Diagnosis impossible the.., p.19
Diagnosis: Impossible: The Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne, page 19
“Call the ambulance, quick! He needs a hospital.”
“Is he bad?”
I’d had time to examine the wound, which wasn’t as deep as I’d first feared. “Not as bad as it could have been. This heavy jacket probably saved his life.”
Whitehead hurried off to call the ambulance, and Fields and Mrs. Adams appeared from the dining room. “Where’ve you two been?” I asked. There was a redness about Fields’s mouth that might have come from lipstick.
“I was in the kitchen having my morning coffee,” Fields said. “Mrs. Adams just joined me and asked if I’d heard a shot.”
“It was your bandit friend again, and he disappeared in the hallway the same as yesterday.”
“My God!” Mrs. Adams looked as if she were going to faint. “Is it a ghost?”
“Let’s take a look at that door,” I said to Fields.
We went down the hall and examined it. The heavy bolt was still in place, locking the door from the inside. There was no way anyone could have gone through that door and left it bolted.
Benny Fields put his left hand on the bracket and pulled the bolt open with his right. “Still works as hard as ever,” he said. Then he swung open the door and we looked outside. It was the same as it had been the day before. The gravel parking area was empty and undisturbed. The woods in the distance were gently peaceful.
I turned and retraced our steps down the hallway. The wallpaper was still faded and stained, but all of it was still firmly in place. Even where the former doors had been boarded up and papered over, there was no sign of a tear, crack, or hinge. This time I got a broomstick from the kitchen and poked at the ceiling, but there was no opening.
The masked bandit had vanished again, and this time I’d seen it with my own eyes.
I went back to tend to my patient while Mrs. Adams and Whitehead hovered nearby. Soon I could hear the ambulance bell approaching.
It was a puzzle, all right—as impossible a crime as I ever encountered.
Was I dealing with a murderous bandit who recklessly returned to the scene of his crime, or was I somehow part of an elaborate plot in which Eustace Carey had been the intended victim all along?
They told me at the hospital that Eustace Carey would live, and that was the best news I had all day. They’d probed for the bullet, removed it, and Carey was out of danger.
When I got back to my office, Sheriff Lens was waitin’ to talk to me. “You actually seen this masked bandit, Doc?”
I nodded. “He was hidden behind the counter when we came in, apparently working on the safe. He fired one shot that just missed me and hit Carey. Then he took off down that same hallway and vanished.”
“Did he look like Fields said?”
“Exactly.” I went on to describe him.
“Why’d he be dumb enough to come back a second time? ’Cause he left the money the first time?”
“Could be. Or he might have been waitin’ there by the safe just to get a shot at Carey.”
“You said the bullet almost hit you first.”
“That’s true. If he was aimin’ at Carey he was a poor shot.”
“So where does that leave us, Doc?”
I thought about it. “He didn’t get the money today either. Maybe he’ll be back again tomorrow.”
“You believe that?”
“No,” I admitted.
“Until this mornin’ I was ready to lock up Fields. Now I don’t know what to do. You think it’s a ghost, Doc?”
“No more than the bandstand ‘ghost’ was last summer.”
“You mean it’s more trickery? But how’d he work it? How’d he vanish from that hallway? I can’t think of a single way it coulda been done.”
“I can think of two ways,” I told him, “and that’s my trouble. Both of them would work once, but neither one would work twice.”
“Two ways!”
“Look, Sheriff, I want to try an experiment. I want you to round up those two meat delivery men and bring them out to the Ferry House tonight. Can you do that?”
“You mean Tommy Bay and George Kraft? Sure, I can find ’em all right.”
“Good. I’ll see you there at eight o’clock and maybe we’ll catch our phantom.”
In some ways it’s harder to solve a mystery with two solutions than one with none. I spent the remainder of the afternoon pondering the two possible explanations before setting out on the drive to the inn. Finally I knew what had happened, and I knew how to prove it.
I arrived at the Ferry House a little before eight o’clock. Benny Fields was sweepin’ the front hallway, looking unhappy. I asked what the trouble was and he replied, “The lawyer was here. He said Stokes’s heirs might sell the inn. I’d be out of a job.”
“If Sheriff Lens arrests you, you’ll be out of a job too,” I pointed out. “But how can he arrest me now?”
“Just pray that he doesn’t. Is Jeff Whitehead still upstairs?”
“I think so, yes.”
I went up and knocked on his door at the top of the stairs, imagining that I saw Mrs. Adams peeking out at me from her room across the hall. Whitehead answered at once and showed me in. “Has there been any break in the case, Doc?” he asked. “Can I go home now?”
“There’ll be a break tonight, I think. And you’ve been free to go from the beginning.”
“I was afraid with Carey prowlin’ around—”
“Balderdash!” I snorted. “You’ve never been afraid of Eustace Carey in your life! I know the real reason you’re here, so you can stop lyin’ to me. I know all about—”
I was interrupted by the slamming of the front door downstairs, followed by the voice of Sheriff Lens calling my name. “Let’s go downstairs,” I said to Whitehead, “and we’ll try to wind this thing up.”
“I don’t want to go,” he muttered.
“Should I bring them all up here?”
“No ...”
“Then come on.”
I went down the hall to summon Mrs. Adams, then led the way downstairs to where the sheriff was waiting with the two deliverymen.
“What’d you drag us out here for?” Tommy Bay was muttering. “We don’t know nothin’ about these shootings!”
I glanced at Benny Fields as he took his position behind the desk, and then at Mrs. Adams standing tall and grim at the foot of the stairs. I even looked down the long hallway to make certain I could see the bolted door at the end. This time the masked bandit would not escape.
“Let me tell you a story,” I began. “It’s the story of how William Stokes could have been killed yesterday mornin’ by a masked bandit who escaped through a bolted door.”
“Get on with it,” George Kraft said. “I gotta get back to work.”
“Well, Stokes was upstairs, just gettin’ ready to come down, when he saw the meat delivery truck pull up out front. Only instead of Bay and Kraft he saw a masked man wearin’ a fringed jacket and carrying a western revolver.”
“What?” Tommy Bay gasped. “What in hell is this?”
“One of them—it doesn’t matter which—entered first with the gun and held up Benny. The other one came up the front walk with the meat, chatting to himself so that Benny would think he heard two people talkin’. Then Stokes appeared and got himself shot, and the killer ran down the hall, unbolted the door, and went out. The one carrying the meat enters, helps Benny with the dyin’ man, and then manages to slip down the hall to rebolt the door from the inside. Meanwhile, the killer ditched his costume and reappeared as a delivery man. With the confusion and all, Benny never realized that both delivery men weren’t here all the time.”
“Say,” Benny Fields said, “it coulda been like that, now that I think of it.”
“That’s plumb crazy!” George Kraft exclaimed. “Even if it was true, why’d we bother to rebolt the door?”
“To frame Benny Fields for the killing,” I said. “To make it appear that his story was impossible.”
“You got any proof o’ this?” Sheriff Lens asked quietly, his right hand resting on the butt of his gun.
I took a deep breath. “No, Sheriff, I don’t—because none of it is true. I only said it could have happened this way.”
“But it didn’t?” He looked exasperated.
“Kraft and Bay weren’t even on the scene of this morning’s shooting. And I could see that bolted door before anyone went near it to fool with the lock. The method I’ve outlined couldn’t have been used today, therefore it wasn’t used yesterday. We can’t believe that two different bandits would duplicate their crimes that exactly. No, it was the same person yesterday and today— and since Bay and Kraft couldn’t have done it today, that makes ’em innocent of yesterday’s killing too.”
“I’m sure glad o’ that!” Tommy Bay said.
Sheriff Lens wasn’t satisfied. “Then what in hell’d I drag ’em down here
for?”
“So I could dispose of the wrong answer before gettin’ to the right one.”
“Damn it, there’s no other way it coulda been worked, Doc.”
“Yes, there is.”
“If the door was really bolted from the inside, an’ if there’s no other way outa that hall—”
“There’s no other way. The walls, floor, and ceiling were examined by me personally.”
“The killer entered the hallway, he didn’t go through the bolted door and he didn’t get out any other way. Then what happened to him?”
I glanced around at the others and started talking. “I was put off the track by the second shooting this mornin’. I even thought for a while that Eustace Carey was prob’ly the intended victim all along, that I’d been snookered into bringing him here for that purpose.” I stared hard at Jeff Whitehead. “Jeff could have been the masked and bearded bandit. There was something about his being on the scene that didn’t ring true anyhow. With all the commotion yesterday mornin’ he stayed hidden in his room till I forced my way in. Why? Not because he feared Eustace Carey. That just didn’t hold water.”
“You think Whitehead killed Stokes to lure Carey out here somehow?” Sheriff Lens asked.
“The thought crossed my mind—until I remembered the bed. It was the bed that told me of Whitehead’s guilt, and also of his innocence.”
Jeff Whitehead stepped forward, starting to protest, but I held up a restraining hand. “No, no, I know you didn’t kill anybody, Jeff. You’re not the masked bandit.”
“Then who in hell is?” Sheriff Lens demanded. “You’ve eliminated every man in the place!”
I glanced sideways at Mrs. Adams. “The killer never spoke. It could have been a woman.”
“Mrs. Adams?”
“No. I happen to know she’s innocent.”
“Then who? And how?”
“I hate to admit it, Sheriff, but you were right all along. There never was a masked bandit. Benny Fields made up the whole story, after he murdered his employer.”
A trapped scream came from Benny’s throat and he turned to run, dashing, once more down that long hallway.
But this time Sheriff Lens had his revolver out. “Stop or I’ll shoot, Benny!” he shouted.
Fields kept running. He was almost to the bolted door when the sheriff fired. This time Benny Fields didn’t disappear.
“You could have killed him, Sheriff.”
“I only aimed for his legs.”
Mrs. Adams was hysterical, her face pressed against Whitehead’s shoulder. Kraft and Bay merely stood there. I told one of them to call for an ambulance.
“I should’ve arrested him yesterday mornin’,” the sheriff said. “He had guilt written all over him.”
“I guess he did,” I had to agree. “I suppose Stokes caught him with his hand in the cash, or else they just had a violent argument. Anyway, Benny pulled out a revolver and shot his employer. I don’t think any of it was planned in advance, and he must have been horrified when Bay and Kraft came in the front door moments later.
“He managed to hide the pistol behind the counter, and he made up the first story that popped into his head—about a masked bandit who was tryin’ to rob the place and killed Stokes. His story was possible, until you noticed that the hall door was still bolted on the inside. Then Benny Fields was in big trouble.”
“Okay, I saw all that the first day,” Sheriff Lens spouted. “But what about the shootin’ this mornin’? You saw the masked bandit! You saw him disappear down this very hallway!”
“Well, what would you have done in Benny’s shoes? He’s free but likely to be arrested durin’ the next day or two. His only chance is to stage another appearance of the masked bandit—to convince everyone his story is true. Carey and I were just unlucky enough to arrive at the wrong moment. The victims could just as well have been Bay and Kraft makin’ another meat delivery. He didn’t mean to kill Eustace—in fact, it was better not to, ’cause that would give him two witnesses to the bandit’s existence.”
“But he did vanish in the hallway! You tol’ me so, Doc!”
“Indeed he did. But even that had to be part of his plan. When he thought of a masked bandit, he described him as dressed in clothes he already owned —I’m sure you’ll find them hidden somewhere, along with the gun—and the rest of his description fit too. Benny was fairly short, but he said the bandit was just a little taller than him. Cowboy boots would add that extra inch or two. So he waited there, crouched behind the desk in his disguise.”
“What if one of the other employees—like Mrs. Adams—had spotted him first?”
“I’m sure he’d have shot anyone—he didn’t care where his witness came from, so long as there was somebody to back up his story.” I led the sheriff back down the hall to the bolted door. “He gimmicked this bolt in a simple way. You remember I examined the lock yesterday and all the screws were tight. But look—now you can see the ends of wooden toothpicks around these two screws holdin’ the bolt receiver to the door frame.
“Sometime last night he removed these screws and slightly enlarged their holes. The result was that though the door looked bolted, a turn of the knob and a tug pulled these two screws out of the door frame and the door opened.
“When Fields was through the door he simply pulled it closed behind him. The loose screws went back in their holes and the door looked as if it were still bolted. Later he put the ends of toothpicks in the holes to tighten the screws.”
Sheriff Lens scratched his head. “How’d you tumble to this?”
“Two things. When I saw Fields after this morning’s shooting, there was a little redness around his mouth. He’d yanked off the false beard and mustache too fast in disposin’ of his costume. Then, when he and I went down to examine the door, he held his left hand on the receiver bracket to keep the screws from comin’ out again when he pulled the bolt.”
“Hell, you mighta seen the bandit go through the door! Or ran down an’ tried it right away. Or the screws mighta fallen on the floor instead ’a going back in their holes!”
“Sure, any of those things could have happened, Sheriff—but none of them would have been fatal to his plan. He’d just have said the screws musta been loose all along and that’s how the bandit escaped yesterday too. We’d know he was lyin’ but we couldn’t have proved it. When the trick did work, he was content to go along with the seeming impossibility.”
“It was a simple killin’ and he sure made it complicated!”
“He invented a lie about a crime that unexpectedly became impossible and then had to invent a method for bringin’ it off, just so people would believe him.”
“What about Jeff Whitehead an’ the bed? What was all that about?”
Jeff and Mrs. Adams were still standing together and I lowered my voice. “When I found him hidin’ in his room yesterday morning, the bed was all made up with the spread on it. Now he hadn’t been outa the room, and he’d had the Do Not Disturb sign on the door. Nobody makes up their own bed at an inn— not when there’s a housekeeper on duty. I think Mrs. Adams made up the bed because she shared it with him. That’s the real reason he was here in the first place. The made-up bed told me they were guilty of a crime—but not of murder.”
Sheriff Lens could only scratch his head and say, “I’ll be doggoned!”
“Well,” Dr. Sam Hawthorne concluded, “they found Benny’s disguise and the gun hidden behind the big old kitchen stove. And a check of the books showed he had been stealing small amounts from the inn for years. So the case was all wrapped up.
“Another—ah—small libation? Next time I’ll tell you about that November’s election—an election in which a man was murdered while he was alone in a voting booth. Now, that was an impossible crime!”
THE PROBLEM OF THE VOTING BOOTH
“Well, it’s another Election Day,” Dr. Sam Hawthorne said, pouring the drinks. “Elections always remind me of the voting booth murder back in Northmont. It was November of 1926, and Sheriff Lens was runnin’ for re-election. I suppose it was about the most impossible-seemin’ murder I ever came up against. A little-— ah—libation before I start? . . .”
I remember it rained on Election Day that year and Sheriff Lens was worried the weather might keep a lot of his supporters at home. He’d waged a hard-fought campaign against a challenger named Henry G. Oatis—a newcomer to Northmont who’d had some law-enforcement experience down south but then moved north after the death of his wife. Of course we still used paper ballots in those days. Only a few of the big cities had voting machines back in ’26, though they’d been authorized for use in elections since 1892. You know, it was Thomas Edison who invented the voting machine back in 1869—the first invention he ever patented—though it was lots different from the machines they use today.
Anyway, Northmont still used paper ballots. You gave ’em your name, signed the voting book, and they handed you a ballot. You went into the curtained booth to make your marks, then deposited the ballot in a slotted box just outside the booth. It was a simple system and it worked just fine, ’cept when the polls closed it sometimes took half the night to count all the ballots accurately and come up with a winner.
This day, as I said, it was raining. Not a gentle spring-like rain, but the sort of drivin’ New England rain that comes so often in the fall, bringin’ down what’s left of the leaves and being generally unpleasant. Because of the rain I’d driven April, my nurse, to the polling place in the back of Whitney’s Barber Shop. Truth to tell, even if it hadn’t been rainin’ she’d have wanted me to come along.
