There Was an Old Woman [= The Quick And the Dead]

And no one spoke, and the mahogany grandfather clock which Cornelia Potts had hauled from her first “regular” house up north pick-picked away at the silence, patiently.

Cuttins reappeared in the doorway. “Miss Louella cannot be disturbed for anything,” he announced to the opposite wall. “I am to say that she is engaged in a very important experiment. Mr. Horatio regrets that he cannot attend; I am to say that he is composing a verse and may lose his inspiration.”

Sheila shuddered.

“All right, Cuttins. Close the door,” said Charley.

Cuttins backed away; the Inspector made sure the door was shut. Charley picked up the sealed envelope.

“Just a moment,” said Inspector Queen. He advanced to the desk and turned to face Thurlow. “Mr. Potts, you understand why I’m here?”

Thurlow blinked, looking uncertain. Then he beamed. “As a friend, of course. A friend in our sad troubles.”

“No, Mr. Potts. As the officer in charge of the investigation of two murders which occurred in this house. I admit they’re posers, and that we know very little about them, not even the motive... for sure. That’s why I’m interested in your mother’s will. Do you grasp that?”

Thurlow shrank a little. “Why do you tell me these things?” he asked in frightened tones. The King had run to cover.

“You’re head of the family now, Mr. Potts, the eldest.” Thurlow swelled again. “I want you to be sure everything’s aboveboard. This envelope—” the Inspector took it from Charley — “was found in your mother’s dead hand upstairs. The flap was pasted down tight, as you see it. We have not opened the envelope. It says it’s Cornelia Potts’s will, and it has her signature on it, but we’ve no way of knowing until it’s opened for the first time, here in this room, whether it’s her old will, which was made out many years ago, or a new will which she typed and signed just before she died.

“The odds are it’s the old will, because we can find no one in the house who witnessed her signature the other day, as would have had to be done if your mother had made a new will. But new or old, this is her will, and I want you to be satisfied that nobody’s putting one over on you or anybody else who might be mentioned in it. All clear, Mr. Potts?”

“Of course, of course,” said Thurlow grandly, waving his bottle. “Very kind of you, I’m sure.”

The Inspector grunted, tossing the envelope onto the desk. “Make sure you don’t forget it, Mr. Potts,” he said mildly. “Because there are a lot of witnesses in this room who won’t.” And he returned to Ellery’s side and made a sign to Charley Paxton. Charley picked up the envelope again and ripped off an edge. He shook the envelope out. A blue-backed document fell to the desk.

“It’s the old will, Inspector,” said Charley, seizing it. “Here’s the date and the notary’s seal. You were right — she just put it into this envelope to get it ready for us... What’s this?”

A smaller envelope, bearing a few typewritten lines, had fallen out of the folds of Cornelia Potts’s will. Charley read the legend on the envelope aloud:

To be opened after the reading of my will and the election of a new President of the Potts Shoe Company.