“I certainly do,” Christopher said gloomily. He said nothing more, and Ellery looked at him. But all Ellery said was, “Oh, you know the Fowlers?” Then he was being introduced to Ellen.
“That Queen,” said Ellen. Ellery could have sworn, from the way her nostrils flared, that he was giving off unsocial odors. And she said nothing more.
“Well,” the Chief of Police said in a rubbing-the-hands tone of voice, “where’s the body? And did anybody notify a doctor?”
“I did, just before I telephoned you,” Wolcott Thorp said. “He’s waiting in Godfrey’s bedroom.”
“Before we go up,” suggested Ellery — and they all started — “would you people mind telling us how the body was found, and so on? To fill us in.”
They told their stories in detail up to the point of the call to headquarters.
Newby nodded. “That’s clear enough. Let’s go.”
So they went upstairs, Margaret Caswell leading the way, followed by Newby and Ellery, with the others straggling behind.
The old man was lying on the floor beside his bed. He lay on his back, his eyes fixed in the disconcerting stare of death. The front of his pajama coat was clotted with the seepage from the knife wound in his chest. There had been very little bleeding. A black-handled knife trimmed in what looked like nickel protruded from the region of his heart.
“Hello, Conk,” Ellery said to the doctor, but looking at the corpse.
“Ellery,” Dr. Farnham exclaimed. “When did you get to town?”
“Last night. Just in time, as usual.” Ellery was still looking at the dead man. “How’s Molly?”
“Blooming—”
“Never mind Old Home Week,” said Newby irritably. “What’s your educated guess, Doctor, as to the time he got it?”
“Between four and five a.m., I’d say. A good spell after the snow stopped, if that’s what you’re thinking of.”
“Speaking of the snow,” said Ellery, looking up. “Who made that double set of tracks around the house I noticed on driving up?”
“Joanne and I,” said Christopher from between his teeth.
“Oh? When did you make them, Mr. Mumford?”
“This morning.”
“You and Miss Caswell walked all around the house?”
“Yes.”
“Did you notice any tracks in the snow other than those you and Miss Caswell were making?” After a moment Ellery said, “Mr. Mumford?”
“No.”
“Not anywhere around the house?”
“No!”
“Thank you,” Ellery said. “I could remark that that’s very helpful, but I can understand that you ladies and gentlemen may have a different point of view. It means no one entered or left the house after the snow stopped falling. It means the murder was committed by someone in the house — someone, moreover, who’s still here.”
“That’s what it means, all right,” said Chief Newby with undisguised satisfaction. He was inching carefully about the room, his bleak glance putting a touch of frost on everything.
“That was intelligent of you, Chris,” Ellen Nash said viciously. “So now we’re all under suspicion. What a bloody farce!”
“You’ve got the wrong category, I’m afraid,” her brother said morosely. “As one of us, I suppose, is going to find out.”
There was a dreary moment. Jo’s fresh face held a look of complete incredulity, as if the full meaning of the trackless snow had just now struck home. Ellen was staring over at her recumbent father, her expression saying that it was all his fault. Margaret Caswell leaned against the door, her lips moving without a sound. Christopher took out a pack of cigarettes, held it awkwardly for a moment, then put it back in his pocket. Wolcott Thorp mumbled something about the absolute impossibility of it all; his tone said he wished he were back in his museum among the relics of the legitimately dead.
“The knife,” Ellery said. He was looking down again at Godfrey Mumford’s torso. “The fact that the killer left it behind, Newby, undoubtedly means that it’s useless as a clue. If it had any fingerprints on it, they probably were wiped off.”
“We’ll dust the room and knife for prints, anyway,” said the Chief. “Don’t any of you come any further than that doorway... Not that it’s going to do us any good, as you say, Ellery. You people — I take it you’ve all been in this bedroom in the last day or so at one time or another?” He shrugged at their nods.
“By the way,” Ellery said, “I haven’t seen one of these old-fashioned jackknives in years. Does anyone recognize it? Mrs. Caswell?”
“It’s Godfrey’s,” Mum said stiffly. “He kept it on the writing desk there. It was one of his prized possessions. He’d had it from childhood.”
“He never carried it around with him?”
“I’ve never seen it anywhere but on his desk. He was very sentimental about it... He used it as a letter opener.”
“I have a boyhood artifact or two myself that I’m inclined to treasure. Did everyone know this, Mrs. Caswell?”
“Everyone in the household—” She stopped with a squeak of her breath — like, Ellery thought, a screech of brakes. But he pretended not to notice. Instead, he knelt to pick something up from the floor beside the body.
“What’s that?” demanded Chief Newby.
“It’s a memo pad,” Dr. Farnham said unexpectedly. “It was kept on the night table at my suggestion for notations of temperature, time of medications, and so on. It apparently fell off the table when Mr. Mumford toppled from the bed; he must have jostled the table. When I got here the pad was lying on the body. I threw it aside in making my examination.”
“Then it doesn’t mean anything,” the Chief began; but Ellery, back on his feet, staring at the top sheet of the pad, said, “I disagree. Unless... Conk, did Mr. Mumford regain any mobility since his stroke?”
“Quite a bit,” replied Dr. Farnham. “He was making a far better and faster recovery than I expected.”
“Then this pad explains why he fell out of bed in the first place, Newby — why, with that knife wound, he didn’t simply die where he lay after being struck.”
“How do you figure that? You know how they’ll thrash around sometimes when they’re dying. What does the pad have to do with it?”
“The pad,” said Ellery, “has this to do with it: after his murderer left him, thinking he was dead, Godfrey Mumford somehow found the strength to raise himself to a sitting position, reach over to the night table, pick up the pencil and pad — you’ll find the pencil under the bed, along with the top sheet of the pad containing the medical notations, where they must have fallen when he dropped them — and blockprinted a message. The dying message, Newby, on this pad.”
“What dying message?” Newby pounced. “Let me see that! Had he recovered enough from the paralysis, Doc, to be able to write?”
“With considerable effort, Chief, yes.”
The dead man’s message consisted of one word, and Newby pronounced it again, like a contestant in a spelling bee.
“MUM,” he read. “Capital M, capital U, capital M — MUM.”
In the silence, fantasy crept. It made no sense of the normal sort at all.
MUM.
“What on earth could Godfrey have meant?” Wolcott Thorp exclaimed. “What a queer thing to write when he was dying!”
“Queer, Mr. Thorp,” Ellery said, “is the exact word.”
“I don’t think so,” said the Chief with a grin. “It won’t do, Ellery. I don’t say I always believe what’s in front of my nose, but if there’s a simple explanation, why duck it? Everybody in town knows that Mrs. Caswell here is called Mum, and has been for over twenty-five years. If Godfrey meant to name his killer, then it’s a cinch this thing on the pad refers to her. No embroidery, Ellery — it’s open and shut.”