Dr. Tully chuckled. “That came later. She died very suddenly in the summer of 1890, but no investigation was made. There was a local physician in the group, and he apparently signed the death certificate. Then a week or so later some local children found the front door here open and they decided to explore the house. The General’s body was here on the bed, dressed in his uniform. He had evidently been dead for several days. Some slices of fruitcake containing arsenic were found on a downstairs table, and it was assumed that Margaret Dorn had baked the fruitcake for him.”

“And he ate the cake after she was dead and buried.”

“Very possibly.” Dr. Tully gave a mock shudder. “I’ve often thought if I had to be confronted by one of them on a dark night, I would prefer it be the General. At least the General never killed any of his relatives.”

We went to the storeroom. “Some of this furniture may have belonged to Margaret Dorn,” Dr. Tully said. “She may have brought some of it here before her house was burned. I imagine a lot of the other things were picked up on the cheap by the General. He may have bought them at auction from the homes of people he frightened away from here.”

Our visitor wanted to see the third floor, but I told him there was no key for the door. Naturally, I didn’t say anything about the uniform I had found. We went back downstairs then and he prowled around some more in the kitchen, and then we went outside and he looked at the barn and the sheds.

“And here’s the graveyard,” he said as we came upon it. “I’ve visited here before. As I told you, I could never get into the house while Miss Hannah was alive, but I did manage to explore the grounds.”

“You probably know that this is—or was—General Caine’s grave, then,” I said as I indicated the place where the soil had recently been overturned.

“I’m sure it isn’t. Or at least I’m sure he wasn’t buried here originally.”

“But Father Fogarty told me—”

“Father Fogarty is wrong. Unless, of course, the stones here have been misplaced for a long time.” He was searching the long grass, kicking through it until he found a small stone, only a rectangle of slate really. Some letters were crudely scratched on it. “m. e. d.”

“There you are,” said Dr. Tully. “Margaret Edith Dorn. She was buried here, or so I always assumed, because the stone was here. I imagine that the General dug the grave himself, since few of his neighbors would’ve been likely to help him. He probably cut the initials on the stone too. Then a little more than a week later he was buried over here.” He led me to where the General’s stone was standing.