There Was an Old Woman [= The Quick And the Dead]

15 And Whipped Them All Soundly and Put Them to Bed

Dr. Samuel Prouty, Assistant Medical Examiner of New York County, squinted past his fuming cigar at the body of Maclyn Potts and said through his stained teeth: “I’ve seen a lot of monkey business but the Potts madness passeth understanding. I can’t even bellyache any more. It’s too fascinating.”

“Spare me your fascinations, Prouty,” snarled Inspector Queen, glaring at Mac’s corpse with bitterness.

“Those marks on his face,” said Dr. Prouty thoughtfully. “Very provocative. I tell you, boys, Freud’s at the bottom of this.”

“Who?” asked Sergeant Velie.

“Perhaps,” remarked Ellery Queen, “perhaps Sigmund’s dark land is, Prouty; but I do believe we can touch on nearer shores, if you’re referring to the welts on poor Mac’s face.”

“What d’ye mean, Ellery?” frowned Doc Prouty.

“Not very much, Doc.”

The Potts mansion was quiet. The mud had been roiled and beaten; now it settled into new patterns. Mac’s body lay on his bed, as Ellery had found it. Nothing had been disturbed except the weapon, which had been taken downtown for ballistics examination.

The photographer, the fingerprint crew, had come and gone. These had been dutiful motions, for the sake of the record. The photographs preserved forever the visual memory of the scene; the fingerprints had no significance except to satisfy the undiscriminating appetite of routine and regulation. They told a story Inspector Queen already knew. Those who were known to have visited deceased’s room since its last cleaning by the housemaids had left the marks of their hand there; of those who were not known to have visited the room, there was no fingerprint evidence. But this could have been because the murderer of Maclyn Potts wore a protective covering on the hands.

Ellery was inclined to this theory. “The fact that no prints at all have been found on the pistol, on the riding crop, or on the bowl of broth indicates gloves, or a very careful wiping off of prints afterwards.” In any event, the fingerprints that were present and those that were not had no clue or evidential value.

“When was the boy murdered, Doc?” asked the Inspector.

“Between three and four A.M.”

“Middle of the night, huh?” said the Sergeant, who had a passion for simplification.

“The shot was fired through the pillow.” Ellery pointed to the powder burns and the bullet hole.

“That’s why no one heard it,” his father nodded.

“Probably,” reflected Ellery, “when the killer stole in here at three or four A.M. Mac’s head had either slipped off the pillow in his sleep or was resting on one corner of it, so that his murderer easily slipped it from under his head. Certainly Mac didn’t wake up until a second or two before the shot was fired, otherwise there’d be signs of a tussle, and there aren’t.”

“Maybe the picking up of the pillow was what woke him,” suggested Velie.

Ellery nodded. “Quite possibly. But he had no time to do more than stare at the face bent over him. The next moment he was dead.”

Dr. Prouty shivered the least bit. “The things people do.”

Inspector Queen had no mind for moralizing; upon him lay the pressure. “Then after the shot was fired, this killer stuck the pillow back under Mac’s head—”

“Neat soul,” murmured Mr. Queen. “Yes, the things people do...”

“And took that riding crop and smacked the boy over the face with it? Is that the way it happened, Doc?”

“Yes,” said Prouty, gazing at the thin blue welts, “the whipping was administered shortly after death, not before. I’d say within seconds. Yes, he dropped the gun and picked up the crop and whacked away. I’d say he whacked away even before he replaced the pillow, Dick.”

Inspector Queen shook his head. “It’s beyond me.”

“But not beyond Mr. Queen,” boomed the Sergeant. “This is the kind of stuff you specialize in, ain’t it, Mr. Queen?”

Mr. Queen did not react to this obvious sarcasm.

“And another thing,” grumbled the Inspector. “That bowl of soup. For Mike’s sake, did this crazy killer bring up a midnight snack with him?”

“How d’ye know he brought it up for himself?” argued the Sergeant. “Maybe he was bringin’ it up to this young guy. In case Mac woke up and said, ‘What the hell are you doin’ in my bedroom at four o’clock in the morning, you so-an-so?’ Then he could show the bowl of soup and say: ‘I figgered you might want some soup before the duel. Chicken broth is swell just before duels,’ he could say. Get his confidence, see? Then — whammo! And he’s killed another chicken.” The Sergeant flushed in the silence. “Anyway,” he said doggedly, “that’s the way I look at it.”

“When I said ‘midnight snack,’ Velie,” said the Inspector, softly savage, “I was just trying to express in my crude way the fact that this is a wacky kill, Velie — madness — lunacy. Ellery, what are some more synonyms? Velie, dry up!”

“Okay, okay.”

“The strange part of the Sergeant’s theory,” murmured Ellery, “is not its wrongness, but its rightness.”

His father stared, and Velie looked amazed.

“Oh, it’s not right,” Ellery hastened to add. “It’s all wrong, in fact. But it’s on the right track. I mean it’s a reasonable theory — it attempts to put a reasonable construction on an absurdity. And that’s definitely correct, Dad.”

“You’re getting deluded, too, Ellery,” said Doc Prouty.

“Not at all. This bowl of chicken broth was brought up here by the killer — incidentally, it was the killer, because the soup wasn’t here when I left Mac asleep in bed last night — and, what’s more, the killer brought the soup up for a completely logical reason.”

“To eat it?” sneered the Inspector. “Or to have Maclyn Potts eat it?”

“No, it wasn’t brought here to be eaten, Dad.”

“Then why?”

“For the same reason the crop was brought... and used. By the way, whose riding crop is it, Dad? Have you identified it yet?”

“It belonged to Mac himself,” replied the Inspector with a sort of frustrated satisfaction, as if to say: And see what you can make out of that little pearl of information!

“And the soup and bowl?”

“From the kitchen. That Mrs. Whatsis, the cook, says she always keeps chicken broth handy in the refrigerator. The Old Woman has to have it.”

“So this killer,” said Sergeant Velie, undaunted, “this killer, before he comes up to the future scene of his foul crime, this killer goes downstairs to the kitchen, takes a bowl, fills it up with cold soup from the icebox, and pussyfoots it upstairs here. There’s even a splash or two on the staircase, where the soup slopped over as he carried it up. Cold soup,” he said thoughtfully. “I’ve heard of jellied soup,” he said, “and hot soup, but just plain cold soup...”

“Don’t fret yourself into a breakdown over it, Velie,” yipped Inspector Queen. “Just check back with downtown and see if they’ve done a ballistics yet on that rod. Ellery, come on.”

Dr. Prouty left, reluctantly, saying to Mr. Queen that this was one case he wished he could follow through ex officio, you lucky dog, you. The body was to be picked up and carted down to the Morgue for routine autopsy, but nothing more could be expected in the way of discoveries: the mouth had shown no trace of soup, or poison, death resulted from one .38-caliber bullet in the heart, and so it was all dirty work from here on in, and he didn’t even think he’d attend the funeral. (Exit DR. PROUTY.)

Inspector Queen and his son made a grand tour of the mansion before retiring for further conversations.

These were dreary rounds. Sheila lay on a chaise longue in her boudoir without tears, staring at her ceiling. (Mr. Queen was uneasily reminded of her brother, who lay in a similar attitude a few doors down the hall, not breathing.) Charley Paxton kept chafing Sheila’s hands, his swollen eyes fixed fearfully on her expressionless face. It was Stephen Brent Potts’s voice which emerged, almost without stuttering, in loving reassurance.

“There’s no sense in giving in, Sheila lambie,” he was saying as the Queens stole in. “Mac’s dead. All right, he’s dead. M-murdered. What are we supposed to do — commit suicide? Curl up and d-die? Sheila, we’ll fight back. We’re not alone, baby. The p-police are our friends. Charley’s on our sis-side... Aren’t you, Charley?” Old Steve dug Charley sharply in the ribs.

“I love you, darling,” was all Charley could say as he chafed Sheila’s cold hands.

“Don’t lie there that way, Sheila,” old Steve said desperately. “Do you want a doctor?”

“No.” Sheila’s voice was faint.

“If you don’t snap out of this, I’ll call one. I’ll call two. I’ll make your life miserable. Sheila honey, don’t go under. Talk to me!”

“Never would have believed it of the old duck,” muttered the Inspector as he and Ellery left, unobserved. “Of all these people, he’s the one with guts. Where’s that sucker Gotch?”

“Taking a nap in his room, Velie told me.” Ellery seemed pained by the memory of that white, frozen face.

“Taking a nap!”

“Steve sent him to bed. It seems,” growled Mr. Queen, “that the worm has turned and, coincidentally with the illness of his mate and the murder of his second son, has developed hair on his chest. I like that little man.”

“Like — dislike!” raved his father. “Who cares how wonderful they are? I want to see this case solved and get the kit and caboodle of ’em out of my hair! What did he send Gotch to bed for?” he asked suspiciously.

“Gotchie-boy has been ‘worrying’ about him too much, it appears. Hasn’t had his proper rest. Stephen Brent Potts version.”

“Gotchie-boy has been hitting the bottle too much, that’s what Gotchie-boy’s been doing,” rasped the Inspector. “If this ain’t all a smoke screen. I don’t get that old pirate at all.”

“It’s very simple, Dad — he found snug harbor, and he’s dug in like a barnacle. By the way, have you had a report on the Major yet?”

“Not yet.”

They hunted Louella in her ivory tower, they took wing and visited Horatio in his house in the clouds, they returned to the Palace and looked in on Thurlow. Louella was still creating sea slime in her porcelain pans. Horatio was still wielding a quill on the greater Mother Goose — wielding it even more zestfully. And Thurlow was sleeping like a just man who has offered to do the honorable thing and been absolved by forces beyond a chevalier’s control. An aroma of alcohol hovered over his pillow, like angel’s wings.

Nothing had changed except that, as Horatio Potts put it, looking up from his versifying, “One person less lives in the house.”

The Inspector crossed lances with Dr. Innis upstairs in Cornelia Potts’s sitting room. The Inspector was determined to speak with mother of deceased; Dr. Innis was equally determined that the Inspector should not speak to mother of deceased.

“Unless,” said Dr. Innis stiffly, “you promise you won’t mention this latest development, Inspector.”

“Promise your jaundiced liver,” said the Inspector. “What would I want to speak to her about if not this ‘latest development,’ as you put it so delicately?”

“Then I’m sorry. She’s a very sick woman. The shock of another murder — another son’s death — would undoubtedly kill her on the spot.”

“I doubt it, Doctor,” said the Inspector grumpily; but he gave up the joust and took Ellery down to the study. “Sit down, son,” sighed the old gentleman. “You generally have a cockeyed slant on cockeyed cases. How about squinting at this one? I’m groggy.”

“I’m a little crocked myself,” admitted Ellery with a wry smile.

“Sure, but what are you thinking?”

“Of Bob. Of Mac. Of life and death and how ineffectual people really are. Of Sheila... What are you thinking?”

“I don’t know what to think. In the past this family of drizzle-birds, while they’ve been mixed up in plenty of trouble, have always wound up in the civil courts. Little stuff, inflated big. But now murder! And two in a row... I’m thinking something’s been smoking under the surface for a long time. I’m thinking the fire’s broken through. And I’m thinking: Is it out, or isn’t it?”

“You think there may be further attempts?”

The Inspector nodded. “It might be just the beginning of a plot to wipe out the lot of them. Not that that wouldn’t be a good thing,” he added dourly. “Except that I wish they’d started on the nuts rather than those two nice young fellas.”

“Yes,” said Ellery grimly.

“Is that all you’re going to say — ‘yes?’ Then there’s this crazy lashing of Mac Potts’s dead face. That looks to me like pure hate — psychopathic. The chicken broth certainly indicates an unbalanced mind, in spite of that fancy speechifying you made upstairs to Velie.”

“But the whipping and the leaving of a bowl of chicken broth are easy, Dad,” said Ellery patiently. “As I said, they were both introduced into the murder’s stew for identical reasons.”

“Flog a corpse — leave soup around.” The Inspector shook his head. “You’ll have to show me, son.”

“Certainly.” And Ellery paused a moment. Then he did the most absurd thing. He began to chant, with an expression of utter gravity, a nursery rhyme:

And Mr. Queen clasped his hands behind his head and gazed steadily at his father.

His father’s eyes were like new quarters.

“The Old Woman,” continued Ellery quietly. “She lives in a Shoe — or rather a house that the Shoe built. And there’s even a nice, literal Shoe on the front lawn. She has so many children... yes, indeed. Six! That she doesn’t know what to do with them I should think is evident to anyone; all her eccentricity and cruelty are masks for her frustration and helplessness.”

“She gave them some broth,” muttered the Inspector. “That chicken broth in Mac’s room!”

“Without any bread,” his son added dryly. “Don’t overlook that precious coincidence. Or perhaps you’re not aware that on Dr. Innis’s orders Mrs. Potts may not eat bread, and consequently she serves none at her table.”

“And whipped them all soundly—”

“Yes, or at any rate whipped Mac. And the bed motif? Mac was killed in bed. You see?”

The Inspector jumped up, fire-red. “No, blast it, I don’t see! Nobody could make me believe—”

“But you do believe, Dad,” sighed Ellery. “You’re terribly impressed. A number of people crazy, and now apparently a series of crimes following a Mother Goose pattern. Well, of course. Would crazy people commit rational crimes? No, no. Crazy people would commit crazy crimes. Mother Goose crimes... Don’t you see that you’re supposed to believe in the lunacy of these two crimes? Don’t you see that a sly brain is creating an atmosphere of madness, or rather utilizing the one that exists, in order to cloak the reality? And what could madness cloak but sanity?”

The Inspector drew a grateful breath. “Well, well. And I’d have fallen for it, too. Of course, son. This is the work of a sane one, not a crazy one.”

“Not necessarily.”

The Inspector’s jaw dropped.

Ellery smiled. “We just don’t know. I was merely expounding an attractive theory. As far as logic is concerned, this might well be the work of a madman.”

“I wish you’d make up your mind,” said his father irritably.

Ellery shrugged. “You’ve got to have more than theories to bring to the District Attorney.”

“Let’s get on with it, let’s get on with it!”

“All right, we’ll proceed on the rational theory. What comes to mind immediately?”

The Inspector said promptly: “We’re supposed to pin this on Horatio Potts. He’s writing a modern ‘Mother Goose.’ ”

Ellery laughed. “You saw that, you old fox.”

“Plain as the nose on your face. If this is the work of a sane mind, then Horatio is being framed for the murders of his two half-brothers.”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Horatio being framed... why, the man hardly knows what’s going on!”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” said Ellery, knitting his brows. “Horatio’s a good deal of a poseur. He knows lots more than he lets on. “

“Now what d’ye mean?”

“Just speculating, Dad. The man’s not a fool. Horatio has an unorthodox slant on life and a great cowardice where adult problems are concerned, but he’s aware of the score at all times. Believe me.”

“You’re no help at all,” grumbled the Inspector. “All right, score or no score, Horatio’s supposed to take the rap; we’re to think he’s behind all this. That means he isn’t.”

“Not necessarily,” said Ellery.

“Will you stick to one point of view?” howled the Inspector, now maddened beyond reason. His face was very red indeed. “Look,” he began again, desperately. “Certain things we know—”

“You wouldn’t be referring,” asked Ellery, “to the arithmetic involved?”

“Yes, the arithmetic involved! When all six children were alive, each one stood to come into five millions at the death of the Old Woman. Then Robert Potts was knocked off, leaving five. Now Mac’s gone, leaving four. Four into thirty millions makes seven and a half million apiece — so the murder of the twins means over two and a half million bucks extra to each of the four surviving children!”

“I can’t get excited over a mere two and a half million,” moaned Mr. Queen. “I doubt if anyone could, where five millions are guaranteed. Oh, well, I’m probably wrong. It’s your fault for having brought into the world the son of a poor man, Dad.”

Providentially, Sergeant Velie came in.

Velie tramped in to ease his two hundred and twenty-five pounds into Major Gotch’s favorite chair. He was yawning.

“Well?” snapped the Inspector, turning the wind of his fury on this more vulnerable vessel.

The Sergeant looked pained. “What did I do now? Don’t follow orders, get bawled out. Follow orders—”

“What order are you following now?”

“The ballistics check-up.”

“Well, what do you think this is, the gentlemen’s lounge at the Grand Street Turkish Baths? Report!”

“Yes, sir.” Velie rose with a noticeable lack of fatigue. “The Lieutenant says the gun found on the floor upstairs is the gun with which Maclyn Potts was homicidally and with murderous intent shot to death—”

“That,” said the Inspector, spreading his hands to Ellery, “is news, is it not? The gun is the gun. We’re certainly progressing! What else?”

“That’s all,” said the Sergeant sullenly. “What did you expect, Inspector — the Lieut should come up with the name of the killer?”

“Just what kind of gun was it, Sergeant?” interposed Ellery. “I didn’t get a good look at it.”

“It’s a Smith & Wesson .38/32 revolver, 2-inch barrel, takes an S. & W. 38 cartridge—”

Mr. Queen gave voice to a strangled exclamation.

His father stared. “What’s the matter? Sick?”

Ellery sprang to his feet. “Sick! Don’t you recall the fourteen guns Thurlow bought at Cornwall & Ritchey’s? Don’t you remember that you’ve accounted for only twelve? Don’t you remember that two guns are missing, that the missing guns are exact duplicates of the two used in the Bob-Thurlow duel — don’t you remember that, according to the store’s check list, one of those two missing guns is a Smith & Wesson .38/32 with a 2-inch barrel? And now you tell me the gun which shot Mac Potts to death last night is a Smith & Wesson .38/32 with a 2-inch barrel!”

After a long time the Inspector choked: “Velie, phone the Lieutenant at H.Q. and get the serial number of the gun in Maclyn Potts’s murder. Then phone Cornwall & Ritchey and get the serial number of the missing Smith & Wesson. Right away, please.”

Dazed by this politeness, Sergeant Velie staggered out. Five minutes later he returned with the information that the Smith & Wesson which had taken Mac’s life was the same Smith & Wesson that appeared on the check list as unaccounted for.

One of the two missing revolvers had been found.

“Clearer and foggier,” moaned Inspector Queen. “Now we know why the killer of Robert hid two of the fourteen guns Thurlow bought — to use one of ’em, the S. & W., for a second murder.”

“The murder of Mac,” put in Velie, the simplifier.

“That’s certainly the look of it,” Ellery mumbled. “But why did he steal and hide two guns?”

Sergeant Velie’s face fell. “You mean we ain’t through?”

“Of course we ‘ain’t’ through!” snarled his superior. “Two guns missing, one of ’em turns up in a murder, so what would the killer be doing with the other if he isn’t planning still another killing?”

“A third murder,” Ellery muttered. “Everything points to it. Not only the missing guns...” He shook his head.

“Then we got to find that last gun — the colt .25 automatic that didn’t turn up,” said the Sergeant with a groan, “or go fishin’ for dreams.”

“Not that finding the missing Colt would necessarily stop a third murder,” Ellery pointed out. “We have no Achilles here, and there are more ways of killing than by an arrow. But finding the missing Colt might uncover a clue to the person who secreted it. By all means search for it. And at once.”

“But where?” whined the Sergeant. “My gosh, we’ve turned this coocoo’s nest upside down, and not only the house but the grounds, too. It’s a pipe to hide a little bitty thing like that vest-pocket Colt in a square block of house and grounds! It would take twelve squads twenty-four weeks—”

The Inspector said: “Find that gun, Velie.”

16 And Then There Were None

But Sergeant Velie did not find that gun. Nor Sergeant Velie, nor Detectives Flint, Piggott, Hesse, Johnson, and company, searching at all hours, in odd places, under irritated or indifferent or astonished noses.

There were days of this fruitless exploration in the Potts mansion and on the Potts grounds, and while some interesting exhibits were turned up — a Spanish leather chest, for instance, buried behind Horatio’s cottage and filled with broad and crooked coins which Mr. Queen delightedly pronounced to be pieces of eight, at the disinterment of which Horatio went into a tantrum and howled that it had taken him years to gather an authentic Spanish “treasure” and a week of dark nights with an iron lantern and a cutlass between his jaws to bury it, and he wasn’t going to stand by and see a lot of cursed policemen spoil his fun — the duplicate Colt Pocket Model .25 automatic remained in the limbo of lost things. The cursed policemen tramped off on aching feet, leaving Horatio to reinter his pirate’s chest angrily.

Inspector Queen staged a mild tantrum himself, but for other reasons.

Then Mac was buried in the family plot at St. Praxed’s churchyard. A section four blocks square was roped off for the ceremony, traffic was re-routed, and police cordons exercised their muscles.

Somehow Cornelia Potts, recovering from her heart attack in the big house, learned of her son’s death.

The first inkling that the Old Woman knew came on the morning of her son’s funeral. She sat up in bed and called for her maid, a woman almost as old as she, Bridget Conniveley by name, whom Dr. Innis detested. Od Bridget, who was a bent and sibilant crone, threw over the yoke of the Old Woman’s authority and telephoned Dr. Innis. Innis came rushing over, pale and stammering. It was impossible. He could not be responsible. She must be sensible. She could no nothing more for Maclyn. He forbade her to leave her bed.

To all this the Old Woman said nothing. She calmly crept out of bed and flayed Bridget with her tongue. Bridget scurried, cowering, to draw her mistress’s bath.

When the Inspector heard about it from the detective on guard outside the Old Woman’s apartment, his face glowed with a dark joy. “Mustn’t talk to her, huh?” he said to Dr. Innis. And he strode by into the Presence.

It was a short, bitter interview. The Old Woman spoke scarcely at all. What she did say was acrid and precise. No, nobody had told her. She just “knew.” And she was going to Maclyn’s funeral; the State Militia could not stop her. Get out and let an old woman dress, you fool.

The Inspector got out. “It’s a cinch little Thurlow spilled the beans to Mama,” he grunted. “What a bunch!”

Cornelia Potts was assisted from her Palace by Dr. Innis and Bridget Conniveley, wrapped in shawls, only the buttery tip of her nose showing. Her expression was one of gloomy interest. She shed no tears, nor would she gaze upon her son’s face before the mortician’s assistant closed the coffin.

At St. Praxed’s Ellery kept watching her with amazement. That aged heart, to whose stuttering and whimpering he had laid his own ear, seemed unmoved by the second death of a son within a week. She was built of granite, and sulphuric acid coursed through her veins... She did not glance at Sheila, or at Stephen her husband, or at Major Gotch, who looked pinched and confused this morning. She did not seem surprised that her other children were not present.

Back at the house, Bridget undressed her and she crawled into bed. She closed her eyes and asked Dr. Innis for “a little something to put me to sleep.”

And she fell asleep and slept restlessly, moaning.

“Well,” demanded the Inspector when it was all over, “where do we go from here?”

“I wish I knew, Dad.”

“You’re stumped?”

His son shrugged. “I can’t believe this case is insoluble. There’s sense in it somewhere. Our job is to spot it.”

The Inspector threw up his hands. “If you can’t see any light, I certainly can’t, Ellery. All we can do is keep a close watch on these people and follow up the few clues we have. Let’s go home.”

A few days after Mac’s funeral, Ellery Queen had two breakfast callers.

He was startled by the change in Sheila Potts. Her face seemed half its normal size, the skin gray; her blue eyes were darker and deeper blue and more liquid, their sockets underscored as by a paintbrush. She was in black, a pitiable figure of distress.

Charley Paxton looked thin and ill, too. And his eyes shared with Sheila’s that burden of anxiety which Mr. Queen had come to associate with the troubled ones of this world who find themselves caught in a tangle from which there is no escape.

The Inspector had been about to leave for his office, but when he saw the haggard faces of the two young people he phoned Police Headquarters to say he would be delayed and became mine host cunningly. “How’s your mother this morning?” he asked Sheila, with an elaborate expression of concern.

“Mother?” said Sheila vaguely. “About the same.”

Charley braced himself “Now you’ll see it’s all stuff, darling,” he said in a cheery voice. “Tell Ellery and the Inspector about it.”

“It isn’t stuff, Charley, and you know it,” Sheila said tiredly. “Sometimes you make me sick. I know I’ve done an awful lot of weeping and squalling, but I’m not a child — I can add. This adds up to more, and you know it. You see,” she said, turning to the Queens before Charley could reply. “I’ve been thinking, Mr. Queen—”

“Ellery,” said Ellery.

“Ellery. I’ve been thinking, and I’ve seen — well, a dreadful design in what’s been happening.”

“Have you? And what design is that?”

Sheila shut her eyes. “At first I was shocked. I couldn’t think at all. Murder is so... newspapery. It doesn’t happen to you. You read about it in a paper, or in a detective story, and it makes you wriggle with disgust, or sympathy. But it doesn’t mean anything.”

“That’s quite true.”

“Then — it happens to you. There are police in your house. Somebody you love is dead. Somebody you’ve been with all your life is... a fiend of some sort. You look at the faces around you, the familiar faces, even the ones you dislike... and you die yourself. Inside. A thousand times. It doesn’t seem possible. But there it is.

“And there you are... When Bob died I couldn’t believe anything. I was all mixed up; none of it seemed real. I just went through the motions. Then Mac...” She put her hands quickly to her face.

Charley reached out to touch her, but Ellery shook his head and Charley turned away to stare blindly out the Queens’ window at the quiet street below.

Inspector Queen kept his hard eyes on the weeping girl.

After a while Sheila groped in her bag and took out a handkerchief. “I’m sorry,” she sniffed. “All I seem to do these days is imitate a fountain.” She blew her little nose with energy and put her handkerchief away, sitting back and even smiling a little.

“Go ahead, Miss Potts,” said Inspector Queen. “This personal stuff is interesting.”

She looked guilty. “I don’t know why I wandered that way... What I began to say was — I’ve been thinking since Mac died. There have been two murders in the house. And who’s been murdered? Robert. Mac. My twin brothers.” Her blue eyes flashed. “Not one of Mother’s first husband’s three children — oh, no! Not one of the crazy ones. Only the Brents are dying. Only the Brents — the sane ones.”

Charley cleared his throat.

“Let me finish, Charley. It’s as clear as anything. We Brents are being killed off, one by one. First Robert, then Mac... then either my father or me. Charley, it’s true and you know it! One of us is next on the list, and if Daddy gets it, I’ll be the only Brent left, and I’ll get it.”

“But why?” shouted Charley, out of control. “It doesn’t make sense, Sheila!”

“What’s the difference why? Money, hate, just plain insanity... I don’t know why, but I know it’s true, as truly as I’m sitting here this minute. And what’s more, you know it, too, Charley! Maybe Mr. Queen and the Inspector don’t know it, but you know it—”

“Miss Potts—” began the Inspector.

“Please call me Brent. I don’t want ever to be called by that horrible name again.”

“Of course, Miss Brent.”

Ellery and his father exchanged glances. Sheila was right. It was what they themselves feared, a third murder. With even more reason: the missing automatic.

The Inspector went to one of the front windows. After a moment, he said: “Miss Brent, would you mind coming here?”

Sheila wearily crossed the room to stand beside him in the sun.

“Look down there,” said the Inspector. “No, across the street. The service entrance of that apartment house. What do you see, Miss Brent?”

“A big man smoking a cigaret.”

“Now look on this side, a few yards up, towards Amsterdam Avenue. What do you see?”

“A car,” said Sheila, puzzled. “With two men in it.”

The Inspector smiled. “The man in that areaway, and the two men in that car, Miss Brent, are detectives assigned to follow you wherever you go. You’re never out of their sight. When you’re in your mother’s house, other detectives have their eye on you every possible moment. The same is true of your father. No one can get near you two, Miss Brent, unless the men on duty feel sure you’re running no risk.”

Sheila flushed. “Don’t think I’m ungrateful, Inspector. I didn’t know that, and it does make me feel better. And I’m happy for Daddy’s sake. But — you know perfectly well if I were surrounded by a cordon twenty-four hours a day — if you put the whole police department to guarding us — sooner or later we’d be caught. A shot through a window, a hand aiming around a door—”

“Not at all,” said the Inspector crossly. “I can promise you that won’t happen!”

“Of course it won’t, dear,” said Charley. “Be sensible, now — let me take you out somewhere. We can have lunch at the Ritz and go to the Music Hall or some place — get your mind off things—”

Sheila shook her head, smiling faintly. “Thank you, darling. It’s sweet of you.” And then there was a silence.

“Sheila.” She turned to Ellery very quickly. His eyes were admiring, and a little color came into her face. “You have something specific in mind — a most excellent mind, by the way,” he said dryly. “What is it?”

Sheila said in a grim tone: “Have them put into an institution.”

“Sheila!” Charley was appalled. “Your own mother?”

“She hates me, Charley. And she’s got a sick brain. If mother had tuberculosis, I’d send her to Arizona, wouldn’t I?”

“But — to put her away...” said Charley feebly.

“Don’t make me sound like a monster!” Sheila cried. “But none of you knows my mother as I do. She’d cheerfully kill me if she thought it would help some ‘plans’ of hers. Her brain’s twisted, I tell you! I won’t feel safe until Mother and Thurlow and Horatio and Louella are behind bars somewhere! Now call me anything you like,” and Sheila sat down and wept again.

“We’ve already considered that plan,” said Ellery gently. She looked up, startled. “Oh, yes. We haven’t overlooked any bets, Sheila. But Charley will tell you there’d be no legal grounds whatever for committing your mother to an institution. Thurlow, Louella, Horatio? It would be very difficult, as there’s no doubt whatever that your mother would fight any such move with every penny of the considerable fortune she possesses. It would take a long time, with no certainty of success — they’re borderline cases, I should say, if they’re mentally deficient in any medical sense at all.

“Meanwhile, they could be doing... damage. No, we abandoned the idea of trying to commit anyone in the Potts family to a mental hospital. Later, perhaps, when this case is settled. Now it would be futile and even dangerous, as it might force someone’s hand.”

“Then there’s the possibility of throwing the lot of them in jail,” said Inspector Queen quietly. “We’ve considered that, too. We could hold them as material witnesses, maybe. Or on some other charge. Whatever the charge, I can tell you — and Charley as a lawyer will bear me out — that we couldn’t hold them indefinitely. Your mother’s money and pull would get them out eventually, and you’d be back where you started. We need more evidence before we can take that step, Miss Brent.”

“It doesn’t leave me very much except to order the latest shroud, does it?” said Sheila with a white smile.

“Sheila, please! Stop talking like that!” cried Charley.

“Meanwhile,” continued the Inspector, “everything’s being done that can be. Every member of your household is under a twenty-four hour guard. We’re doing all we can to dig into the background of this case, in the hope that we’ll find some clue to the truth. Yes, there’s always the danger of a slip. But then,” added the Inspector in a peculiar tone, “you could slip on a banana peel this afternoon, Miss Brent, and break your neck.”

“Now hold on, Inspector,” said Charley angrily. “Can’t you see she’s scared blue? I know you’re doing all you can, but—”

“Shut up, Charley,” said the Inspector.

Ellery glanced at his father quickly. This had not been on the agendum. Charley was shocked.

“How about Charley’s taking Sheila away somewhere?” asked Ellery innocently. “Out of range of any possible danger, Dad?”

The Inspector’s cheeks darkened to a crimson gray. “I think not,” he snapped. “No. Not out of the state, Ellery.”

Ellery drew, his horns in very quickly indeed. So that was it!

“I wouldn’t go, anyway,” said Sheila listlessly. “I won’t leave Dad. I didn’t tell you that my father doesn’t think he ought to leave. He says he’s an old man and he won’t start running away at his age. He wants me to go, but of course I can’t. Not without him. It’s all rather hopeless, isn’t it?”

“No,” smiled Ellery. “There’s one person who can put a stop to all this.”

“Huh?” The Inspector looked incredulous. “Who?”

“Cornelia Potts.”

“The Old Woman?” Charley shook his head.

“But Mr. Queen—” began Sheila.

“Ellery,” said Ellery. “You see, Sheila, your mother is the lord and the law in Potts Palace. At least to the three children of her first marriage. I have the ridiculous feeling suddenly that if she could be persuaded to issue an ultimatum—”

“You saw how hard she tried to stop the duel between Bob and Thurlow,” said Sheila bitterly. “I tell you she wants us Brents dead. She’s been happy about it in her own perverted way. She went to poor Mac’s funeral to gloat! You’re wasting your time, Ellery.”

“I don’t know,” muttered Charley. “I’m not defending your mother, darling, but that’s a bit hard on her, it seems to me. I think Ellery’s right. She could put a stop to all this, and it’s up to us to make her do it.”

“It’s an idea,” said the Inspector unexpectedly. But it was evident he was thinking of other fish to fry. “As long as Sheila’s mother is alive, she rules that roost. They’d quit on her say-so... Yes. It’s worth a try.”

17 How the Old Woman Got Home

They met Dr. Innis in the driveway. The physician had just driven up for his daily visit to the Old Woman.

They all went in together.

The Inspector kept a sharp eye out for his men. What he saw seemed to satisfy him. He grunted and stumped on upstairs, keeping his counsel.

Sheila kept saying, “I tell you it’s hopeless,” in a tone appropriate to the utterance.

At the top of the spiral staircase, Ellery said to Dr. Innis: “By the way, Doctor, Mrs. Potts seems to have come through this last heart attack and the death of Mac very well indeed. What would you say is the prognosis; now?”

Dr. Innis shrugged. “You can’t make over a heart like hers, Mr. Queen. We don’t know very much about stamina, and the will to live. But that woman’s alive this moment, I’m convinced, only because she wants to be. No other reason. In fact, there’s every reason to believe her heart should have given out years ago.”

“We may talk to her freely? There’s one question I’m anxious to ask her, Doctor, that I should have asked long ago. And then we have a rather grim job.”

The physician shrugged again. “I’m through trying to make people around here do what they ought to do. Every medical sign indicates that absolute rest and freedom from excitement are called for. I can only ask that you take as little time with her as possible.”

“Fair enough.”

“She’ll live forever,” said Sheila wildly. “She’ll be alive when we’re all dead.”

Dr. Innis glanced at Sheila oddly as they went to the door of Cornelia Potts’s apartment. He began to say something, but then Inspector Queen knocked softly, so he refrained. When there was no answer the Inspector opened the door and they went into the sitting room, and Dr. Innis opened the door to the bedroom.

“Mrs. Potts,” said Dr. Innis.

The Old Woman lay in her incredible bed, rather high on two fat pillows, as usual, with her eyes open and her mouth open and the lace cap a trifle askew on her head.

Sheila screamed and ran, and Charley, crying out, ran after her.

“It’s the good Lord’s gospel,” wept old Bridget. “She rings for me not an hour and a half gone, and she says I’m not to come blunderin’ in, may she rest in peace, because seein’ as how she wants to be alone, poor soul — alone with the good Lord and His heavenly saints, as it turns out, but how was a miserable sinner like me to know that? That’s all I know, sir, so help me God...Dead — the Old Woman dead! It’s like the end of the world, it is.”

Inspector Queen said harshly: “Don’t monkey with that body, Doctor.”

“I’m not monkeying,” shrilled Dr. Innis. “You asked me to examine her, and I am. This woman was my patient, and she died while under my care, and it’s my right to examine her, anyway! I have to sign the death certificate—”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” said Ellery in a weary voice. “Did Cornelia Potts die in the conventional manner, Dr. Innis, or was she assisted into the hereafter? That’s what I want to know.”

“Death from natural causes, Mr. Queen. Heart gave out, that’s all. She’s been dead about one hour.”

“Normal death.” The Inspector gnawed his mustache, eyeing that silent, pudgy corpse as if he expected it at any moment to gush blood.

“Excitement and the strain of the past week have been too much for her. I warned you this was coming.” Dr. Innis picked up his hat, bowed frigidly, and left.

“Just the same, Dr. Innis,” said the Inspector under his breath, “old Doc Prouty’s going to check your findings, and Jehovah help you if you’re covering something up! Ellery, what are you doing?”

“It might be called,” grunted Ellery, “looking over the scene of the crime, except that there seems to have been no crime, so let’s call it simply finding out what the hell Cornelia Potts had been writing when the Dark Angel paid her his long-overdue visit.”

“Writing?” The Inspector came over swiftly.

Ellery indicated the portable typewriter on its stand, beside the bed. Its case was on the floor, as if the machine had been used and death had come before the cover could be replaced. On the night table stood a large box of varisized notepapers and envelopes, its hinged lid thrown back.

“So what?” frowned the Inspector.

Ellery pointed to the dead woman’s right hand. It was almost buried in the bedclothes, and the Inspector smoothed them a little to see better. What he saw made his brows huddle together over his eyes.

In Cornelia Potts’s right hand lay a large sealed envelope, undoubtedly one of the envelopes from the box by her bed.

The Inspector snatched the envelope from the stiff hand and held it up to the light. The face bore the typewritten words: LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT. Beneath this was the scrawled signature, in the broad strokes of the soft-leaded pencils the Old Woman affected: Cornelia Potts.

“I’ve got Sheila quiet,” said Charley Paxton distractedly, running. “What is it? Murder, Ellery?”

“Dr. Innis pronounces it a natural death.”

“I won’t believe it till Doc Prouty tells me so,” said Inspector Queen absently. “Charley, here’s what we just found in Cornelia’s hand. I thought you said she had a will.”

“Yes.” Charley took the proffered envelope with a frown. “Don’t tell me she’s made a new will!”

“I hardly think so,” said Ellery. “Tell me, Charley. Did she have possession of the original of her will?” “Oh, yes.”

“Where did she usually keep it, do you know?”

“In the night-table drawer. Right by her bed.”

Ellery looked into the drawer. It was empty.

“Was it in an envelope, or loose?”

“Not in an envelope the last time I saw it.”

“Well, this is a fresh one, and the typing and signature look fresh, too, so I’d say she felt herself going, took the old will from the drawer, pulled over the portable, typed an envelope, scrawled her signature, and sealed the will in the envelope just before she died.”

“I wonder why,” mused the Inspector.

Ellery raised his brows.

The Inspector raised his shoulders. “Well, we’ll find out when the will’s opened after the funeral.” He handed Charley Paxton the sealed envelope for safekeeping, and they left the Old Woman alone in her bed.

And so Cornelia Potts was dead, and that was the end of the world, as old Bridget Conniveley had sobbed, for a number of servants, many of whom had never known another mistress; it was the end of a dynasty for certain others whose memories were yellow-tinged; and for those who had been closest to the stiffly dead it was... as nothing.

This was the remarkable thing about the Old Woman’s death. It seemed to concern none of her children — not those she loved, nor Sheila whom she hated. Sheila after that first scream had felt a weight slip from her heart. She was ashamed, and frightened — and relieved.

Sheila remained in her quarters, resting and alone. Outside her door Detective Flint smoked a five-cent panatela and read a racing form.

As for the bereaved husband, he called quietly to his crony, Major Gotch, and the two men went into Steve Brent’s room with two virgin fifths of Scotch and two whiskey glasses and shut themselves firmly in. An hour later they were singing Tahitian beach songs at the tops of their voices, uproariously.

18 Who’ll Be Chief Mourner? “I!” Said The Dove

Dr. Prouty said that this was getting to be a personal affair and perhaps he had better resign from the Medical Examiner’s office and become private mortician to the Pottses. “I’m getting to know ’em intimately,” said Doc Prouty to Ellery, on the morning when he handed Inspector Queen his official post-mortem finding in re Cornelia Potts, deceased. “Now take the Old Woman. A fighter. She gave me a battle all the way. Not like those two fine sons of hers, Bob and Mac. She was a hell-raiser, all right. Could hardly do a thing with her.”

Ellery, who was at breakfast, closed his eyes and murmured: “But the report, Prouty.”

“Aaaa, she died of natural causes,” said the Inspector before Prouty could reply. “At least that’s what his old poop’s report says.”

“What are you so grumpy about, you cantankerous fuddy-duddy?” demanded Doc Prouty. “Haven’t you had enough murders at that address? Are you disappointed?”

“Well, if she had to die,” grumbled Inspector Queen, “I wish she’d done it in such a way as to leave some clue to this screwy business. Natural death! Go on, get back to your boneyard.”

Dr. Prouty snarled and went out, muttering something about O base ingratitude thou are a viper’s fang.

Now you must believe a wonderful thing, you who have read of the Pottses and their Shoe and their duels and their laboratories and their boys who never grew up and the improbable house they all lived in.

You must believe that this woman, this Old Woman, who had once inexplicably been a child and a girl and who married a dark character named Bacchus Potts and was thereafter bewitched by his name, who had founded a dynasty and built a pyramid and lived on its apex like a queen, who had spawned three dark children and lived to defend them with her considerable cunning against their own dark natures and so defend herself against the pricks of conscience — you must believe that this Cornelia Potts, who had lived only for those three, who had built and been ruthless only for those three, who had lied and scratched and spent her substance upon those three, who had cuffed them and nurtured them and kept them out of public institutions — you must believe that she went to her grave in St. Praxed’s churchyard unattended by any of them, to lie by her sons whom she did not love and whose violent death meant no more to her than the violation of her sacred precincts — if indeed that much.

Mr. Ellery Queen took the astonishing census before and during the last rites. Mr. Queen was not interested in the details of the Old Woman’s interment. She was dead of natural causes; requiescat in pace. But the three troglodytes of her womb — ah, Confusion!

Check them off, Mr. Queen: — Louella... The mother was an old pink goddess whose claws held the lever of life. She punished, she denied, she ruled. Yes, she endeavored to love. But what is love to Louella? A mating of guinea pigs (a most interesting experiment which — Louella can watch tirelessly, and does). Love is an impediment: a wall, a wood of black and tangled depths standing between Louella and the temple, where the stuff of life may be played with in ritual worship. Good riddance, love.

Louella remains faithful to the sexless god of knowledge. In its fane there is no room for sentiment. Like all eunuchs, it is stern, and cruel, and above mankind... Louella could have seen the cortege making its way up Riverside Drive to St. Praxed’s from her tower window, but Ellery doubted if she even bothered to straighten up from her packing cases.

For in the three days between her mother’s death and funeral, Louella, the scientist, truly went mad of her science. Went mad with the relaxation of those biting claws of motherhood. Now there was no old pink goddess to say her nay, or even yea. Now there was a many-armed telephone, and the riches of all the laboratory supply houses of the world within its genie’s reach.

Equipment poured in: an electric oven, retorts, racks of brilliant new test tubes, motors, a refrigerator, chemicals in blue, and brick, and yellow, and silver, and magenta — lovely colors, lovely colors... Louella was unpacking crates, clambering over boxes, in her tower all that day when her mother was borne up the Drive to eternity.

Horatio... Horatio fascinates Ellery Queen. Horatio is a phenomenon to Ellery, a mythological figure. Ellery was unceasingly astonished to see Horatio caper about the Potts estate in the quivering flesh. It was like seeing Silenus on Times Square grinning down from the moving news sign on the Times Building. It was like having Vulcan change your tire at Ye Olde Garage.

Horatio and Death have no simpatico. Horatio is above Death. Horatio is Youth, when Death is inconceivable, even the death of the old.

Informed by Ellery and Charley Paxton of his mother’s death, Horatio scarcely turned a hair. “Come, come, gentlemen. Death is an illusion. My mother is still in that house, in her bed, being crotchety about something.” Horatio tossed a bean-bag frog into the air and caught it clumsily in its descent. “Always being crotchety about something, Mother,” he boomed. “Good scout at heart, though.”

“For heaven’s sake, Horatio,” cried Charley, “will you try to realize that she isn’t in the house any more? That she’s lying on a slab in the Morgue and that she’ll be buried six feet deep in a couple of days?”

Horatio chuckled indulgently. “My dear Charley. Death is an illusion. We’re all dead, and we’re all living. We die when we grow up, we live when we’re children. You’re dead right now, only you haven’t sense enough to lie down and be shoveled under. Same with you, sir,” said Horatio, winking at Ellery. “Lie down, sir, and be shoveled under!”

“Aren’t you even going to the funeral?” choked Charley.

“Gosh, no,” said Horatio. “I’ve got a swell new kite to fly. It’s simply super!” And he seized a large red apple and ran munching out into the gardens, joyously.

When the cortege passed, Horatio saw it. He must have seen it, for he was perched on the outer wall disentangling the cord of his swell new kite from the branches of an overhanging maple. He must have seen it, because instantly he turned his meaty back and jumped off the wall, abandoning his kite. He capered off towards his sugarloaf house, whistling Little Boy Blue Come Blow Your Horn bravely. Horatio didn’t believe in Death, you see.

Thurlow... Thurlow, the Terror of the Plains, is a bold bad man this day. His not to display unmanly grief before the vulgar. His to mourn in the solitude of his apartment, hugging a bottle of cognac to his plump bosom. This is the way of men who are masculine. The mother is dead — God rest her, gentlemen. But let the son alone; he mourns.

Ellery suspected other Thurlovian thoughts, in the light of subsequent events. Ellery suspected that among Thurlow’s thoughts ran one like a Wagnerian leitmotif: The Queen is dead; long live the King. Ellery suspected royalist thoughts because it was evident shortly after the funeral that Thurlow had planned — during his manly, solitary session with the cognac — to seize his mother’s ermine and seat himself upon her throne instanter.

No, Thurlow the Killer did not attend his mother’s funeral. He had too many affairs of state to think through.

So, Old Woman, this is your final bitterness, that the children you loved turned their backs on you, and the child you hated came to weep at your grave.

Sheila wept without explanation, with Charley Paxton supporting her on one side and Stephen Brent on the other. Sheila wept, and Stephen Brent did not. He followed the coffin with his eyes into the grave, whiskey-reddened eyes without expression.

Major Gotch wore an old jacket of Horatio’s, the only member of the household with a commensurate girth. The Major sneezed frequently and carried himself with great dignity. He seemed to regret the Old Woman’s passing in a bibulous sort of way. As the earth clumped on the coffin, he was actually seen to shed a tear, at which he swiped surreptitiously with the back of Horatio’s sleeve. But then a reporter was so unwise as to ask the Major what he was Major of, and where he had been honored with his Majority. Whereupon Major Gotch did an unmilitary thing: he kicked the press. There were some moments of confusion.

Another was there, a stranger both to Ellery Queen and to his father. He was an elderly gentleman with a pointed Yankee face and mild, observing eyes, dressed plainly but correctly, whom Sheila addressed as “Mr. Underhill.” Mr. Underhill had the hands of a workman. Charley Paxton presented him to the Queens as the man who managed the Potts factories.

“Knew Cornelia when she was a young woman, Inspector,” Mr. Underhill said, shaking his head. “She was always one to stand on her own two feet. I’m not saying she didn’t have faults, but she always treated me fine, and I’m darned sorry to see her go.” And he blew his nose exaggeratedly in the way men do at funerals.

No photographers allowed. No windy eulogy. Just a funeral with a handful of curious passers-by and, beyond, the police cordon.

“So that’s how the Old Woman got home,” mumbled Mr. Queen as the last shovelful of earth was patted into place by the gravedigger’s spade.

“How’s that?” The Inspector was absently searching the faces of those beyond the cordon.

“Nothing. Nothing, Dad.”

“Thought you said something. Well, that’s over.” The Inspector pulled his jacket more tightly about him. “Let’s go back to the house and listen to the reading of the will.” He sighed. “Who knows? There may be something there.”

19 The Queen Wills It

Thurlow came downstairs grasping the bottle of cognac by the neck like a scepter. “In the library?” he squeaked, stepping high. “Yes, in the library. Very nice. Nice and proper.” He paused gallantly to permit Sheila to precede him into the study. “I trust everything went off nicely at the funeral, my dear?” asked Thurlow.

Sheila swept by him with a noble loathing. Thurlow clucked, narrowed his eyes into a leer, and then, gravely, stepping higher, he crossed the threshold and waded into the study.

“Aren’t the others c-coming?” asked Steve Brent.

“I’ve sent for them twice,” replied Charles Hunter Paxton.

“What good would it do?” cried Sheila. Then she looked down and took a seat, flushing a little.

“Send for them again,” suggested Inspector Queen.

Cuttins was summoned. Yes, he had delivered Mr. Paxton’s message in person to Miss Louella and Mr. Horatio.

“Deliver it again,” said Charley irritably. “We’re not going to wait forever. Five minutes, Cuttins.”

The butler bowed and drifted off.

No one spoke as they waited.

It was late afternoon and the westering sun was being coy above the Palisades. It sliced its blades into the library through the French doors, cutting the gilt of book titles, flicking Sheila’s hair, stabbing at the dregs of gold in Thurlow’s bottle. Ellery, looking about, thought he had never beheld Nature in such an undiplomatic mood. There should be no sharp sparkle in this place; it should be all browns and glooms and dullnesses.

He turned his attention to Thurlow. Thurlow’s eyes were still narrowed in that absurd leer. I am master here, he seemed to say. Beware my wrath, for it is terrible. The Queen is dead — long live the King, and you’d better be good subjects! Read, read the will, slave; your master waits.

And Thurlow beamed upon them all: upon Sheila; upon Steve Brent, a haggard man ill at ease and out of place; upon quiet, watching Mr. Underhill; upon Major Gotch, who also sat uneasily, but in a corner, as if he felt himself tied to this house and these people only by the slenderest of Minoan threads; upon harassed Charley Paxton, who stood behind the small kneehole desk in one of the angles of the library, which he had used frequently to transact the Old Woman’s business, and tapped a nervous tattoo upon the sealed envelope Inspector Queen had entrusted to his care; upon the Queens, who stood together near the door, forgotten, watching everything.

And no one spoke, and the mahogany grandfather clock which Cornelia Potts had hauled from her first “regular” house up north pick-picked away at the silence, patiently.

Cuttins reappeared in the doorway. “Miss Louella cannot be disturbed for anything,” he announced to the opposite wall. “I am to say that she is engaged in a very important experiment. Mr. Horatio regrets that he cannot attend; I am to say that he is composing a verse and may lose his inspiration.”

Sheila shuddered.

“All right, Cuttins. Close the door,” said Charley.

Cuttins backed away; the Inspector made sure the door was shut. Charley picked up the sealed envelope.

“Just a moment,” said Inspector Queen. He advanced to the desk and turned to face Thurlow. “Mr. Potts, you understand why I’m here?”

Thurlow blinked, looking uncertain. Then he beamed. “As a friend, of course. A friend in our sad troubles.”

“No, Mr. Potts. As the officer in charge of the investigation of two murders which occurred in this house. I admit they’re posers, and that we know very little about them, not even the motive... for sure. That’s why I’m interested in your mother’s will. Do you grasp that?”

Thurlow shrank a little. “Why do you tell me these things?” he asked in frightened tones. The King had run to cover.

“You’re head of the family now, Mr. Potts, the eldest.” Thurlow swelled again. “I want you to be sure everything’s aboveboard. This envelope—” the Inspector took it from Charley — “was found in your mother’s dead hand upstairs. The flap was pasted down tight, as you see it. We have not opened the envelope. It says it’s Cornelia Potts’s will, and it has her signature on it, but we’ve no way of knowing until it’s opened for the first time, here in this room, whether it’s her old will, which was made out many years ago, or a new will which she typed and signed just before she died.

“The odds are it’s the old will, because we can find no one in the house who witnessed her signature the other day, as would have had to be done if your mother had made a new will. But new or old, this is her will, and I want you to be satisfied that nobody’s putting one over on you or anybody else who might be mentioned in it. All clear, Mr. Potts?”

“Of course, of course,” said Thurlow grandly, waving his bottle. “Very kind of you, I’m sure.”

The Inspector grunted, tossing the envelope onto the desk. “Make sure you don’t forget it, Mr. Potts,” he said mildly. “Because there are a lot of witnesses in this room who won’t.” And he returned to Ellery’s side and made a sign to Charley Paxton. Charley picked up the envelope again and ripped off an edge. He shook the envelope out. A blue-backed document fell to the desk.

“It’s the old will, Inspector,” said Charley, seizing it. “Here’s the date and the notary’s seal. You were right — she just put it into this envelope to get it ready for us... What’s this?”

A smaller envelope, bearing a few typewritten lines, had fallen out of the folds of Cornelia Potts’s will. Charley read the legend on the envelope aloud:

To be opened after the reading of my will and the election of a new President of the Potts Shoe Company.

He turned the smaller envelope over; it was sealed. Charley stared inquiringly at the Queens.

Father and son came forward eagerly and examined the small envelope.

“Same typewriter.”

“Yes, Dad. Also the same make of envelope as the larger one. There were both sizes in that box of stationery on her night table upstairs.”

“So that’s why she typed out a large envelope before she died.”

“Yes. She wrote something on the portable, enclosed it in this smaller envelope, then enclosed envelope and the will from her night table in this large envelope.” Ellery looked up at his friend. “Charley, you’d better get on with the formal reading. The sooner we can open this small envelope officially the sooner we’ll find out what I feel in my bones is a vital clue in the case.”

Charley Paxton read the will rapidly aloud. There was nothing important in it that the Queens had not heard from the Old Woman’s own lips the day the Inspector had demanded she tell him the terms of her will.

There were, as she had said, three main provisions: Upon her death her estate, after all legal debts, taxes, and expenses of the funeral had been paid, was to be divided “among my surviving children” share and share alike. Stephen, “my husband by my second marriage,” was to get no share whatever, “either in real or personal property.” The election of a new President of the Board of Directors of the Potts Shoe Company was to be held immediately upon her death, or as soon after the funeral as possible.

The Board, as currently constituted, comprised the Potts family (except for Stephen Brent Potts). The new Board was to be the same, plus Simon Bradford Underhill, superintendent of the factories, who was, like the others, to have one vote.

“While the enforcement of this provision is not strictly speaking within my powers as testatrix” (Charley Paxton read), “I nevertheless enjoin my children to obey it. Underhill knows the business better than any of them.”

There were certain minor provisions: The Potts property on Riverside Drive was to remain the joint property of “my designated heirs.” “All of my clothing is to be burned.” “My Bible, my dental plates, my wedding rings” were bequeathed to “my daughter Louella.”

That was all. No bequests to charity, no bequests to old Bridget or the other servants, no endowments to universities or gifts to churches. No specific mention of her daughter Sheila or of her sons Robert and Maclyn. Or of Major Gotch.

Thurlow Potts listened with an indulgent expression, his eyes nearly closed and his head nodding benevolently with every sentence, as if to say: “Quite so. Quite so.”

“Dental plates,” muttered the Inspector.

Charley finished reading and began to put the will down. But then he looked startled and picked it up again. “There’s a... codicil at the bottom of this last sheet, under the signatures of testatrix and witnesses,” he exclaimed. “Something typed in and typesigned ‘Cornelia Potts’...” He scanned it quickly, his eyes widening.

“What is it?” demanded Ellery Queen. “Here, let me see that, Charley.”

“I’ll read it to you,” said Charley grimly. That forbidding tone sat Thurlow upright in his chair and brought the others half out of theirs.

“It says: ‘Hold the Board of Directors meeting right after the reading of the will. As soon as a new President of the Potts Shoe Company is elected, open the enclosed sealed envelope—’ ”

“But we know that,” said Ellery with a trace of impatience. “That’s practically the same thing she typewrote on the small envelope itself.”

“Wait. This message attached to the will isn’t finished.” Charley was tense. “It goes on to say: ‘The statement inside the small envelope will tell the authorities who killed my sons Robert and Maclyn’ ”

20 The Old Woman’s Tale

Inspector Queen bounded across the room. “Give me that envelope!” He snatched it and held it fast, glaring about as if he expected someone to try to take it away from him.

“She knew,” said Sheila in a wondering voice.

“She knew?” cried her father.

Major Gotch rubbed his jaw agitatedly.

Thurlow grasped the arms of his chair.

At the door Mr. Queen had not stirred.

“Hold that blasted Board meeting right now!” the Inspector yapped. “Can’t do a thing without that Board meeting. Come on, get it over with. I want to open this envelope!” He chuckled and peered at the envelope. “She knew,” he chortled. “The old harridan knew all along, bless her.” Then he growled to Charley: “Did you hear what I said? Get it over with!”

Charley stammered something ridiculously like “Y-yes, sir,” and then he shook his head. “I’ve got nothing to do with the Board, Inspector. No power and no authority.”

“Well, who has? Speak up!”

“I should imagine if anyone has to take charge, it’s Thurlow. Cornelia was President — she’s dead. Bob and Mac were Vice-presidents — and they’re dead. Thurlow’s the only officer left.”

Thurlow rose, frightened.

“All right, Mr. Potts,” said the Inspector testily. “Don’t just stand there. Call your Board to order and start nominating, or whatever it is you’re supposed to do.”

Thurlow drew himself up. “I know my duties. Charles — I’ll sit at that desk, if you please.”

Charley shrugged and went over to sit with Sheila, who took his hand in hers but did not look at him.

Thurlow edged behind the desk, picked up a paperweight, and rapped with it.

“The meeting will come to order,” he said, and harrumphed. “As we all know, my dear mother has passed on, and—”

“Kindly omit flowers,” said Inspector Queen.

Thurlow flushed. “You make this difficult, Inspector Queen, most difficult. Things must be done decorously, decorously. Now the first question is the question of—” Thurlow paused, then continued in an acid, querulous tone, “Simon Bradford Underhill. He has not been a member of this Board—”

“Least I can do, Thurlow.” The speaker was Underhill, and he was smiling very sadly. “Cornelia’s request, you know.”

Thurlow frowned. “Yes. Yes, Underhill, I know.” He cleared his throat again. “Wouldn’t dream of having it otherwise.” He sat down suddenly in the chair behind the desk; it might almost be said that he fell down. He looked longingly at the bottle of cognac, which he had left behind him in the other chair. Then he harrumphed a few more times and said sternly: “I believe we have a quorum. I will accept nominations for the Presidency of the Board of Directors of the Potts Shoe Company.” And now Thurlow did an extraordinary thing: he rose, circled the desk, faced the unoccupied chair, said: “I nominate myself,” nodded defiantly, then went round the desk again and reseated himself. “Any other nominations?”

Sheila sprang to her feet, her dimples plunging deep. “This is the last straw! Everybody here knows you haven’t the ability to manage a peanut stand, let alone a business that earns millions every year!”

“What’s that? What’s that?” said Thurlow excitedly.

“You’d ruin the company in a year, Thurlow. My brothers Bob and Mac ran this business, and you’ve never had a single constructive thing to do with it! All you ever did was make ridiculous mistakes. And you’ve got the nerve to nominate yourself President!”

“Now Sh-Sheila,” stuttered her father. “Don’t upset yourself, d-dear...”

“Dad, you know yourself that if the twins were alive, one of them would have become the new head of the firm to take Mother’s place. You know it!”

Thurlow found his voice. “Sheila, if you weren’t a female—”

“I know, you’d challenge me to a duel,” said Sheila bitterly. “Well, your dueling days are over, Mr. Potts. And you’re not going to ruin the company. I’d nominate Daddy if he were a member of the Board—”

“Stephen?” Thurlow gazed with astonishment at his stepfather, as if he had never contemplated the possibility of such a watery character’s usurping his prerogatives.

“But since I can’t I nominate Mr. Underhill,” cried Sheila. “Mr. Underhill, please. At least you know the business, you know how to make shoes, you’re the oldest employee, you own stock in the company—”

Thurlow now turned his astonishment upon the lean old Yankee.

But Underhill shook his head. “I’m very grateful, Sheila. But I can’t accept the nomination. I’m an outsider. You know how set your mother was about keeping the firm in the family—”

Thurlow nodded vigorously. “That’s right. Underbill’s got no business sticking his nose in at all. I won’t let him be President. I’ll discharge him first—”

Color stained the old man’s cheeks. “Now that makes me mad, Thurlow. That makes me real mad. Sheila, I’ve changed my mind. I’ll accept that nomination, by Godfrey!”

The Inspector stamped. “My envelope!” he cried. “For Joe’s sake, get this musical comedy over with!”

Thurlow looked desperate. Suddenly he shouted: “Wait!” and scuttled out of the library.

The delay caused by Thurlow’s disappearance almost reduced the Inspector to tears. He kept looking at the sealed envelope piteously, looking at his watch, sending Sergeant Velie “to see what that oakum-headed fool Thurlow’s up to,” and occasionally berating Ellery in a bitter undertone for standing there and doing nothing.

“Play it out, Dad,” was all Ellery would reply.

Eventually Thurlow returned, and the meeting was resumed. Thurlow looked smug. Something bulged in his breast pocket which Sergeant Velie, who had followed him, whispered to the Inspector was “papers, some kind of papers. He’s been racin’ all over the joint wavin’ papers.”

“Meeting will come to order again,” said Thurlow briskly. “Any other nominations? No? Then we will proceed to a vote by the showing of hands. The nominees are Simon Bradford Underhill and Thurlow Potts. All those in favor of Mr. Underhill who have a legal vote on this Board please signify by raising your hands.”

Two hands went up — Sheila’s, and Underhill’s.

“Two votes for Mr. Underhill.” Thurlow smacked his lips. “Now. I have here,” and he brought out of his pocket two envelopes, unsealed, “the absentee votes of the other members of this Board, Louella Potts and Horatio Potts. I have their votes by proxy.”

Sheila paled.

“Louella Potts.” Thurlow drew from one of the envelopes a signed statement. “Votes for Thurlow Potts.” He threw down Louella’s paper with a disdainful gesture and took up the second envelope. “Horatio Potts. Votes for Thurlow Potts.” And Thurlow Potts held up one pudgy hand triumphantly. “Tally — two votes for Underhill, three for Thurlow Potts. Thurlow Potts is elected President of the Board of Directors of the Potts Shoe Company by a plurality of one.”

Thurlow rapped on the desk. “The meeting is adjourned.”

“No,” said Sheila in a voice full of hate. “No!”

Charley gripped her shoulder.

“Finished?” Inspector Queen strode forward. “In that case, we’ll get down to business. Ellery, open this smaller envelope!”

Ellery wielded a letter knife on Cornelia Potts’s envelope, slowly. This letter was going to do something final to the Potts murder case: it would name the murderer. Why this should annoy him Mr. Queen did not quite know, except the patently outlandish reason that the naming of murderers had always been a Queen specialty.

They had forgotten the small envelope in their absorption with the Board election. Now they watched him unfold a single long typewritten sheet, and scan it, and there was no sound of anything but the pick-picking of the grandfather clock.

“Well?” cried the Inspector.

Ellery replied in a quite flat voice: “This is the letter Cornelia Potts wrote. It is dated the afternoon of her death, the time specified being 3.35 P.M. The message goes:

I, Cornelia Potts, being of sound mind and in full possession of my faculties, and knowing that I am shortly to die of my heart ailment, and in prayer that I may be forgiven in Heaven for what I have done, make this statement:

I ask not the world to judge me, for what I have done will be condemned by the world as if it were a fixed jury and I know that its judgment will be prejudiced.

Only a mother knows what motherhood is, how the mother loves the weak and hates the strong.

I have always loved my children Thurlow, Louella, and Horatio. Their weaknesses cannot be laid to them. They are what they are because of their father, my first husband. This I came to know shortly after he disappeared; and I have never forgiven him for it. May he rot. I took his name and made something of it; it is more than he ever did for me or mine.

My first children have always needed me, and I have always been their strength and their defender. The children of my second marriage have never needed me. I hated the twins for their independence and their strength; I hate Sheila for hers. Their very existence has been a daily reminder to me of the folly and tragedy of my first marriage, to Bacchus Potts. I have hated them since their childhood for their health, for their laughter, for their cleverness, for their sanity.

I, Cornelia Potts, killed my twin sons Robert and Maclyn.

It was I who substituted the bullet for the blank cartridge the police had put into Thurlow’s weapon. It was I who took the Harrington & Richardson revolver from Thurlow’s hiding place with which I held up the newspaper people and made them leave my estate. Later it was I who stole one of Thurlow’s other guns and hid it from the police and went with it into my son Maclyn’s bedroom in the middle of the night and shot him with it — yes, and whipped him.

I will be called a monster. Perhaps. Let the world cast stones at me — I shall be dead.

I confess these crimes of my own free will, and let this be an end to them. I will answer for them before my Creator.

“The letter,” continued Ellery Queen in the same even voice, “is signed in the usual soft-pencil scrawl, ‘Cornelia Potts.’ Dad,” he said, “let’s have a look at the Old Woman’s other two written signatures — the one on the big envelope and the one on the will.”

It was still in the room.

Ellery looked up. “The signature on this confession,” he announced, “is the authentic handwriting of Cornelia Potts.”

Sheila threw back her head and laughed and laughed.

“I’m glad,” she gasped. “I’m glad! Glad she was the one. Glad she’s dead. Now I’m free. Daddy’s free. We’re safe. There won’t be any more murders. There won’t be any more murders. There won’t be any...”

Charley Paxton caught her as she crumpled.

The Inspector very carefully pocketed Cornelia Potts’s will, her confession, and the two envelopes.

“For the record,” he grunted. The Inspector looked tired, but relaxed. He glanced about the empty study, the overturned chair in which Sheila had been sitting, the desk, the books twinkling their titles in the playful sun. “That’s that, Ellery. Case of Potts and Potts kaput, killed off like a case of Irish whiskey at a wake.” He sighed. “A nasty business from beginning to end, and I’m glad to be rid of it.”

“If you are rid of it,” said Ellery fretfully.

The Inspector stiffened. “If? Did you say ‘if,’ son?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Don’t go highfalutin on me, for cripe’s sake,” groaned the Inspector. “Aren’t you ever satisfied?”

“Not when there’s a ragtag end.”

“Talk English!”

Ellery lit a cigarette. He blew smoke at the ceiling without relish, swinging his leg idly against the desk on which he was perched. “One thing bothers me, Dad. I wish it didn’t but it does.” He frowned. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to sweep it out of my skull.”

“What’s that?” asked his father, almost with fear.

“There’s still a gun missing.”