There was an Old Woman Trivia Quiz

Answer: Buy a gun

Thurlow had filed a lawsuit against a man whom he said offended his family name. According to the Potts family attorney, Charley Paxton, this was Thurlow's forty-somethingth lawsuit of the kind and it was dismissed like the others. Angry at the court, Thurlow then attacked reporters outside the court house and one fought back. That prompted Thurlow to declare that he would buy a gun to protect himself. He actually would go and buy 14 guns.

Ellery noted that Thurlow probably purposely got into that fight as an excuse to buy a gun.

Answer: Thurlow, Louella and Horatio

Cornelia's first husband Bacchus Potts disappeared and was never heard from again. Her children from that husband are Thurlow, Louella and Horatio, all three of whom are unusual in some way.

Thurlow is obsessed with protecting his family name, as evidenced by the many lawsuits he files that are promptly thrown out. He is also generally perceived to be selfish and lazy. He is a Vice President of the Potts Shoe Company, but has no business skills and is ruining the business.

Louella is a middle aged spinster who is obsessed with science and experiments. She constantly works on a new kind of plastic and thinks everyone is out to steal her invention. She locks herself in her laboratory (which is in a castle-like tower) all day.

Horatio, who is about forty years old, is referred to as the boy who never grew up. He lives in a cottage that Ellery says looks like it fell out of a Disney movie. He plays with children's toys and is obsessed with nursery rhymes.

Cornelia's three children from her second marriage to Stephen Brent (who took her name of Potts upon their marriage) are considered normal. They are Sheila (who is engaged to the family lawyer, Charley) and the twins Bob and Maclyn. Cornelia held an open dislike for her three youngest children and was overly devoted to her three "crazy" children.

Answer: Ellery had put a blank in Thurlow's gun

Ellery, together with Charley, Sheila and the twins, decided that they needed to figure out some way to protect Bob because they did not trust Thurlow to do the gentlemanly thing and not shoot Bob. Upon Charley's suggestion, Ellery replaced the bullets in Thurlow's and Bob's guns with blanks. However, during the duel, Bob was killed, which shouldn't have happened if there were blanks in Thurlow's gun.

After the duel, Inspector Queen and Sergeant Velie come and collect Thurlow's gun stash but only find twelve of the fourteen guns. The police (and Ellery) determine that someone must have replaced the blank bullet with a real bullet after Ellery switched it. However, everyone who knew about the blank in the first place either has a solid alibi for the time between when the blank was placed in the gun and the duel or was one of the twins (who were not very likely to replace the blank with a real bullet). Thurlow also has an alibi for the time, and thus could not have done it.

Answer: A whip and a bowl of broth

The whip and the broth are a clear reference to the lines "she gave them some broth without any bread" and "she whipped them all soundly and put them to bed", which Ellery immediately notices. Maclyn's murder provided yet another seemingly impossible crime for Ellery and his father to solve. It also provides Sheila with something to fear. With Bob and Maclyn dead, she is the only living child from Cornelia's second marriage. Sheila is convinced either she or her father will be the next to be killed.

In addition to the whip and the broth, the murder weapon is also discovered. It is one of Thurlow's missing guns, and the duplicate of the gun Bob had intended to use during the duel.

Answer: Legacies for the servants

Cornelia left no legacies for the servants in her will nor did she leave anything for her loyal physician Dr. Innis or for the family lawyer Charley.

Cornelia had told Ellery and his father that she had taken care of Stephen and his friend Major Gotch for too long, and they would get nothing upon her death.

As Cornelia was the president of Potts Shoes, a new one would need to be selected upon her death. Her will specifically stated that each of her six children (four of which would still be alive by the time Cornelia died) would receive one vote as would Mr. Underhill, the longtime plant manager.

Cornelia's fortune of $30 million would be split evenly between her six children for a total of $5 million dollars each. After Bob was killed, Inspector Queen speculated money was the motive as each of the children's inheritances would increase for every sibling who died before Mrs. Potts. Ellery corrects him and says that with only five heirs, each living sibling gets six million dollars, hardly worth killing for when they were guaranteed five million if all siblings were living. Even with four siblings, the total is only about $7.5 million each. Ellery also noted that besides Thurlow, none of the Potts siblings would have killed for money.

Answer: No

Ellery thought the confession was a forgery because Mrs. Potts' signature was identical to the one on a note she wrote to Charley about stocks. Ellery noted that signatures when handwritten are never identical and determined that someone traced Mrs. Potts' signature from the note to the confession.

However, as Ellery figured out toward the end of the novel, he got it mixed up. The confession was written by Mrs. Potts (though it was not true) and someone traced the signature from the confessional to the note about the stocks, not the other way around.

Answer: Horatio

Horatio found the gun in a tree when he climbed it to free his kite from the branches. The missing gun is a duplicate of the one Thurlow used in his duel against Bob. Sergeant Velie had searched the grounds and the mansion several times throughout the novel, but never found that missing gun. He had found Thurlow's others hidden carelessly in a false closet.

The location of the gun means nothing to Ellery but does give him an idea on how to trap the murderer.

Answer: Nothing

Ellery figured out the solution when he realized absolutely nothing happened after he was shot at. The murderer did try to kill Ellery with the same gun that was found in the tree. After the shot was fired, Ellery pretended to be hit. Sergeant Velie was standing guard nearby and was supposed to catch the shooter but he was knocked unconscious.

In the aftermath, it is discovered that there is not a mark on Ellery's vest where the bullet should have hit him, nor was there a spent shell in the room.

Answer: Thurlow

Ellery tells his father, Velie, Sheila and Charley that Thurlow is the killer. They are in disbelief as it was not possible for Thurlow to exchange the blank bullet with the real one that killed Bob. But Ellery explains that Thurlow did not use the gun with the blank to kill Bob. Thurlow had a duplicate gun that had a real bullet in it. He actually had two sets of identical guns because he offered Bob his choice of weapon, so Thurlow would always have two identical guns no matter which one Bob selected.

Ellery explains that when he handed Thurlow the gun with the blank before the duel, Thurlow pocketed it. Everyone saw that, but what no one realized was that Thurlow had the identical gun already loaded in a hidden pocket. This made it look like someone had changed the blank bullet with a real one. Thurlow was able to hide the gun with the blank during the chaos after the duel. It was this gun that Horatio found, and which Thurlow used to try to kill Ellery. He had forgotten the blank was still in it which why there was no spent bullet found after he shot it, and why Ellery had no mark on him.

Thurlow killed Bob and Maclyn because he wanted to be named president of Potts Shoes after his mother's death, which was imminent. Either Bob or Maclyn would have been the likely successor, since they both had business minds. However, and more crucially, Thurlow would not have had the votes to be made president. Of the seven voters, Bob, Maclyn, Sheila and Mr. Underhill would have voted for either of the twins. Thurlow would have voted for himself as would Louella and Horatio, who had no mind for business but Thurlow had great sway over both them. Thurlow would have lost the vote 4-3 but with the twins dead, he would have won the vote 3-2, and did so.

Answer: Charley

Ellery admits he had fallen right into Charley's trap. Charley had convinced Thurlow to kill Bob and Maclyn so he would become president of Potts Shoes. Charley thought up the whole plan, even the point of Thurlow buying fourteen guns. It was Charley who convinced Ellery to replace the bullets with blanks. Thurlow could not have known about that plan so he wouldn't have, on his own, developed the plot of pocketing one gun and taking out the other to make it look like the blanks were replaced.

Charley's motive was to eventually incriminate Thurlow for the murders of Bob and Maclyn. With Thurlow out of the picture, Sheila would have been the next mostly likely president of Potts Shoes. Indeed, that is what happened once Thurlow died. Charley wanted to gain the company through his would-be wife Sheila.

The only problem for Charley was that Mrs. Potts, believing Thurlow was the killer, signed the confession on her death bed, admitting to the murders to protect her favorite son. This was bad for Charley, because he needed to remove Thurlow, and the confession from Mrs. Potts would have ended the investigation. He forged the stock note (which was actually a copy of a real note the Queens saw Mrs. Potts sign) to match against the confession. This tricked Ellery into believing the signature on the confession was fake, since he had seen Mrs. Potts sign the stock note. That kept the investigation open and until Thurlow was revealed to be the killer.