Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 101, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 610 & 611, March 1993

Bullock’s ears perked up. It was the second reference to Athanatos today. But it seemed impossible it could be the same man. Athanatos had perished in the Arctic when the giant Queen of the Ice Worms, enraged by the slaughter of her young, had burst from beneath the waves to catch The Sea Monoceros in her terrible coils and, with the submarine’s hull creaking like a boot in agony, had plunged back into the icy depths, leaving an astonished Buzz Haycock suddenly alone beside the Arctic Sea. But that had been at the turn of the century. Bullock asked, “What are we talking, time-frame-wise?”

“The smoking galoshes were nineteen forty-six,” replied Noonan. He waited for a moment to see if Bullock was going to interrupt him again. Then he continued his story. “This Biggins guy claimed turtle glands could slow the rush toward old age that triggers the spontaneous combustion. But he said Athanatos had found out about his research and was threatening him. Well, I explained about the insurance scam and I sent the good professor on his way. But just to be on the safe side, I gave Athanatos the once-over. Well sure, his neighbors told of a small face at the attic windows and lights up there till all hours. But you always get stories like that. As I said in my report, the guy was a legitimate health-food manufacturer. The next thing I knew I was transferred to Cape Despondency.

“But the day I left to go up north I thought I saw Professor Biggins’s purple and green tie walking down the street around the neck of a guy with a full head of hair who was the spitting image of Biggins, only looking twenty-five years younger.”

“You mean?”

Noonan nodded. “He’d gone and done the old fire-insurance scam. I blame myself for putting him onto it.”

Bullock thought for a moment. Athanatos made the Blue Bread of Happiness, the Loaf of Longevity, and Peacock Island Brand Soup of Youth. But what about the Potted Prunes Jubilee? “Who’s this guy Tansy?” he asked.

“It’s an herb,” said Noonan, the ball of his thumb paging again. “Tansy,” he read. “The name comes from the Greek word...” He stopped and looked at Bullock. “...the Greek word Athanasia meaning ‘immortal.’ ”

From the bingo game beneath them they heard another old voice claim tame victory.

Bullock left Horseman’s End in a puzzle. Would Miss Bright set up so elaborate a deception just for a fire-insurance policy? And why leave behind the envelope with the money? But the situation clarified when he arrived back at headquarters and found a note on his locker door. It said: “Maynard, Sally at the desk said Carl from Forensics called. The ashes belong to a human female. One hundred and sixty years old. Did I get that right? Leo.” I’ll say you did, Leo, thought Bullock. By godfrey, there was no doubt about it now. The Blue Bread of Happiness worked!

Fenians’ Bend, another of those odd turnings of the Rideau Canal that have earned Ottawa the nickname The Venice of the Pre-Cambrian Shield, was the site of the last of the Fenian Raids, when Irish veterans of the American Civil War tried to conquer Canada, meaning to trade it back to the British for their beloved Emerald Isle. In the winter of 1880 they launched a surprise attack on Ottawa itself. But Canadian intelligence had an informer in their midst. (In the movie he was played by Barry Fitzgerald.) Bullock could never visit the place without hearing Victor Kornflower’s thundering score for the famous battle on the ice or seeing, in his mind’s eye, the rank on rank of Fenians all canted forward into the wind, skating up the middle of the frozen canal, dragging an arsenal of Gatling guns and small field pieces mounted on bobsleds behind them. There among the trees the local Canadian militia, though desperately few in number, waited with drawn sabers and muffled harness, ready, as a poet of the day put it, “to smite the sledded Fenians on the ice.” They were under the command of C. Aubrey Smith with snow in his mighty eyebrows and a worried face. Where, you could see him wonder, were the French Canadian reinforcements, the veteran zouaves du pape? Was their delay misadventure or deliberate betrayal?

The only sounds were the hum of the falling snow and the whisk-whisk of the invaders’ skates. Here where the canal bent eastward exposing the attackers’ left flank the cavalry struck. Saber thrusts, gunshots, Canadian battle cries, Irish tenor oaths, cracking ice, and neighing horses filled the moonlit night. Just as the militia began to give way, Charles Boyer’s zouaves, delayed by Ontario’s English signposts, galloped up to turn the tide.