Nothing Is Impossible: Further Problems for Dr. Sam Hawthorne

by Hoch Edward D.

  “I was over to visit Tess last night. I can’t believe this could happen in this neighborhood.” She brushed hair away from her eyes, looking distraught.

  “You saw her last night?” I asked with interest. “Was her husband here?”

  “Clint? Yes—he was going over the store’s books. I said hello, but I’d come to see Tess. We were in here, talking about her paintings.”

  I motioned toward the easel. “She was working on this still life?”

  “The flowers, yes. I see she added some color to it since last night.”

  “You were close to her, Heidi. Did she ever hint that her life might be in danger?”

  “No.”

  “What did you talk about last night?” Sheriff Lens asked.

  “Her painting, my children. She was always interested in my boys, probably because she had no children of her own. We visited each other often. I can’t believe she’s gone.”

  “Do you employ Mrs. Babcock, too?” I asked on a hunch.

  “Yes. She does my house on Tuesdays.”

  “Is she trustworthy?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “You’ve never had any problems with her?”

  “Never.”

  There was little more to be done and I walked out to my car with Sheriff Lens. “Do you have any idea who might have called her between eleven and twelve?”

  The sheriff shrugged. “Maybe we should talk to Milly Tucker at the exchange. She might remember who she plugged in.”

  “I’ll let you handle that. I’ve got patients waiting.”

  “I sure would appreciate any help you can give me, Doc. Clint Wainwright’s an important man with the local merchants. I gotta solve this one real quick.”

  I paused by the car. “I can’t help thinking about Clint’s perfect alibi. If we believe Mrs. Babcock, at the time Tess was being murdered he was sitting in that hospital room with Major Fox. I saw him there myself. I’m always suspicious of perfect alibis.”

  “You think Clint hired someone to strangle his wife?” Sheriff Lens asked, his tone of voice reflecting his doubts.

  “I don’t know. That wouldn’t solve the problem of Mrs. Babcock swearing no one entered the room, would it?”

  The sheriff shook his head. “Could you talk to Milly at the telephone exchange for me? I want to get the autopsy started as soon as possible.”

  I agreed with reluctance. I was already late for my house call on Mrs. Higgins, but her condition was nothing serious. I could always drive over in the morning.

  Wainwright’s Haberdashery was only a block from the telephone building and I decided to stop there first. I remembered the young woman Clint Wainwright had mentioned. Lottie Gross was an attractive brunette who’d been popular with the boys ever since high school.

  “Dr. Sam,” she greeted me. “Mr. Wainwright’s not here now. You probably heard the awful news about his wife.”

  “I just came from there. It’s a terrible tragedy.”

  “They were so close. He’ll take it awfully hard.”

  “Was he in the store at all this morning, Lottie?”

  “No, I think he went right to the hospital from home, to visit Major Fox. I opened at ten and he got here a little after twelve, just before the sheriff phoned him.”

  “Thanks, Lottie,” I said. “I’ll be seeing you.”

  I went down the block to the telephone exchange and climbed the stairs to the second floor where Milly Tucker and another girl worked the switchboards. Both had been out of high school only a few years. Milly was a wild young woman who’d been born a little too late to be a flapper, but she had the reputation of livening up a party with her rendition of the Charleston.

  “Hello, Milly. How are you today?”

  “Dr. Hawthorne! What are you doing up here?”

  The other operator shoved a plug into a lighted hole and spoke the familiar request. “Number, please.”

  “You heard what happened to Tess Wainwright this morning?”

  “Someone killed her. It’s horrible!”

  “As near as we can tell, she died between eleven and noon. Mrs. Babcock, the cleaning woman, heard the phone ring once during that time. Is there any chance you could remember who called her?”

  “Gee, Dr. Hawthorne, we get so many calls during the day. Rose and I just plug and unplug without paying much attention.” Her board was beginning to light up and she made a few quick connections before turning back to me. “I wish I could help you. Rose, do you remember a call to the Wainwright house between eleven and twelve?”

  The other girl thought about it. “It seems like there was one. Maybe from Mr. Wainwright at his store?”

  I shook my head. “He wasn’t at the store.”

  “I guess I can’t remember, then.”

  “Thanks anyway, girls. If anything comes to you, let me or Sheriff Lens know right away.”

  When I got to my office, April was frantic. “I’ve been calling all over trying to find you. Millie Tucker said you just left there. The Forest boy is worse.”

  “I’ll go right out to see him.”

  “The Stamford hospital called. The respirator is fixed. I told them to send it as fast as possible.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Just after one. I tried to reach you at the Higgins place but they said you never arrived there. Where’ve you been?” There was something like accusation in her tone.

  “Mrs. Wainwright’s been murdered. The sheriff needed my help.”

  “What about Mrs. Higgins? She’s wondering when you’ll be out to see her.”

  “Call and tell her tomorrow morning.”

  I hurried down the hospital corridor to Tommy Forest’s room. When I reached it I saw a staff doctor and a nurse at his bedside with Tommy’s parents. The doctor glanced up as I entered. “I’ve got a respirator on the way from Stamford,” I said.

  He shook his head slightly. “I’m sorry, Sam. We couldn’t keep him going. He died a few minutes ago.”

  Mavis Forest turned toward me from the bed. “Where were you? Tommy was crying for you to help him.”

  “I’m sure Dr. Cranston here did everything he could.”

  “If the respirator had gotten here in time—” Tears were running down Mike Forest’s cheeks.

  “I’m sorry.” It was all I could say.

  Cranston followed me out of the room. “April couldn’t reach you anywhere.”

  “I was helping Sheriff Lens with something.”

  His lips tightened into a grim line. “Excuse me for saying it, Sam, but our job is to treat the living. We’re not policemen.”

  “There was nothing I could have done.”

  “You could have been here.”

  April found me in the office, my hand on the telephone. “Tommy Forest died,” I told her.

  “I know.”

  “I just called Stamford to cancel the respirator.”

  She came over to the desk. “Why don’t you go home? You look terrible.”

  “Cranston says I should have been with my patient instead of out helping Sheriff Lens.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to him.”

  “He might be right.”

  I went home to my apartment and brooded. Sheriff Lens phoned once to talk about the case, but I told him I wasn’t in a talking mood. The killing of Tess Wainwright had all but passed from my mind. I was thinking instead of Tommy Forest and Mrs. Higgins and the rest of my patients.

  Had I let them down?

  Did I deserve to be a doctor in Northmont?

  I slept very little that night, weighing my future. Solving the mysteries that Sheriff Lens brought me had become an important part of my life, but if I was to remain in Northmont that could no longer be. I was a doctor first. It was time to get my priorities straight, even if it meant leaving Northmont and setting up a new practice in another town.

  In the morning I made my hospital rounds, avoiding the empty room where Tommy Forest had been. Major Fox was feeling a l
ittle better and I sat with him longer than usual, listening to him reminisce about the war. It was there Sheriff Lens found me. “I been lookin’ all over for you, Doc.”

  I said goodbye to the major and stepped into the hall. “I’m thinking of retiring from the crime-solving business, Sheriff.”

  “What?”

  “A boy died of polio yesterday. I couldn’t have saved him by being here, but it might have been some comfort to him and his family.”

  “What about the people whose lives you save by bringin’ killers to justice?”

  “We don’t get too many repeat offenders around here.”

  “What about the Wainwright case? Suppose the killer goes free and strangles someone else?”

  “I think Tess Wainwright knew her killer. Otherwise he couldn’t have ­gotten behind her to strangle her so easily. You don’t turn your back on a burglar.”

  “How’d he get into the room?”

  “Maybe he was there all the time. Maybe Tess had a lover she let in after her husband departed. She could have opened the window for him and relatched it after he entered.”

  “How’d he get out again?”

  “He was still there, hiding behind the door, when Mrs. Babcock entered. He slipped out while she was phoning you.”

  “I suppose it’s a possibility,” the sheriff conceded, sounding doubtful. “But wouldn’t he have slugged Mrs. Babcock over the head as she entered rather than risk being seen?”

  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Sheriff. I have to make a house call. On the way back, I’ll meet you at the Wainwright house and we’ll see if my theory could work.”

  “Can you make it in an hour? Around noon?”

  “I’ll try.”

  I called on Mrs. Decker and her baby, who were doing fine, and then drove out to the Higgins house. They were pleasant enough to me, though Mrs. Higgins did say, “We expected you yesterday. I baked a cake and you could have had a piece.”

  “I’m sorry I missed that. Something came up.”

  “Milly Tucker says you’re helping the sheriff with the Wainwright killing.”

  “I was, but I’m too busy with patients to give much more time to it.”

  When I left, I drove immediately to the Wainwright house. Sheriff Lens was waiting outside.

  “Find anything interesting?” I asked.

  “Just that your theory wouldn’t work, Doc. Come take a look.”

  I followed him into the house, which was silent now and strangely lifeless. “She’s being waked this afternoon,” the sheriff explained. “Everyone’s at the funeral parlor.”

  We entered the studio off the living room and I saw at once what he meant. The door opened inward to the right, and the telephone was on a table by the right-hand wall. Mrs. Babcock had to go that way to phone for help after finding the body. Even more fatal to my theory, a stack of finished paintings was stored behind the door, leaning against the wall. No one could have hidden there—and even if they’d tried, Mrs. Babcock would have spotted them when she made her call. “I’m convinced,” I said.

  “Any other ideas, Doc?”

  “Not a one.” I flipped through the unframed canvases. “She seemed to prefer flowers and still life. Look at the delicate strokes on those petals and leaves. She was a good artist.”

  “If you say so. I like more action in my pictures.”

  I started for the door. “I have patients to see.”

  “Doc, you know who killed her, don’t you?”

  “There’s one possibility,” I admitted. “Let’s drive over to the funeral parlor.”

  I followed him in my car and left it parked down the road. Though it wasn’t quite time for visiting hours, a crowd had already gathered. We said hello to several people as I searched for the person I wanted. It was a long shot, I knew—a bluff—but it might pay off. “There she is,” I said to Sheriff Lens. “Come on.”

  “Hell, Doc, she can’t be the killer! That’s—”

  “Lottie!” I called out. “Lottie Gross! Could I see you for a minute?”

  The girl from Wainwright’s clothing store came over to us, looking puzzled. “Could you get in the car for a minute, Lottie? We have to speak with you.”

  “What about?” she asked, getting into the back seat while I held the door.

  I slipped into the front seat with the sheriff and half turned to face her. “Lottie, Clint asked you to phone his house yesterday, didn’t he? Between eleven and twelve? He asked you to let the phone ring once and then hang up.”

  “I—”

  “Sheriff Lens is about to arrest Clint Wainwright for the murder of his wife. Unless you cooperate with him, you could be charged as an accessory.”

  Lottie Gross cried a great deal. The sheriff finally drove us down the road where we could talk without fear of interruption. What came through the tears was an overriding fear that her parents would discover she was having an affair with Wainwright. This seemed to her a far greater sin and disgrace than the fact that she’d played a role in helping Wainwright establish an alibi for his wife’s murder.

  “He never said he was going to kill her,” she insisted. “He just asked me to make the phone call.”

  Sheriff Lens was still in the dark, though he was doing a good job of pretending to know all about it. Finally he asked me, “Could you run over it for Lottie from the beginning, Doc? Maybe then she’ll see how serious it is.”

  “Wainwright strangled his wife in her studio shortly before Mrs. Babcock arrived at quarter or ten to eleven. He closed the door, knowing Mrs. Babcock wouldn’t disturb her at least until noon. To heighten the illusion that Tess was still alive, he did two things. He went to the basement on the pretext of picking up a tire to be repaired, and while he was down there he replaced a fuse he’d removed earlier from the fuse box. That caused the radio in Tess’s studio to start playing, because he’d turned it on before he left the room earlier. Mrs. Babcock naturally assumed she was alive and had turned on the radio herself. Later, while he was establishing his hospital alibi by visiting Major Fox, he had Lottie here phone his house and let it ring just once, further heightening the illusion that Tess was alive and talking to someone.”

  “How did you know all this, Doc? How do you know Tess wasn’t alive?”

  “Mrs. Babcock told us she turned off the radio to call you because it was so loud. Are we to believe Tess would have answered the phone when it rang without either turning the radio down or off?”

  “I thought Mrs. Babcock said she heard her moving around.”

  “That part was simply her imagination. If the door was too thick to hear voices, she couldn’t have heard any slight movements, either.”

  Lottie Gross lifted her head.

  “He said he’d marry me. I love him.”

  “You’ll have to testify against him if you want to avoid a prison term,” I warned her.

  “Doc,” the sheriff asked me, “how’d you stumble onto this?”

  “It was that unfinished painting, I suppose. Those broad strokes of red and green were so unlike the delicate strokes on the petals and leaves of her other paintings. Of course, artists do change their styles, but Heidi Miller visited her the night before and saw the work before those unusual strokes were added. If Tess died earlier than we supposed, without having time for her painting, it would be obvious that her husband’s alibi was no good. That got me thinking how the whole thing could have been faked. Rose at the telephone exchange thought the mysterious call was Clint calling home from his store. Her memory was half right in that the call was from the store. I knew it couldn’t have been Clint and guessed he’d asked Lottie to place the call and then hang up.”

  “One thing I still don’t understand,” Sheriff Lens said. “Why did Clint make it difficult for himself by inventing a closed-room situation? Why didn’t he leave a window unlocked, at least, to give a random killer access to the studio?”

  “The answer to that is simple. Clint couldn’t know that Mrs. Babcock would rema
in within sight of that door for all that time. He thought she’d be moving around the house, going to other rooms, allowing plenty of opportunity for a hypothetical killer to strike. Mrs. Babcock made the killing into an impossible crime by her movements—or lack of movements.”

  “Do you want to dictate a statement to me and then sign it?” Sheriff Lens asked Lottie.

  “I don’t want to hurt Clint.”

  “He killed his wife, Lottie. He has to be punished.”

  “Yes,” she said finally. “I’ll sign a statement.”

  Clint Wainwright was arrested later that afternoon. Two days later Tess was buried. I missed the funeral because Tommy Forest was buried the same morning and I went there instead.

  “As it turned out,” Dr. Sam concluded, “I stuck pretty well to my promise to devote more time to my patients. I stayed away from playing detective for more than a year. It wasn’t until the night Prohibition ended that something happened in Northmont to make me break my vow. But I’ll save that story for next time.”

  THE PROBLEM OF THE SEALED BOTTLE

  “This time I promised to tell you about the night Prohibition ended in Northmont,” old Dr. Sam Hawthorne told his visitor as he poured a generous glass of brandy. “Of course, it ended all over the country at the same time, but I don’t expect it was quite as dramatic anywhere else as it was in Northmont.”

  The day was Tuesday, December 5, 1933 (Dr. Sam continued). Franklin D. Roosevelt had been in the White House since March, and thirty-three states had already ratified the constitutional amendment repealing Prohibition. Utah was insisting upon the honor of being the thirty-sixth and final state needed to ratify the amendment, and its state convention delayed the vote until Pennsylvania and Ohio had acted. The hour grew late, and it was 5:32 P.M. on the East Coast before the ratification finally came from Utah. Just over an hour later, President Roosevelt signed the official proclamation ­ending Prohibition.

  Each community celebrated in its own way. In Northmont, a group of us had been invited to have our first legal drink in nearly fourteen years at Molly’s Cafe, a brand-new enterprise on the site of the old coffee shop. It seemed a fitting place to offer the newly legalized spirits, because many of us had frequented the coffee shop over the years for a cup full of illegal spirits.