Nothing Is Impossible: Further Problems for Dr. Sam Hawthorne

by Hoch Edward D.

  Law chuckled. “A birthmark. It’s a long story. Excuse me, will you? I have to get ready for the second show at ten.”

  The sheriff and Vera finished their dinner and departed with a wave to us. I was waiting for our check when the manager appeared at the microphone to announce that Larry Law and Lucy would not be performing at the second show.

  “What do you think the trouble is?” Mary asked.

  I got to my feet. “I’d better find out.” I left money for the check and arranged to meet her at the car.

  I had to walk through the kitchen to reach the small storeroom that doubled as a dressing room for the entertainers. Larry Law was sitting next to an open suitcase that held his brown-haired dummy, Lucy. “What happened?” I asked. “Why can’t you go on?”

  “I came back and found her in the suitcase like this. I’m calling the police. Who’d want to do this to a dummy?”

  A hammer lay on the floor nearby. Someone had used it to batter in the side of Lucy’s wooden head.

  In the morning, Mary was at her desk when I arrived. “Dr. Endlewise wants to see you as soon as possible,” she informed me.

  “He’s starting to treat me like one of the staff,” I said with a sigh.

  “Have you had any more thoughts about what happened last night?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose someone in the audience took offense at one of the jokes, though they seemed harmless enough to me. You never know what’s going to set people off.”

  Mary glanced at my appointment schedule. “You told Mrs. Fredericks you’d come by to see her son this morning.”

  I nodded. “Sounds like a routine case of chicken pox, but I’ll drive over as soon as I finish with Endlewise.”

  The hospital director was in his office, looking harried. “Have you heard what happened last night, Sam?”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “We’re trying to keep it quiet. Someone got into Hugh Streeter’s room around ten o’clock and tried to kill him.”

  “What?”

  Dr. Endlewise nodded. “I couldn’t believe it, either. He was asleep when it happened. Someone held a pillow over his face in an attempt to smother him.”

  I slumped into a chair. “You’d better tell me the whole story.”

  “Streeter was very restless in the evening. Kathleen Rogers was on duty and she obtained Dr. Hayett’s permission to give the patient a mild sleeping powder. He dozed off almost immediately and she returned to the nurses’ station. This all happened around nine o’clock. Kathleen says she was busy with other patients for the next hour, putting them to bed, administering medication, and so forth.”

  “Wasn’t Anna Fitzgerald on duty, too? I saw them both earlier in the day, at the start of the shift.”

  “Anna was in and out. One of the patients needed an X-ray and there was no one else to wheel him down to Radiology.”

  “Go on,” I urged.

  “About ten o’clock, when Kathleen was back at her station, she heard a crash from Streeter’s room. A pitcher had been upset and fallen to the floor. She ran in and found a pillow pressed down over his face. There were still hand marks on it. But there was no one else in the room.”

  “Perhaps he turned over in his sleep and got his head under the pillow accidentally.”

  Dr. Endlewise shook his head. “This was a second pillow he asked Kathleen to take away. She left it on a chair across the room. As I said, there were marks of its having been pressed down over his face.”

  “Did Streeter remember anything?”

  “Only the sensation of smothering. It woke him from his drugged sleep and he remembers flailing out with his arms and hitting the water pitcher. The sound of it breaking saved his life.”

  “But how could the would-be killer get out of the room without being seen by Kathleen?”

  “We haven’t figured that out.” Endlewise hesitated and added, “I know you’ve had experience in these matters, Sam.”

  “Have you notified Sheriff Lens?”

  “We’d rather not. Streeter seems all right this morning, and he’s inclined to think it was just a bad dream he was having.”

  “I’ll want to speak with both nurses.”

  “Certainly. Both of them are working the four-to-midnight shift again today, but I asked Kathleen to come in early to help with the investigation. She should be here right after lunch.”

  “I can’t promise to discover anything you don’t know already,” I told him.

  At one o’clock, I found Kathleen Rogers finishing lunch in the hospital cafeteria. I got myself a cup of coffee and sat down opposite her. “How are you today, Dr. Sam?” she greeted me.

  “Doing well, Kathleen. Dr. Endlewise asked me to look into what happened with one of your patients last night.”

  “Hugh Streeter?”

  “Yes. You say someone tried to kill him.”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  “How could anyone have entered his room without your being aware of it?”

  She was a large-boned, handsome young woman with the sort of commitment that was necessary in a good nurse. She spoke in a precise manner that begged for belief. “You know the layout, Doctor. The patient’s room is down the hall from the nursing station. I can’t see the door from my desk. Visitors have to pass by me, but often I’m away from the station or otherwise occupied and don’t see where they go. And there’s a fire exit at the end of the corridor that must be kept unlocked at all times. Anyone could have entered or left that way.”

  “But you heard the glass break and you started down the hall at once?”

  “Yes. Mr. Streeter was alone. The bathroom door was open. I saw no one leave the room. As I’ve said, anyone might have entered or left through the fire exit, but I saw no one.”

  “How do you explain that?”

  She shrugged. “I can’t. All I know is there were handprints on the pillow where it had been pressed over Mr. Streeter’s face.”

  “What about Anna Fitzgerald? Did she see anything?”

  “No, I—” She hesitated, looking uncomfortable for the first time. “I haven’t seen her since it happened.”

  “Haven’t seen her at all?”

  “Dr. Sam, she’s my superior. I don’t want to get her in trouble.”

  “You’d better tell me what you know,” I told her gently.

  “Well, for the last few weeks she’s been leaving early some nights before her shift ends. If things are quiet, she leaves around ten-thirty or eleven and I cover for her. I think she’s meeting someone.”

  “She did this last night?”

  “I didn’t see her after ten o’clock, after the trouble with Mr. Streeter.”

  “Did she tell you she was leaving early?”

  “No, and that was odd.”

  “I’ll have to tell Dr. Endlewise about this.”

  She looked unhappy, but didn’t argue.

  “One other thing, Kathleen. Tell me about the pillow. I understand it wasn’t on the bed.”

  “Mr. Streeter had me remove it when I brought him his sleeping powder around nine o’clock. He said he’d sleep better with just one pillow, so I put it on the chair by the window.”

  “Anna’s disappearance after the attack on Streeter would seem very suspicious. Can you think of any reason she might have tried to smother him?”

  “No! She’s a nurse, Dr. Sam.”

  I could see I was upsetting her and I finished my coffee and left.

  As I was heading back toward my office wing, I spotted Jim Hayett ­standing by the locked door of operating room #2, peering tensely through the oval window. “Sam!” he called to me. “Could that be a body in there?”

  I glanced through the window in the adjoining door. Though the room had no real windows, enough daylight came through the glass brick sections in the far wall to reveal a sheet-covered figure on a gurney next to the operating table. I looked at the locked deadbolt holding the two swinging doors closed. “I’ll get the key,” I told him
.

  Most times, Pilgrim Memorial had little use for two operating rooms, and the second one was kept locked. Endlewise carried the one key with him on his ring. I found him in his office and told him what we’d seen.

  “Impossible,” he said. “That room hasn’t been used in nearly a month.” But he got quickly to his feet and followed me out of the office. When we reached the operating-room doors, he frowned as he peered through the portholes, then used his key to unlock the bolt. Hayett and I entered the room on either side of him, pushing open both swinging doors.

  It was Endlewise who lifted the sheet and exposed the body of the missing nurse, Anna Fitzgerald.

  At my side, Hayett gasped, but somehow I wasn’t surprised. I’d almost expected it since the moment he’d pointed out the gurney and its odd cargo.

  Anna had been dead since the previous night, and I’d never bought the suggestion that she’d left duty two hours early without telling Kathleen. “Look at those bruises on her throat,” Endlewise said, his voice barely a whisper. “She’s been strangled.”

  I was looking at something else. Her long brown hair had fallen away from her neck and I could see the small birthmark beneath her right ear, in the same position as the dab of paint under the ear of Larry Law’s dummy. I remembered noticing it before at some time and half remembering it at the Magnolia last night.

  “We’d better phone Sheriff Lens,” Jim Hayett was saying. I glanced around at the four walls, broken only by the glass bricks and a small storage closet, which we quickly examined. We’d just used the room’s only entrance, and the key to it had been on Endlewise’s ring. Either Endlewise himself had strangled her, which seemed highly unlikely, or the killer had left the room the same way he left Hugh Streeter’s hospital room, without being seen by Kathleen.

  I was in my office later when Sheriff Lens stopped by. He’d examined the body and talked with the others. Now it was my turn.

  “You know anything about this Fitzgerald killing, Doc?”

  “Some background, but nothing much that will help you,” I told him and ran through the events of the previous evening at Pilgrim Memorial.

  The sheriff thought for a moment. “Sounds as if Anna Fitzgerald surprised someone trying to smother Hugh Streeter and got herself killed for it.” Then he added, “Funny thing. You know that ventriloquist we saw at the Magnolia last night?”

  “Larry Law and Lucy?”

  “That’s the one. He called in with a complaint. Someone broke into his dressing room between shows and battered the dummy’s head with a hammer. What do you think of that?”

  “Mary and I were still there when it happened,” I told him, adding what little I knew.

  After the sheriff left, I went out and filled Mary in on the latest developments. “You know, Larry Law never did explain about that dab of paint on the dummy’s neck,” she said. “It’s a slow afternoon here. Why don’t I drive out to the Magnolia and ask him about it?”

  “Would he be there this early?”

  “I’ll track him down,” she assured me.

  I’d been thinking about Law myself, but the one I really wanted to question was Hugh Streeter. “Go to it,” I told her. “But be careful. If he acts in the least bit odd, get away from there quickly.”

  “Do you think he’s a suspect? It was nearly ten o’clock when we were with him in his dressing room. Wasn’t that the same time Streeter was attacked and Anna Fitzgerald disappeared?”

  “I know. I’m not happy about any of it. Everyone seems to have an alibi of some sort. Dr. Endlewise has the only key to the operating room and Sheriff Lens just told me he’s confirmed that Endlewise was home with his family all evening. If you learn anything helpful from Larry Law, I’ll be grateful.”

  I closed up the office, leaving word at the hospital admissions desk as to where I could be found. Then I went down the hall to Hugh Streeter’s room. He was sitting up in bed, looking pretty good. “How are you doing today?” I asked.

  “Okay, I guess. I met you yesterday, didn’t I?”

  “Yes. Dr. Endlewise asked me in for an opinion on your case.”

  “I thought Dr. Hayett was caring for me.”

  “We’re all looking after you,” I assured him. “I came about what happened last night. I understand there was a pillow over your face.”

  “I don’t know how it happened. The nurse had given me a sleeping powder and I’d dozed off. First thing I knew, there was pressure on my face and I couldn’t breathe. I thrashed out and knocked a pitcher off the table. Luckily, that brought the nurse.” He held up his left wrist. “I got cut from the glass.”

  It was a mere scratch, not enough to bandage. “Do you think someone tried to kill you?”

  “At first I thought the whole thing was a dream, but now I don’t know. Nurse Rogers was just in and told me someone killed the other night nurse.” He avoided my eyes, but I could see the news had disturbed him. I decided on a long shot.

  “Mr. Streeter, was the other night nurse, Anna Fitzgerald, somehow related to you?”

  “Related to me? I never saw her before I was admitted here.”

  “Nevertheless, I can see a resemblance between the two of you, especially around the mouth. It makes me wonder—”

  Streeter moistened his lips. “I’m not sure. She might have been my half sister.”

  I sat on the edge of his bed. “You’d better tell me about it.”

  “My mother was married before. She told me once she had a daughter by her first marriage who was a few years older than me. But I never met her.”

  “Did you think she might be here in Northmont?”

  He sighed. “I’d better start at the beginning. My mother died last year. She told me before she died that she was leaving nearly a thousand acres of property in her will to me and my half sister Anna. The land is here in Northmont, where she lived when Anna was a baby. I came here last week to inspect the property, and by a crazy chance I ended up here in the hospital where she worked as a nurse. I wasn’t sure until I noticed a birthmark on her neck. My mother had told me about that.”

  “Did you tell her who you were?”

  “I never had the opportunity. I never saw her after the time I noticed the birthmark.”

  I stood up. “One more question. Who is Larry Law?”

  “I don’t believe I know the man,” he said, looking puzzled.

  “Larry Law and Lucy?”

  He shook his head. “Sorry. I can’t help you.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Streeter.” I started to leave.

  “Is it true I can leave today, Doctor? Dr. Hayett says he can’t find anything wrong with me.”

  “You certainly didn’t have a heart attack. We suspected some sort of food poisoning, but I think that’s been ruled out, too.”

  “As long as I can get out of here,” Streeter said with a smile, “I don’t care what it was . . .”

  I’d hardly reopened my office when Sheriff Lens poked his head in. “Where’s that cute nurse of yours, Doc?”

  “She went out to the Magnolia to talk with Larry Law.”

  “She’s playin’ detective now, huh?”

  “She might come up with something we missed,” I challenged him.

  The sheriff sat down. “I already came up with what we missed, Sam. I know what the Larry Law link is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The birthmarks. He painted that red spot on the dummy’s neck so she’d look like Anna Fitzgerald. You musta noticed that both Anna and the dummy had the same color hair.”

  “So she’d look like Anna.” I repeated the words slowly, trying to make sense of them. “Why would he?” And then it all came together. “Of course! She was leaving her job early so she could meet Law after his second show at the Magnolia—he’s the mysterious boy friend!”

  “You got it, Sam. The Magnolia owner confirmed that she’s been comin’ around the last few weeks, ever since she met Law near the beginning of his engagement.”

  �
��But Larry Law couldn’t have killed her if he was out at the restaurant.”

  “It wouldn’t seem so,” Sheriff Lens agreed. “I got a preliminary autopsy report that indicates she was strangled manually somewhere around ten o’clock last night, give or take an hour. The fingermarks show that the killer was in front of her when he did it, lookin’ her right in the eyes.”

  “So that lets Law off the hook.”

  “Maybe not. Let me try this one on you, Sam. Larry Law battered his own dummy so he’d have an excuse for canceling the second show, then he drove in here and strangled Anna because of some lovers’ quarrel, or because he was tired of her and she wouldn’t let go. Then he tried smothering Streeter just to confuse us.”

  “But how did he get into the operating room?” I said. “How’d he vanish so easily from Streeter’s room?”

  “I gotta admit I’m stumped there. Dr. Endlewise has the only key and he was home with his family. As for the attack on Streeter, all I can think of is maybe Nurse Rogers isn’t telling the truth.”

  But I wasn’t satisfied. “Think about this a minute, Sheriff. Why should Larry Law go to all the trouble of canceling his second show so that he could get down here and strangle Anna at the hospital when he could have waited for her to come to him, as she did most nights? The remote area around the Magnolia is a far more private place for a murder.”

  Before Sheriff Lens could respond, Mary Best walked in. “Have you solved the mystery yet?”

  “No,” I told her. “Have you?”

  “Part of it,” she said. “Larry Law lied about the whole thing. He bashed in his own dummy’s head. It wasn’t too great a loss—he always travels with an identical spare Lucy when he’s on the road.”

  Sheriff Lens glowed in triumph. “What did I tell you, Sam?”

  My mouth must have dropped open. “You mean he bashed the dummy as an excuse to cancel the second show?”

  “Of course not,” Mary responded, puzzled by my question. “He did it because two nights ago, after his show, a stranger came to his dressing room and gave him a thousand dollars in cash to do it.”

  “What?”

  “Exactly. He was paid to smash his own dummy—and for that much money he didn’t ask questions. He did it and then reported the vandalism to the police just as he’d been instructed.”