More Things Impossible: The Second Casebook of Dr. Sam Hawthorne, page 1
Edward D. Hoch
More Things Impossible
Copyright © 2006 by Edward D. Hoch
Individual stories copyright © 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983 by Edward D. Hoch
Cover painting by Carol Heyer
Cover design by Deborah Miller
Crippen & Landru logo by Eric D. Greene
Crippen & Landru Publishers Inc.
P. O. Box 9315
Norfolk, VA 23505
USA
For Steven Steinbock
Table of Contents
Front Matter
INTRODUCTION
THE PROBLEM OF THE REVIVAL TENT
THE PROBLEM OF THE WHISPERING HOUSE
THE PROBLEM OF THE BOSTON COMMON
THE PROBLEM OF THE GENERAL STORE
THE PROBLEM OF THE COURTHOUSE GARGOYLE
THE PROBLEM OF THE PILGRIMS WINDMILL
THE PROBLEM OF THE GINGERBREAD HOUSEBOAT
THE PROBLEM OF THE PINK POST OFFICE
THE PROBLEM OF THE OCTAGON ROOM
THE PROBLEM OF THE GYPSY CAMP
THE PROBLEM OF THE BOOTLEGGER’S CAR
THE PROBLEM OF THE TIN GOOSE
THE PROBLEM OF THE HUNTING LODGE
THE PROBLEM OF THE BODY IN THE HAYSTACK
THE PROBLEM OF SANTA’S LIGHTHOUSE
A DR. SAM HAWTHORNE CHECKLIST
INTRODUCTION
I’m always pleased when I meet readers at Bouchercons or other fan gatherings who tell me that one or the other of my series characters is their favorite. It doesn’t really matter to me which one they mention, and I’ve become aware over the years that a difference of opinion exists. Many people choose Nick Velvet, my most profitable series, as their favorite, while others prefer the intricate locked rooms and impossible crimes of the Dr. Sam Hawthorne tales. I usually hear from someone when it’s been too long between my Captain Leopold stories, even though the good Captain has been trying to retire for years. And some old-time fans have stuck with Simon Ark almost from the very beginning — not easy to do since the character, and my professional career, are 50 years old this month.
I believe the stories about Dr. Sam Hawthorne have remained popular for two reasons. First, of course, is the eternal fascination with locked rooms and impossible crimes. When Fred Dannay, the legendary editor of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, suggested that all the Dr. Sam stories feature some sort of impossibility, I readily agreed. I’ve now published 68 of them, and I don’t believe I’ve ever duplicated an idea, or a solution. In fact, I sometimes find it easier coming up with a new impossible crime for Dr. Sam to solve than a new valueless object for Nick Velvet to steal.
A second reason for their continued popularity is that, taken together, they relate the life and times of my main character and tell the reader something of the world in which he lived. My previous volume of Dr. Sam stories, Diagnosis: Impossible, began with the good doctor’s arrival in Northmont in January of 1922 and carries us up to September 1927. The present collection of fifteen stories begins in the Fall of 1927 and ends in December of 1931. Eight of these stories have been reprinted in anthologies—“The Whispering House,” “The Boston Common,” “The Pilgrims Windmill,” “The Pink Post Office,” “The Octagon Room,” “The Tin Goose,” “The Hunting Lodge” and “Santa’s Lighthouse.” I have no special favorites among them, though it should be noted that “The Octagon Room” takes place on the day of Sheriff Lens’s wedding, and “The Hunting Lodge” is the only story in which Dr. Sam’s parents appear.
I do enjoy writing about Dr. Sam Hawthorne and Northmont’s impossible crimes, and plan to continue the series for as long as I, and my computer, hold up. In later stories Sam finally finds a wife, just as the nation plunges into the Second World War. His 68th adventure is set in September of 1943.
For readers who wonder what Dr. Sam did after he finally retired: well, he poured himself a small libation and told these stories to his friends.
Edward D. Hoch
Rochester, New York
September 2005
THE PROBLEM OF THE REVIVAL TENT
“Didn’t I ever tell you about the time I was almost arrested for murder?” Dr. Sam Hawthorne began, reaching up to lift the decanter of brandy off the top shelf. “That was really something! Can’t blame the sheriff, though, ’cause it looked like I was the only one there when the murder happened. Just me and the victim, alone in a big tent. The tent? Well, that was for the revival meeting. But maybe I’d better start at the beginning . . .”
I suppose the real beginning—the first time I heard about the revival meeting— was a week before it took place. A retired college professor named Hamus McLaughlin was writing a book on the rituals of American life, and he’d invited me to his home. McLaughlin was such a smooth talker and an ego-builder that I somehow got the idea I was to be the only guest. It was a bit of a surprise to encounter Madge Miller on the front porch, holding a thick scrapbook in her arms.
Madge was a schoolteacher, just turned 29 in that autumn of 1927. Since we were about the same age and both unmarried, there’d been a few unsuccessful attempts to get us together, in the heavy-handed manner of country folk. She was a good-looking young lady, with a shapely body, but we’d never really hit it off. Wrong chemistry, I guess. That’s what somebody today would call it. Seeing her on the porch of Professor McLaughlin’s house that evening, though, my first thought was of another marriage plot.
“Well, hello there, Madge. How’s life treating you?”
“Dr. Sam! Imagine seeing you here!” She shifted the scrapbook nervously. “Are you part of Hamus McLaughlin’s research project too?”
“It seems that I am.”
“He’s been interviewing people and gathering bits of material for this book of his. Honestly, he’s such a wise old gentleman he really intimidates me! Once when he was touring our school he came into my classroom and I just froze. I haven’t stood that still since I rode the sorority float in the homecoming parade. I just—”
The door opened and suddenly there was Hamus McLaughlin standing in front of us. I think we both felt like a couple of school kids caught talking in class. I was the first to recover and I held out my hand.
“Good to see you again, Professor. How’s the leg?”
“Much better, thanks.” He’d been suffering from a bit of arthritis, but as he led us into the sitting room there was no evidence of his previous limp.
“I brought my scrapbook that I kept in college,” Madge Miller said, laying it on the table. “You can keep it to look through if you want.”
The professor smiled at her. He knew how to charm young women. “I’ll put it safely away in my desk until I need it, Madge. Spending one’s teaching career at Harvard isn’t really a preparation for writing about student life on the average American campus.”
“Ohio was about as average as you can get,” she said. “Sororities, fraternities, football, homecoming parades, the works. The boy I went with had a ukulele and a hip flask—and that was only the first year of Prohibition!”
Professor McLaughlin glanced through the scrapbook and slid it into his desk drawer. “The rituals of college life—I’ll find it fascinating.” Turning to me he said, “That’s to be a chapter in my book, you know. Another will be on the rituals of the rich. Sheriff Lens is helping me with legal rituals, and I want your help, Dr. Hawthorne, with the rituals of the sick and the dying.”
“I don’t know that I can—”
“I believe all of life to be made up of rituals. We pass from one set of rites to another, and I don’t just mean in organized religion. The rituals of marriage, and business, and even sports—all of these need to be studied.”
“Sounds like a massive task,” I observed.
“Massive indeed! My publisher envisions a five-hundred-page book, and it could go even longer. I’ve already collected piles of research material.” He cast a hand around the study and I noticed for the first time the stacks of manila folders, the correspondence waiting to be answered, the thick volumes with slips of paper marking important pages of text.
“I’m afraid that scrapbook is mostly just pictures of me,” Madge said, a bit awed by the scholarly tomes.
“All the more reason for me to borrow it. A mixture of research and pleasure.”
“I have no scrapbook to offer,” I told him. “What do you want from me?”
Hamus McLaughlin picked up a handbill from his desk. “Have you seen these around town? There’s to be a revival meeting in a tent out at the fairgrounds next Thursday night. Man named George Yester who travels around the northeast with his wife and seven-year-old son. He claims the child can cure people of illness by laying on of his hands.”
“That’s crazy!” Madge Miller exploded. “Do you believe such foolishness, Dr. Sam?”
“Certainly not.”
“The man should be arrested!”
“I’m sure Sheriff Lens will keep an eye on him. But where do I fit in, Professor?”
McLaughlin shifted in his chair. “I’d like you to accompany me to that revival meeting, Dr. Hawthorne. I’d like your first-hand impressions of what goes on. The way I understand it, there’s a great deal of religious fervor at these things.”
“I’m no man of the cloth.”
“But you’re a man of medicine, and t
“And if they are real?”
“It will help support the thesis of my book that American ritual is a factor of immense psychological power.”
“You’re out of my depth,” Madge admitted. “If you don’t need me any more, Professor, I’ll be running along.”
He had a final smile for her. “Thank you, Madge. I’m certain your pictures and clippings will be a great help.”
She glanced at me as she left, but if there was any special fondness in her look I ignored it. “Goodbye, Madge. See you around.”
“Fine young lady,” Hamus McLaughlin volunteered when we were alone. “Make somebody a good wife.” I ignored that too.
So the following week I drove out to Hamus McLaughlin’s house with my nurse April. “Imagine us goin’ to this shindig, Dr. Sam,” she said. “People see you there, they’ll think you’re gettin’ ideas for new cures.”
“I try to keep an open mind, April. Heaven knows I’d go along with anything that could cure someone like Phil Rafferty or Polly Aarons.”
“I hear talk they’re both goin’ to be there tonight.”
“I trust it’s not raising false hopes.” Rafferty was a man in his sixties with some sort of blood disease. Polly Aarons was almost crippled with back trouble. I hadn’t been able to help either one, and I doubted if a seven-year-old child could. Still, there was McLaughlin’s theory of rituals to consider.
“Here we are,” April said. “Land sakes, you’d drive right by the house!”
“My mind was somewhere else.”
“On the Miller girl, maybe? I hear you two were seen together the other night.”
“On McLaughlin’s front porch. Not exactly a trysting place.” I left the motor of the Pierce-Arrow running as I hopped out and went to get the professor.
He answered the door on my first ring. “Good, good! I’m glad you could come early, Doctor. It’ll give us an opportunity to speak with this man Yester before he starts performing.”
The car only held two passengers, but April was used to straddling the bucket seats. “This is cozy,” she decided. “Two handsome fellas.”
McLaughlin chuckled. “Dr. Hawthorne, your nurse could make an old man young again.”
“She’s all talk,” I assured him. “And speaking of talk, what’s the word around town about Yester and his boy? Fill us in on the gossip, April.”
She loved it. “Well, I hear tell his present wife isn’t the boy’s mother. First wife walked out on him after the kid was born. But the current one’s something to see—all red hair and lip rouge. Flashy New York clothes too. He keeps her under cover at collection time.” April was an entirely different person when it came to gossip.
The tent came into view, and I was surprised at the number of cars in the rutted parking lot a full hour before the meeting. We parked around back and followed Professor McLaughlin as he strode purposefully into the big top. There was no circus inside, only some local men arranging rows of chairs on the dirt floor while a slim fellow with a pencil-thin mustache worked at positioning a life-size silver statue of a nearly nude woman holding a sword.
“Hi there,” he said, seeing our approach.
“George Yester?”
“That’s me.” He was both younger and handsomer than I’d expected, the sort of dapper city slicker we country folk were forever being warned against. I wondered how this man could possibly cure anything, except maybe an overweight wallet. But then I remembered the boy.
Hamus McLaughlin had introduced us all, and as I shook Yester’s hand I asked, “Is your son around?”
“No, no—he has to rest before the revivals. They take a lot out of him. You’ll see him later.” He stepped back to eye the statue, then moved it a bit to the left. “Like it? I call it the Angel of Good Health. My first wife posed for it.” He tapped the figure’s left shoulder. “It’s just plaster, covered with silver paint. Makes it easy to transport in the back of our truck. The sword is real, though.”
I touched the weapon, held loosely in the statue’s right hand with its point resting against the wooden platform on which we stood. It was indeed a real sword. “Shouldn’t she have it raised over her head?” I asked. “Doing battle with disease?” I wasn’t about to take any of this hogwash seriously.
But Yester gave me a serious answer. “Tried it that way, but the weight of the sword unbalanced the statue. So I have her holding it down. This way the sword helps support the statue. Toby likes it. Sometimes I let him play with the sword.”
“I wouldn’t think he could lift it.”
“He’s a big boy for his age. Looks all of eight or nine.”
Professor McLaughlin turned and stared out from the platform at the rows of empty wooden chairs. “Expecting a crowd?” he asked. He seemed to be getting the feel of the place, and imagining how it would look from the boy’s vantage point.
“We’ll fill it,” Yester answered offhandedly. “Toby really brings them in. The child of God and the Angel of Good Health. You seen our handbills around town?”
“We’ve seen them,” I answered dryly. I could understand why his first wife left him, even if I couldn’t imagine any sensible girl marrying him in the first place. “You’ll forgive me for being skeptical.”
“Medical men always are,” he said, dismissing me with a wave of his hand. “Toby and me, we bring the cures you can’t accomplish.”
“And the rituals,” the professor added. “Perhaps Dr. Hawthorne would be more successful if he performed like an African witch doctor. And I say that in all seriousness.”
“I can’t tell you how Toby does it,” his father said. “I’ve been doing revivals for years, but it was only last winter that I brought the boy into the act—the service—and let him perform. He was born to it. Now he wears a little white suit and looks like an angel himself.”
“I wonder if you’d have a photograph of him,” McLaughlin asked. “Like the one on the handbill. Something for my book.”
Yester glanced at his watch. “See me afterwards. He’ll even autograph it for you. They’re coming in now.”
We retreated to front-row seats where Professor McLaughlin could have a good view of the proceedings. Yester started off the platform but was intercepted by a flashy red-haired woman who waved her hands as she talked. “That’s his wife,” April whispered in my ear.
I grunted an acknowledgement, wondering what the woman’s problem was. Maybe she was having trouble with the boy. Maybe he’d got his white suit dirty.
The citizens of Northmont filed in, almost filling the place. A few looked guiltily in my direction, as if their presence lent support to this rival healer. I smiled and waved. It was a theater, not a church.
And presently the electric lights, hanging from the top of the tent, dimmed. The performance was about to begin. George Yester appeared on the wooden platform, billowing the side curtains as he came. He held his hands high toward heaven and proclaimed, “Today . . . is Yester Day!”
Nobody laughed.
I wondered if he’d managed to hypnotize them all while they stood in line. He’d barely appeared and he had the audience eating out of his hand. God help us all.
After a long introduction full of platitudes he directed our attention to the silver statue of the Angel of Good Health. The spotlight circled it while the rest of the platform went dark. Then, with a suddenness that was breathtaking, a boy in white stepped from behind the statue. Applause filled the tent. This was what they’d come for.
“Confess your sins,” the boy intoned, “and I will make you whole again.”
A phonograph record of some organ music came on, lending the proper mood to the event. I wondered if Yester’s red-haired wife handled things like spotlights and Victrolas.
Then I saw them coming up the center aisle—the lame and the halt, the ill and the aged. My people, my patients. Coming to this child for the cure I could not find for them. And singing as they came.
It filled me with a fury I’d never known before, and it must have showed. I felt April’s restraining hand on my arm. “Not now, Dr. Sam,” she whispered.
