Nothing Is Impossible: Further Problems for Dr. Sam Hawthorne

by Hoch Edward D.

  “Then he was killed after sunrise.”

  “I’d say so, yes. It was around ten o’clock when we found him. There were unwashed breakfast dishes and the lights were out.”

  “The snow stopped before the sun was up.” Sheriff Petty turned to Mulhone. “There was no one else here when you entered the cabin?”

  “Only poor Shorter.”

  “And no tracks leading in or out?”

  Andre shook his head.

  “No tracks,” I confirmed. “We searched the cabin and looked out in all directions. This is the only door and the snow was drifted against it when we arrived. The windows were all closed and latched against the cold. Nothing came near the place except for a bobcat.”

  “The killer must have been here all night,” the sheriff decided. “But then how did he get away without leaving tracks?”

  “Suicide,” Mulhone said. “It’s the only answer.”

  Sheriff Petty’s frown deepened. “If it’s suicide, what happened to the weapon?”

  It was a fair enough question, and for the moment we had no answer.

  They took the body away, pulling it on a sled up the snow-covered hill, then down the other side till they reached the road that was clear. We headed back to the lodge.

  “Tell me about Shorter,” I said to Andre. “Who do you think would want to kill him?”

  The innkeeper shrugged. “Someone from his past, I suppose. I doubt if he saw enough people around here to make enemies. As I said before, he was friendly enough but he kept to himself.”

  “Did he ever come over to the lodge?”

  “Hardly at all.” Then he snapped his fingers at a sudden thought. “But he did show up just a few days ago. He came to visit a woman who’s staying here. I remember being surprised to see him, but then I thought no more about it.”

  “Is she still here?”

  “Mrs. Deveroux—yes, I believe she is.”

  I left April enjoying Andre’s company and sought out the number of Mrs. Deveroux’s room. The desk clerk pointed across the lobby at a slim woman in her thirties who was glancing through a fashion magazine. I thanked him and walked over to her. “Pardon me. Mrs. Deveroux?”

  She turned and smiled. “Yes. Do I know you?”

  “I haven’t had the pleasure. My name is Sam Hawthorne.”

  “And I’m Faith Deveroux, as you seem to know. What can I do for you?” She put down the magazine.

  “It’s about Ted Shorter. I understand you knew him.”

  “Knew?”

  “I’m sorry. I thought you’d heard by now. Mr. Shorter was found dead in his cabin this morning.”

  She swayed and started to fall out of her chair. I caught her just in time.

  When she’d regained her composure, Faith Deveroux took a sip of the brandy I’d ordered and said, “You’ll have to excuse me. I haven’t fainted in years.”

  “I’m sorry my news was such a shock.”

  She leaned back against the sofa in the lobby. There had been no fuss—only the desk clerk had seen her fall and I had quickly revived her. “It shouldn’t have been, really. He was someone I knew a long time ago. What was it—a heart attack?”

  “He was stabbed in the chest.”

  “You mean someone killed him?” Her pallid face might have grown a shade paler.

  “It might have been suicide, but that’s doubtful. Could you tell me something about him, about why he chose to live here away from everyone?”

  “That’s simple enough. Ted was a stockbroker. He was wiped out in the crash and never recovered from it. He not only lost his own money but that of hundreds of small investors as well. Some of them blamed him for their losses. He finally reached the point where he couldn’t face it any more. He moved up here from Boston about three years ago and he’s been alone ever since.”

  “Were you one of his investors?” I asked.

  She gave me a sad smile. “No. I was his wife.”

  It was my turn to be shocked. “You were divorced?”

  Faith Deveroux nodded. “It had nothing to do with the crash. I met Glen Deveroux early in 1929 and we fell in love. I told Ted I wanted a divorce a few months later. I was sorry when I heard what happened to him, but it had no connection with me.”

  “You’re up here now without your husband?”

  “Yes. He’s a construction engineer working on the new Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Sometimes he’s out there for months at a time. I got lonesome, so I came up here for a week.”

  “Did you know your former husband was living here?”

  “I knew he was in the general area.”

  “Did you phone him when you arrived?”

  By this time her patience had worn thin. “What are you, Mr. Hawthorne, some sort of detective? What’s the meaning of all these questions?”

  “I’m a doctor. I’ve had some experience with crimes of this type and I thought I might help the local police.”

  “What do you mean, crimes of this type?”

  “The circumstances seem somewhat bizarre, even impossible. Mr. Shorter was stabbed while he was alone in a cabin surrounded by unmarked snow. The killer couldn’t have entered or left once the snow stopped before dawn. Yet there is no weapon pointing to suicide.”

  “Do the police suspect me of killing him?” she asked.

  “I don’t think at this point they’re even aware of your existence.”

  “I’d appreciate it if that continued to be the case, Dr. Hawthorne. I assure you I know nothing of my ex-husband’s death. We dined together the other night and that was all.”

  There was nothing more to be learned just then. I thanked her for her time and went to my room, where I sat by the window and tried to recall the details of the dead man’s cabin. It was one large room with a sleeping loft and a small kitchen area. An outhouse was located at the rear. There had been some books, mainly about business and the stock market, and the remains of breakfast, confirming that Shorter had probably died after dawn. I wondered if a man would make breakfast if he intended to kill himself—and decided that stranger things had happened.

  I didn’t see April until after dinner. Then she seemed happier than I’d ever seen her.

  “Have you been with Andre all day?” I asked, thinking I was making a joke.

  To my surprise, she nodded. “I really like him, Sam. We had dinner in his office, just the two of us.”

  “This is getting serious,” I said.

  She changed the subject. “Do you have any leads on the killing?”

  “Nothing much. I met a woman here at the lodge who turns out to be Shorter’s former wife. It’s interesting that she should be on the scene at the time he died, but she swears she knows nothing about it.”

  “Why would anyone kill a man who lived by himself in the woods?”

  “I don’t know. He lost a great deal of money in the crash and so did a number of people whose investments he handled. Perhaps one of them followed him up here for revenge.”

  “After more than five years?”

  “It’s happened before. Sometimes the anger at a supposed wrong will build in a person’s mind until it blossoms into a homicidal rage. Shorter may have been here in hiding from just such a person.”

  We strolled out around the lodge, and the conversation shifted to Northmont and the people there. April spoke of it with something like nostalgia, as if remembering the home she’d left long ago. The conversation bothered me, and later in my room I sat for a long time at the window, staring out at the snow and the few lights that reflected off it.

  Once I saw a figure moving, passing beneath one of the lights. It was Gus Laxault, carrying his shotgun, perhaps on the trail of another bobcat.

  In the morning, April was gone from her room when I knocked at the door. I went down to breakfast and avoided joining Faith Deveroux, who was seated alone on the other side of the room.

  April appeared as I was finishing my coffee. “I’m sorry I’m late,” she said a bit sheepis
hly.

  “That’s all right. We’re both on our own up here. Have you had breakfast?”

  “Yes.”

  “How about a walk, then?”

  “Sounds good. Where to?”

  “I was thinking of taking another look at Shorter’s cabin.”

  “Won’t we need snowshoes?”

  “I imagine Sheriff Petty’s people have worn a path to the door by now. Let’s find out.”

  We followed our route of the previous day, encountering deep snow at only one point. April sank in up to her waist and I had to pull her out. We were still laughing when we finally reached the top of the hill overlooking Shorter’s cabin.

  “I think someone’s in there,” I said. “The door’s standing open.”

  It proved to be a bearded man in a fur parka, sent by the telephone company to remove the phone from the wall. “Guess he won’t have any more need for this,” he told us. “We don’t like to leave our equipment around in an empty house.”

  “Did you know Ted Shorter?” I asked him.

  “Not really.” He kept working as he talked. “Met him once when I came out here to string some new line.”

  “Was he alone?”

  “No—one of the fellas from the lodge was here with him.”

  “Andre Mulhone?”

  “No, a handyman who works there. Laxault, I think his name is.”

  “Gus Laxault.” I thought about that. “Ever see any bobcats around here?”

  “Sure, once in a while. Mostly they mind their own business.”

  After he’d gone, April and I examined the cabin. It was much as I remembered it from the previous day, except that now there was no warming heat from the fireplace. I stood by the chair in which Shorter had been found dead, looking in every direction for some clue I might have missed. “Any ideas?” I asked April.

  She giggled, this lighthearted new April I’d never seen before. “You sound like Sherlock Holmes. All right, how’s this? He stabs himself with a knife tied to a piece of rubber cut from an inner tube or something. When he lets go of the knife, it’s yanked away out of sight by this long rubber band.”

  “Where out of sight?”

  April looked up and pointed. “Through that skylight to the roof.”

  It was just crazy enough to have happened. I moved a sturdy table over, placed a chair on top of it, and was able to reach the skylight. It opened easily, but the snow on the roof appeared unmarked. I felt around the edge of the window but there was no hidden knife.

  I climbed back down to the floor. “Nothing up there,” I said.

  After replacing the furniture, I looked up the chimney, remembering a story I’d read about a weapon pulled up a chimney after a suicide, but there, too, I found nothing. I tried to reconstruct the events of the previous morning, talking as much to myself as to April. “He got up, probably shortly after dawn, and fixed breakfast. He started a fire, either before or after breakfast.”

  “Maybe the killer started the fire,” April suggested, “to keep the body warm and confuse the time of death.”

  That was a possibility I’d overlooked. “But that still doesn’t tell us how the killer got in and out,” I said.

  “During the night, before the snow stopped.”

  I shook my head. “You’re forgetting breakfast.”

  “The killer could have faked that.”

  “But there’s still the fire. It would have died down if it was unattended for that long.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” she admitted. Then her eyes fastened on something on the floor near the door, almost hidden by a scatter rug. “What’s that?”

  It was a slim gold lead-pencil with the initials G.D. engraved on its side. “Maybe it’s a clue,” I said, though I doubted it. Sheriff Petty’s people wouldn’t be likely to miss it. Perhaps one of the investigators had used it to draw a map of the cabin and dropped it. I put it in my pocket and looked around the room. “I guess we’ve done all the looking that makes sense, April,” I said.

  As we walked back to the lodge, April became serious. “Sam, what would you do if I left you someday to take another job?”

  “Probably close up my practice and become a monk.”

  “No, seriously.”

  “You’ve been with me thirteen years, April. As long as I’ve had my practice. Aren’t you happy? Do you want more money?”

  “It has nothing to do with money.”

  “I thought you were happy. You’ve certainly been happy the last couple of days.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, what—”

  “Andre’s asked me to stay up here.”

  I was dumbfounded. “He offered you a job?”

  “He wants to marry me.”

  “April! You’d marry a man you met only two days ago?”

  “No.”

  I sighed with relief. “That’s something, anyway.”

  “But maybe I’d like to stay here a while longer, to get to know him better.”

  “His wife was killed in an auto accident last year. He’s just lonesome.”

  “So am I.”

  “What?”

  “I’m thirty-nine years old, Sam.”

  “I never thought of you as wanting—”

  “I know you didn’t.” There was a new note of sharpness in her voice. “Sometimes I’ve wondered if you thought of me as a woman at all.”

  I didn’t want to talk about it any more. “We’ve got a few more days here,” I said. “Let’s just see what happens.”

  That night after dinner, I joined Faith Deveroux at her table for a little sherry. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow,” she confided, “going back to Boston.”

  “You’re not staying for Shorter’s funeral?”

  She shook her head. “He hasn’t meant anything to me in years. I was foolish to come up here at all.”

  I saw April standing in the doorway, looking around the room. When she saw me, she waved and headed for the table. “What is it?” I asked, standing up to greet her.

  “Can you come with me? Andre thinks he’s solved the mystery. I want you to hear it.”

  “I’d be happy to.”

  Faith Deveroux was on her feet, too. “May I come?”

  I introduced her to April and we both followed along to Andre’s office. He was seated behind his desk and seemed surprised to see Mrs. Deveroux, but he quickly offered her a chair. “You must excuse me, Mrs. Deveroux. I wasn’t aware Ted’s former wife was a guest here. I have a theory about his death which seems to fit the facts, and April thought Dr. Hawthorne should hear it.”

  “Go right ahead,” she said.

  “If you can explain how he was killed in that cabin with no tracks nearby except those of a wandering bobcat,” I told him, “I’ll certainly be interested in hearing it.”

  Andre nodded. “It’s so simple I can tell you in one sentence. Ted Shorter stabbed himself with a dagger of ice, which promptly melted in the heat from the fireplace.”

  Faith Deveroux and I were silent, but April was quick to praise the theory. “That’s the sort of thing you’d come up with, Sam! I just know it has to be right.”

  “April—” I started to say, and then directed my remarks directly to Mulhone. “Have you ever tried cutting the skin with a sharp piece of ice? It’s not as easy as it sounds, even outdoors. Indoors, next to that fire, it would be impossible. What happens is that the edge of the ice, no matter how sharp it is, immediately begins to melt and grow dull.” I turned to Faith. “Would your ex-husband have gained anything by concealing the fact of his suicide?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. After the divorce, he turned in his insurance policy for its cash value. He told me after he moved up here that there was no one who needed his insurance money.”

  “I still think your theory is possible, Andre,” April insisted.

  “No, Dr. Hawthorne is right,” Mulhone said graciously. “I hadn’t thought it through. I suppose I was trying to dispel the notion of a killer at la
rge in the area.”

  Later, as I relaxed over a billiard table in the lodge’s game room, April sought me out. “Sam, I want to talk.”

  “All right. In the bar?”

  “I’d rather go upstairs.”

  I took her to my room and relaxed in a chair while she sat stiffly on the bed. “Now tell me what’s troubling you,” I said, dreading what might be coming.

  “You hate Andre, don’t you? Ever since I told you about us.”

  “You’re wrong, April.”

  “What is it, then?”

  I felt drained of energy. What I was about to say was the most difficult thing I’d ever done. “We have to face facts. Shorter’s death wasn’t a suicide, and certainly that wandering bobcat didn’t kill him. No one entered that cabin between the time the snow stopped and we entered to find him. No one could have. The windows were latched and the snow at the door and on the roof was undisturbed.”

  “But—”

  “Ted Shorter was alive when we entered, perhaps dozing by the fire. Andre, the first one to reach his chair, stabbed him when he bent over to shake him. That’s the only way it could have been. I’m sorry, April. —Perhaps he lost money with Shorter’s firm some years ago.”

  “No!” She threw herself down on the bed and sobbed, beating at the spread with her fists. There was nothing I could say or do. I’d said too much already.

  I slept badly that night, but I finally dozed off near dawn and awakened with a clear head. My brain seemed to have been working even while I slept, and I had a fresh grasp of the situation that hadn’t been obvious before. I lay in bed for a time, staring at the ceiling, then finally got up and telephoned Sheriff Petty. I told him what I wanted to do, without explaining why.

  “It may be too late, Sheriff, but I’d like you to go with me to Shorter’s cabin. This morning.”

  “What for?”

  “I’d rather not say until I’m more certain.”

  “Don’t tell me you believe that old chestnut about the murderer returning to the scene of the crime.”

  “Something like that,” I admitted.

  I met him there shortly after eight o’clock, having suggested he leave his car out of sight on the main road. There had been no further snow, so we were able to enter the cabin along the well trodden path without leaving new prints. Once inside, I suggested we take cover in the sleeping loft.