Nothing Is Impossible: Further Problems for Dr. Sam Hawthorne

by Hoch Edward D.

  “That’s a bit out of my line, Sarah.” I hesitated and then asked, “Is there any truth to it?”

  Her face flushed scarlet. “Of course not. Roy is a nice young man and I’m friendly toward him like I am to everyone. These letters are a sick perversion.”

  “You must have some suspects in mind.”

  “No, I don’t. I can’t imagine anyone who could hate me this much.”

  “Have you reported it to Sheriff Lens?”

  “What is there to report—two poison-pen letters? I don’t even know if it’s a crime to send them.”

  “Does Jasper know?”

  She looked away. “I haven’t told him. He has so much on his mind right now, trying to harvest his first tobacco crop. I was hoping you could identify the sender and we could put an end to it.”

  “How? Suppose I could identify the person who wrote this, what would you do next?”

  “I—I suppose I’d confront him or her and demand an apology. If it’s one of our hands I’d fire him.”

  “How many people do you have working here?”

  “There’s Belinda in the house. She helps me with the cooking and cleaning. Jasper has a half dozen farmhands like Roy who work here full time. The rest are migrants just hired to help with the harvest.”

  I got to my feet. “I can’t promise anything, Sarah, but I’ll take a look around. Who might have seen you and Hanson alone in the curing barn?”

  “No one! We’ve never been alone out there.”

  “When I was there earlier this summer you brought some drinking water out—do you always do that on warm days?”

  “Sometimes,” she admitted. “Not always.”

  “Hanson was working alone inside that day because of his hand.”

  “Well, yes. But there are usually others around.”

  “I think you’re overly alarmed about the notes. The person who wrote them may be an enemy, but it’s an enemy who’s afraid to take any more direct action. After all, what could they do besides send you another letter?”

  She had an answer for that. “Send my husband a letter.”

  Belinda Sanchez was a large half-Mexican woman who’d been cooking and caring for the Jennings family for nearly a year. I found her in the kitchen with the Jennings’ only child, Matthew, an introspective sixteen-year-old who hadn’t yet decided whether his father’s business was for him.

  “Hello, Matthew. How’s it feel to be back to school?”

  He gave me a sulky look. “Dad’s keeping me out till next week, to help with the harvest.”

  “I thought it would be finished by now.”

  “Slow season,” Belinda chimed in like one of the family. “All that cool weather in June set everything back.”

  “I’m looking for Roy Hanson, to check on his hand. Have you seen him around?”

  “His hand’s all healed,” Belinda said. “He’s out cuttin’ tobacco leaves with the others.”

  I left the house by the back door and walked past the curing barn to the tobacco fields. The cheesecloth canopies were down now and all along the rows of broad-leafed plants, men in undershirts and dungarees were swinging axes. Jasper Jennings was among them, demonstrating to one of the migrant workers the proper method for lifting the broad leaves with one hand while cutting the stalk close to the ground.

  I found Hanson hanging the newly cut leaves on drying racks. Other leaves, cut days earlier and now dry, were being moved into the curing barn. “How’s the hand coming along?” I asked him.

  “Good as new, Doc.” He held it up, flexing his fingers to demonstrate.

  “I’d like to speak with you for a minute if you’ve got the time.”

  “Sure.”

  “You know, this is a small town and gossip gets started mighty easy.” I glanced around to be certain we weren’t overheard. “There’s been some talk about you and Mrs. Jennings.”

  “What? What kind of talk?” He seemed genuinely bewildered.

  “Have you been alone with her in the curing barn?”

  “Gosh, no—there’s always people around. Mr. Jennings is always around somewhere. Who’s been telling you these things?”

  “That’s not important. Just watch your step, Roy. Some people delight in causing trouble.”

  “Thanks for the tip,” he said.

  He went on with his work and I strolled farther down the line of workers, watching as they chopped at the stalks of the tobacco plants. Some of these people, I knew, could barely read and write. It wasn’t very likely that any of them had written the poison-pen letter Sarah had shown me. More likely it was a neighbor, or someone who called on them regularly. However, there was one other possibility worth looking into.

  When I returned to the house, I found Sarah watering the plants on the front porch. “Did you learn anything?” she asked.

  “Very little. I talked to Hanson, but he acted innocent. I didn’t specifically mention the anonymous letters, just said there’d been some talk.”

  “Of course he acted innocent—he is innocent! There’s not a shred of truth to those letters.”

  “I wonder, Sarah, could you arrange for me to stay for supper tonight? I’d like to see these people in a more relaxed atmosphere.”

  “That would be no trouble at all. Belinda always serves enough food for a small army.”

  The migrant workers and some of the regulars ate together out in the bunkhouse where they slept. Because Hanson and one other employee—Jennings’ field boss, Frank Prescott—lived in town, they ate with the family. It was nearly seven by the time the day’s chores were completed and I joined them at the dining-room table—Sarah, Jasper, and Matthew plus Hanson and Prescott.

  It quickly became obvious that Jennings used the evening meal to review the day’s events with his field boss. Prescott was a thin but wiry man in his forties, who spoke only in response to Jennings’ questions.

  “How’d it go today, Frank? Them migrants getting the crop in? Are you on schedule?”

  “Could use a few more,” Prescott replied.

  Jennings turned to Hanson. “Think you could round up a few hoboes who want a day’s work, Roy?”

  “There are always a flock of ’em over by the tracks. I don’t know how good they’d be at harvesting tobacco—”

  “As good as the crew we got,” Jennings assured him. “I had to teach one fella how to swing an axe today.”

  Hanson promised to round up some day laborers on his way to work the following morning and the conversation shifted to the size of the crop. “Ain’t as big as we hoped for,” Frank Prescott admitted, “but this is only the first year. It’s bound to get better.”

  Belinda finished off the meal with some delicious apple pie, then Jennings went outside with Prescott and Hanson to check on the racks of drying leaves. The radio had said there were showers in the area and Jennings wanted to be certain the newly cut tobacco was under cover. I went upstairs with Matthew to a typical boy’s bedroom crowded with college pennants and piles of dirty clothes. An unfinished game of Monopoly was on the floor, and a bunch of blue balloons from a recent carnival floated against the ceiling. On his cluttered dresser were a couple of 4-H Club ribbons, testifying to at least a little gainful effort.

  “I wanted to talk with you alone, Matthew,” I said.

  “What about?” he asked sullenly. “I’m not sick.”

  “I was wondering about Frank Prescott and Roy Hanson. You must see a lot of them, and they eat dinner with the family every night. Do you like them?”

  He glanced away. “Yeah, they’re okay.”

  “Do they talk to you much?” I motioned toward the Monopoly board. “Do they play games with you?”

  “Roy comes up here once in a while. He likes Monopoly. I don’t see much of Mr. Prescott except at dinner and in the field. He’s a lot older than me.”

  “He seems sort of quiet,” I suggested. “Doesn’t say much.”

  “Oh, he talks when my dad’s not around.”

  �
�Does your mother like them—Roy and Mr. Prescott?”

  “I guess so.”

  I’d been seated on the edge of the bed while we talked. Now I stood up and said, “Maybe we can have a Monopoly game ourselves someday soon. Would you like that?”

  He shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “Good. Matthew, if you ever have any problems I’d be glad to talk them over with you. They don’t have to be medical problems. I’m a good listener. I was your age once—I know there are sometimes things you don’t like to talk to your folks about.”

  He didn’t answer, so I went back downstairs. Jasper Jennings was in the kitchen. “Something wrong with the lights in the curing barn,” he announced. “I think it’s a fuse.” He rummaged around until he found a box of fuses, then went back outside. It was dark now, though near the house I could see Prescott carrying some logs to one of the woodpiles.

  “They’ll be startin’ a fire soon,” Belinda told me. “With rain threatening, they gotta make sure the harvested leaves stay dry.” She opened the icebox and started chipping away at a new block of ice.

  “You really have your share of work,” I remarked, “cooking for the family and all the others, too.”

  “I don’t mind it.” She went on chipping ice.

  “Do you like Roy Hanson?”

  “Sure. Everybody likes Roy.”

  “Is Mrs. Jennings around?”

  “I think she went outside,” Belinda said.

  I went out the back door and started across the barnyard. The lights hadn’t yet been restored in the barn, but through the breaks in the wall I could make out the occasional shadows of men moving around. “Hello!”I called out.

  “We’re in the barn, Doc,” a voice answered. I thought it was Prescott.

  I entered and started making my way through the maze of curing racks, smelling the pungent odor of the tobacco. The place was in darkness, with only the lights from the farmhouse on one side and those in the bunkhouse on the other giving some slight illumination, and as I moved farther in among the racks even this slim light was blotted out. “Hello!” I called again.

  “Over here,” Jasper Jennings said.

  I made my way toward his voice.

  Suddenly there was a gasping, gurgling sound that chilled my blood. “What’s happening?” I asked, moving faster and running into a rack of tobacco leaves that scattered and fell in my path.

  The overhead lights went on, and I saw Prescott and Hanson about twenty feet in front of me by the fusebox. Jasper Jennings was sprawled on the dirt floor in front of them. His throat had been cut.

  He died with his eyes open and beseeching, as if begging for help I was too late to give him.

  I worked over Jennings for several minutes but there was nothing I could do to restore his life. “What happened?” I asked the two men standing helplessly above me. “Who killed him?” I could see no sign of a weapon.

  Frank Prescott was shaking his head in bewilderment. “Damned if I know, Doc. I just heard him give this—sound and he fell over. We were all standing close enough to touch each other.”

  “All right,” I said, “empty out your pockets. I need to make sure neither of you has a knife.”

  I checked their pockets, then frisked them quickly as I’d seen Sheriff Lens do on more than one occasion. There was no weapon.

  “What’s going on out here?” It was Sarah Jennings, coming toward us down the aisle of the barn. “Is that Jasper on the floor!”

  “Go back to the house and call the sheriff,” I told her. “There’s been an accident.”

  “Jasper—”

  I went to her and placed a comforting arm around her shoulders. “I’m ­terribly sorry, Sarah. He’s dead.”

  She screamed and half fell.

  I helped her back to the house and told Belinda to call Sheriff Lens. Matthew had come downstairs and was standing ashen-faced in the kitchen. “You’ve got to be a brave young man now,” I told him. “Your mother needs all the help and strength you can give her.”

  We left Jennings where he was until the sheriff arrived. He examined the body quickly and then turned to me. “At least it’s not one of those locked-room murders you’re always gettin’ involved with, Doc. This barn’s got more holes than a rusty sieve. What happened—did they run out of lumber?”

  “It’s a curing barn,” I explained. “The dried tobacco needs air circulating around it. There’s also fire curing, using smoke to do the job, but most American tobacco is air cured.”

  “You sound like an expert on the subject, Doc.”

  “Jennings gave me a lecture tour here this summer.”

  “Which of those two killed him—Hanson or Prescott?”

  “I hate to tell you this, Sheriff, but they both swear neither one could have done it. Their hands were empty when they entered the barn with Jennings. Hanson was wearing a loose jacket but it has no pockets. I searched them both within seconds of the killing and neither one had a weapon. There’s no weapon on the barn floor or among the racks of tobacco.”

  “That don’t mean a thing, Doc. You don’t need a knife to cut a throat.

  I know of cases where it’s been done with a thin wire.”

  “So do I, but not this case. If he was garroted there’d be a mark all around his neck. And he didn’t walk into a hanging wire because he was standing still at the time.”

  “An angler could cast a sharp fishhook—”

  “In the dark, Sheriff? With him standing between two other people? Besides, look at that cut across his throat—it’s much too smooth to have been made by something like a fishhook. The sharpened blade was drawn quickly across his throat in one firm motion, from right to left.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “In wounds like this the killer almost always stands behind the victim and reaches over his shoulder. If he’s in front of the victim, the victim will reflexively jerk backward at the first touch of the blade to his throat. Also, of course, standing behind protects the killer’s clothes from the blood.”

  “What are you tryin’ to say, Doc?”

  “The killer stood behind him, reached over his left shoulder, and cut his throat with a quick pull of the blade from right to left. You can see that from the wound. It means the killer is left-handed.”

  Sheriff Lens looked grim. “Come on, Doc. We’re checkin’ out everyone on this farm.”

  The following hour was frustrating for us both. Sarah and Matthew Jennings were both right-handed, as was Belinda. Roy Hanson and Frank Prescott were both right-handed, too. The only left-handed people on the farm proved to be two of the migrant workers in the bunkhouse. But the migrants and the live-in employees had been still at the dinner table when the murder occurred. They all swore no one had left the table in the bunkhouse for even a moment.

  Sheriff Lens was exasperated. “Look here, Doc, Hanson and Prescott swear neither of them had a weapon, and they’re sure they’d have heard another person approaching. Sarah and her son and the cook were outa sight of each other, without alibis, but all five of them people are right-handed. And everyone in the bunkhouse has an ironclad alibi.”

  I went outside to speak with Hanson and Prescott again. Sheriff Lens had a deputy searching the floor of the barn in case a knife had been hurled away after the crime, but I was pretty sure he wouldn’t find anything.

  “Tell me something, Roy,” I said. “You were going to hire some hoboes as day workers in the morning. How far away is their camp by the railroad tracks?”

  “About a mile, I reckon.” He looked puzzled.

  “Might one of them have wandered over here tonight, looking for work, and come into the barn while you were there?”

  It was Prescott who answered, shaking his head. “Not a chance, Doc. The fuse for the lights had been removed by someone to get Jasper out to the barn. A passing bum wouldn’t have known he’d come out himself to fix something like that. And a bum would have no motive for killing him. Besides, I tell you we would have known it if
someone sneaked up on us.”

  “Then how do you think he was killed?”

  “I’m stumped,” Prescott admitted. “I just don’t know.”

  I turned back to Hanson. “Roy?”

  “He sure didn’t kill himself, that’s all I know.”

  Sheriff Lens had been reading up on big-city police methods, and one of his deputies was taking a flash photograph of the body in the barn. I went back into the kitchen, where Belinda was attempting to comfort Sarah.

  “Have they found anything yet?” Sarah asked me.

  “Not yet. The deputies are searching the barn.”

  “It happened because of me, didn’t it? Because of those letters?”

  “I doubt that.”

  She dried her eyes and tried to compose herself while Belinda made a pretense of straightening the kitchen. “You try to do what’s best,” Sarah murmured, talking more to herself than to me. “You marry and raise a family. You watch your son grow into manhood, watch him start to go out with girls—”

  “What are you trying to say, Sarah? Are you talking about Jasper or Matthew?”

  “I don’t know. Both of them.” She started crying again and Belinda came to comfort her.

  I climbed the stairs to the second floor and knocked softly on the closed door of Matthew’s room. “Go away!” he said.

  I opened the door and stepped inside. “I want to talk to you,” I told him. “About your father.”

  “He’s dead. I killed him.”

  I sat down next to him on the bed and gripped his shoulders. He looked at me.

  “I wrote some letters to Mom, about her and Roy Hanson. That’s why Dad was killed.”

  “You wrote—” I’d already suspected it, of course. The English was too good to have come from Belinda or most of the others. But his admission was still a shock.

  “Why did you do it, Matthew? Why would you put your mother through that torment?”

  “She paid more attention to Roy than to me. I stayed in my room at night while he was down there in the living room with her.”

  “I thought you and Roy were friends. You said he played Monopoly with you.”