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pad refers to her. No embroidery, Ellery—it’s open and shut.”
    â€œWhat—what rot! ” Joanne cried, jumping to her mother’s side. “Mother loved Uncle Godfrey. You know what you are, Chief Newby? You’re a—you’re a nitwit! Isn’t he, Mr. Queen?”
    â€œI would like to think about it,” said Mr. Queen, staring at the pad.
    January 9: It is a fact that must be recorded, at whatever peril to his reputation, that Mr. Queen had achieved in Wrightsville the status of a professional houseguest. In more than two decades he had proved a miserably meager source of revenue to the Hollis Hotel. No sooner did he check in, it seemed, than he was checking out again. Let it be said in his defense that this was not the result of parsimony. It was simply because of his flair for entangling himself in Wrightsville’s private lives and, as a consequence, being invited to Wrightsville’s relevant private homes.
    The invitation to move over to the Mumfords’ was extended by an unhilarious Christopher at the iron plea of Joanne. Jo’s motive was transparent enough; Ellery was not sufficiently vain to suppose it had anything to do with moonlight and roses. With Chief Newby breathing down her mother’s neck, Jo had sensed an ally; she wanted Ellery not only on her side morally, but physically at hand.
    Which explains why, on the morning of January ninth, Ellery settled his account at the checkout desk of the Hollis and, lugging his suitcases like ballast on either side, tacked briskly toward the northwest arc of the Square. Crossing Upper Dade Street, he luffed past the Wrightsville National Bank, Town Hall, and the Our Boys Memorial at the entrance to Memorial Park, and finally made the side entrance of the County Court House Building. In police headquarters he paused long enough to register his change of address with Chief Newby, who received the announcement with an unenthusiastic nod.
    â€œAny luck with the fingerprinting, by the way?” Ellery asked.
    â€œAll kinds of it. We found everybody’s fingerprints in the bedroom. But not a one on the jackknife. Wiped clean, all right.” Newby scowled. “Who’d have thought a nice little housekeeper like Mum Caswell would have the know-how to remove her prints or wear gloves?”
    â€œIf you’re so certain she killed Mumford, why don’t you make the collar?”
    â€œOn what evidence? That MUM message?” The Chief threw up his hands. “Imagine the corned-beef hash a defense lawyer would make of that in court. Ellery, find something for me in that house, will you?”
    â€œI’ll do my best,” said Ellery. “Although it may not turn out to be for you.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œI’m concerned with the truth, Anse. You’re merely concerned with the facts,” said Ellery.
    And he left before Newby could reply.
    Ellery commandeered a taxicab driven, to his surprise, by someone he did not recognize, and was trundled off (after circling the Square) back up broad-bottomed State Street to the oldest part of town, where the houses were black-shuttered pre-Revolutionaries set well back on rolling lawns in the shade of centuries-old trees. And soon he was ringing the chimes-doorbell of the Mumford mansion.
    It was the day after Mumford’s funeral, and the big house was still haunted. The old man’s presence seemed to linger in the sight and scent of his precious chrysanthemums, which in lesser greenhouses bore their blooms from late August to December.
    Joanne let him in with a glad little cry.
    She established him in a tall-ceilinged bedroom upstairs with a tester bed and a beautiful Duncan Phyfe highboy that he instantaneously coveted. But he was made melancholy by the vase of two-headed mums that Jo had set on the night table, and he soon descended in search of fleshlier company.
    He found Jo, Ellen, and Christopher in the library, and it