The procession—near every car in Jacksburg, Doc Strong announced proudly, over a hundred of them—got under way at exactly two o’clock.
Nikki had been embarrassed but not surprised to find herself being handed into the leading car, an old but brightly polished touring job contributed for the occasion by Lew Bagley; for the moment Nikki spied the ancient, doddering head under the Union Army hat in the front seat she detected the fine Italian whisper of her employer. Zach Bigelow held his papery frame fiercely if shakily erect between the driver and a powerful red-necked man with a brutal face who, Nikki surmised, was the old man’s grandson, Andy Bigelow. Nikki looked back, peering around the flapping folds of the flag stuck in the corner of the car. Cissy Chase was in the second car in a black veil, weeping on a stout woman’s shoulder. So the female Yankee from New York sat back between Ellery and Mayor Strong, against the bank of flowers in which the flag was set, and glared at the necks of the two Bigelows, having long since taken sides in this matter. And when Doc Strong made the introductions, Nikki barely nodded to Jacksburg’s sole survivor of the Grand Army of the Republic, and then only in acknowledgment of his historic importance.
Ellery, however, was all deference and cordiality, even to the brute grandson. He leaned forward, talking into the hairy ear.
“How do I address your grandfather, Mr. Bigelow? I don’t want to make a mistake about his rank.”
“Gramp’s a general,” said Andy Bigelow loudly. “Ain’t you, Gramp?” He beamed at the ancient, but Zach Bigelow was staring proudly ahead, holding fast to something in a rotted musette bag on his lap. “Went through the War a private,” the grandson confided, “but he don’t like to talk about that.”
“General Bigelow—” began Ellery.
“That’s his deef ear,” said the grandson. “Try the other one.”
“General Bigelow!”
“Hey?” The old man turned his trembling head, glaring. “Speak up, bub. Ye’re mumblin’.”
“General Bigelow,” shouted Ellery, “now that all the money is yours, what are you going to do with it?”
“Hey? Money?”
“The treasure, Gramp,” roared Andy Bigelow. “They’ve even heard about it in New York. What are you goin’ to do with it, he wants to know?”
“Does, does he?” Old Zach sounded grimly amused. “Can’t talk, Andy. Hurts m’ neck.”
“How much does it amount to, General?” cried Ellery.
Old Zach eyed him. “Mighty nosy, ain’t ye?” Then he cackled. “Last time we counted it—Caleb, Ab, and me—came to nigh on a million dollars. Yes, sir, one million dollars.” The old man’s left eye, startlingly, drooped. “Goin’ to be a big surprise to the smartalecks and the doubtin’ Thomases. You wait an’ see.”
Andy Bigelow grinned, and Nikki could have strangled him.
“According to Cissy,” Nikki murmured to Doc Strong, “Abner Chase said it was only two hundred thousand.”
“Zach makes it more every time he talks about it,” said the mayor unhappily.
“I heard ye, Martin Strong!” yelled Zach Bigelow, swiveling his twig of a neck so suddenly that Nikki winced, expecting it to snap. “You wait! I’ll show ye, ye durn whippersnapper, who’s a lot o’ wind!”
“Now, Zach,” said Doc Strong pacifyingly. “Save your wind for that bugle.”
Zach Bigelow cackled and clutched the musette bag in his lap, glaring ahead in triumph, as if he had scored a great victory.
Ellery said no more. Oddly, he kept staring not at old Zach but at Andy Bigelow, who sat beside his grandfather grinning at invisible audiences along the empty countryside as if he, too, had won—or was on his way to winning—a triumph.
The sun was hot. Men shucked their coats and women fanned themselves with handkerchiefs and pocketbooks.
“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated...”
Children dodged among the graves, pursued by shushing mothers. On most of the graves there were fresh flowers.
“—that from these honored dead...”
Little American flags protruded from the graves, too.
“…gave the last full measure of devotion...”
Doc Martin Strong’s voice was deep and sure, not at all like the voice of that tall ugly man, who had spoken the same words apologetically.
“…that these dead shall not have died in vain...”
Doc was standing on the pedestal of the Civil War Monument, which was decorated with flags and bunting and faced the weathered stone ranks like a commander in full-dress uniform.
“—that this nation, under God...”
A color guard of the American Legion, Jacksburg Post, stood at attention between the mayor and the people. A file of Legionnaires carrying old Sharps rifles faced the graves.
“—and that government of the people...”
Beside the mayor, disdaining the simian shoulder of his grandson, stood General Zach Bigelow. Straight as the barrel of a Sharps, musette bag held tightly to his blue tunic.
“…shall not perish from the earth.”
The old man nodded impatiently. He began to fumble with the bag.
“Comp-’ny! Present—arms!”
“Go ahead, Gramp!” Andy Bigelow bellowed.
The old man muttered. He was having difficulty extricating the bugle from the bag.
“Here, lemme give ye a hand!”
“Let the old man alone, Andy,” said the mayor of Jacksburg quietly. “We’re in no hurry.”
Finally the bugle was free. It was an old army bugle, as old as Zach Bigelow, dented and scarred in a hundred places.
The old man raised it to his earth-colored lips.
Now his hands were not shaking.
Now even the children were quiet.
Now the Legionnaires stood more rigidly.
And the old man began to play taps.
It could hardly have been called playing. He blew, and out of the bugle’s bell came cracked sounds. And sometimes he blew and no sounds came out at all. Then the veins of his neck swelled and his face turned to burning bark. Or he sucked at the mouthpiece, in and out, to clear it of his spittle. But still he blew, and the trees in the burying ground nodded in the warm breeze, and the people stood at attention listening as if the butchery of sound were sweet music.
And then, suddenly, the butchery faltered. Old Zach Bigelow stood with bulging eyes. The Gettysburg bugle fell to the pedestal with a tinny clatter.
For an instant everything seemed to stop—the slight movements of the children, the breathing of the people, even the rustling of the leaves.
Then into the vacuum rushed a murmur of horror, and Nikki unbelievingly opened the eyes which she had shut to glimpse the last of Jacksburg’s G.A.R. veterans crumpling to the feet of Doc Strong and Andy Bigelow.
“You were right the first time, Doc,” Ellery said.
They were in Andy Bigelow’s house, where old Zach’s body had been taken from the cemetery. The house was full of chittering women and scampering children, but in this room there were only a few, and they talked in low tones. The old man was laid out on a settee with a patchwork quilt over him. Doc Strong sat in a rocker beside the body, looking very old.
“It’s my fault,” he mumbled. “I didn’t examine Caleb’s mouth last year. I didn’t examine the mouthpiece of that bugle. It’s my fault, Mr. Queen.”
Ellery soothed him. “It’s not an easy poison to spot, Doc, as you know. And after all, the whole thing was so ludicrous. You’d have caught it in autopsy, but the Atwells laughed you out of it.”