“Someone told me he was living in the Cloister at the time of the fire.”
“Really?” He thought about it. “I guess maybe it was after we heard he was coming. Can’t remember who suggested it, though.”
I left the hardware store, wondering more than ever what was bringing Rusty Wagner back to Northmont.
Tuesday was sunny and mild, a perfect spring day to greet the crowd that had turned out for the war-bond rally. It was nothing compared to the Boston crowd, of course, but I recognized several people from Shinn Corners and other towns who’d driven over for the event. We’d set up a stage in the town square, with a billowing flag bunting as a backdrop. The auction items were all on view, including the Cloister door standing upright against one of the backdrop supports.
Just before the rally began, Mayor Bensmith made a point of introducing me to the star attraction, Rusty Wagner. He was shorter than I’d expected, and his features were a bit sharper. Close up I could see the scarring on the right side of his face. It appeared that the skin had been burnt, apparently during the Cloister fire. The damaged area was not large and could have been easily covered by make up if he wished. Accompanying him was his manager, a fellow named Jack Mitchell, looking uncomfortable in a suit already rumpled from their train trip.
“I understand you lived here for a time,” I said, shaking Wagner’s hand.
He smiled pleasantly. “A long time ago, one summer before I moved to New York City. The town has changed a lot since then.”
The mayor rested a hand on his old friend’s shoulder. “We’re going to start in a few minutes. You’d better get in position on the stage.” He turned to me with a wink. “We want to open with a bang, like in Rusty’s movies.”
For a moment I didn’t know what he meant. Then, as Wagner took the stage amidst an outburst of applause, a man in a German officer’s uniform suddenly appeared from behind the flag bunting and stood before the Cloister door, taking aim at him with a Luger pistol. There were screams from the spectators as a shot rang out and Rusty Wagner clutched his chest, falling to the floor.
Immediately Mayor Bensmith sprang to the microphone, holding up his arms to calm the audience. “That, folks, is what could happen right here if not enough of us support our government with war bonds! Happily, the German officer is really our own Milt Stern, and Rusty Wagner is alive to fight another day.” He motioned to the downed star. “Time to greet your public, Rusty!”
But Wagner remained sprawled on the floor of the stage without moving. I went quickly to his side. There was no blood, no sign of a wound, but I knew at once that he was dead.
When a well-known movie star dies before hundreds of people at a bond rally, it makes news all over the country. Mayor Bensmith and Sheriff Lens both knew Northmont would be on the front pages the following day and they turned to me for help. I urged them to calm down, reminding them that we didn’t yet know the cause of Wagner’s death. “One thing we know for sure, whatever killed him, it wasn’t a bullet from Milt Stern’s gun.”
Nevertheless, while the mayor tried to calm the crowd and get on with the war-bond auction, Milt was the first person the sheriff and I questioned. He was a ten-year resident of Northmont, in his mid thirties, married with two children. For the past several years he’d worked at the local feed store. “Is Wagner dead?” he asked us at once. “They took him away in the ambulance and somebody said he was breathing.”
“He’s dead, son,” Sheriff Lens told him. “We just didn’t want to announce it right away and put a damper on things. After the bond rally’s over there’ll be an announcement.”
Stern passed over the German Luger for our examination. “All I had was one blank cartridge in it.” I slid out the clip and confirmed that it was empty. “The mayor got the gun and uniform from a theatrical costume place in Boston.”
“It was the mayor’s idea?” I asked.
“Well, he was talking about something like that to start things with a bang. I volunteered to play a Nazi and fire a blank at him.”
The facts were clear-cut and I would have been awfully surprised if the autopsy showed Rusty Wagner had been poisoned or choked to death. It didn’t. By the following morning we knew that he’d died of a heart attack. There was no wound anywhere on his body.
Still, I stopped by the mayor’s office to have a talk with him. “Apparently the man had a weak heart,” I said. “Maybe that’s what kept him out of the army, that and his age.”
“It’s just a tragedy it had to happen here,” Mayor Bensmith said. “He could have dropped dead in Boston just as well.”
“Tell me something. Did you explain to Wagner exactly what you had planned, with the Nazi officer and all? Did he know someone would fire a blank cartridge at him?”
“Certainly. I went over every bit of it with him as soon as he arrived. My secretary, Rita, was with us at the time.” He called her into the office. “Rita, what did I tell Rusty Wagner when we met him at the station?”
Rita Innes was a prim middle-aged woman who’d worked in Bensmith’s office at the farm before his election as mayor. He’d taken her with him to the elective office and she’d settled in well. Now she answered, “You explained about the man dressed as a Nazi who’d fire a blank at him. He’d fall to the stage and you’d tell the audience to buy bonds. He wasn’t surprised. He said he’d acted out scenes for audiences in other cities, too.”
“The heart attack was just a coincidence, happening when it did,” Bensmith decided.
I had to agree with him. From both a medical and a legal viewpoint, there’d been no crime.
Wagner’s death had completely overshadowed the war-bond auction, and it was a couple of days later before I saw Vera Lens and remembered to ask her about it. “We did well,” she reported, “considering everything.”
“Who bought that door from the Black Cloister?”
“Funny you should ask. It went to a man named Jack Mitchell. He was Rusty Wagner’s manager and was making the tour with him. The door’s still here. We’re supposed to ship it to him in California.”
On the following Monday, the day after Easter, I was driving past the ruins of the old Cloister and decided to stop. Walking through the high grass to the gaping front entrance, I found a roof partly burned through, and weathered walls still showing scars from the fire. There was evidence of children playing there, and ground into the dirt out back I found a used shotgun shell. Every farm family kept a weapon close at hand. There were always varmints on the prowl.
After lunch I stopped in to see Sheriff Lens at his office. “I drove by the Black Cloister this morning and took a look. Can you tell me any more about the fire and your investigation?”
The sheriff gave one of his familiar sighs. “Doc, there’s no crime for you to solve, neither here nor back in nineteen twenty-one. That Rusty Wagner could be killed by a shot from a blank cartridge isn’t an impossible crime, it’s no crime at all!”
“Let’s get back to the Cloister fire for the moment. Tell me about the young man who died there.”
He went over to the file and opened the bottom drawer. “I haven’t looked at that folder myself in years. Probably should have discarded it after all this time.” Opening the slender file, he took out some papers and a few photographs. “The victim’s name was Fritz Heck. He was eighteen, same age as Wagner. Nice-looking fellow. That’s him on the right in this photo.”
“Is this Wagner with him?”
“No, it’s Heck’s younger brother.”
I nodded. “I should have guessed that from the resemblance.”
“We got the photo from the family in Hartford, for identification purposes. There was no doubt it was him, though. Heck’s finger-prints were on file with the Hartford police. Him and Wagner stole a car but didn’t know much about driving it.”
“How did the fire start?”
“Wagner told me they were preparing dinner, chatting about a girl they’d met in town, when Heck got careless and some hot grease caug
ht fire. They tossed water on it but that just spread it around. The flames went up along the ceiling and into the living room.” He referred to his notes and Wagner’s statement. “Heck ran into the living room and tried to beat it out, but it was too late. He was trapped by the fire and smoke, and died inside the front door, trying to get it open.”
“Why is the house still standing after all these years?”
Sheriff Lens shrugged. “I heard tell Heck’s family bought it, wanted it as a memorial to their son. But they never did anything except pay the taxes.”
“Did you ever meet any of them?”
He shook his head. “If they came here I didn’t see them. Of course the body was shipped back to Hartford for burial.”
“What about Rusty Wagner? What happened to him after the fire?”
“They took him back to Hartford, too, for treatment of his burns. We heard later that he moved to New York and was in a play. Mayor Bensmith was a friend of his and stayed in touch over the years.” He squinted at me over the tops of his glasses. “You’re tryin’ to make something out of all this, aren’t you?”
“I’m trying,” I agreed with a smile. I picked up the snapshot of Fritz Heck and studied it. “Do you have an autopsy report there?”
“Well, not really. Back in 1921, Northmont’s coroner was just a local sawbones eager to make a few extra bucks. He just had to look at the body to know the fire killed Heck. The Hartford police furnished us with medical records on the two boys, though.”
He passed them over to me and I glanced quickly through them. There were the usual childhood illnesses, plus a serious bout of influenza for Heck during the nineteen epidemic. Wagner had suffered from rheumatic fever twice as a child, but had escaped the flu. “What else do you have there?”
“Just Wagner’s statement on the fire, which I’ve told you about. His face was burnt trying to save his friend.”
I thought about that. “Do you have a phone number for this manager of his, Jack Mitchell?”
“I think it’s here somewhere. Why do you want it?”
“Vera says he was high bidder on that Cloister door. It seems an odd thing to bother about when your client has just died.”
I phoned Mitchell’s West Coast office and after some delay was put through to him. “Mr Mitchell, this is Dr Hawthorne, back in Northmont. We’re still investigating Rusty Wagner’s unfortunate death.”
“Yes,” he replied. “I just got in the office. I’ve been making arrangements for the memorial service. What can I do for you?”
“I’m told that you were high bidder for the door from the Black Cloister, where Rusty lived for a time.”
“That’s correct. He wanted me to bid on it for him. It seemed very important to him. When the ambulance took him away I was hoping he was still alive. I entered my bid on the door before following him to the hospital.”
“What do you plan to do with the door?”
“Do with it?” his voice rasped over the phone. “Nothing. Now that he’s dead you can keep the door, auction it off again.”
“Did he have any reason for wanting it so badly?”
“None that I know of. He’d lived at that Cloister for one whole summer. I suppose it brought back memories.”
“I’m sure it did,” I agreed. “His friend died in the fire, and he was badly burned.”
“He never went into detail about it. He just asked me to buy the door at the auction.”
I thanked him and hung up. Sheriff Lens asked, “Did you learn anything?”
“He doesn’t want the door now that Wagner’s dead. He said we should keep it and auction it off again.”
“I’ll tell Vera.”
“Where’s the door now?”
“Still over at the town hall. In the mayor’s office, I think.”
“Let’s go have another look at it,” I suggested.
We walked across the square to the town hall. Mayor Bensmith hadn’t yet returned from lunch, but his secretary Rita showed us the door leaning against his office wall. “We’re waiting for shipping instructions,” she informed us.
“He doesn’t want it,” I told her. “We’ll auction it again.”
I moved over to examine the door more closely and asked Rita, “Do you have a pair of tweezers?”
“I think so.” She went back to her desk and returned with them.
“What are you after, Doc?” Sheriff Lens wanted to know.
“I’m not sure, but I know Wagner wanted this door, and his statement to you at the time of the fire wasn’t completely accurate.”
“How’s that?”
“He said Fritz Heck died inside the front door, trying to get it open. But look at this door. The scorching is on the outside, while the inside is unmarked by flames. This door had to be open at the time of the fire, and if that was the case how could Heck have been trapped there by the fire and smoke? He could have simply run outside.”
“I never thought of that,” the sheriff admitted.
I took a penknife from my pocket. “I wish we’d had a more complete autopsy report.”
“In those days—”
“I know.” I concentrated on one of the wormholes Annabel had noticed earlier, enlarging it a bit with my knife. Then I went to work with the tweezers. After a moment I extracted what I was seeking.
“What is it, Doc?”
“Buckshot. Annabel thought they were wormholes, but I noticed the other side was unmarked. These were worms that went in but didn’t come out. Notice the unusual pattern they formed.” I pointed out a half-dozen small holes toward the sides and top of the door.
“A buckshot pattern would be more circular,” he argued.
“Not if something or someone had been in its way. Don’t you see, Sheriff? Fritz Heck was standing by this open door when someone fired a shotgun at him. I know they probably had one on the premises because I found an old shotgun shell in the dirt there. The missing pellets from the pattern are in Heck’s body, and judging by the close grouping of these other pellets that shotgun blast was probably enough to kill him.”
“Rusty Wagner was the only one in the house at the time.”
“Exactly,” I told him. “We’ll never know now what happened, but Wagner told you they’d been chatting about a girl they met. Maybe they argued about her, maybe Wagner picked up the shotgun that every farmhouse had in those days and tried to drive Heck from the Cloister. Maybe it went off accidentally by the front door.”
“Then he started the fire deliberately?”
I nodded. “To cover the crime. He probably made a special point of burning the body, to cover up the wounds from the shotgun pellets. When he got too close and burned his own face it added verisimilitude to his story.”
“Any coroner today would have found those shotgun pellets.”
“Probably. He certainly would have spotted the absence of smoke in the lungs, a sure sign that Heck was already dead when the fire started.”
Sheriff Lens sighed. “With Wagner dead there’s not much point in exhuming the body now.”
“None whatsoever.”
“I only wish you’d been around here a year earlier, Doc, and I wouldn’t have missed all this. It was a perfect crime.”
I shook my head. “No, Sheriff. The perfect crime was the murder of Rusty Wagner in front of this building last Tuesday. And there’s not a thing we can do about it.”
As it happened, Annabel and I were dining at Max’s Steakhouse, our favorite restaurant, a few nights later when I spotted Milt Stern drinking at the bar. “Excuse me for a few minutes,” I told her. “I’m going to talk to him.”
“Sam! You said you wouldn’t.”
But I got up anyway and went over to him. “Got a few minutes, Milt?”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“I just want to chat. Over in that empty booth would be best.”
He glanced toward Annabel at our table. “You shouldn’t leave her alone.”
“This won’t take long.”
/>
He followed me to the booth and slid in the other side. “So what’s this all about?”
“Rusty Wagner.”
“God, I feel terrible about that! It’s as if I’d murdered him.”
“You did.”
He moistened his lips and gave a half laugh. “Well, not really. The gun had a blank cartridge in it.”
“What was it that made you move here, Milt? Did you know your brother had been murdered that day up at the Cloister?”
“He wasn’t—”
“Yes he was, Milt. I saw the snapshot of the two of you and even then I noticed the resemblance. Ten years ago you left Hartford and moved here, changing your name from the German Heck to its English meaning, stern. You suspected all along that Wagner had killed your brother. Perhaps he hinted at trouble between them in one of his letters. Once here you settled down and married. Somewhere along the line you saw the Cloister door that Felix Pond had rescued from the place, and recognized those little ‘wormholes’ for what they were. When you heard that Wagner would be coming here to take part in a war-bond drive, the idea came to you.”
“What idea?”
“You would suggest to Pond that he donate that old door for the war-bond auction. Then, when the mayor was discussing a clever way to bring Wagner on stage, you volunteered to dress in a Nazi costume and fire a blank pistol at him. You knew, of course, that he’d had rheumatic fever twice as a child. Perhaps your brother mentioned it or you read it in a movie fan magazine. Such a medical history almost certainly would have left him with a weak heart, probably the reason for his draft deferral.”
“He knew in advance I was going to fire a blank pistol at him,” Milt Stern said. “That wouldn’t have caused a heart attack.”
“Perhaps not alone. But when he came onto that stage what he saw was the friend he’d killed twenty-two years ago, aged a bit but still recognizable, standing in front of that same door and pointing a gun at him. In the instant the gun went off, his weak heart failed.”
“Do you really expect anyone to believe that?”
“No,” I admitted. “Certainly not a jury.”
Milt Stern smiled at me. “Then why are you telling me this? Who else have you told?”
The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes & Impossible Mysteries Page 25