Charlotte Armstrong - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 90, May 1951

“...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.

The old man raised it to his lips.

Now his hands were not shaking.

Now even the children were quiet.

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 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.

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.

“It’s my fault,” he mumbled. “I didn’t examine Caleb’s mouth last year. I didn’t examine the mouthpiece of the bugle. It’s my fault.”

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.”

“They’re all gone. All three.” Doc Strong looked up fiercely. “Who poisoned that 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?”

“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.

“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 box.

And it was crammed to the brim with moldy bills.

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.