Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 48, No. 1, January 2003

“He left a good portion of his money to found the society,” Frances explained to Jake and me over tea. “But the ivory...” She sighed heavily. “I think he always felt badly about that. He said it never occurred to him when he was a younger man. There were so many elephants, he said, and so few hunters. I did ask him once where it was, if he’d sold it or had it destroyed, and his answer was, ‘It’s all been taken care of.’ He must have hidden it there when the furnace was put into the house and the fireplaces boarded up. My goodness, that was so long ago, in the fifties, perhaps, and...” She shook her head sadly.

“The Japanese black market will pay over three hundred a pound for it,” I informed her.

“That biggest one is over seven foot long,” Jake said, looking at the soot-covered tusks he and I pulled down out of the chimney in the front room. “And well over a hundred pounds.”

“My father killed only the best specimens,” she said sadly. “I think he meant for us to find this the summer he died. We didn’t need the money, or maybe...” she looked away, “...we did. I don’t really recall. We didn’t play that last game. We had a funeral to arrange.”

“But you were just a kid,” I said. “How could you be planning...”

Jake cut me off: “Miss Carter, we think Dan Church did know about the ivory, that maybe your sister told him about it. She might have known when she found that first clue in your father’s desk.”

“She knew?” Frances looked up at Jake. She had a dazed look on her face. “Oh yes, I see. It seems obvious with the key chain. But how do we do we know that Sophie didn’t just find that and gave it to Dan?”

“There’s the friend with the truck,” Jake said to her.

“Come to pick up some trash! Some old furniture, that’s all. Maybe Sophie said, well, you can have this and this, and... no, Sergeant Valari, the medical examiner has told me that Daniel Church’s death was accidental, and that my sister...” Her lips, then her entire face, began to tremble. “...was depressed, and her death had nothing to do with Daniel. So if you’re suggesting that she...”

“I’m suggesting he was using her,” Jake said as gently as he could. “She told him about the game, perhaps in a moment of excitement when she found that first clue. The letters IV and the key chain together tipped her off to...”

“No,” Frances whispered.

“But when she found out that Dan planned to sell it on the black market...”

“No,” she said again, almost frantically, shaking her head.

I hated then to see her so upset, and though I wanted to go to her defense, I couldn’t. Not even when she got up and walked away, straight out of her big house, down the steps, and into her back yard.

“It didn’t work you, you know, not with Sophie, and not with me.” She didn’t seem to be talking to me, not exactly, so I walked over to her slowly.

“My wedding,” she said over her shoulder. “I got over to Paris and found that marriage to a younger man wasn’t going to work, though we did have a lovely vacation together.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Thirty years ago I stood in this same yard wondering what I was going to do with my life, and here I am, still wondering.”

“Thirty years ago...”

“I saw the look on your face, Herbie, in the kitchen, and I take it as a compliment you think I’m so young. But I’m not young. I’ll be fifty-five my next birthday.”

So I was a little surprised; I was off by about twenty years. It really didn’t matter.

“So, what was it, then?” she asked suddenly. “How did it happen? Did she... did they go on a hunt together? Did she tell Daniel what the clues were probably leading to, especially with that key chain? It was our father’s. I haven’t seen or thought about it since he died.” She turned away from me, hands clasped together inside her sleeves as she stared at the shed. “But Sophie knew the two together could only mean one thing. So did he deceive her, then she killed him? And then she killed herself? Or was it an accident, and when she found him...”

“Jake says there’s no prints of hers on the trapdoor, or the handle.”

She threw out her arms. “So Sophie wore gloves!” And then her face folded, grew heavy, and was not so much pale now as gray. “Do you know how that sounds? She wore gloves. Did she? In the middle of October? Did she wear gloves when she threw down that door on Daniel Church’s head? Did she go home that night, and kill herself the next day? Is that how it happened? My fifty-eight-year-old sister, who was foolish enough to fall in love with someone twenty years younger? Did she really think...”

“We may never know,” I said, for what it was worth.