Molly Franklin was a jovial woman in her early forties who’d moved to Northmont a few years earlier with her husband Gus. They’d come from Boston, where Molly’s father ran an electroplating business, and Gus had opened a small cigar store on Main Street near the town hall. They seemed like a happily married couple and it came as a shock to everyone when Gus Franklin hanged himself in his garage one night while Molly was away visiting her family in Boston. It took her a few months to recover from the shock, but she decided to remain in Northmont and open her own business. She used the money from Gus’s insurance and the cigar store to buy the coffee shop and remodel it into a cafe. She was ready to open on the day Prohibition ended, and a steady rain did nothing to dampen her spirits.
I took my nurse April to the opening of Molly’s Cafe that evening, and Molly greeted us at the door with her usual exuberance. “Come on in, Sam—you, too, April. We’re just waiting for word on the radio that it’s legal again.” She was a tall, big-boned woman with a good figure only a little on the plump side. She’d had her short blonde hair carefully waved for the occasion and wore a fancy dress that sparkled when it caught the light.
I shed the raincoat I’d worn against the damp drizzle outside, and took April’s coat. “Not a pleasant evening,” I said, looking for a place to hang them.
“Cheer up—ten degrees colder and it would be snow. Here, Doc, we’ve got a regular checkroom for your coats. This is a high-class place.” She took them from me.
I had to admit it was a big improvement over the coffee shop. The lights were dim enough to lend a little atmosphere, and large wall mirrors made the place appear about twice as large as it really was. A good crowd was already gathered at the bar, and I spotted Dr. Wayne from the hospital along with Mayor Cresson and his wife Susan. My friend Sheriff Lens was there, too, playing with an empty wine glass as if he couldn’t wait for the long-anticipated moment to arrive.
“How are you, Sheriff?”
“Doin’ fine, Doc. This is a big night.”
“That it is,” I agreed.
“But Molly doesn’t have her stock in yet. Phil Yancy’s goin’ into the liquor distribution business—legally, this time—and he can’t make his delivery until Roosevelt signs the proclamation.”
“Well, we’ve waited this long. I guess we can wait a while longer.”
I drifted over to the bar where Molly was chatting with John Finnigan, one of the town aldermen. Finnigan was a balding man of about fifty I’d been treating for a variety of minor ailments. “Didn’t know you were a drinking man, Sam,” he said as I joined them.
“This is more in the nature of a celebration. I figured you needed a doctor present in case somebody imbibes a little too much.”
“Well, we got Doc Wayne, too, so we’re doubly protected.”
“I doubt if you’ll need it,” Molly Franklin told us glumly. “Phil Yancy called a while back to say it got so late in the day the Boston warehouse decided they couldn’t deliver the whiskey and gin and rum to him till morning. All he’s got for me’s a case of port and a case of sherry.”
“Hell,” Finnigan grumbled. “I was hopin’ for some good Scotch.”
“We’re not alone,” Molly said, apparently on the theory that misery loves company. “It’s the same in New York City. The warehouses are full, but most of them have already closed for the day. I hear only two liquor stores got their supplies, and only about one percent of the bars and restaurants with licenses. The rest will have to wait till tomorrow if they don’t want to get caught serving illegal stuff.”
As if on cue, the door opened to admit Phil Yancy, carrying a cardboard case on his shoulder. A cheer went up from the twenty or so people waiting at the bar. He shook the rain from himself like a big friendly dog and set the case on the bar. “Here’s your port, Molly. I’ll go get the sherry. It’s rainin’ cats and dogs now.”
“What’s the price of this going to be, Molly?” Mayor Cresson asked from down the bar. He was a good egg, a well off real-estate salesman when he wasn’t busy mayoring. He hadn’t been in office a full year yet, but everyone seemed to like him.
“The first drink’s on the house,” Molly announced, bringing a loud cheer. “After that it’ll be thirty cents a glass, same as New York prices. And forty-five cents for Scotch.”
Anyone but Molly might have gotten an argument about charging the same prices as New York, but everyone was in such a good mood that no one questioned it. Dr. Wayne was already pulling open the top of the box as if to assure us there really were bottles inside. Yancy returned with the sherry and set it on the bar next to the port.
Molly turned the case around to read the label and then opened it as everyone crowded around.
“Who’s first?” Finnigan asked.
“I think it should be Mayor Cresson,” Molly announced, and nobody argued with that. “What’ll it be, Mayor? Port or sherry?”
Cresson seemed to waver between the two freshly opened cases. “Maybe a little port. No, no—make it sherry. I haven’t had sherry in so long I’ve almost forgotten what it tastes like.”
“Choose your bottle.”
Now there was no hesitation. The mayor reached for the one in the upper left-hand corner of the box and withdrew it from its slot. The seal was removed and Molly ceremoniously presented Cresson with a corkscrew. He was grinning like a small boy as he removed the cork and another cheer went up. He chose one of the wine glasses from the row on the bar, held it up to the light, and then filled it with sherry from the bottle.
“To your health,” he announced to the room. “And to the future of Northmont.”
Alderman Finnigan picked up a glass and held it out to be filled, but then a curious thing happened. Still holding the sherry bottle in his left hand, the mayor drained the glass and made a terrible face. “It doesn’t taste—”
He never finished the sentence. I saw him start to drop and dashed forward to catch him. Behind me, Susan Cresson screamed.
His breathing almost stopped, though he still clutched the sherry bottle with one hand. Some of it spilled on the floor as I lowered him and tried to get him breathing again. Then I caught the unmistakable odor of bitter almonds. I took the bottle from his grip and smelled it. There could be no doubt.
“He’s been poisoned,” I said. “Cyanide, I think.”
“Can’t you do anything?” his wife cried.
“I’m sorry, Susan. He’s dead . . .”
Later, as the body was being removed, Sheriff Lens said, “You’ve got to help me on this one, Doc.”
“I’ll supervise the autopsy if you want. And I’ll see that the contents of this bottle are analyzed, though I’m pretty certain it’s cyanide—probably a solution of potassium cyanide.”
“You know what I mean. I need your help in solving it.”
“It’s been more than a year since the last time,” I told him. “I’m devoting more time to my patients these days, Sheriff. I’m out of the amateur-detective business.”
“This is the mayor, Doc. They’ll have my scalp if I don’t come up with a quick solution. And it’s impossible! We were watching all the time and nobody touched that bottle or that glass except Cresson himself.”
Molly had cleared everyone out of the place and was staring down at a spot of spilled wine near where the body had been. “Maybe he killed himself,” she suggested. “Whatever happened, it sure as hell ruined my opening.”
“The only thing I can suggest is that the entire case was poisoned at the vineyard or the bottling plant.” I walked over and lifted out another bottle at random. “Let’s see if I’m right.” But when I opened the bottle with the corkscrew there was no odor of bitter almonds. “I think this one is all right, but I’ll have it analyzed to be certain.”
“You’d better take the whole case along, Doc,” Sheriff Lens said.
“Good idea. The hospital lab has the equipment we need.” I glanced at Molly. “I’m sorry about this.”
“Go ahead,” she s
aid with a wave of her hand. “I suppose the sooner we know how he died the sooner I can get down to business here without this cloud hanging over the place.”
In the morning I knew a little more about the death of Mayor Cresson. The bottle he’d opened had indeed contained potassium cyanide, in a large enough concentration to kill almost instantly. And none of the other eleven bottles in the case had been poisoned. They all contained sherry and nothing else. I was left with the theory that some disgruntled worker at a winery in France had poisoned a single bottle and that mere happenstance had caused the death of Mayor Edmund Cresson here in Northmont.
But I didn’t believe it for a minute.
I drove over to the jail and gave my findings to a downhearted Sheriff Lens. “Alderman Finnigan has asked the state police to take over the investigation,” he told me. “He says I’m not competent to conduct it. Can you imagine that? I’m the one who caught those kids breakin’ into his house last summer, and he calls me incompetent!”
“It won’t do any good to get upset, Sheriff. We’ve got to keep calm and think about this.”
His face lit up. “Does that mean you’ll help me?”
“I’ll help point you in the right direction, that’s all I can promise. What have we got so far?”
“A poisoned sherry bottle and one dead mayor,” the sheriff answered glumly, “who picked the bottle, opened it, and poured it himself.”
“I know. He even picked his own glass, and there was nothing else in it. The poison was in the bottle.”
“Unless someone added it in the confusion after he keeled over.”
I shook my head. “He had a good grip on the bottle until I took it from him, and then the poison was already in it. That means it was in before he pulled that cork.”
“A poisoned corkscrew?” Sheriff Lens asked, but even he didn’t seem to regard the suggestion very seriously.
“No, there was too much poison for that. And I opened the second bottle with the same corkscrew.”
“Then the bottle had to be poisoned earlier. That points the finger at the man who delivered it—Phil Yancy.”
“Even if Yancy somehow poisoned it and resealed it, how did he know Mayor Cresson would choose that bottle?”
“He couldn’t have. But maybe he didn’t care who died, maybe he just wanted to discredit Molly’s bar, or drinking in general. Maybe he’s a secret Prohibitionist.”
“Phil Yancy?” I laughed at the idea. “He’s been selling moonshine in these parts ever since I came to Northmont.”
“Maybe he made this stuff and faked the labels. Who’d know the difference after all these years of Prohibition?”
“It’s real. Dr. Wayne is something of a wine expert and he confirmed it.” I’d spoken with him before leaving the hospital that morning.
“Will you do me one favor, Doc? Will you question Phil Yancy about that delivery? I gotta stay here and wait for the state police.”
I figured it was the least I could do for him. I’d have been fooling nobody if I denied the case intrigued me. It had been a long time since I’d helped Sheriff Lens with a murder case, and I had no patients in the hospital and nothing but routine office calls lined up. “All right,” I agreed, “I’ll talk to him . . .”
I found Yancy working with three other men at his warehouse outside of town. A big truck from Boston was being unloaded while Yancy checked off cases of whiskey and supervised the transfer of some of them to his own smaller delivery truck. “The busiest day I’ve ever had and you come around askin’ questions, Doc. Come on, give me a break!”
“I’ll only take a couple of minutes,” I assured him. “I have to ask about those cases of wine you delivered to Molly’s last night.”
“Oh—them! What about ’em?”
“Our tests show one bottle was definitely poisoned. We’re trying to figure out how it could have happened.”
“It didn’t happen here, I’ll tell you that.”
“And I don’t see how it could have happened at Molly’s. Where does that leave? Are you saying it was poisoned before it ever reached you?”
Yancy was silent for a moment, carefully writing out Molly’s name and address on the label he’d affixed to a case of bourbon. Then he laid down his fountain pen and said, “You’re approaching this from the wrong angle, Doc. Why don’t you start asking questions about Mayor Cresson, and what went on at his hunting lodge over near Shinn Corners?”
“What’s that mean?”
“You find out,” Yancy said. “I gotta get back to work.”
He walked away, yelling at one of the men who was awkwardly balancing a case of gin. I saw there was no hope of getting any more information out of him then, so I went back to my car and drove into town. I drove past Pilgrim Memorial Hospital where my office was located and continued out North Road until I came to the mayor’s house. It seemed deserted at first, but then I saw a flicker of the front curtain and knew someone was watching me. I parked and went up to the door. Before I could knock, it opened and Susan Cresson faced me.
“What do you want, Doctor?”
I’d never considered the mayor’s wife to be a beautiful woman, but now in her moment of grief there was something oddly appealing about her. “I’m helping Sheriff Lens with the investigation of your husband’s death.”
“His murder,” she corrected.
“Well, that’s probably the case but we can’t be certain. It might have been some sort of bizarre accident.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know what to believe right now. Could I come in and ask you a few questions?”
“I’m leaving in ten minutes for the funeral parlor. I have to complete the arrangements. Has Edmund’s body been released yet?”
“Yes. The autopsy is complete.”
She led me into a large living room furnished in a surprising combination of colonial and contemporary. “I suppose it was poison.”
I nodded. “The wine bottle was loaded with it. Who would want to kill your husband, Mrs. Cresson?”
“No one. He was a very popular man. He was elected mayor by a large majority.”
“I understand he had a hunting lodge over near Shinn Corners.”
“Yes, he and his cronies.” She picked up a ring of keys and dropped them into her purse. “I hardly ever went there. It was always stag.”
“What cronies were those?” I asked.
“Oh, Doctor Wayne from the hospital, and John Finnigan. Phil Yancy, too, I think. Before he died, Gus Franklin used to go sometimes. They didn’t really hunt. I gathered it was more for card-playing and drinking.”
“Would it be possible for me to visit the lodge? It could hold a clue to your husband’s death.”
“Where did you get that idea?”
“It’s just something I heard. Perhaps you have a key to the place on your ring there.”
“No, these are just the house and car keys. I don’t know where he kept the lodge key and I don’t have time to look for it now.” She was obviously anxious to leave.
“As I remember, he was always an extremely precise person. I’m sure you know exactly where his keys are.”
She sighed and led the way into the study. A homemade key rack with rows of nails hung on one wall. She chose one of the labeled keys and handed it to me.
“You’re right about his being precise. When he picked that bottle of sherry for his first drink, I knew exactly which one he’d choose. He started at the upper left-hand corner every time, just as if he were reading a book or a newspaper.”
“Did many people know that?”
“He was the same way with a square cake or a meat loaf. He’d always cut the upper left-hand corner first. Anyone who knew him must have noticed it. Alderman Finnigan kidded him about it sometimes.”
I dropped the key into my pocket. “I’ll return this as soon as I can,” I told her.
I don’t know what I expected to find at the hunting lodge, but Yancy had said to ask questions
about what went on there and I figured I should start by looking the place over. It was a rustic log building, more of a house than a cabin, with the upstairs divided into four bedrooms. The furnishings were plentiful though not fancy. After a quick tour of the place, I settled down to go over it in more detail.
There were ashes in the fireplace, indicating the lodge had probably been used that fall, maybe during the hunting season that was just ending. A man as precise and meticulous as Mayor Cresson wouldn’t have been likely to leave a dirty fireplace from the previous winter. I prowled around the cupboards and the upstairs bedrooms, not really knowing what I sought. After about thirty minutes, I was ready to give up when a small leather pouch in one of the drawers caught my eye. Inside were a number of black gummy balls.
I froze as the sound of an opening door reached me from downstairs. Pulling the drawstrings of the pouch shut, I returned it to the drawer and hurried out of the bedroom to confront the intruder. We met on the stairs. It was Dr. Wayne. “Ah, Hawthorne!” he greeted me, as if we were in a corridor at the hospital. “I wondered whose car that was outside. I didn’t realize you had a key to this place.”
Wayne was older than me, around fifty, and his bushy hair was already grey. I never saw him outside of work, but he seemed to be a knowledgeable physician who worked long hours. He often sat yawning at staff meetings, but I couldn’t blame him for that. “Mrs. Cresson gave it to me,” I explained. “I’m helping Sheriff Lens with his investigation.”
“Back at the detective work, are you?” he asked with a bit of a smirk. It had always been something of a joke to him. “I’m sure the Prohibitionists are behind it somehow, trying to turn everyone away from drinking now that it’s legal again.”
“What brings you way out here?”
Wayne had paused on the stairs, waiting for me to let him pass. “I left some clothes here from our last hunting trip—thought I should pick them up while I still can.”
“You had your own key?”
“Certainly.” He showed it to me. “A few of us came here often on weekends, just to relax. Edmund was very generous with it, and we enjoyed the place. I suppose that’s all over now.”
Nothing Is Impossible: Further Problems for Dr. Sam Hawthorne Page 8