Free Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 03/01/11 by Dell Magazines

“He says himself he doesn’t know if it’s the plain regimen he insists I follow or the tinctures that are doing me good. Seems a decent enough fellow, Tobias.”
    “He is. He has the most charming wife, too, possessed of true elegance of mind and person.”
    “You are telling me this because there’s something you don’t want me to know,” he growled, looking at me from under his eyebrows. “Admit it!”
    “I do indeed,” I said, not knowing whether to be pleased by this sudden allusion to the way he had always dealt with my childhood peccadilloes. “But it is not my secret I would betray if I told it.”
    “Oh, everyone’s told me he married his doxy of a housekeeper—”
    “Then everyone has misled you, sir. He married a lady who was someone else’s housekeeper—and was far more intelligent and learned than those who employed her. Indeed, it is she who introduced Edmund to many of the simple remedies he now employs. When you do me the honour of dining at the rectory, sir,” I pressed on bravely, “you will have the chance to meet them—for I would not invite the one without the other. And if Mama happened to be of the party, I would say no different.”
    He looked suddenly furtive. “Your mother must know nothing of this, do you hear?” He pointed at his foot. “Or I shall never again have peace in my own home.”
    We exchanged a smile: This was the first time we had ever entered such a conspiracy together.
    Edmund’s other patients continued to do well. In due course, I was able to church the mother, having must needs baptised her first, Dr. Coates never having formally welcomed her into the church. Edmund and Maria sponsored her, Edmund regarding with covert concern the two frail men, her father and father-in-law, who accompanied her and her husband to the font. One was detailed to hold the lusty babe, who had had a much less formal baptism, but Maria soon seized him, for safety’s sake as much as anything else.
    After the ceremony, the two old men hung back. And for the most solemn reason. They wanted to confess to Edmund and me that they had committed the vile murder and crucifixion. Along with horror, my first impulse was to laugh. How could these two living skeletons have overpowered such a powerful specimen? They insisted that they had acted in concert, to kill a vagrant who had in some unspecified way insulted them. Despite our questioning, they would say no more. So, in his capacity as justice of the peace, Edmund was bound to have them confined in the local lockup, a poor affair of but three pitiful rooms—two cells and the jailer’s office.
    Justice soon took its course. They were found guilty after the most perfunctory of trials and condemned to death within the week. Privately, Edmund doubted whether the elder would survive to take his punishment.
    Since the lockup could not provide the men with more than the most rudimentary sustenance, I was permitted to take food with me when I visited them each day to preach the Gospel and assure them of the forgiveness of sins.
    I was not the only visitor, nor the only provider of food. On their last day, several of the womenfolk of the village came to say their farewells, bearing pies and a cake, so small the jailer made a sad jest about it not being big enough to contain a file.
    So tender were their final embraces I could scarce forbear to weep. At last we all wended our way home; only Edmund and I could promise to be there to accompany them on their final earthly journey.
    “Dead!” I had repeated, staggering back as the jailer broke the astonishing news. “What? Both dead?”
    He had nodded, equally amazed. “You may see for yourself, Mr. Campion. There they lie, with as sweet smiles on their faces as if they had never done the dreadful deed for which they stood condemned.”
    “But which, I am as sure as I am sitting beside you in this chaise, Tobias,” Edmund confided, as we returned to Langley Park, “they did not commit. When I