The seven cats

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Ellery is a super detective, especially interested in strange things, and good at analysis. On this day, he went to Curley's pet store, intended to buy a dog, but was fascinated by another incident Curley said.

　　This is to say that Currie a customer named Euphemia Tucker, she is physically paralyzed, crazy, is not a cat-loving old lady, but recently, she will call every week to buy a black cat pet store, pointing to the exact same kind sold to her sister.

　　Euphemia has a sister named Sarah Ann, because she can't take care of herself, she asked her to act as a housekeeper.

　　A year ago, Sarah Ann came to the pet store to buy a black cat, but within a few days, she came to consult whether she could return the cat, saying that her sister abhorred cats. That's when Corrie learned that Euphemia didn't like cats. But in the end, Sarah Ann did not come, and the matter was left unresolved.

　　Corrie had just sent Euphemia her sixth cat two days before. Knowing that Sarah Ann never locks her door when she goes out, Euphemia chooses to let her through every time when Sarah Ann is not there, which also makes Curly feel strange that Euphemia does not seem to want her sister to know that she bought a cat.

　　Ellery also found it strange that an old lady who did not love cats had secretly bought six cats in a row. So he convinced Curley to go to the apartment where they lived while Sarah Ann was out for a walk, and he wanted to find out the truth about Euphemia's cat purchase.

　　Before long, they stood in front of the door of room C on the fifth floor of the apartment. There were two full milk bottles on the hallway floor, like yesterday's and today's.

　　Ellery turned the doorknob and the door was surprisingly locked. Currie was surprised by the door. Ellery rang the doorbell several times, but no one answered.

　　They had no choice, they went to find the housekeeper. Porter, the housekeeper, lived in a small room in the basement. Ellery rang the doorbell, and Mrs. Porter answered the door.

　　"Is the housekeeper home?" Ellery asked. "No, he's not home,"

　　Mrs. Porter said suspiciously, "He has a part-time job at the Long Island chemical plant and won't be home until 3:30. What can I do for you?"

　　"We'd like to ask you a favor. We're here to visit Miss Tucker, but after knocking on the door for half a day, no one answered."

　　"The door wasn't open? It's usually open at this time of day." Mrs. Porter frowned.

　　She told Ellery that she hadn't seen the sisters for two days, that she occasionally visited Euphemia, that sometimes when Sarah Ann was out, Euphemia would call her to take the garbage to the incinerator, and that she had sent a letter for her the other day.

　　Ellery associated with the two bottles of milk at the door and felt that something was wrong. He pulled out his badge, proved his identity, and asked Mrs. Porter to bring the key to the upstairs, and busied himself with Currie to the fifth floor, leaving Mrs. Porter dazed in the same place.

　　Upstairs, Ellery was inserting the key into the lock when he heard the sound of running from the room, accompanied by a scraping sound. He swiftly turned the key and the door opened half an inch and blocked.

　　Then Ellery slammed the door sideways, and it jerked open inward, and a chair fell backward. Ellery and Currie saw at the same time, someone smashed open the window and ran through the roof by the iron ladder! But it was too late to catch up!

　　They then turned to the bedroom, where there were two identical beds, one bed was turned upside down, the other bed was neat and tidy.

　　Curley said that the messy one was none other than Euphemia's. But no one was in the room, the whole room, except for Euphemia's bed, nothing was messed up. On the floor near the bottom of the bed was a tray with plates, knives and forks and leftover food.

　　Curley had been asking about the whereabouts of the Tarkir sisters and who it was that had come to the door, while Ellery was more concerned about the whereabouts of the seven black cats - Saraan's one and Euphemia's six - than he was about these.

　　The window hooks had been smashed open just a short time ago, indicating that the windows had been closed, and in all probability, the cats had ......

　　As she thought this, Mrs. Porter came into the foyer, startled and frightened, saying repeatedly that she had not seen the sisters for two days, and that her husband had seen them the night before when he was framing Euphemia's room - Porter, the housekeeper, had come to help Euphemia frame her room every night earlier to earn some money for her work.

　　At that moment, a voice came from the foyer, and a young man poked his head in and asked, "Does Miss Euphemia live here, please?"

　　"Yes," Ellery said kindly, "please come in. Who are you?"

　　"And where is Aunt Euphemia?" The young man was a little worried, "I am her nephew, from out of town, and I received a letter from Aunt Euphemia the other day, saying that she was in a very dangerous situation and asking me to come to her aid quickly." Said, taking out a crumpled letter from his pocket.

　　Ellery grabbed the letter and saw that it was written in a hurry. Ellery briefly recounted the circumstances of his discovery and asked the young man to tell him about his two aunts.

　　The young man said that Euphemia had some money, which his maternal grandfather had left behind. Saraan always complained that she was a miser, but had to live with her because he had nothing. Euphemia didn't like banks and kept all her money with her, and always accused Saraan of trying to steal her money. Also, it is true that Euphemia hates cats, and it is also true that Saraan likes cats.

　　After asking some more questions, Ellery gave the young man a place to stay and told him to wait for news.

　　Then Ellery went towards the bath room and found a black cat submerged in the tub! The head was broken, the body was broken in several places, and the blood that had splashed onto the tub was clotted. A bathtub brush sat next to it, stained with blood. This solved the mystery of one of the seven cats missing, was killed with this brush, and from the looks of it had been dead for a day or two.

　　Shocked and then furious, Corrie suspects Euphemia of the crime, but Ellery reminds her that Euphemia is a person who cannot walk on the floor.

　　Back in the bedroom, Ellery picks up the tray from the floor and places it on the bedside table. Corrie said that on previous visits, the tray had been placed on Euphemia's bed or table, and that Euphemia had been eating alone lately.

　　Ellery pulled a set of pocket tools from his body, along with some powder, and examined the knife and fork and spoon in the tray. The knife and fork still had dried food stuck to them, apparently used by Euphemia for her last meal.

　　"Odd, there aren't any fingerprints." Said he, shrugging his shoulders. After a moment of silence, he wrapped up the rest of the food in the tray and asked Corrie to take it to her best friend for a lab test, with instructions to make sure she didn't bring it to anyone's attention when she returned.

The Seventh Black Cat

　　After Curley left, Ellery checked the house again, and then went to the Porter house. A short, stout, rough-looking man opened the door, and behind him was Mrs. Porter. Mrs. Porter briefly introduced Ellery.

　　"I'm Porter, the housekeeper here, just got home from the mill, and my wife says there's been an accident at the Tuckers, what's going on?"

　　"I'm glad you're home. You can more than likely provide some information that I desperately need. Have you found any dead cats anywhere lately?"

　　"Kinda," Porter said, "In the basement incinerator, the skulls of six cats and some small bones were found while clearing the ashes." Porter added that the cat bones had not been dropped at the same time, but had been lost for about five or six weeks in a row, almost one every week.

　　Ellery came out after the questioning and went up to Room C on the fifth floor without a word. In the evening, Curley also came back quietly. "There's nothing wrong with the food that was sent, just a little spoiled."

　　"That may be good news," Ellery's eyes suddenly lit up, "I know why Euphemia bought the cat! There's only one possibility, she wants to defend herself!"

　　With that, he jumped up from his chair and analyzed: Euphemia had recently started eating alone, and she used all the cats she bought as food testers to taste her food. Those cats were poisoned by the food prepared for Euphemia, so she had to buy them again. The cat corpses, she wrapped into garbage for simple-minded Mrs. Porter to help take to the incinerator, the evidence is the skulls of six cats in the incinerator. As for why they were all black cats of the same size, it must have been to fool Sarah Ann so that she would believe that whenever she saw the black cat was her own original one.

　　"We know there have been at least six attempts to poison her, all unsuccessful, so there is bound to be a seventh. Now Euphemia is missing, which means the seventh attempt was successful."

　　"But how do you know she's dead?"

　　"There is, of course, another possibility," Ellery said, "that she escaped, but she could not walk, and who would help her? Only Saraan, the man she suspected of attempting to poison her. But the letter to her nephew indicated that she would not have turned to Salaam. So escape was not possible, and since she was missing, she must be dead. She knew that someone was going to poison her with food and took precautions, but the last time she let the seventh cat taste the food in the tray, the food was not poisoned and the cat did not die from the food, it was killed. The cat did not die from poisoned food, Euphemia then is not, yet all signs show that she died from poison, that leaves only one answer: she died from poison not in what she ate, but in the process of eating." Said Ellery, pointing to the tray.

　　Ellery found that someone had taken Euphemia's knife and fork and spoon, and the poisoner had stained the utensils for the seventh time! There was a layer of colorless, odorless, dried poison on the fork, and Euphemia would not have noticed. The cat took the paws to eat the food naturally, but not Euphemia. The poisoner failed six times, changed the method for the seventh time, and succeeded!

　　"But where is her body?" Curley asked. Ellery did not answer, suddenly turned sharply toward the door, his face changed. He tensed and stared for a moment, without saying a word, his hands slammed the stunned Corrie into a closet in the bedroom and closed the door behind her.

　　Currie hid in the closet and heard a slight scraping of metal on the front door, guessing that the poisoner had arrived. Then there was a yell, followed by the sound of a struggle. She pushed open the closet door and rushed out, only to see Ellery on the floor wrestling with a man who had raised a hand with a knife, and Corrie jumped over and kicked it, dropping it.

　　"Curley - the door!" Ellery said under his breath, one knee pressing down hard. Only then did Curley react and open the door, and a group of police officers swarmed in, after which she passed out...

　　When Corrie opened her eyes again, Ellery told her triumphantly that it was all over.

　　That day, when Currie took the food to the lab, Ellery called the police for assistance, and he already knew who the killer was! The person who poisoned the food had to be at least close to the food to do so. This obviously leads one to suspect Sara Ann, because she had a motive for the crime - hatred and possibly greed; she also had the opportunity, because she was the one who prepared the food. But she was not the one who poisoned it, because the seventh cat was killed and she loved it so much that she could not have been the murderer. On the contrary, she went the way of the cat and her sister. It is thought that the poisoner planned to poison Euphemia to make it look like Sarah Ann had poisoned her, but Sarah Ann happened to see the murderer and was killed on the spot by the poisoner to silence her.

　　The police found Euphemia's money in the Bible on her bed, while her body and that of her sister, were left in the incinerator forever. Yes, the poisoner had to be close to Euphemia's food for more than a month without being suspected, except for Sarah Ann, only one person, this person came to frame the room for some time in a row, and worked in a chemical plant, knew the poison and had access to it, and tended the incinerator, could dispose of the bones of his victims without endangering himself, in a word, this person was the manager of the building - -Porter!