“I don’t believe I do.” I’d heard he’d hired a ticket-seller from Shinn Corners, but no one had mentioned she was so attractive.
“Vera, this is Dr. Sam Hawthorne. You get a sprained wrist from taking in all that money, Doc’s the one you call.”
She gave me an appealing smile. “I hope that won’t happen.”
“Do you live in town?” I asked as if I didn’t know better.
“Shinn Corners. I drive over in my auto.”
“This is a good job. You’re in on the ground floor.”
“So Mr. Creeley keeps telling me,” she replied.
“I still have to hire a couple of boys to be ushers,” Creeley said, “but I’ll do that this afternoon. I ran an ad in the paper this morning.”
“I wish you the best of luck.”
“Here are a couple of passes for opening night, Doc. Bring a girl friend.”
“Thanks very much.”
That summer there were no women in my life, so when I returned to the office I asked my nurse April if she’d like to accompany me. “Tomorrow night?” she asked. “When Mayor Trenton cuts the ribbon and everything?”
“That’s right.”
“I’d love it! But what would I wear? In the magazines they wear formal clothes to movie openings.”
“Not in Northmont, we don’t. That dress you wore to—”
The telephone interrupted us. It was Sheriff Lens and he sounded excited. “Doc, you gotta come over here quick. I’ve got a body.”
“Where are you, Sheriff?”
“Up in Freddie Bay’s apartment above the barber shop. He just committed suicide.”
The apartment was dusty and sparsely furnished—the sort of place I’d have expected Freddie to live in. There was a half empty bottle of bootleg Scotch on the dining-room table. Freddie was sprawled in an easy chair nearby, a revolver on the floor beneath his right hand. “Shot himself in the head,” Sheriff Lens muttered.
I inspected the bloody wound in his temple. “Powder burns. It looks like suicide all right, Sheriff.”
“Woman across the hall heard the shot about an hour ago. She tried knocking on his door and when no one answered she telephoned me.”
“I wonder why poor Freddie would kill himself.”
“Oh, he left a suicide note, Doc. Damndest thing you ever saw!”
I took the shakily written note and read it quickly: I killed Mayor Trenton at the opening night of the Northmont Cinema. I hated him because he always had the cops after me for my drinking. I’d drilled a hole in the floor of the projection booth through the ceiling of the crying room. When the mayor went in to try it out, I made a noise so he looked up at the ceiling and I shot him between the eyes. I put putty in the hole so no one could see it, and nobody knew how he could have been shot while he was alone in that room. I could have gotten away with it, but my conscience wouldn’t let me. I’m taking this way out. Freddie Bay.
“But—”
“Exactly, Doc. The opening isn’t till tomorrow night, and Mayor Trenton is alive. Freddie confessed to a murder that hasn’t been committed yet.”
Freddie Bay’s suicide note was put down to the ramblings of an alcoholic, and Mayor Trenton dismissed it with a laugh. “Maybe he was planning to kill me and he got so drunk he thought he’d done it.”
Sheriff Lens and I personally inspected the floor of the projection booth and the ceiling of the room below without finding any indication of a hole. If Freddie had been serious about his plan, he hadn’t yet carried out the crucial first step.
“What am I going to do without a projectionist?” Matt Creeley fumed, running a hand through his thinning hair. “I’ll have to run the projectors myself when I should be down here greeting people.”
“It’ll work out,” Sheriff Lens assured him.
“And what if the mayor is scared off and doesn’t show up to cut the ribbon?”
“Nothing’s ever scared off Ernie Trenton,” Lens assured him. “And why should this? The would-be killer is already dead.”
But as we were leaving the theater, I asked the sheriff: “You’re going to be here for the opening, aren’t you?”
“I sure am, but not because of this business. The wife and I just want to see a couple of good moving pictures, right here in town.” He squinted at me. “You’re not worried, are you?”
“Not really.”
“Then what is it, Doc? I can tell when something’s not right with you.”
“I was just thinking about that half empty bottle of bootleg Scotch. You know how Freddie liked to drink. If he was going to kill himself, don’t you think he’d have finished off the bottle first?”
“Maybe,” Sheriff Lens admitted. “But if somebody killed him and is planning to kill the mayor, they wouldn’t be dumb enough to leave that suicide note and warn us about it.”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t know what to think.”
The afternoon of the opening was bright with sunshine, a warm summer’s day that seemed made for a celebration. The whole town square had been decorated for the centennial, and Mayor Trenton wasn’t the only politician taking advantage of it. I spotted Casper Drake, a town selectman and political foe of Trenton’s, shaking a few hands.
He saw me and called out, “Doc Hawthorne! Wait up a minute!”
“How are you, Casper?” He was a thin man with an ulcer problem I’d been treating off and on over the years.
“Good as can be expected. Tell me, what’s this about Freddie Bay shooting himself?”
“That seems to be what happened. He left a suicide note.”
“Seems mighty strange. Creeley had just given him a job at his new theater.”
“I know.” I was reluctant to add anything else, hoping the contents of the note hadn’t yet become general knowledge.
“Are you going to the opening tonight?”
“I wouldn’t miss it. I’ll see you there, Casper.”
April was ready when I picked her up in my Stutz Torpedo a little after seven o’clock, and at that time of the year there was still plenty of daylight as we drove around the square and parked near the new theater. Even though the Fourth of July was five days off, there were kids with firecrackers and cap pistols celebrating early over by the bandstand. Somehow it added a festive air to the evening’s activities, and though I saw Sheriff Lens standing at the curb glaring at them he made no effort to interfere with their play.
“Good to see you Doc—April,” he said as we left the car.
“Is your wife here, Sheriff?” April asked.
“She’s inside, saving a couple of seats. I figured I should be out here when the mayor makes it official.”
Since the opening-night audience was made up of invited guests, Vera Smith didn’t need to be in the box office. Instead, she stood beside Matt Creeley in the doorway, accepting passes from people as they went in. When Creeley spotted Mayor Trenton out front, he called a temporary halt to admissions and we all gathered around while a symbolic red ribbon was stretched across the entrance.
“Friends and fellow townspeople,” the beefy mayor began, as if he were campaigning for re-election, “it’s a pleasure to be here this evening for one of the banner events of this centennial summer—the grand opening of the Northmont Cinema, our very first motion-picture theater.” He lifted the scissors and snipped the ribbon as the crowd cheered.
We all filed inside after him and I noticed Casper Drake lean over to whisper something to Vera Smith as he passed. Whatever it was, she blushed and smiled. April and I found aisle seats about halfway back, waving to the sheriff’s wife at the other end of the same row. Sheriff Lens himself appeared after a moment, catching me by the elbow.
“Doc, I got a problem. Mayor Trenton wants to watch the first half of the movie from the crying room.”
I had to smile. “You’re not superstitious, are you, Sheriff? We went over that room and there are no holes in the ceiling. Besides, whether Freddie’s confession was serious or n
ot, the man is dead.”
He shook his head. “I just don’t like it, tempting fate like that.”
“I’ll go back and talk to him,” I told him. April promised to save my seat, but she was so excited watching the crowd I wasn’t going to count on it.
Trenton was standing with Matt Creeley and Casper Drake, admiring the theater’s interior. Matt was the first one to tell me, “Doc, if the mayor really wants to watch the movie from the crying room, I wonder if you could sit with him.
I have to be up in the projection booth running the film, and I’d feel better if the sheriff kept a watch on the door from outside.”
“I think you’re all being foolish,” Trenton said, and I had to agree with him. “I only want to sit there for five or ten minutes to get the feel of the room. Then I’ll come out and join the rest of you.” It crossed my mind that he might be playing to the women’s vote, though there were no young families invited to test the room on opening night.
“I’ll sit with you for that long,” I agreed. “Let’s go.”
Matt Creeley, smiling at last, motioned to Vera. “Tell the ushers to stand in the back during the show. I don’t want their heads blocking the screen.”
We entered the glass-fronted room and took seats in the first row. The soundproof paneling gave my ears an eerie feeling and I started out talking in a whisper until I remembered we couldn’t be heard outside. “Nice thick glass,” I said. “It must have cost Creeley a chunk.”
Mayor Trenton nodded. “Boston’s got nothing on us.”
“Where’s your wife tonight?” I asked, making conversation. Hilda Trenton was a pleasant middle-aged woman who usually accompanied the mayor to civic events.
“I expected her here before this. She had to visit her mother in Shinn Corners this afternoon.”
“Shinn Corners. That’s where Vera, the ticket-seller, is from.”
Trenton grunted. “I thought she looked familiar. Maybe I’ve seen her over there.”
The house lights dimmed and the fancy red curtains parted. The audience applauded as the first black-and-white images appeared on the screen. Above our heads, music flowed through a corner speaker. I saw Sheriff Lens glance in at us through the window and wave. “These are good seats,” I said to the mayor. “Creeley should probably put carpeting on the floor, though.”
Trenton grunted, his eyes on the screen.
The second feature was shown first. It was the story of a gang of crooks reformed by a faith healer. Mayor Trenton seemed to know there’d been a previous silent version with Lon Chaney. After less than ten minutes, he showed impatience and suggested we move out with the rest of the audience. “I should take a look around for Hilda. She’s probably here by now.”
On the screen one of the characters had drawn a gun. Trenton was just starting to rise when I heard a muffled crack, like a shot fired some distance away. I thought it was on the screen, but beside me the mayor gasped. “Oh, my God! I’ve been shot!” He toppled back into his seat and I saw him grasp at the fleshy part of his chest below the left shoulder. “Let me see,” I said, pulling away his coat. There was blood on his shirt, and a hole where the bullet had entered.
Just then the door opened and Sheriff Lens poked his head in. “Mayor, your wife just arrived. Should I bring her in here?”
“He’s been shot!” I shouted. “Get help!”
“Shot? How could he be? He was alone in here with you, Doc. I’ve been outside the door all the time.”
“Maybe Freddie Bay did it,” I muttered. “Just get the lights on so I can see what I’m doing here.”
Hilda Trenton was close to hysteria after hearing the news. “Is he going to die? I want to see him! I want to be with him!”
“You can see him,” I told her. “We’re going to take him to the hospital, but he’ll be all right. Luckily, he was starting to rise just as the shot was fired. Otherwise it might have struck the side of his head.”
“But how—?”
Sheriff Lens was helping the mayor to his feet. The film had stopped and the house lights were turned on. I knew an ambulance would be on its way from Pilgrim Memorial Hospital. “Just take it easy, Mayor,” I cautioned. “It looks like a flesh wound to me, but we can’t be sure yet.”
His face had gone white and I feared he might be going into shock. I hoped the ambulance wouldn’t take too long. Casper Drake appeared from the audience, trying to get through to us. “What happened? Is he dead?”
“He’s very much alive, Casper. Keep everyone back, will you?”
Finally the ambulance arrived and we persuaded Mayor Trenton to lie down on a stretcher. His color was better and though I figured there would probably be no complications, I rode along with him. I told Sheriff Lens, “Check that ceiling again. Look for a hole big enough to admit a bullet. And the walls, too. Those acoustical panels—”
“I’ll take care of it, Doc.”
Hilda Trenton insisted on riding in the ambulance, and by the time we reached Pilgrim Memorial she was in worse shape than her husband. The staff doctors had been alerted and Trenton was immediately wheeled into the operating room. I scrubbed, put on a mask and gown, and followed along.
The whole thing took only fifteen minutes. Extricating the bullet, Dr. Lask held it up for me to see. “It went in only about an inch,” he said. “Either it was fired from a great distance away or it passed through something that slowed its velocity.”
“Could it have killed him?”
“Sure, depending on where it hit. He was lucky.” He bent back over his work. “A few stitches and he’ll be as good as new.”
“Hang onto that bullet,” I told him. “The sheriff will want it.”
I left the operating room and returned to Hilda Trenton, waiting outside.
“Tell me the worst, Dr. Sam,” she said. “Is he dead?”
“Hilda, he’ll be fine. It’s little more than a scratch.”
“But someone shot him!”
“Yes.”
“Who would do a thing like that?”
“Any politician makes enemies,” I answered, thinking about Freddie Bay.
“Then they might try again, even here in the hospital.”
“I’m sure Sheriff Lens will have a deputy guarding his door, Hilda.”
I told the sheriff about Hilda Trenton’s fears and he explained that he had already ordered a guard for the mayor.
I told him Dr. Lask’s comment that it might have been fired through something that slowed its velocity. “The sound of the shot was muffled,” I confirmed.
“Like a silencer?”
“I’ve only heard them in movies, but those are usually more like a cough, or a hiss of air. This was a sharp sound, like a shot, but just not very loud. Of course, the acoustical panels might have affected it.”
Sheriff Lens shook his head. “It doesn’t make a great deal of difference, Doc. There’s no bullet hole in the window or the walls—or the ceiling. And none of the holes in those soundproof tiles are big enough for a bullet. The door may not have been locked like in your classic locked-room mysteries, but it was the next best thing. I was standin’ right outside and you were inside. Nobody entered, and the bullet couldn’t have entered either. It’s impossible, Doc.”
“Nothing’s impossible if you think about it long enough. Suppose Freddie Bay told the truth about wanting to kill Trenton, but merely lied about the method. Suppose he had some sort of trap set in the crying room well in advance—a gun hidden in one of the seats, or even in that wall speaker, set to go off at a certain time.”
“I don’t know, Doc—”
“Let’s go look.”
The shooting of Mayor Trenton had so upset Matt Creeley he had cancelled the rest of the show. He was pacing the empty lobby when we arrived, still looking distraught. “Casper Drake says you had a warning this might happen,” he said, confronting us. “Is that true?”
“Well, not exactly,” Sheriff Lens replied. “We thought the threat was over.”<
br />
“This was my big opening and you ruined it for me.”
“We didn’t ruin it,” I reminded him. “The would-be killer did that.”
I followed the sheriff into the auditorium where he’d left a deputy on guard by the crying-room door. “It’s just as we left it,” he told me. “I checked the walls and ceiling but I didn’t touch anything.”
I could see that. A blood-soaked handkerchief was still on the floor by Trenton’s seat along with the navy-blue suitcoat I’d peeled off him after the shooting. Luckily, there wasn’t much damage to it—only a spot or two of blood on the inner lining. “You can get this jacket back to the mayor,” I said. “Is there any chance one of those acoustical panels might move or conceal a tiny door?”
“None, Doc. I tried them all. And I even checked the projection room upstairs.”
I got a stepladder and inspected the wall speaker myself. There was no gun inside. Next I felt the upholstery in all the seats—with the same result. The floor of the new theater was virtually spotless. I picked up a tiny piece of red paper, smaller than a toenail, but found nothing else. “A dead end, Sheriff,” I decided.
“You’re stumped?”
“Maybe. Tell me something. How did Casper Drake know the contents of Freddie’s suicide note? He told Creeley there’d been a warning.”
“Mayor Trenton mentioned it at a meeting this afternoon. Said he felt like Lincoln going off to the theater tonight.”
“Do you think Casper knows something about this business?”
Sheriff Lens waved a hand. “I doubt it. He’s more interested in the news from Chicago.”
“Chicago?” I’d almost forgotten that the Democratic Convention was in its final day there. New York governor Franklin D. Roosevelt had won the presidential nomination on the fourth ballot and had surprised everyone by flying there to deliver his acceptance speech.
“Roosevelt came out for Repeal in his speech, just like Hoover did two weeks ago. Prohibition is dead, no matter who gets elected.”
“How does that affect Casper?”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to say—”
Nothing Is Impossible: Further Problems for Dr. Sam Hawthorne Page 3
