Queens Full by Ellery Queen

yet.”
    â€œDecided not to wait for Sunday after all.” Ellery nodded. He looked grim. “She must have decided that urgency was the order of the day. What does her new will provide, Mr. Wentworth?”
    â€œDon’t know. It was on a single sheet, folded so only the space for the signatures showed. My law clerk and my office girl witnessed her signature, she sealed the envelope herself in our presence, and she waited till I locked it up in my office safe.”
    â€œSomebody’s in for a real shock.” Chief Dakin glanced at his watch. “They’re about ready to bury old Bella now.”
    Ellery rose. “Let’s get out to the cemetery.”
    He was puzzled, and he thought the funeral might tell him something.
    The Livingston plot on the sunny west slope of Twin Hill Cemetery smelled of breeze, grass, and grief. All the tottering Hill contingent were there, Bella Livingston’s lifelong friends—Hermione Wright, the Granjon clan, the Wheelers, the Minikins, Judge Eli Martin, Emmeline DuPré, and the rest; Amy Upham, her pretty face swollen, stricken, and lost; old Dorcas weeping and Morris Hunker honking his nose; and Bella Livingston’s three stepchildren tightly knotted, but with no false show of sorrow. Ellery thought it clever of them.
    He watched them closely as Dr. Doolittle lowered his Book and the silent scattering began. But the three merely made the slow correct march back to the Lincoln and there waited patiently for Amy.
    And back at the house on the Hill they were unreadable, too. Chief Dakin introduced Ellery with calculated brutality as “come up from New York to look into Bella’s murder.” Amy clung to Mr. Wentworth as if he were her one remaining tether to the past, seeming hardly to realize why Ellery was there. But the Livingstons chatted with him charmingly; and when the lawyer produced a long envelope sealed with red wax and, clearing his throat, asked everyone to be seated, they nested down side by side in the dead old lady’s slip-covered sofa with martinis in their hands and just the right air of well-bred expectancy.
    They remained that way while Wentworth broke the seal and opened the envelope and took out a sheet of white onionskin paper … while he unfolded it and held it up to the sunlight coming in through the bay window so that line after line of closely spaced handwriting showed through. Only when he read the date did their sad smiles stiffen.
    â€œâ€˜I, Bella Bluefield Livingston, residing at 410 Hill Drive, Wrightsville,’” Mr. Wentworth’s damp twang informed them, “‘do hereby make, publish, and declare this to be my last will and testament, revoking all other and former wills and codicils heretofore made by me …’”
    So there was the ending before the story was well begun.
    Everett’s shrug was a masterwork: That is definitely that , it said. Nice going, girl , was the message of Olivia’s smile to Amy Upham. And Samuel Junior stared into his empty cocktail glass and its obvious symbolism like the gentleman-philosopher he appeared to be.
    And yet to one of them, Ellery mused, it must be a sickening blow. There was something to be said for the discipline of breeding, at that.
    He went over to follow the shaky but determined handwriting on the paper in Wentworth’s hands as a cover for his surveillance. Provision for funeral expenses, payments of debts and taxes, the Wentworth law firm as administrator, bequests to Dorcas Bondy, Morris Hunker, and several Wrightsville charities … Then:
    â€œâ€˜The property on Hill Drive, both real and personal, and the income from the residue of my estate—the principal value of which totals about $1,000,000—I leave to my dear young friend and companion Amy Upham, for the duration of her lifetime. On Amy Upham’s death the principal estate is to pass to my late husband’s three children, Samuel Junior,