There Was an Old Woman

by Ellery Queen

  "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; reguiescat 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, l
ovely 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 simpático. 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 com
posing 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. AU 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.