Diagnosis: Impossible: The Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne Page 3

  “Just the thing. Want to come to the bridge with me?”

  The ice of the creek was still firm, though the road had turned to mud. I handed one end o’ the rope to Rumsey and played out the other end till it reached the edge of the frozen creek. “What’s this all about?” he asked.

  “I read a story ’bout a gun that vanished off a bridge by bein’ pulled into the water.”

  He looked puzzled. “But Hank’s buggy couldn’ta gone into the crick. The ice was unbroken.”

  “All the same I think it tells me somethin’. Thanks for the use o’ the rope.” He took me back to the Bringlow house, puzzled but unquestioning. The mourners were beginning to drift away, and I sought out Sheriff Lens. “I’ve got an idea about this mystery, Sheriff. But it’s sort of crazy.”

  “In this case, even a crazy idea would be welcome.”

  Jacob Bringlow, tall and unbent from the ordeal of the funeral, came around the corner o’ the house with one of the twins. “What is it, Sheriff?” he asked. “Still searchin’ for clues?”

  “We may have one,” I said. “I got an idea.”

  He eyed me up an’ down, p’raps blamin’ me for what happened to his stepson. “You stick to your doctorin’,” he said with a slur, and I knew he’d been samplin’ Larry’s bottle. “Go look at my wife. She don’t seem right to me.

  I went inside and found Sara pale and tired-looking. I ordered her up to bed and she went without argument. Max was leavin’, and so was the O’Brian family. The banker had already gone. But when I went back on the porch, Jacob Bringlow was still waitin’ for me. He was lookin’ for trouble. Maybe it was a mixture of grief and bootleg whiskey.

  “Sheriff says you know who killed Hank.”

  “I didn’t say that. I just got an idea.”

  “Tell me. Tell us all!”

  He spoke loudly, and Larry O’Brian paused with Millie to listen. Walt Rumsey came over too. In the distance, near the buggies, I saw Gert Page from the bank. I hadn’t seen her at the funeral, but she’d come to pay some sort of last respects to Hank.

  “We can talk about it inside,” I replied, keepin’ my voice down.

  “You’re bluffin’! You don’t know a thing!”

  I drew a deep breath. “All right, if you want it like this. Hank was reading a Sherlock Holmes story before he died. There’s another one he prob’ly read years ago. In it Holmes calls Watson’s attention to the curious incident of the dog in the night-time. I could echo his words.”

  “But there was no dog in the night-time,” Sheriff Lens pointed out. “There’s no dog in this whole danged case!”

  “My mistake,” I said. “Then let me direct your attention to the curious incident of the cows in the daytime.”

  It was then that Walt Rumsey broke from the group and ran towards his buggy. “Grab him, Sheriff!” I shouted. “He’s your murderer!”

  I had to tell it all to April, back at my office, because she hadn’t been there and wouldn’t believe it otherwise. “Come on, Dr. Sam! How did the cows tell you Walt was the killer?”

  “He was bringin’ them back to the barn, across the road, as we passed. But from where? Cows don’t graze in the snow, and their waterin’ trough is next to the barn, not across the road. The only possible reason for the cows crossin’ the road in front of us was to obliterate the tracks of Hank’s horse an’ buggy.

  “Except for those cows, the snow was unbroken by anything but the single buggy track—all the way from the Bringlow farm to the covered bridge. We know Hank left the farm. If he never reached the bridge, whatever happened to him had to happen at the point where those cows crossed the road.”

  “But the tracks to the bridge! You were only a minute behind him, Dr. Sam. That wasn’t long enough for him to fake those tracks!”

  I smiled, runnin’ over the reasonin’ as it first came to me. “Roberts the banker answered that one, along with Sherlock Holmes. Roberts asked why—why did the killer go to all that trouble? And the answer was that he didn’t. It wasn’t the killer but Hank Bringlow who went to all the trouble.

  “We already knew he’d fooled people with his twin sisters, confusin’ their identities. And we knew he’d recently read ‘The Problem of Thor Bridge,’ which has an impossible suicide of sorts takin’ place on a bridge. It’s not too far-fetched to imagine him arrangin’ the ultimate joke—his own disappearance from that covered bridge.”

  “But how, Dr. Sam?” April wanted to know. “I read that Sherlock Holmes story too, an’ there’s nothin’ in it like what happened here.”

  “True. But as soon as I realized the purpose o’ those noonday cows, I knew somethin’ had happened to those tracks at the barn. And only one thing could’ve happened—Hank’s buggy turned off the road and went into the barn. The tracks from the road to the bridge were faked.”

  “How?” she repeated, not yet ready to believe a word of it.

  “When is the more important question. Since there was no time to fake the tracks in the single minute before we came along, they had to have been done earlier. Hank and Walt Rumsey must’ve been in cahoots on the scheme. Walt went out that mornin’, after the snow had stopped, with a couple o’ old carriage wheels linked together by an axle. On his boots he’d fastened blocks o’ wood a couple o’ inches thick, with horseshoes nailed to the bottoms.

  “He simply trotted along the road, through the snow, pushin’ the pair o’ wheels ahead of him. He went into the bridge far enough to leave traces o’ snow, then reversed the blocks o’ wood on his boots and pushed the wheels back again. The resultin’ tracks looked like a four-footed animal pullin’ a four-wheeled buggy.”

  “But—” April started to object.

  “I know, I know! A man doesn’t run like a horse. But with practice he could space the prints to look good enough. And I’ll bet Hank an’ Walt practiced plenty while they waited for the right mornin’ when the snow was fresh but not too deep. If anyone had examined the tracks o’ the horse carefully, they’d’ve discovered the truth. Careful as he was, Walt Rumsey’s prints comin’ back from the bridge woulda been a bit different, hittin’ the snow from the opposite direction. But they figured I’d drive my buggy up to the bridge in his tracks, all but obliteratin’ them, which is what I did. They couldn’t really be examined then.”

  “You’re forgetting the broken jar o’ applesauce,” April said. “Don’t that prove Hank was on the bridge?”

  “Nothing of the sort! Hank knew in advance his ma planned to send the applesauce to Mrs. O’Brian. He prob’ly suggested it, and he certainly reminded her of it. He simply gave Walt Rumsey a duplicate jar a day or two earlier, an’ it was that jar Walt broke on the bridge. The jar Hank was carrying went with him into Walt’s barn.”

  “What if it hadn’t snowed that mornin’? What if someone else came along first to leave other tracks?”

  I shrugged. “They would’ve phoned one another and postponed it, I s’pose. It was only meant as a joke. They’d have tried again some other day, with other witnesses. They didn’t really need me an’ Millie.”

  “Then how did it turn from a joke to murder?”

  “Walt Rumsey had never given up lovin’ Millie, or hatin’ Hank for takin’ her away from him. After the trick worked so well, he saw the perfect chance to kill Hank and win her back. Once I knew he was in on the trick, he had to be the killer—else why was he keepin’ quiet ’bout his part in it?

  “Hank had hidden his horse an’ buggy in that big shed behind the Rumsey barn. When we all went back to town, an’ Hank was ready to reappear an’ have a good laugh on everyone, Walt Rumsey killed him. Then he waited till dark to dispose of the body on the Post Road. He drove the buggy part way, turned the horse loose to run, and walked home.

  “This mornin’ after the funeral I made an excuse of wantin’ a piece of rope so I could see the inside of Rumsey’s barn again. He had spare carriage wheels there, and the shed was big enough to hold a horse an’ buggy. That was all the confirmation I need
ed.”

  April leaned back and smiled, convinced at last. “After this they’ll probably give the you the Sheriff’s job, Dr. Sam.”

  I shook my head. “I’m just a country doctor.”

  “A country doctor with a Pierce-Arrow car!” . . .

  “That’s the way it happened, back in ’22. I’ve often thought I should write it up now that I’m retired, but there’s just never enough time. Sure, I’ve got other stories. Lots of’em! Can I get you another—ah—small libation?”

  THE PROBLEM OF THE OLD GRISTMILL

  Now murders didn’t come every day to our little town of Northmont, and after the covered-bridge affair it was more than a year before I was faced with another mystery that seemed impossible to solve. By July of 1923, after eighteen months of medical practice in the area, I’d become an accepted member of the community. I knew most o’ the men by their first names, and their wives an’ children, too. They’d stopped kiddin’ me about my yellow Pierce-Arrow Runabout—a med-school graduation gift from my folks—and sometimes the kids would even ask for rides in it.”

  Dr. Sam Hawthorne paused to take a sip from the small glass in his hand. “The year had started violently, when a convict named Delos killed a guard while escaping from state prison on New Year’s Day. Now, beneath a hot an’ brooding July sun, the odor of death was still in the air. Word had come from Mexico of the assassination of Pancho Villa, shot sixteen times as he drove down from the hills in his car. And within weeks we were to learn of the death of President Harding on the west coast.

  “But the death that concerned me was much closer to home. . . . Could I interest you in a—ah—small libation?”

  “Land sakes, Dr. Sam! What you doin’ out this neck o’ the woods? Someone sick, or you lookin’ for a good still?”

  “Neither one,” I told Minnie Dranger, pulling my car off the side of the road so I could chat with her. She was one of those buxom country women who seemed ageless, going on from year to year like the endless flowing of the mill stream. She always joked about bootleg whiskey out in the woods, but in truth we were only 150 miles from the Canadian border and everything we needed came in that way. “I’m on my way to Hawkins’ gristmill to see Henry Cordwainer before he leaves.”

  “So’m I. Can I ride along?”

  “Sure can, Minnie, if you don’t mind bein’ seen in my car.”

  She climbed into the seat beside me, depositing her bulky string bag on the floor by her feet. “Folks hereabouts name it a treat to ride with you, Dr. Sam.”

  “Glad to hear that.”

  I turned the yellow Runabout onto the mill road and we bumped along in silence for a few moments. Henry Cordwainer had become something of a local celebrity in the months he’d been living at Hawkins’ gristmill, and it was a measure of his fame that two people as different as Minnie and me were coming to see him off.

  Cordwainer was a full-bearded naturalist in the best New England tradition of Thoreau. He’d settled into old mill ten months earlier, arriving with the first chill of late September. They said he was writing a book about the seasons along Snake Creek, but during those first few months hardly anyone ever saw him. Even his food and supplies were delivered to the mill. But after a few months things changed. People began to see him, and to like him. He really was writin’ a book, and he even let us read some of the early passages.

  I took to stopping by the mill on spring evenings, sitting with him beneath the flowering dogwoods, joining him in an illegal beer and listenin’ to his rambling reminiscences. Then he would bring out the journal and I’d read his beautifully phrased notes about autumn on Snake Creek.

  “Who’d be interested in reading this sort of book?” I asked one night, when the beers had strengthened my courage.

  He shrugged and scratched at his beard. “Who reads Thoreau?”

  “Not very many people, at first.”

  “True enough.”

  I picked up one of the recent journals, but there was nothing in it but a handwritten copy of a newspaper clipping. “Take this, for instance.” And I read:

  Fifty Pounds Reward—Mysteriously Disappeared on the afternoon of the 20th ult., a Young Lady, 22 years of age, rather less than 5 feet in height, of sallow complexion, grey eyes, brown hair, and bearing evident marks of recent illness. She wore a black silk dress, a straw hat trimmed with white, and had with her a black travelling trunk. Information should be forwarded to Mr. C. F. Field (late Chief of the Metropolitan Police), Private Inquiry- office, 20, Devereux-court, Temple.

  “That,” Henry Cordwainer explained with a smile, “was a classified advertisement which had been circled in pencil on the front page of the London Times for August 6, 1873.” When he saw my puzzlement he added, “I found the newspaper right upstairs, on the second floor of this very mill. There was a pile of old rags and magazines and papers, and this was one of ’em. I put it in my journal as a curiosity, because what would a fifty-year-old London newspaper be doing in an old New England mill? And especially with an item marked that way?”

  “Many of the people hereabouts came from England. Hawkins, who used to operate the mill here, was English. He might have come over at about that time. Maybe he brought the newspaper from his last day in the mother country.”

  “Maybe,” the bearded naturalist agreed. “But I can’t help wondering about Mr. C. F. Field, late Chief of the Metropolitan Police. D’you think he ever found the young lady?”

  That was the way one o’ the conversations had gone. More often they dealt with the creek itself, with the various forms of wildlife Cordwainer found along its banks, and with the changing of the seasons. Though he avoided socializin’ with the town residents, the naturalist was quick to lend a hand on community projects. During the winter when the creek froze over, he could be seen helping to saw ice for storage in the commercial icehouse that adjoined the mill. And on the first warm weekend of spring he joined the others for the annual cemetery cleanup.

  Now, in late July, his journal was completed. It filled some three-dozen composition books such as students used, and bore the title A Year on Snake Creek, though in truth he’d been there only a bit over ten months. But now he was leaving, and Minnie Dranger and I had come to say our goodbyes.

  I parked the Runabout next to Seth Hawkins’ black Ford and we went inside. Cordwainer was busy packin’ his books and journals inside a big wood-and-metal strongbox I’d seen before, all the while carrying on a running conversation with young Hawkins. “Hate to leave this place,” he was saying. “You’ve all been mighty friendly to me here.”

  Young Seth Hawkins was a gangly farm lad just turned 20. His father had died five years ago and Seth had been too young to carry on the gristmill business himself. So the mill had closed down, though Seth’s mother was reluctant to sell it. She still hoped Seth would take it over someday and build it back into the profitable business her husband had once had. Renting it to Cordwainer for a year had been a small source of income to the family, and now that he was leaving, the question of Seth’s future was bein’ raised again.

  “We were mighty glad to have you here,” Seth told Cordwainer. “Mebbe your book will make the old mill famous.”

  The naturalist gazed up at the stone walls and the roughhewn wood ceiling. “I’ll have fond memories of the place,” he admitted. “I loved it even when the grain dust made me sneeze.” Then he saw Minnie and me. “Two more good friends! How are you, Dr. Sam? Minnie?”

  “Land sakes, Henry Cordwainer, the old mill ain’t goin’ to be the same ’thout you!” She put down her bag and went to him, embracing him like a mother. “Why not stay another year?”

  “I wish I could, Minnie. But I’m only on a sabbatical. I have to go back to teaching in September. Even Thoreau left his cabin, you know.” He liked mentioning Thoreau, and at times I wondered just how good a journal he had written. I wished he’d let me read some of his later notes.

  “I’ll help you with those,” I said, taking a pile of books from Seth H
awkins and loading them into the strongbox on top of the journals. I wasn’t that much older than Seth, but there seemed a world of differemce between us. The death of his father had done nothing to thrust maturity onto his narrow shoulders. “Is there anything else of yours upstairs?” Seth asked Cordwainer.

  The naturalist hesitated. “I think that’s everything, but you might check upstairs for me, Seth.”

  “That boy’ll be lost without you,” Minnie said when he was out of earshot. “Now that you’re leavin’, his mom wants him to start the mill up again.” Cordwainer shrugged. “Maybe it’s good for him that I’m going. It’ll force him to make a decision.” He closed the lid of the strongbox. “Will you help me get this chest to the depot, Dr. Sam?”

  “Where’s it going?”

  “I’m shipping it on to Boston. I’ll pick it up there in a few days and then take the journals to my publisher.”

  I’d reached out to touch the familiar worn spots on the strongbox lid when we heard a muffled shout from above. “What’s that lad into now?” Minnie asked, starting for the stairs as I followed.

  We found him in the upper room of the gristmill, near a pile of rubbish Cordwainer had mentioned to me earlier. “Look at this!” he said.

  In his rummagings he’d uncovered a human skull. Minnie Dranger gasped and stepped back, but I took the skull in my hand. “It’s from some medical school or doctor’s office,” I assured them. “See how the lower jaw is wired onto the rest? They don’t just come that way.”

  “What’s it doin’ up there?” Minnie wanted to know.

  “Some kids probably stole it and left it here.” I turned to Seth. “The place is your property. If you don’t want this, I’ll take it back to my office.”

  “Go ahead, take it! I don’t want it.”

  “Every good doctor’s office needs a skull.”

  We went back downstairs and I showed my acquisition to Cordwainer. He was just closin’ the lid of his strongbox, and securing the hasp with a big padlock. “I’m ready whenever you are,” he told me.