Nothing Is Impossible: Further Problems for Dr. Sam Hawthorne

by Hoch Edward D.

  “I don’t know. We’ve never been especially friendly, but I’m not aware of any injury I’ve done him.”

  “Could Mrs. Willis have been poisoned by her niece or her husband?”

  “I don’t see how.” I tried to think. “It had to be them, but I can’t see how they did it.”

  Mary went to the file drawer, removed a folder, and read through it. “The records in Mrs. Willis’s folder only seem to go back a year. What about before that?”

  “Before—” Suddenly I remembered. I wondered how I could have forgotten it. “Before that she was Martin Wolfe’s patient.”

  Mary raised her eyebrows.

  “I’d known her only slightly. But shortly after Freda Ann and Nat came to live there, they decided she wasn’t getting the finest treatment from Dr. Wolfe. Part of the problem was that he was president of the Medical Society and had so many civic duties it left him with almost no time for house calls. After she broke her hip and became bedridden, they called me and I agreed to take her on as a patient. But there was never any hard feeling over it with Dr. Wolfe.”

  “Still, it might explain his present attitude,” she said. “There might be a lingering guilt at having abandoned her himself.”

  All that day, I thought about my relationship with the dead woman and everything that had happened in the farmhouse the previous morning. I’d solved dozens of bizarre puzzles in my time, but nothing had prepared me for this simple case of a woman poisoned under my very eyes. It dogged me as I saw to my other patients and made my hospital rounds.

  Betty Willis’s body was laid out at the Freedkin Funeral Parlor on Main Street, right on the town square. I called there on Wednesday, the second night of the wake, and then attended the funeral on Thursday morning. There were already people muttering about keeping the body only two days instead of the traditional three, accusing the Parkers of hurrying to get her into the ground.

  As I studied Freda Ann and her husband across the grave that morning, as the minister intoned the traditional prayers for the dead, it was difficult for me to imagine either of them as a murderer, and I wondered why they would have felt murder was necessary. Aunt Betty was a dying woman and her condition had been worse that very morning. There was no need for anyone to kill her unless her will contained some obscure provision with a time limit.

  Thinking of that, I spotted Seth Rogers at the edge of the circle of mourners. Seth was a well known local attorney, much liked among Northmont’s older residents, and it was a good guess that he was attending the funeral because he’d acted as attorney for the deceased. When the crowd started to disperse, I caught up with him, and after a few words of formal greeting I asked him directly.

  “Yes, I handled her legal matters,” he told me. His eyes behind thick wire-rimmed glasses seemed large and fishlike. “Not that she ever had much work for me. A little tinkering with her will from time to time, that was about all.”

  “When did she tinker with it most recently?”

  “Oh, it must have been a year ago—before she broke her hip. She came over to the office to sign it, I remember that.”

  “And you hadn’t seen her since then?”

  He smiled at me. “You cross-examine like a lawyer, Sam. As a matter of fact, I visited her just last Friday, three days before her death.”

  “Could I ask the nature of your visit? I’m not asking you to be specific, just—”

  “She wanted some advice about selling off a portion of the property. But she didn’t pursue it at all. I gathered it was merely a possibility for some future time.”

  We’d strolled down the knoll to his car, a flashy green Cadillac Sport Phaeton with sixteen cylinders and a white convertible top. Though in many ways I preferred my own red Mercedes, I had to admit a secret fondness for this massive beauty with its $5,000 price tag. “Did she seem well when you saw her?” I asked as he got behind the wheel of the car.

  “As well as she’d been lately. Well enough to be sucking on hard candy all the time I was there.”

  I remembered. “It was her one weakness. She always kept a bag of it on her night table. I couldn’t complain, though. She was a good patient and generally did everything I told her to.”

  Seth frowned at me and leaned out the car window. “Just between us, Sam, was she murdered?”

  “I wish I knew, Seth,” I told him. “I really do.”

  All that day I was aware of gazes in the street, of whispered words as my familiar car drove past the center of town. The news was getting around that my conduct in Betty Willis’s final illness was under investigation—by the Medical Society if not by the police. Back at the office, Mary confirmed how bad things were becoming. “Three of your patients for this afternoon and tomorrow called to cancel their appointments.”

  “Did they give reasons?” I asked her.

  “Well, Mrs. Mason wasn’t feeling well—”

  “I guess we know the real reason, don’t we, Mary? The word’s getting around that Betty Willis was poisoned.”

  Her expression was bleak. “Everyone at the hospital knows the autopsy results and the word was bound to spread. What are you going to do?”

  “Think about it,” I told her. “I have the advantage of knowing I’m innocent. There has to have been some other cause of death.”

  She sat down opposite me. “Let’s go over it step by step, Sam. Is there any possibility someone could have substituted cyanide for the digitalis pills in your bag?”

  “Not a chance. You know what they look like. The manufacturer’s mark is on every one. It’s not something a pharmacist could duplicate in his back room. Even if one of them had been poisoned, I shook it from a nearly full bottle of a hundred. I’ve examined the others and they’re perfect. No one could have known who’d get the poisoned one, or when.”

  “How about the Parkers? Were they in the room with you and Mrs. Willis?”

  “Nat didn’t come upstairs until after she was dead. Freda Ann stood near the door during my examination. The only time she approached the bed was to hand me the glass of water.”

  “And you’re certain Mrs. Willis was really dead?”

  “She was really dead, Mary. There was no pulse, no breathing, no heartbeat. And she couldn’t have been faking it somehow, because I never left the room until Sheriff Lens arrived.”

  “Then it has to be the water. The glass of water. It’s the only way she could have been poisoned.”

  “Don’t you think I thought of that? First of all, when most cyanide compounds are dissolved in water, they give off a distinctive odor. Second, the half empty glass was never out of my sight after she drank from it. Third, I took a sample of the water for testing and it was perfectly all right. So was the water her teeth were in.”

  The next patient—one who hadn’t canceled—arrived then and our ­ruminating came to an end.

  I slept badly that night, expecting that what had happened so far was just the prelude to a growing storm.

  On Friday morning, Mary told me there’d been two more cancellations. With some free hours ahead of me, I decided to drive out to the Willis place, my first visit since Monday’s tragedy. It was a fine morning, sunny and warm, and Mary was already planning a Fourth of July picnic with some of the other nurses. It would be coming up the following Thursday, two days after the Medical Society met. I wondered if I’d have anything to celebrate.

  At the Willis farm I found Nat Parker in the pumphouse, repairing a pipe that supplied well water to the living quarters. “Good to see you, Doc,” he said, wiping the grease from his hands. “Thanks for coming to the funeral yesterday.”

  “It was the least I could do. How’s Freda Ann holding up?”

  “Oh, it’s a bit hard on her but I think we both know it was for the best. The old lady wasn’t doing nobody any good wasting away up there in that bed. Whatever you done, I thank you for it.”

  “Whatever I—? Look here, Nat, I didn’t do a thing to hasten her end. I certainly didn’t poison her, if that�
��s what you’re getting at!”

  “No, no, of course not. I just meant whatever sort of accident happened. We take no stock in this talk that’s goin’ around town. You were a good doctor to her. She always spoke highly of you. She told us once you done more for her than old Doc Wolfe ever did.”

  “Did he ever come around to see her after I took her on as a patient?”

  “Heck, no. At least I never seen him out here.”

  I went up to the house and found Freda Ann washing out some things in the kitchen. “There’s lots to be done,” she said, brushing the dark hair back from her forehead. “I’ve been cleaning out her bedroom and closets, washing the curtains and bedding.”

  “Has Sheriff Lens been out to see you?”

  “He came by again last evening, full of questions. He still thinks my aunt was poisoned.”

  “She was, Freda Ann. There’s no doubt about it.”

  “I don’t know how it could have happened with you sittin’ there right by her bed!”

  “I’m sure that’s what the sheriff is trying to determine. Tell me something. Was it just you who took care of your aunt, or did your husband sometimes tend to her needs, too?”

  “Are you kidding? Nat stayed as far away from her as he could. He wanted to put her in an old folks’ home, but I figured she was leaving the place to us in return for taking care of her and we had to do something to earn it.”

  “Have you spoken to the attorney since her death?”

  “Mr. Rogers? Yes, he telephoned to arrange a meeting in his office. Nat and I are going in on Monday morning.”

  “Any problems?”

  “No, I just have to sign some papers. The property comes to me, along with a small bank account and some stock she owned.”

  “I wonder if I could see her bedroom again. I’m just trying to get clear in my own mind what happened.”

  “Certainly.” She led the way upstairs to the second floor. “I want you to know that Nat and I both think this business of the Medical Society holding a hearing next week is ridiculous. We have every confidence in you.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  I stood for a moment in the doorway, studying the bare bed and the scant furnishings. Without curtains, the morning sun streamed in the window, bathing everything in a golden glow. I sat on the same cane-backed chair I’d sat in the previous Monday, thinking about all that had happened since then. “Was Seth Rogers here last week?” I asked Freda Ann.

  She nodded. “On Friday. He stayed about a half hour.”

  “Were you in the room while they talked?”

  “Heavens, no. She always kept her legal and financial affairs strictly to herself.”

  I walked to the window and looked out, shielding my eyes from the sun. I could see Nat out in the yard, carrying his tools from the pumphouse. Then I turned and looked at the bare bedside table. “Was she buried with her teeth in?”

  “Of course.” Freda Ann looked at me strangely. “What an odd question to ask.”

  The weekend dragged on. I had two patients Saturday morning, and when I’d seen them both I stayed in the office going over Betty Willis’s records. Mary poked her head in once and asked if I’d be attending the Fourth of July picnic. “We’ve got about twenty people so far,” she told me.

  “I don’t know, Mary. Right now I don’t think my heart would be in it.”

  She understood. “I’ll ask you again later,” she said.

  The next time the office door opened it was Sheriff Lens. “I was hopin’ I’d find you here, Doc.”

  “What’s up, Sheriff?”

  He came in and sat down. “I’m still workin’ on the Willis case. Folks want some action, but I don’t know what to do. Should I arrest the niece, Mrs. Parker?”

  “Your only alternative is to arrest me, Sheriff.”

  “Don’t talk foolish, Doc!”

  “Martin Wolfe doesn’t think it’s so foolish.”

  “Don’t worry about him. He’s just a lot of talk.”

  “If the Medical Society believes him, they could take away my practice.”

  “They don’t think you murdered her, Doc. They just think you might have made a mistake of some kind.”

  “For a doctor, it’s pretty much the same thing. If I made a mistake, I murdered her.”

  Sheriff Lens took out a package of chewing tobacco and opened it as he spoke. “I been thinking about it and comin’ up with all these crazy theories—the sort you’d think of.”

  “For instance?”

  “Well, maybe Mrs. Parker or her husband poisoned the old lady’s false teeth.”

  I had to smile at that one. But would the truth, if I ever discovered it, be any less bizarre? “Cyanide kills instantly, Sheriff—within seconds. She didn’t have her teeth in her mouth all the time I was there. And if she’d been poisoned before I arrived, she’d have been dead already.”

  “What went into her mouth while you were there?”

  “The digitalis pill and a little water.” I remembered something else. “And my thermometer. I took her temperature.”

  “Could someone have gotten to it and poisoned it?”

  “Not a chance. I don’t even carry it in my bag. It’s right here in a little case inside my coat, with my pen and pencil.”

  “Well—”

  “Believe me, Sheriff, I’ve been all over the possibilities already. Betty Willis couldn’t have been poisoned, but she was.”

  “What are you going to do, Doc?” Sheriff Lens asked.

  “I’ll attend the hearing on Tuesday, of course. I’ll abide by their verdict.”

  “If they say you can’t practice here—”

  “There are other places besides Northmont.” I managed a weak grin. “Maybe I’ll become a veterinarian. They might let me treat animals.”

  “Doc!”

  “Go on, Sheriff. I’m only kidding.”

  “I have to appear at the hearing on Tuesday. I been tryin’ to trace any local purchases of cyanide compounds, but that’s tough to do. A lot of photographic chemicals, like reducing or toning agents, have cyanide bases. People have little darkrooms at home for developing pictures and they go out and buy the stuff over the counter.”

  “They can even buy the stuff if they don’t have darkrooms,” I pointed out. “And the cyanide can be easily extracted.”

  He still looked unhappy. “What should I tell them on Tuesday, Doc?”

  “The truth,” I reassured him. “It’s the only thing you can do.”

  Only one of my patients showed up on Monday, and I noticed people had stopped whispering when they saw me in the street. They didn’t need to any more—everyone knew I was suspect in Mrs. Willis’s death.

  “I’m going with you,” Mary announced Tuesday morning as I prepared to leave for the hearing.

  “Nonsense—someone has to take care of the office.”

  Her clear blue eyes sparkled. “I’ve already arranged for one of the girls to answer the phone. I’m going along, Sam.”

  At that moment I had too much on my mind to argue with her. I merely shook my head in resignation and started for the door. She followed along and slid into the seat of the Mercedes next to me.

  The hearing was scheduled for 10:30, and we were there early. The Medical Society served a three-county area, renting office space in the new Northmont Bank Building. A conference room had been set aside for the hearing and when I entered I saw that Dr. Wolfe and two other physicians I barely knew were already seated at the end of a long table.

  Wolfe gave me a half friendly smile. “Take a seat anywhere, Dr. Hawthorne. I believe you know Dr. Black and Dr. Tobias. They’re representing the other counties in our group.”

  We shook hands all around and I introduced Mary. “This is my nurse, Miss Best.”

  Wolfe cleared his throat. “A pleasure to see you again, Miss Best, but this isn’t a public hearing. I’ll have to ask you to wait outside.”

  Mary retreated with some reluctance and I faced the
three of them alone. “What questions do you gentlemen have?” I asked.

  “This is an informal hearing, not a trial,” Wolfe told me. “First off, let me say we’ve all admired your dedication and high visibility in Northmont during the years you’ve been practicing here, Doctor. I’m certain no one believes for a moment that any deliberate act was involved in the poisoning of Mrs. Willis. We simply want to determine if her death was the result of some preventable error on the part of yourself or someone else.”

  “There was no error,” I insisted. “I gave her digitalis, the drug I intended to give her. The autopsy found it in her stomach.”

  “We plan to call two others to speak to the circumstances of this tragedy—Freda Ann Parker and Sheriff Lens. Do you have any objection?”

  “None whatever,” I said.

  We listened to Freda Ann tell her story, about phoning my office when her aunt’s condition seemed so bad, about my arrival, and about fetching the glass of water for me. They asked very few questions. Then it was my turn. While Freda Ann took a seat against the wall, I told them what I knew of Betty Willis’s condition on Monday morning a week ago, of my decision to treat her with digitalis, and of her sudden seizure and death.

  “You knew immediately that she’d been poisoned?” Dr. Wolfe asked.

  “Yes. The odor of bitter almonds was unmistakable. I witnessed a similar poisoning a few years ago.”

  “And you told Mrs. Parker to telephone Sheriff Lens?”

  “That’s correct.”

  Wolfe held a whispered conversation with the other two doctors and they decided to call the sheriff in for his story. He entered the room with seeming reluctance, glancing at me as he took his place at the table. His questioning was brief as he told of receiving the call and arriving at the house to find me still waiting in the bedroom with the dead woman.

  When he’d finished, Dr. Wolfe said, “That’ll be all for the moment, Sheriff. Dr. Hawthorne, could we review the evidence with you?”

  “Certainly.”

  Sheriff Lens took a seat against the wall near Freda Ann Parker as Wolfe turned to me with another attempt at a smile. “Let me quickly review the facts of the case, Dr. Hawthorne. Please correct me if I’m wrong. When you arrived at the house, you found Mrs. Willis confined to bed as she had been for the past year. Your diagnosis was that she needed a heart stimulant but otherwise was in no danger of death. You were alone with the patient during the examination, except that Mrs. Parker came to stand in the doorway. She brought a glass of water to wash down the pill you prescribed, and almost immediately Betty Willis expired, with an odor of bitter almonds pointing to the presence of a cyanide compound. Sheriff Lens was summoned and you remained with the body until his arrival. The unfinished glass of water was never out of your sight, and when it was later tested it was found to be free of any poison. Is that a fair summary of the events?”