Authors: Ellery Queen
“Lovely girl you have here, Bella,” said Everett “Lovely.”
“Thank you, Mr. Livingston,” Amy murmured.
“Ev. No, really, Amy, let's cool off in the pond.”
“Don't,” Olivia said to Amy again.
“And you, Samuel,” said the old lady, setting her teacup down. “You lost yours in oil and mines, didn't you? The latest, I hear, is uranium.”
“Was,” said Samuel Junior, reaching for a peanut-butter sandwich. “Was, Bella. Yes, you find us all financially mortified, which I take it is the point of all this.”
“In fact,” said Everett, but looking at Amy, “broke.”
“Of course, in my case there's always dear old Charles,” said Olivia. “My Texas oil admirer, Bella. But Charles has such filthy table manners.”
“Marry him anyway, GaGa,” her brother Everett urged. “If he'd finance that basketball deal I'd cut him in for forty-five percent. And maybe five for little you.”
“Don't be vulgar, Ev.”
“Don't be stupid, Ev,” said Samuel Junior. “Charlie Waggoner sold me the wells I dropped a quarter of a million in.”
There was a lull. The old lady kept smiling at them. Amy began to feel uncomfortable.
“All right, Bella dear.” Samuel Junior smiled back. “You've had your best fears confirmed. Why the summons?”
“I'll tell you after supper, Samuel. Herbert Wentworth's coming.”
“Father's old legal beagle?”
“Old Mr. Wentworth's been dead for years. His son took over the management of the estate.”
“That'll be real jolly,” said Everett Livingston. “Amy, at least let's walk down to the pond for a
look
. I'll show you where I once almost drowned GaGa.”
“Show
me
,” said Olivia grimly, rising. “Excuse us?”
Samuel Junior wandered off after them.
When the three had disappeared, Amy said quietly, “Aren't you overexciting yourself, Mother Livingston?”
“You do know me, dear, don't you?” The old lady's cheeks were bright pink. “By the way, Olivia is taking care of Everett, I'm glad to see, so don't worry.”
“As long as I stay out of a bikini I imagine I'm safe,” said Amy, smiling. “You're sure you're all right?”
“Just fine, dear.”
But Amy fretted about her all through supper. Olivia chattered about Cannes and the international set, a rather sulky Everett diagrammed the blood lines of a racing thoroughbred he was thinking of buying, and Samuel Junior gallantly commended the currant pie, while the old lady's pinkness deepened.
Herbert Wentworth arrived on the tick of eight. He was a cadaverous Yankee with a voice like a water-logged harp.
There was no mistaking where Mr. Wentworth's sympathies lay. “I'll go over this with no hems and no haws,” he announced frigidly when they were all settled in the vast crypt of the drawing room. “Under the terms of Samuel R. Livingston's will, each of his three children was left one million dollars, supposedly aggregating the bulk of his fortune. The widow was left the real and personal property plus the residuary estate. This was believed at the time to be just enough to take care of Mrs. Livingston's needs.
“How
ever
.” Mr. Wentworth surveyed the prodigals without joy. “A secret codicil to your father's will enjoined my father, as administrator of the estate, from disclosing the true state of affairs to you; and your stepmother was directed to keep it a secret from you, too.”
“Why?” demanded Everett.
His sister said softly, “Shut up,
darling
.”
“Because,” retorted the lawyer with a smack of his dentures, “your father was worth a whole lot more than he let on, and he didn't want you to know it till you became responsible enough to handle it. Samuel Livingston didn't think his children had the proper respect for capital.”
“So”âand they all turned at the sound of her voice to stare at Bella Livingstonâ“your father left it up to me to decide whenâif everâyou were to get it. Herbert, read the codicil.”
Mr. Wentworth took a rather worn document from his briefcase and read it through in a resounding twang. Then he handed it to Samuel Junior. Samuel Junior read it and passed it to his brother. Everett read it and tossed it to his sister. Olivia studied it for some time before she handed it back to the lawyer.
“The codicil doesn't mention figures,” Olivia said brightly. “How much does it amount to, Bella?”
The old lady glanced at her, and Olivia flushed.
“For a long time I thought Sam was wrong to deprive you of the extra money just because of me. So years ago I made a will leaving everything to you three in equal shares. But”âand at the word the trio grew very stillâ“now I know that Sam's fears about you were justified. Give me one good reason why I should leave the money to you.”
“The best reason in the world, Bella,” Olivia said reasonably. “The money was Father's and we're his children.”
“The money is mine, and how have you ever treated me? Any of you?”
There was a silence. Amy began to wish she could get out of the room without being noticed.
“Why, very decently, I've always thoughtâ” began Everett in a hearty tone.
“Everett, what date is my birthday?”
Everett glanced swiftly at Olivia, who just as swiftly turned to her elder brother.
“Don't look at me,
I
don't know, either,” said Samuel Junior. “You're perfectly right, old dear, we've been absolute swine. But, Bella,” her eldest stepchild asked ruefully, “who else is there to leave it to?”
“Amy.”
Amy almost fell off the arm of the old lady's chair. The waxy hand reached up to touch her.
“Since your father was taken from me, this child has been the only soul in the world who's cared if I lived or died. She's run my house, fed me, read to me, managed my card parties, rubbed my feet, cheered me up, nursed me through a heart attack. She's devoted her young life to keeping me comfortable and happy, for no reward but the salary I pay her. I couldn't love Amy Upham more if she were my own.
“But you three
are
my husband's children,” Bella Livingston went on with some difficulty, “and it's been very hard knowing the right thing to do. That's why I had to see you again. I know Dr. Farnham doesn't think my heart will survive another attack. I've got to make a decision one way or the other, and do it soon.”
The stout old body struggled to rise. Amy helped her, hardly knowing what she was doing.
“I've given myself till Sunday to decide about a new will,” said the old lady; and she went out leaning on Amy's arm.
That was a Friday evening.
At seven-thirty Sunday morning Amy, still in her bathrobe, trudged upstairs from the kitchen with the old lady's “wake-up” coffee, entered the master bedroom with a cheerful “
Good
morning!” and found Bella Livingston glaring back at her from the huge curly-maple bed, dead.
On Tuesday morning next, the shrilling of his telephone roused one Ellery Queen from his sleep in his Manhattan apartment, and a twanging voice identified the caller as one Attorney Herbert Wentworth of Wrightsville. Mr. Wentworth, it appeared, was sorry to be phoning so early but it was at the urgent suggestion of Mr. Queen's friend Chief of Police Dakin, and could Mr. Queen catch the next plane for Boston and the Wrightsville connecting plane? Old Mrs. Bella Livingston had died Sunday and Chief Dakin was sure now it was murder, and a real baffler at that.
“At first, Mr. Queen,” said Chief Dakin, looking more like a sorrowing Abe Lincoln than ever, “Amy thought old Bella had died of a heart attack. But something about the look of things made her phone Mr. Wentworth and me without waking up the three Livingstons. On Coroner Grupp's and the lab's reports I'm satisfied now that one of those three snuck into the old lady's bedroom in the middle of the night of Saturday-Sunday, around three
A
.
M
., and held a pillow over her face till she smothered to death. The thing is, which one? Nothing to tell that I can see, and I've questioned 'em and studied reports till I'm blue in the face.”
“Murder.” Mr. Wentworth sounded soggy.
Ellery looked the room and the reports over for the fourth time. Dakin had driven him from the airport to the mansion on the Hill, saying that with everyone over at Willis Stone's Eternal Rest Mortuary on Upper Whistling, where the services were going on, they would have the Livingston place to themselves.
The emptiness of the big old house had weight.
“I see nothing here, Dakin,” Ellery said at last. “Let's go downstairs and talk.”
The silence was less oppressive in the drawing room.
“Now, Mr. Wentworth, about the old lady's visit to your office.”
“There were two visits, Mr. Queen. The first was a week ago Monday, four days before those three got to town. Morris Hunker drove her to High Villageâ”
“Alone?”
“Yes. She'd come in, she said, to ask me what the right wording of a holograph will would be âin case' she wanted to write one. I gave her a sample will form, told her it wasn't a smart idea for anybody to try and write her own will, she just thanked me politely, and left.”
“What about her second visit?”
“That was Saturdayâmorning after the conference here, when she told 'em they were her heirs but she was thinking of changing the will. She used the excuse of a D.A.R. lunch in High Village to come down to my office in a taxi without anyone knowing, not even Amy. She brought with her a new will she told me she'd written out late Friday nightâa will, she said, that nobody knew about yet.”
“Decided not to wait for Sunday after all.” Ellery nodded. He looked grim. “She must have decided that urgency was the order of the day. What does her new will provide, Mr. Wentworth?”
“Don't know. It was on a single sheet, folded so only the space for the signatures showed. My law clerk and my office girl witnessed her signature, she sealed the envelope herself in our presence, and she waited till I locked it up in my office safe.”
“Somebody's in for a real shock.” Chief Dakin glanced at his watch. “They're about ready to bury old Bella now.”
Ellery rose. “Let's get out to the cemetery.”
He was puzzled, and he thought the funeral might tell him something.
The Livingston plot on the sunny west slope of Twin Hill Cemetery smelled of breeze, grass, and grief. All the tottering Hill contingent were there, Bella Livingston's lifelong friendsâHermione Wright, the Granjon clan, the Wheelers, the Minikins, Judge Eli Martin, Emmeline DuPré, and the rest; Amy Upham, her pretty face swollen, stricken, and lost; old Dorcas weeping and Morris Hunker honking his nose; and Bella Livingston's three stepchildren tightly knotted, but with no false show of sorrow. Ellery thought it clever of them.
He watched them closely as Dr. Doolittle lowered his Book and the silent scattering began. But the three merely made the slow correct march back to the Lincoln and there waited patiently for Amy.
And back at the house on the Hill they were unreadable, too. Chief Dakin introduced Ellery with calculated brutality as “come up from New York to look into Bella's murder.” Amy clung to Mr. Wentworth as if he were her one remaining tether to the past, seeming hardly to realize why Ellery was there. But the Livingstons chatted with him charmingly; and when the lawyer produced a long envelope sealed with red wax and, clearing his throat, asked everyone to be seated, they nested down side by side in the dead old lady's slip-covered sofa with martinis in their hands and just the right air of well-bred expectancy.
They remained that way while Wentworth broke the seal and opened the envelope and took out a sheet of white onionskin paper ⦠while he unfolded it and held it up to the sunlight coming in through the bay window so that line after line of closely spaced handwriting showed through. Only when he read the date did their sad smiles stiffen.
“âI, Bella Bluefield Livingston, residing at 410 Hill Drive, Wrightsville,'” Mr. Wentworth's damp twang informed them, “âdo hereby make, publish, and declare this to be my last will and testament,
revoking all other and former wills and codicils heretofore made by me
â¦'”
So there was the ending before the story was well begun.
Everett's shrug was a masterwork:
That is definitely that
, it said.
Nice going, girl
, was the message of Olivia's smile to Amy Upham. And Samuel Junior stared into his empty cocktail glass and its obvious symbolism like the gentleman-philosopher he appeared to be.
And yet to one of them, Ellery mused, it must be a sickening blow. There was something to be said for the discipline of breeding, at that.
He went over to follow the shaky but determined handwriting on the paper in Wentworth's hands as a cover for his surveillance. Provision for funeral expenses, payments of debts and taxes, the Wentworth law firm as administrator, bequests to Dorcas Bondy, Morris Hunker, and several Wrightsville charities ⦠Then:
“âThe property on Hill Drive, both real and personal, and the income from the residue of my estateâthe principal value of which totals about $1,000,000âI leave to my dear young friend and companion Amy Upham, for the duration of her lifetime. On Amy Upham's death the principal estate is to pass to my late husband's three children, Samuel Junior, Everett, and Olivia, in equal shares; or in the event of the predecease of any or all of them, to his or their heirs or assigns.'”
Ellery could only admire them. In a body they rose and went to Amy, struck dumb in her chair, and congratulated her as sportsmen gracefully acknowledge a race well run but lost.
“Well, gentlemen,” said Samuel Junior, turning to them, “that would seem to settle that.”
“Yes,” said Ellery, “but not the question of who smothered Bella Livingston three nights ago.”