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happiest years of his life.
    â€œAnd I’d have been happy, too—if not for you three and your grand dames. From the way you and your wives have treated me, anybody’d think Dave married a dead whale. No class. Didn’t know all the forks. Took my degree at Roseland, and postgraduate work stripping in front of a bunch of drunks. It wasn’t as if I didn’t care. I tried, hard. I tried not to shame you. I even took lessons in how to come into a room without reaching for a zipper. But I was poison.… If it was just you jerks, I wouldn’t have minded so much. But those highclass babes of yours really gave it to me, and that I couldn’t take. For Dave’s sake I couldn’t take it. I was his wife, and his wife deserved to be treated by his family like a lady, even if she wasn’t one. I made up my mind that if I ever got the chance to pay you back …”
    Big Dave’s widow straightened up, breathing as if she had been running. But when she spoke again, her voice flowed as evenly as a high-voltage wire.
    â€œOne week from today you three be at my house between two and three in the afternoon. With your stock.”
    Ellery found his father standing outside the David Brothers mansion on the East River. It had been raining since morning and Ellery had to splash through puddles on the driveway before he could join the Inspector under the porte-cochere.
    â€œWas this trip necessary?” grumbled Ellery, shaking the rain from his hat. “And if so, why couldn’t the taxi deposit me decently under the roof?” The protected part of the driveway was roped off.
    â€œTire tracks,” said Inspector Queen. “I thought you’d want to sit in on this, Ellery. It’s murder, it’s nasty, and … I don’t know.”
    Ellery perked up and looked at the tire marks. “Who, how, when, why, and so forth?”
    â€œMrs. Daisy Brothers, ex-club stripper. Stabbed to death between two and three this P.M. by one of her three brothers-in-law. I’ve got the whole story from her lawyer.” And the Inspector told Ellery of the Four Brothers Mining Company board meeting of the previous week and Big Dave’s widow’s stock coup. “So I guess they found she was right when she told them they’d be wasting their time and money trying to beat her in court—and as a result she’s lying in there in her library, still with the three certified checks, the deadest dame you ever saw. She was alone in the house—she’d given up all her servants when her husband died and she’s been living here ever since like a hermit, doing her own work.”
    â€œWhat about these tire marks?”
    â€œThree cars rolled up here one at a time,” said Inspector Queen with a sigh. “The marks identify the cars as a Cadillac, a Rolls-Royce, and a Chevrolet—and from the overlapping of the treads, they came in that order. The Caddy is a ’51 town car belonging to the finance company—I mean Charlton Brothers; the Rolls is a secondhand job Everett Brothers picked up cheap in London last year; the Chewy is what Archibald Brothers runs around in when he’s calling on his girl friends or otherwise doesn’t want to be noticed by some vulgar columnist.
    â€œI’ve sweated the three gents and they’ve admitted coming here between two and three today, separately and alone, about fifteen-twenty minutes apart.”
    â€œAnd their stories are?” murmured Ellery.
    â€œIdentical. It’s collusion, of course; they were all ready for me. They probably drew lots, and the brother who got tagged for the party is being covered up by the other two. Each one says she was already dead when he got here, and that he got scared and ran.”
    â€œThey’d have to say that,” said Ellery reflectively, “otherwise how would they account for their stocks’ not having been turned over to her? Let’s have