“It’s the ghost of an unsolved murder mystery.”
“Murder mystery!”
“Unsolved?” said Ellery.
“The house was then occupied by a family of five,” chuckled their chauffeur, “a father, a mother, and three grown children. The two sons were bugs on hunting and they had a regular arsenal. One night the father’s body was found in the Gun Room. He’d been shot to death. It couldn’t have been suicide, the servants were away, and from the physical evidence an outside murderer was out of the question. It had to be someone in the house that night, and the only ones in the house that night were the mother and the three grown children. Revolting, hey?”
Ellery stirred.
“Humor him!” whispered Nikki.
“Mark’s just making this up,” said Inspector Queen heartily. “Mark, I’m soaked to the hide. Have you lost your way?”
Haggard laughed again. But then he hurled the station wagon around another car, cursing, and Ellery shuddered. “And the best part of it was that nobody ever suspected the father’d been murdered. Not even the police.”
“You see?” said the Inspector in a beamy voice. “Fairy tales. Mark, get there!”
“But keep talking,” said Ellery. “Just how was the murder concealed?”
“Simplest thing in the world. One of the sons was a medical doctor and the other was an undertaker. The son who was a doctor made out a false death certificate and the son who was an undertaker prepared the body for burial.” Haggard’s laugh mingled with the rain and the thunder. “So murder didn’t out after all. And it won’t unless somebody can read those three clues.”
“Oh, there were clues,” said Ellery.
“This has gone far enough,” said the Inspector sharply. “Are you sure, Mark, you’re not driving around in circles?” He peered through a window, but they might have been crossing the Styx.
“What were they, Mark?”
“Ellery,” moaned Nikki.
“The bullet which killed the father came from a .38 revolver. There were two .38 revolvers in the Gun Room. So the two .38s were clues—”
“Ballistics checkup,” mumbled the Inspector.
“Oh, no,” chuckled Mark Haggard. “The bullet passed right through the body and smashed against the bricks of the fireplace. And both guns had been cleaned after the murder.”
“And the third clue?”
“You’ll love it, Ellery. It was found by the sons in their father’s hand.”
“Oh? What was it?”
“A pair of dice. Very famous bones they are, too, bloody as hell.” And Haggard laughed and laughed.
After a moment Ellery said, “All this happened... when did you say, Mark?”
“I didn’t. Ten years ago.”
“Ten—!” The Inspector checked himself.
“Would you care to see the two revolvers and the dice?”
“Do you have them?”
“Oh, yes,” said Mark. “In a wooden box at home.”
“Now that’s going too far!” exploded the Inspector. “Mark, either stop this foolishness or turn around and drive us back to the railroad station!”
Mark Haggard laughed again. The lightning flashed, and for a photographic instant they saw his lumpish eyes, the blueness about the black stubble, the dance of his hands on the wheel.
Ellery heard Nikki’s teeth. “M-Mister Haggard,” she chattered, “what do you and your brother d-do for a living?”
“Tracy is a physician,” Haggard cried, “and I’m an undertaker.” The station wagon slid to a cascading stop, throwing them violently forward. Mark Haggard sprang into the darkness, and from the darkness they heard him shout, “Get out, get out, we’re here!” like some demon commanding them to his pleasure.
This was the beginning of an historic night... darkest history. They could make out nothing of the house, but a porch creaked underfoot and things banged somewhere gleefully. Ellery could feel the revolt in Nikki as she held on to him. Mark Haggard’s right fist crashed repeatedly against an invisible door.
“Damn you, Malvina, open the door! Why’d you lock it?”
A creature in a white negligee of the flowing drapery variety stood there, holding aloft in her left hand—Nikki giggled something about a lefthanded Statue of Liberty—a candle in a black candlestick. The face behind the candle was blanker than her robe. Only the eyes had life, a peering kind of life.
“I’m glad you’ve come back, Mark,” she said in a perfectly lifeless voice. “The lights went out and then a hot flash followed me all over the house. Wherever I went, it was hot, and it burned, Mark, it burned me. Why did the lights go out?”
“Hot what?” muttered the Inspector.
Haggard tried a wall switch. “Power failure—!”
“It burns, Mark,” his sister intoned.
“Malvina, these are some people visiting us. Give me that candle! I’ll get a couple of flashlights.” Mark Haggard’s right hand seized the candlestick and the flame darted off, leaving them in darkness, with the white-robed woman.
“Malvina, you remember me, don’t you?” The Inspector might have been wheedling a child. “Your father’s friend? Richard Queen?”
“No.” That was all she said, in the toneless tones; after that inhuman sound, no one said anything. They shivered in the dark among their weekend bags, waiting dully for Mark Haggard’s return. The house was deathly cold, with a dampness that attacked like acid.
Mark returned in another rage. “No lights, no heat, no dinner prepared, Tracy gone out on a sick call, servants off somewhere—Malvina! Where the devil are Bessie and Connors?”
“They left. They were going to kill me. I chased them with a kitchen knife and they ran away. And Tracy went away, too. My own brother a doctor, and he doesn’t care that the hot flashes burn me...” They heard a horrible snuffing, and they realized the creature was crying.
Mark thrust a flashlight into Ellery’s hand, wielding his own in crazy swoops that touched bare floors, shrouded furniture, his weeping sister. “Stop it or you’ll have another fit—” She had it, on the floor, writhing like a frying soul, and screaming, screaming. “—! If Tracy hadn’t — No! I’ll handle her alone. Go to your rooms—head of the stairs. You’ll find some bread and a can of sardines in the kitchen—”
“Couldn’t eat a thing,” mumbled Inspector Queen. “Wet clothes... go to bed...”
But Haggard was gone, running with his sister in his arms, her draperies trailing, the beam of light painting wild parabolas on the darkness. The Inspector said simply, “We’d better get dry, rest awhile, and then clear out.”
“How about now?” said Nikki. “I sometimes enjoy being wet, and I’m not the least bit tired. I’m sure we could call a cab—”
“While a ten-year-old unsolved murder drifts around the premises crying for its mate?” Ellery glanced up into the black hole of the staircase, his jaw out. “I’m sticking the weekend.”
Inspector Queen was stretched on one of the icy twin beds, and Nikki whimpered in the bedroom beyond—she had promised hysterics at the suggestion that in the interests of propriety the communicating door be shut—when the men’s door burst open and light invaded the room. From the other room Nikki squealed, and the Inspector heaved twelve inches toward the ceiling. Ellery dropped a shoe, definitely.
But it was only Mark Haggard, grinning. He was carrying an electric lantern in one hand and a battered old wooden box the size of a cigar humidor in the other. “The clues to the murder,” he chuckled. “Old Mark Elephant!” He slammed the box down on the highboy nearest the door.
Haggard kept looking at Ellery, teeth glittering from the underbrush of stubble. The Inspector scrambled out of bed in his nightshirt as Ellery slowly opened the box.