by Ellery Queen
He set out on the table the cowbell and the three sharp-pronged objects. The point of one of these was still stained with the blood of Harper’s horse. The other two were clean, bright metal.
Dillworth leaned forward and drew one of the pointed things to him with his hook.
“Caltrops,” he said wonderingly. “Where did you get these?”
My uncle was watching him, and a flicker of surprise crossed his face. “You recognize these things?”
Dillworth pushed it from him. “A cavalryman should know them. Many a charge has been undone by these wicked things. It is said that Napoleon met with them, to his cost.”
“Not only Bonaparte,” Abner said. “Thomas Harper encountered these four objects this morning and paid for it with his life.”
Amid shocked exclamations, he went on:
“At first light, someone hung this bell on a branch, to lure Harper into looking for a stray cow. It was hung at the edge of a small cliff. To complete the trap, these Devil’s tools were strewn near the bell, where a horse would step. Harper’s horse did step on one. The blood is still to be seen. Harper was thrown over the cliff. His neck was broken.”
There was silence at the table. It was plain that everyone remembered what Randolph had said about Harper’s memory and knew what the murder implied.
Anna Blackhurst broke that silence. “I propose a test. Squire Randolph, will you send for a candle?”
Randolph rubbed the side of his nose, where the tiny broken bloodvessels showed. “To what end?” he asked.
The widow’s green eyes flashed. She stretched out her right hand, slender and graceful, but clearly strong. “Let us have a trial by ordeal, Mr. Dillworth and I, as the Indians would do. I am willing to expose my good right hand to the flame to prove my innocence. Is he?”
Dillworth went pale. “You know well that no man would face a woman in such a test.”
“There is no need for such foolishness,” Abner said sharply. “By ignoring the oldest law, Harper’s killer has stepped into plain view.”
Randolph cleared his throat. “That is the second time you have referred to a law which escapes me. A Virginia law? Something carried over from England? The Sixth Commandment? Or the Tenth?”
“All those might be involved,” replied Abner. “The Sixth and Tenth Commandments are, I am certain. As to the rest, I do not know. The law which I mean is older than any of these.”
“It goes back to Adam, I suppose,” said Randolph.
“It is older than Adam.”
“Impossible!” Randolph snorted. “There is no law named before the commandments made to Adam.”
“It is not named, that is true,” Abner agreed, “but it is written in everything which was created. Think, Randolph: the Lord decreed that mountains should crumble, rocks should break, the sands of the desert should powder, all living things decay. From all this came the dust. From this dust Adam was formed. Now do you read the law?”
“It is still unclear.”
“Once again—it is stamped on every created thing and cannot be broken. This is the law: all things must change.”
Randolph nodded. He could not fault Abner’s explanation. “And by naming Harper’s murderer you will also name the forger?”
“By no means,” said Abner. “The forger is different. I suggest that the forgery was done by Morgan Roberts’ law clerk. No other person could have had the original document long enough to do it. No person here could have produced the necessary form for the deed.”
“Morgan Roberts—” Randolph began.
“Had no motive,” Abner finished. “He was an old man, and the land involved seemed of little value. Where was his gain?”
“I can hardly remember his clerk,” Randolph reflected. “McGraw. Joseph McGraw. A sickly man. He died young. He had few attractive qualities while he lived.”
Abner turned to Dillworth. “Dillworth, why did your father leave here for Baltimore?”
The ex-cavalryman was surprised. “To earn a living.”
Abner stared at him. “That completes it.”
He gestured toward the three caltrops before him and spoke to Randolph and the three disputants.
“I spoke of the oldest law, and how Harper’s murderer thought to ignore it. It is at work here.”
He touched the three caltrops. “That law decrees that everything must change. What are we told in the Sermon on the Mount? Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt. What, then, is rust?”
His question brought only silence.
He answered it himself. “Rust is nothing but the oldest law at work. Now, look at these three of Satan’s instruments. One is stained only by the blood of Harper’s horse. The other two show not the faintest blemish, not a pinpoint of rust. All are newly made.”
He turned to young Dillworth. “Dillworth, when you showed familiarity with these things, I became unsure of the picture which had formed in my mind. There were things which stood in your favor, but you could have brought these objects with you. Even so, they would have shown rust somewhere, if only faint blackening.”
Dillworth made no answer. He lifted his good hand and let it fall to the table.
Randall Dorsey started to rise from his seat. “There’s no man’s blood on my hands, in spite of this made-up law of yours!”
“No, Dorsey, I don’t believe there is,” said Abner mildly. “You could not have been at Harper’s place this morning. Martin and I both saw you hard at work when we passed your smithy.”
Anna Blackhurst laughed, and I could hear nothing but music in it. “Then you must be saying that I did all the scheming for the land, that I stole out in the last shades of night to take a man’s life. Abner, I must remind you that it is not I with theatrical connections. I am not the one skilled in pretending.”
“You have many skills,” Abner said gravely. “You know the ways of the Indian, and you know the ways they have been fought. How would Dillworth know, when he was raised in Baltimore?”
“You become more confusing, Abner,” she laughed. “First you talk of old laws, then of Indians.”
“It is simple enough,” Abner said sternly. “You heard how Harper died. The ruse with the bell is a redskin’s trick to lure a settler from his cabin. The settlers, in turn, used the deadly steel tares to penetrate moccasins and cripple prowling enemies. You knew these things. I have heard you tell of them.”
I, too, heard her voice talking of them, in the days when I carried a wooden hunting knife.
She raised her head and thrust out her chin. “Who paid Joseph McGraw to forge a deed to the land? Dillworth’s father had money. I had none.”
“Dillworth’s father had little money,” Abner replied. “Why did he go to Baltimore? Only ten minutes ago I was told ‘to earn a living.’”
Abner’s presence suddenly seemed to increase, dwarfing even Randall Dorsey’s.
“Joseph McGraw was an unloved man. And not all payment is in money. If you want an example, I give you Delilah.”
Still she did not yield. Reaching out, she swept the caltrops the length of the table. “Still, to prove your ancient law, you must say that I made these things. That is impossible.”
“Then I have a question,” said Abner. “Is your brother Tubal-cain or Cain?”
Dorsey suddenly shot to his feet. His voice shook. “Cain I am not! I said that no man’s blood is on my hands, and that is true. She said she wanted them to show in school, and I thought it was the truth. I always believed the deed to the land was a true one. But I will not defend murder.”
He looked down at Abner. “I made the caltrops for her. Yesterday.”
Stanley Ellin
The Ledbetter Syndrome
Critics are not always unanimous in their judgments, but we know of no critic who does not share Julian Symons’ critical view of Stanley Ellin. In MORTAL CONSEQUENCES (1972), Mr. Symons wrote: “[Stanley Ellin’s] work is a landmark in the history of the crime short story�
��. . .
As Chief Clerk of the county’s Hall of Records, Mr. Ince reigned with benevolent inefficiency over a pleasant domain which Women’s Liberation had either passed by or not yet arrived at. The domain, on the top floor of the county courthouse, was a spacious room cluttered with filing cabinets and metal book-racks and with a well-worn counter where the public was served. On the counter at appropriate intervals, hand-lettered signs indicated where the public was to present its queries about Births & Deaths or Marriages or Property Records (Deeds & Abstracts).
A staff of three serving under Mr. Ince provided the advertised services. Miss McCurdy and Miss Schultz, both Clerk, Grade 2, were oldtimers on the job. Mrs. Rogers, Clerk, Grade 5, was a relative latecomer. A widow, she had been a native Chicagoan, assistant to her struggling shopkeeper husband there for the twenty years of their marriage. After his unexpected death by heart failure, she had emigrated westward to the placid county seat of Kandia Falls to share life with her already widowed sister and eventually, when what little money there was had run out, had taken the necessary civil service examination and wound up as a member of Mr. Ince’s team.
So there they were, the four of them tucked away under the occasionally leaky roof of the courthouse, getting along with each other very well indeed. Cheerful dispositions were what their leader wanted around him on the job, and the ladies generally obliged. This imposed little strain on them since they all admired him intensely, a robust, high-spirited man and certainly the least demanding and most tolerant of supervisors.
And, as they sometimes had occasion to remind each other, this was a long-suffering soul who, with hardly any complaint, had to contend with a thankless marriage. How natural—and how saddening—that after a particularly bad session at home he should be led to seek solace in the bottle and so plainly show the effects at his desk the next morning. The more reason then to put on those bright and smiling faces for his comforting.
They were wrong in one regard.
What they did not know, because Mr. Ince kept the secret clutched tight to his bosom, was that when he turned to the bottle it was to drown nothing more or less than the frustrations of the failed creative artist. A devotee of murder mysteries, he had, over the long years, sent out a score of cleverly plotted murder tales to publishers from coast to coast. Those evenings when a cherished manuscript would appear in his mail on the rebound, the familiar Sorry appended to it, were the bad ones for Mr. Ince, the mornings after even worse.
But of course, as his ladies could attest, these hangovers were occasional small dark clouds passing through their sunshiny working days. Most often it was the sunshine that prevailed.
Then along came Mr. Ledbetter.
For some reason, people like to believe that in a small town everyone knows everyone else, which is a long way from the truth. The truth is that in a small town like Kandia Falls—population 20,000—everyone knows about everyone else who may be worth knowing about. Thus when Mr. Ledbetter suddenly appeared in the Hall of Records one fine morning, all present knew enough about him to be greatly surprised by this visit.
Mr. Ledbetter was rich, reclusive, and, at age fifty, as total a bachelor as one could be. Your true bachelor of fifty is seldom a big jolly fellow with carefree ways. Far from it, he is likely to be spare of build, prim of manner, and with a disposition to hypochondria.
So it was with Mr. Ledbetter, for good reason. An only child, the last of his line, delivered to his astonished and delighted parents after they had long given up hope of becoming parents, he had been an ailing little creature, swathed almost to smothering in the cotton-batting of their adoration, privately educated so that he could be kept away from any possible contamination. When in the fullness of their years his parents died, the son took one quick look at the world he would have to contend with from the presidential suite of the Ledbetter National Bank, then placed the bank’s affairs in the hands of capable surrogates and fled back to the spacious confines of the Ledbetter estate, a Victorian mansion surrounded by acres of lawn and garden on the far outskirts of town near the waters of Kandia Falls itself.
There, nursing a neurasthenic shyness, the estate in charge of a trusted houseman and whatever staff he chose to muster, Mr. Ledbetter devoted himself to a solitary life of gardening, extensive reading, coin collecting, and, of recent years, genealogical investigation of his forebears. Although he never entertained at home and was rarely seen in town, there was nothing of the misanthrope in him. An appeal to him by any respectable local cause would, if delivered by mail, be answered more than generously. In the end, although almost invisible to the community, he came to be well-regarded by it. Even the most calculating of those unmarried ladies who had seen in him the prize of a lifetime came to view his remote image with kindliness once they understood that in this lottery there would be no tickets sold. That’s the way he is, poor soul, they told each other, and took comfort in knowing they were all in the same boat.
Now here was Mr. Ledbetter standing at the counter of the Hall of Records and bearing a formal letter of introduction. The letter was from the State Commissioner of Records himself, was addressed to Mr. Ince, and was brief and to the point. Every possible courtesy was to be extended to Mr. Ledbetter, all possible assistance was to be provided him. The underlining of the every and the all gave the message an almost menacing authority.
No need for that. Mr. Ince was delighted with this turn of events, a personal contact with the town’s most sought-after and elusive citizen. At his desk, railed off at the far end of the room, he patiently extracted from his tight-lipped visitor the nature of his business. In a nutshell, it was that Mr. Ledbetter was now engaged in preparing a definitive history of his once-extensive family from that time, a century before, when they had first homesteaded in the county and helped found the town of Kandia Falls.
So, said Mr. Ledbetter, to make sure that every detail of the history was accurate, he must rely on these public files. Would need them at his fingertips for a few weeks. If that could be arranged without difficulty—
It could, indeed. On the strength of the letter from the Commissioner, a small table was commandeered from the laboratory of the County Farm Agency across the hall. A well-padded chair was carted up from the courtroom clerk’s office downstairs. Room was made for these furnishings under the large window overlooking the town square, where any available sunlight would be behind Mr. Ledbetter’s shoulder while he was at work. An added advantage to the location was that it was a good distance from the counter, thus assuring the historian a certain amount of privacy at his labors, and for this he was outspokenly grateful.
It took only a few days for all hands to familiarize themselves with their guest’s routine. Ten o’clock each morning he would arrange the contents of a swollen briefcase on his table—notebooks, charts, and index cards—and go to work with a glassy-eyed concentration, sometimes approaching Mr. Ince with a list of required documents and plat books. Only Mr. Ince was approached, no one else. At noon there would be a break for lunch, a sandwich and a small Thermos of tea extracted from the briefcase, and then it was back to work with a vengeance. Four o’clock to the minute was departure time.
Mr. Ince, who had at first welcomed the arrangement, quickly came to detest it, for sound reasons. He had always run his department on the logical assumption that what you didn’t do today was probably not worth doing tomorrow either. Now faced by someone across the room with a direct pipeline to the State Commissioner, he had to at least go through the motions. A gregarious spirit, he used to take pleasure in extended visits to old acquaintances in other departments. Now he was nailed down to his desk and, what was worse, the bottle locked in its bottom drawer could not be called on for support when needed.
Then there was the way Mr. Ledbetter remained so conspicuously aloof from the ladies on the staff, suggesting nothing so much as a Pilgrim Father on guard against a trio of threatening Jezebels. Since Miss McCurdy and Miss Schultz were well on in years and, to put it kindl
y, exceedingly plain of feature, and since Mrs. Rogers, while somewhat more pleasant-featured, was almost comically short and tubby, they might have found this rather flattering. But they did not. They were too level-headed for such nonsense. What they did feel was a mounting resentment which, only out of regard for Mr. Ince, they tried to keep tightly bottled up.
The result, of course, was the collapse of the department’s morale. Once the happiest of havens, the Hall of Records now became almost funereal in atmosphere.
To ease this situation, Mr. Ince several times deferentially asked Mr. Ledbetter to call on the ladies for information retrieval rather than lay all dependence on him. Each time, Mr. Ledbetter demonstrated a maddening stubbornness in his ways. “No, Mr. Ince. I prefer it this way.”
“The ladies are extremely competent, Mr. Ledbetter.”
“I am sure they are. But I prefer your services.”
No solution there. The one and only solution to everything, Mr. Ince morosely told himself, would be provided by time itself. After all, it was only a matter of a few weeks before this interloper took his leave for keeps.
Indeed, after a few weeks, each as nerve-racking as the one that preceded it, Mr. Ledbetter’s requests for documentation did become more and more infrequent. One day there were no requests at all. The historian, lost to the world, simply spent that day examining his notes, now and again nodding sober appreciation of them. Mr. Ince took pleased notice of this. Definitely, from the look of it, the moment of deliverance was near.
He went home that evening in comparatively high spirits. There, his wife, whose face was not often wreathed in smiles, greeted him with a face wreathed in smiles. The reason became clear when she handed him his mail, which she was honor-bound not to open. The envelope on top was from the publisher to whom Mr. Ince had sent his last novel, a wickedly contrived murder mystery where the least likely suspect, a gentle spinster, was, in fact, the murderer.
