”

“But why,” asked the Chief, “would a man like Thorp murder his best friend in cold blood? He’s confessed to the killing, but we haven’t been able to get a word out of him about motive. It certainly can’t be that measly twenty thousand Godfrey was leaving him.”

Ellery sighed. “The collector breed are a strange lot, Newby. In spite of what he told Godfrey, Thorp probably didn’t consider himself too old to go on that expedition to West Africa; he must have been waiting desperately for years for what he thought was going to be a hundred thousand dollars to finance the trip. When he learned that Godfrey’s carelessness had caused it to shrink to only one-fifth of that, he flipped. That expedition was the dream of his life. Is there anyone we can come to hate more than the loved one who disappoints and frustrates us?”

Newby held up his hand as Ellery rose. “Wait a minute! What made you suspect Thorp in the first place? It must be something fancy I missed.”

Ellery did not display pride. His Wrightsville triumphs too often felt like defeats. Perhaps it was because he loved the old town, and it had been his lot to clean up her filth.

“Nothing fancy, Newby. The dreariest kind of slip on Thorp’s part. When you and I first went to the house, they told us in detail what had gone on at the discovery of the body. The line of previous action was very clear. Margaret Caswell rushed out of Godfrey’s bedroom, crying out that the old man was — mark the word — dead. They all rushed upstairs except Thorp, who went to the downstairs phone, called Dr. Farnham, then called you here at headquarters. And what did Thorp tell you? That Mumford had been found, not merely dead, but murdered. Why should Thorp have leaped to the conclusion that the old man’s death was unnatural unless he already knew it?

“You know, Newby,” Ellery said with a half smile that apologized in advance, “Wolcott Thorp would have been far, far better off if he’d followed his own advice and — forgive me — kept mum.”