“They’re all gone. All three.” Doc Strong looked up fiercely. “Who poisoned their bugle?”
“God Almighty, don’t look at me,” said Andy Bigelow. “Anybody could of, Doc.”
“Anybody, Andy?” the mayor cried. “When Caleb Atwell died, Zach took the bugle and it’s been in this house for a year!”
“Anybody could of,” said Bigelow stubbornly. “The bugle was hangin’ over the fireplace and anybody could of snuck in durin’ the night... Anyway, it wasn’t here before old Caleb died; he had it up to last Memorial Day. Who poisoned it in his house?”
“We won’t get anywhere on this tack, Doc,” Ellery murmured. “Bigelow. Did your grandfather ever let on where that Civil War treasure is hidden?”
“Suppose he did.” The man licked his lips, blinking, as if he had been surprised into the half-admission. “What’s it to you?”
“That money is behind the murders, Bigelow.”
“Don’t know nothin’ about that. Anyway, nobody’s got no right to that money but me.” Andy Bigelow spread his thick chest. “When Ab Chase died, Gramp was the last survivor. That money was Zach Bigelow’s. I’m his next o’ kin, so now it’s mine!”
“You know where it’s hid, Andy.” Doc was on his feet, eyes glittering. “Where?”
“I ain’t talkin’. Git outen my house!”
“I’m the law in Jacksburg, too, Andy,” Doc said softly. “This is a murder case. Where’s that money?”
Bigelow laughed.
“You didn’t know, Bigelow, did you?” said Ellery.
“Course not.” He laughed again. “See, Doc? He’s on your side, and he says I don’t know, too.”
“That is,” said Ellery, “until a few minutes ago.”
Bigelow’s grin faded. “What are ye talkin’ about?”
“Zach Bigelow wrote a message this morning, immediately after Doc Strong told him about Abner Chase’s death.”
Bigelow’s face went ashen.
“And your grandfather sealed the message in an envelope—”
“Who told ye that?” yelled Bigelow.
“One of your children. And the first thing you did when we got home from the burying ground with your grandfather’s corpse was to sneak up to the old man’s bedroom. Hand it over.”
Bigelow made two fists. Then he laughed again. “All right, I’ll let ye see it. Hell, I’ll let ye dig the money up for me! Why not? It’s mine by law. Here, read it. See? He wrote my name on the envelope!”
And so he had. And the message in the envelope was also written in ink, in the same wavering hand:
Dere Andy now that Ab Chase is ded to—if sumthin happins to me you wil find the money we been keepin all these long yeres in a iron box in the coffin wich we beried Caleb Atwell in. I leave it all to you my beluved grandson cuz you been sech a good grandson to me. Yours truly Zach Bigelow.
“In Caleb’s coffin,” choked Doc Strong.
Ellery’s face was impassive. “How soon can you get an exhumation order, Doc?”
“Right now,” exclaimed Doc. “I’m also deputy coroner of this district!”
And they took some men and they went back to the old burying ground, and in the darkening day they dug up the remains of Caleb Atwell and they opened the casket and found, on the corpse’s knees, a flattish box of iron with a hasp but no lock. And, while two strong men held Andy Bigelow to keep him from hurling himself at the crumbling coffin, Doctor-Mayor-Chief of Police-Deputy Coroner Martin Strong held his breath and raised the lid of the iron box.
And it was crammed to the brim with moldy bills of large denominations.
In Confederate money.
No one said anything for some time, not even Andy Bigelow.
Then Ellery said, “It stood to reason. They found it buried in the cellar of an old Southern mansion—would it be Northern greenbacks? When they dug it up again after the War and brought it up to Jacksburg they probably had some faint hope that it might have some value. When they realized it was worthless, they decided to have some fun with it. This has been a private joke of those three old rascals since, roughly, 1865. When Caleb died last Memorial Day, Abner and Zach probably decided that, as the first of the trio to go, Caleb ought to have the honor of being custodian of their Confederate treasure in perpetuity. So one of them managed to slip the iron box into the coffin before the lid was screwed on. Zach’s note bequeathing his ‘fortune’ to his ‘beloved grandson’ — in view of what I’ve seen of his beloved grandson today—was the old fellow’s final joke.”
Everybody chuckled; but the corpse stared mirthlessly and the silence fell again, to be broken by a weak curse from Andy Bigelow and Doc Strong’s puzzled: “But Mr. Queen, that doesn’t explain the murders.”
“Well, now, Doc, it does,” said Ellery; and then he said in a very different tone: “Suppose we put old Caleb back the way we found him, for your re-exhumation later for autopsy, Doc—and then we’ll close the book on your Memorial Day murders.”
Ellery closed the book in town, in the dusk, on the porch of Cissy Chase’s house, which was central and convenient for everybody. Ellery and Nikki and Doc Strong and Cissy and Andy Bigelow—still clutching the iron box dazedly—were on the porch, and Lew Bagley and Bill Yoder and everyone else in Jacksburg, it seemed, stood about on the lawn and sidewalk, listening. And there was a touch of sadness to the soft twilight air, for something vital and exciting in the life of the village had come to an end.
“There’s no trick to this,” began Ellery, “and no joke, either, even though the men who were murdered were so old that death had grown tired waiting for them. The answer is as simple as the initials of their last names. Who knew that the supposed fortune was in Confederate money and therefore worthless? Only the three old men. One or another of the three would hardly have planned the deaths of the other two for possession of some scraps of valueless paper. So the murderer has to be someone who believed the fortune was legitimate and who—since until today there was no clue to the money’s hiding place—knew he could claim it legally.
“Now of course that last-survivor-take-all business was pure moonshine, invented by Caleb, Zach, and Abner for their own amusement and the mystification of the community. But the would-be murderer didn’t know that. The would-be murderer went on the assumption that the whole story was true, or he wouldn’t have planned murder in the first place.
“Who would be able to claim the fortune legally if the last of the three old men—the survivor who presumably came into possession of the fortune on the deaths of the other two—died in his turn?”
“Last survivor’s heir,” said Doc Strong, and he rose.
“And who is the last survivor’s heir?”
“Zach Bigelow’s grandson, Andy” And the little mayor of Jacksburg stared hard at Bigelow, and a grumbling sound came from the people below, and Bigelow shrank against the wall behind Cissy, as if to seek her protection. But Cissy only looked at him and moved away.
“You thought the fortune was real,” Cissy said scornfully, “so you killed Caleb Atwell and my great-grandpa so your grandfather’d be the last survivor so you could kill him the way you did today and get the fortune.”
“That’s it, Ellery,” cried Nikki.
“Unfortunately, Nikki, that’s not it at all. You all refer to Zach Bigelow as the last survivor—”
“Well, he was,” said Nikki in amazement.
“How could he not be?” said Doc Strong. “Caleb and Abner died first—”
“Literally, that’s true,” said Ellery, “but what you’ve all forgotten is that Zach Bigelow was the last survivor only by accident. When Abner Chase died early this morning, was it through poisoning, or some other violent means? No, Doc, you were absolutely positive he’d died of a simple cerebral hemorrhage—not by violence, but a natural death. Don’t you see that if Abner Chase hadn’t died a natural death early this morning, he’d still be alive this evening? Zach Bigelow would have put the bugle to his lips this afternoon, just as he did, just as Caleb Atwell did a year ago... and at this moment Abner Chase would have been the last survivor.