The Quick and the Dead: There Was an Old Woman by Ellery Queen

Author:Ellery Queen [Queen, Ellery]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Google: IXf3ugAACAAJ
Publisher: Pan
Published: 1961-11-14T12:00:00+00:00

* * *

“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.”

Chapter 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 sons funeral.

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