Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 124, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 757 & 758, September/October 2004

“I suppose that’s what he had in the plastic bag when Suzie saw him,” Leopold surmised. “She should have guessed it. She knew he smoked pot.”

Mark had a sudden thought. “Isn’t that why Southby fired him when he owned the place? When Southby came back in the picture, Jerry might have poisoned him to keep him quiet.”

“I still can’t see it,” Sarah said with a shake of her head.

Molly nudged Leopold. “Come on, I can hear you thinking. What is it we’re missing?”

“Can we go down to your fermenting room again?” he asked Mark. “Now that the helicopter mystery is cleared up, I have an idea about the rest of it.”

“Of course,” Mark said, leading the way, “but I don’t know what you expect to find there.”

Leopold followed along with the others, then went on alone to the far end of the cellar where the decorative wooden barrels stood as a reminder of days long past. “Southby was desperate to buy back this place, even offering twice what you’d paid for it. At dinner last night he asked to buy these old barrels to help decorate another winery, but he was again rebuffed. We must consider the possibility that the barrels were his main objective all along. Do these tops come off?”

Mark Calendar frowned. “I suppose so. We never bothered to remove them. There’s nothing inside.”

“Let’s see. Do you have a crowbar or something?”

As Molly and Sarah watched with fascination, Leopold pried the top off one of the barrels. It was empty. “Satisfied now?” Mark asked.

“No. There are still five more to open.”

He found what he sought in the third barrel. At first they appeared to be rolled-up scrolls, and even Molly asked, “What is it?”

“I think...” Leopold carefully unrolled one, revealing a painting of a ballet class. A second one seemed to show a wheat field at sunrise. “Yes. Pauline told me today that Southby’s parents supposedly brought some valuable paintings with them when they fled from the Nazis. He was still searching for them. I believe that was why he tried to buy the winery back from you. The bank forced him to sell the winery and after it was gone he came across something — perhaps a letter or diary — that revealed the hiding place of the paintings.”

“Does that tell us who poisoned him?” Mark asked.

“I think so. Let’s look at the rest of these paintings and go back over to your house. I’ll explain it all there.”

The paintings were carefully removed from the barrel and counted. There were eight in all, and the other barrels proved to be empty. They carefully carried them over to the house. “These could be worth millions,” Sarah speculated. “But if they were stolen from a museum or something we’d have to return them.”

“More likely they belonged to Southby’s parents,” Mark told her. “But they’re still not ours if he left any heirs.”

Molly was more interested in the mystery at hand. “Tell us who poisoned him,” she insisted.

“Very well,” Leopold said. “You’ll remember he asked again last night about buying the place, and even seemed to settle for buying those old barrels. When you turned him down again, Mark, he decided he had to kill you.”

“Southby?”

Leopold nodded. “He’d brought a vial of poison with him for just that purpose.”

“You can’t know that,” Molly argued.

“Yes, I can. You told me, Mark, that Southby asked you to invite Pauline Fitzgerald, too. But he had to know what you were serving because Pauline didn’t eat meat. That wasn’t true. She had a burger with me for lunch today, and said she’d gone to the same place with Southby last week. Why had he said she was a vegetarian? It could only have been to find out what you were serving for dinner. According to Ambrose, the poison was arsenic, dissolved in white wine, so it went well with the fish course. He must have known there’d be no chance to poison your glass, Mark, without anyone seeing him, but he found an excuse to visit the kitchen and add it to the wine sauce on one of the plates. He couldn’t keep that vial in his pocket so he stuck it in a space between the stove and counter.”

“Anyone might have done that,” Molly argued.

“But they wouldn’t have left it there to be discovered later by the police. They would have removed it, ground it up, dropped it in the rubbish, anything! Why was it still there for the police to find? It could only have been because the poisoner could not retrieve it. Only Southby couldn’t retrieve it, because he was dying.”

Mark frowned. “But he wouldn’t have poisoned himself.”

“Certainly not deliberately. But with eight plates, and four people carrying them, he simply got confused. When he felt the first terrible cramps he must have realized what had happened, but he could hardly admit what he’d done. He had to hope the dose would be non-fatal.”

“If I had died—”

“If you had died, he assumed Sarah would sell the place to him, or at least sell those barrels. That was all he really needed.”