The Miser of Cherry Hill Read online

  I stood in Tonawanda Road a short while later. Various horse-drawn conveyances passed by. Mr Woodrow Addison, a patient of mine, puttered by in his Stanley Steamer, the engine hissing and chugging as he manned the tiller beside his fat, goggled wife. They waved a Merry Christmas. I waved back, waited for them to pass, then walked to the middle of the town’s main thoroughfare and angled my gaze to the rooms above the drugstore.

  I surveyed various possible rifle perches. I did so with ill-humour. My love-life was making me miserable. I turned around and looked up at the hotel roof. The hotel roof irritated me. Everything irritated me at the present moment. Especially the female sex’s God-given right to misunderstand.

  I shook these troubles from my mind and applied myself to the case.

  Given the angle of Mr Purcell’s chest wound – down through the lung, stopped by the scapula – the weapon could have certainly been fired from the upper reaches of the drugstore or from the hotel. Though the flask was still confusing me, I was growing more and more convinced that the shot, or shots, had indeed come from – to use Merle Slack’s terminology – high ground after all.

  What bothered me now was his account of the way one shot had come from the hotel roof and the other from an upstairs window of the drugstore. So much for the theory of Marigold and Billy acting in concert. How could one or the other gain access to an upstairs drugstore window without being discovered? Perhaps it had been members of the Swinford family acting together? Or perhaps two shooters unlinked and ignorant of the other’s presence? Yet it hardly seemed possible that two unlinked people had decided to kill Purcell at the exact same time. The coincidental nature of such a happenstance seemed beyond statistical likelihood.

  I left the roadway and entered the Grand Hotel.

  I found Eugene Lapinance, the hotel manager, polishing glassware in the tavern. He was a dark-haired man of forty in a red and white striped shirt, a black vest, with a healthy dark mustache that joined with his sideburns.

  ‘Dr Deacon! Merry Christmas to you! What can I get you?’

  As he seemed intent on dispensing what I saw was a fine Blue Mountain sour mash, I broke my usual five o’clock rule and enjoyed some liquid cheer earlier in the day than was usual for me. After Lapinance had decanted a shot for me, he poured a straight whisky for himself.

  I then broached the subject of Purcell’s latest transgressions against Mrs Swinford. ‘Mr Johnstone told me you were talking to Purcell about his renewed passion for Mrs Swinford shortly before he met his end.’

  Mr Lapinance was at first reluctant to speak on the subject. But when I told him it had a direct bearing on the murder case, and might help catch Mr Purcell’s killer, he opened up.

  ‘As a married man, I generally didn’t approve of Ephraim’s habits when it came to women. But Ephraim was a different animal than the rest of us. It was his instinct. You would never ask a coyote why he goes after a rabbit. With Ephraim and the ladies, it was the same thing. Mrs Swinford was his particular favourite. His hankerings go back a long way. He’d been trying to hold them in check, but I guess they finally broke loose again. He was such a lonely man at times, especially after Francine died.’

  ‘I understand Mrs Swinford’s son, Clarence, worked here awhile.’

  Delight came to the bartender’s eyes. ‘Yes, sir. A couple years ago. A fine young man, Clarence. Did the books for us. Was fifteen at the time, but smarter than a lot of men twice his age.’

  ‘And he worked in the back?’

  ‘He did.’

  I motioned to the lobby. ‘Did he come in through the front to get to work? Or did he have a key to the rear entrance?’ For to get to the roof undetected Clarence would have had to go through the back.

  ‘He had a key to the rear entrance.’ Mr Lapinance stopped to give me a momentary perusal. ‘Say, doc, what are you getting at here?’

  ‘When he finished his employment at the Grand Hotel, did he surrender his key?’

  A line came to Mr Lapinance’s ham-colored brow. ‘The assistant manager looked after that for me. Let’s see, back then it was Andy Michaelson. He lit out for California eighteen months ago.’

  ‘Do you know if Clarence gave his key back?’

  ‘It was such a long time ago. I’m sure it’s mixed up with all the other spares.’

  ‘Can I look at the back door?’

  ‘Of course, doc.’ He raised his glass. ‘Bottoms up.’

  After draining our glasses, we found our way to the rear service entrance.

  ‘On the Saturday night of the murder, was there anybody back here?’ I asked.

  ‘Just the kitchen staff bringing garbage to the trash bins in the alley from time to time.’

  ‘Can I take another look around the roof?’

  ‘Be my guest. But if you don’t mind, I have to get back to the bar. You think you can find your own way up?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Once I was up on the roof I checked it yet again for shell casings and other ballistics evidence, taking extra care this time, going over every square inch, looking into every corner, around all the vents, and even under some flashing. I saw no rifle or gun evidence. I checked the copper that capped the brick walls, turned green from years of weather, but saw nothing that looked even remotely like a powder burn. I inspected lines of fire, focusing on the estimated spot where Mr Purcell had fallen before he had crawled away, and saw that I might have a match. The angle of Mr Purcell’s wound seemed to correlate nicely.

  But where was the evidence?

  Clarence was a bright boy.

  Was he bright enough to make sure he left no evidence behind?

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Having checked for ballistics evidence in the hat shop during my warrant search of the building to find the flask and discovering none, the only thing left now was to search Wiley’s Drugstore.

  I left the hotel and headed over.

  Though the drugstore was open, the Wileys themselves were visiting relatives in Scranton. I learned from their only store employee, Bruce Farrow, a young man in a green shop apron, that they weren’t due back till a day before Christmas.

  I told him that I was here not in my capacity as doctor – I often came to the drugstore to purchase routine medical supplies for the surgery – but as the sheriff’s deputy, and that I was investigating lines of fire in the Purcell murder case. ‘I want to go upstairs to check the windows.’ Because I knew Mr Farrow was interested in science, and had aspirations to some day go to college and study in the field, I framed my inquiry as if it were an experiment. ‘I need to test a hypothesis, Bruce, and I know you understand all about hypotheses.’

  He grew thoughtful after this, put his thumb and forefinger to his clean-shaven chin, and nodded. ‘I suppose it would be all right. Who am I to say no to a deputy of the law, especially when he’s got some scientific investigating to do?’

  He took me to the back and led me upstairs to the private rooms.

  I found a lavatory and parlor on the first floor. I checked the two front windows in the parlor, examining closely their sills and drapery for anything like a powder burn from a firearms discharge, but discovered only the dirty handprint of a child.

  On the top floor I found three bedrooms. I went into the big one at the front. A quick survey of the furniture and layout told me this was Gordon and Cora Wiley’s master bedroom. The green velvet curtains had tassel fringes, and were tied back to reveal lace sheers. I immediately noticed a hole through the north sheer. My heartbeat quickened. I went over and examined the perforation more closely.

  In diameter, it was roughly the width of a bullet. A series of fine black dots stippled its outer edge. I decided that the lace sheers could have provided the perfect hunter’s blind for my shooter. I took out my Swiss Army knife, retracted the small nail scissors, and snipped the sample away, adding significant margins to optimize my chance at a testable specimen. I deposited the sample in a glassine envelope, then went back downstairs to talk to young Mr Fa
rrow.

  ‘Are you familiar with the Swinfords at all, Bruce?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir, I am. Clarence and I have become good friends. We play chess together often.’

  ‘Are they frequent visitors here?’

  ‘Mrs Swinford is. She depends on Mrs Wiley when she has her spells.’

  ‘Spells? What kind of spells?’

  He thought for a few seconds. ‘I guess you’d call them the doldrums, sir. She gets them, and she cries a lot. Mrs Wiley always manages to cheer her up.’

  ‘And how did Mrs Swinford and Mrs Wiley become friends?’

  ‘I believe they were on the church social committee together a number of years back.’

  ‘Is it often that Mrs Swinford comes here in the evening?’

  ‘If the Swinfords are in town late, she’ll come over. Especially when the Saturday night auction at the Corn Mercantile drags on.’

  ‘And you board with the Wileys, don’t you?’

  ‘I do, sir.’

  ‘And where’s your room?’

  ‘In the basement.’

  ‘And were you in your room on the night Mr Purcell was murdered?’

  ‘No, sir. I was out with some chums at the Pleasant Hotel. It was Mickey Hudson’s birthday. We were having a fine old time.’

  ‘Tell me, does Mr Wiley own a rifle?’

  Young Mr Farrow grew suddenly nervous. ‘Don’t tell me you think my boss shot Mr Purcell?’

  ‘I wouldn’t think that for a minute, Bruce. But as you’re a young man who’s as sharp as a tack, and has a head on his shoulders, and is aspiring to be a scientist, you admire and understand scientific principles.’ Bruce puffed up a bit at this praise. ‘You know that in order to arrive at a scientific proof, hypotheses have to be tested and discarded, tested and discarded, until one of them stands. Mr Wiley owning a rifle is a hypothesis. Come now, Mr Farrow, surely as my scientific colleague you can see that I must investigate all rifles within a certain radius of the Grand Hotel.’

  He raised his thumb and forefinger to his chin again – a born thinker – screwed up his eyes, and contemplated the soda fountain as if it were a newly discovered planet. ‘Radius. I see what you mean. I’ve been reading up on my geometry, doc. It’s a fascinating subject, ain’t it?’

  ‘It plays heartily into my investigation.’

  ‘Well, then, I can tell you that Mr Wiley definitely does not own a rifle.’

  My spirits sank. All that flattery for nothing. ‘He doesn’t?’

  ‘No, sir, he doesn’t. Mrs Wiley and he had a big argument about it recently and she made him sell it.’

  My spirits rose, as the fact of anybody getting rid of a rifle in and around the time of my victim’s murder was indeed pertinent to my case. ‘And when did he sell it, Mr Farrow? Think carefully, now. Science depends on accuracy.’

  The young man’s eyes focused in appropriately conveyed concentration. ‘I would say two days after Mr Purcell met his end out here in the street.’

  This timing, then, was even more pertinent. ‘And tell me, when Mr Wiley did own his rifle, where did he keep it?’

  ‘In his bedroom closet.’

  Ah. The shooter took the rifle from the bedroom closet and shot out the bedroom window. ‘And to whom did he sell his rifle?’

  ‘Mr King, over at King’s Emporium of New and Used Merchandise.’

  My spirits sank again when I visited King’s Emporium of New and Used Merchandise.

  Anthony King said, ‘You mean that old Winchester of his? I don’t have it no more.’

  ‘You sold it?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Then what did you do with it?’

  ‘I broke it down for parts. It wasn’t good for much else.’

  So though I had preliminary evidence that a shot had been fired through Gordon and Cora Wiley’s bedroom window, and that there had been easy access to a weapon up there on the night of the murder, I had no way to test-fire the rifle in question.

  I made a last-ditch try. ‘You couldn’t have used the barrel as a spare part for another weapon, could you? Because I’m primarily interested in the rifling.’

  ‘The barrel was out of true, so I sold it for scrap to Robson’s Metalworks. I’m sure it’s gone into the forge by now.’

  At home, I went to my small laboratory and took my bullet-hole sample from the glassine envelope with Adson forceps and placed it in a Petri dish. Any kind of lab work acted as a hypnotic on me, and I soon became fixated on my purpose – that of determining whether within this fine piece of lisle fabric there existed minute particles of lead.

  I walked as if in a trance to my library and put my hand on Volume 144 of The American Journal of the Medical Sciences. After a quick perusal of its table of contents, I turned to page 599 where I found the exact article I was looking for. The title was ‘The Chemical Detection of Lead in Gunshot Wounds.’ I read it over quickly and returned to my laboratory.

  I glanced out my window where I saw Henny and Jeremiah building a snowman. We would get a tree tomorrow. We would decorate it. Henny would look at me with lovelorn eyes and I wouldn’t know how to respond.

  I put the whole matter from my mind and applied myself to the alchemy of crime.

  I selected from my various stoppered bottles some nitric acid, and mixed fifteen drops into a drachm of distilled water. I then dampened my lace sheer in the resulting solution. I chose another bottle, this one containing iodide of potassium crystals, and, using tweezers, placed several of these into an Erlenmeyer flask of distilled water and dissolved them. I then added this solution, by way of an a eye-dropper, to my ballistics specimen, and waited to observe any chemical reaction.

  Slowly, over the course of the next five minutes, my sample turned yellow.

  Eureka!

  I had struck lead!

  PART THREE

  The Bridge to Eternity

  TWENTY-NINE

  I had Jeremiah wear a suit. Miss Gregsby wore her green evening gown. I dressed in my black swallowtail tuxedo with black top hat and white gloves.

  We were on our way to the event of the season, Dr Olaf Thorensen’s annual holiday party.

  Once Munroe had hitched Pythagoras and Archimedes to the sleigh, he brought it around to the side of the house. Snow was falling. The three of us got in, and were soon trotting over the span bridge at Tonawanda Road into the rich neighbourhood of Cherry Hill. I glanced up and down the river. Wide enough for various small barge traffic, it was now closed for the season, as ice had begun to form.

  Upon our arrival at Dr Thorensen’s, the crush was thick. We were swept into the end of the receiving line. Female servants in black uniforms and white aprons plied this line with alcoholic beverages trimmed with sprigs of holly or candy canes. I recognized many people, but several I did not know, and it underlined for me again how I was still a relative newcomer to Fairfield.

  Whereas Dr Pritchard, the dentist, had hired a seven-piece band from Buffalo, Dr Thorensen had engaged an eighteen-piece orchestra with female vocalist from New York City. In other words, Olaf had spared no expense to treat the town to Christmas in true Fezziwig style.

  I glanced ahead to Dr Thorensen, a substantial man, taller than me, dressed in formal attire, with full shield-front collar and white bowtie. His sandy hair was pomaded back and his golden beard had been trimmed. Mrs Thorensen, beside him, was petite, birdlike, and wore a yellow gown with a diamond tiara. She reminded me of a bejewelled canary.

  When we reached him, Thorensen said, ‘Ah-hah! We have a fox in the henhouse! Dr Deacon, have you come to poach my patients again?’ He chortled heartily; he was always joking with me about stealing his patients, even though there were more than enough to go around. ‘A Merry Christmas to you, my fine fellow. And best wishes for the New Year.’ His eyes alighted on Henny. ‘I see you’ve brought your lovely new nurse, Miss Gregsby. And bless me! This must be your son.’ He turned to his wife. ‘Lydia, Dr Deacon has brought his son, Jeremiah. Isn’t that marvellous?�
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  Lydia Thorensen turned. ‘My, my, but he’s certainly tall enough. They grow like weeds, don’t they, Clyde?’

  ‘So true, Mrs Thorensen.’

  I made formal introductions.

  After we were finished with the receiving line, my son, Miss Gregsby, and I availed ourselves of a buffet-style dinner: cold chicken, jellied oysters, foie gras, fruit sauce, mandarins, nuts, and my own favourite, mince-meat pie.

  It was during this repast that I saw Olive Wade, arriving late, come through the front door. She was accompanied by a young man I did not recognize. Feeling a pang of jealousy, I immediately lost my appetite. I wondered who this man was. He appeared to be a few years older than Olive. As with all the male guests, he wore a black tuxedo, but he affected a red satin bowtie. The receiving line had by this time dissolved, and so it was left to the butler to greet them. The butler took their coats, and Miss Wade’s fox stole and muff, and the pair made their way to the front salon.

  Miss Wade spotted the three of us sitting by the fire with plates and champagne. Her face tightened like the first ice on a winter pond, and she quickly turned away. She was resplendent in a mauve gown, and her golden hair was up in a most fetching manner, held there by jewelled combs. I don’t think I’d ever seen her lovelier.

  Yet she was with this man!

  She now turned back to us. Her stiff smile did nothing to hide the troubled cast to her eyes. She said a few words to her companion. He went off to find refreshments, and she came over.

  I leaned toward Jeremiah. ‘Here comes Miss Wade.’

  He turned. His eyes widened – an angel could have entered the room.

  The three of us put our plates on the table and rose.

  ‘Good evening, Dr Deacon,’ said Miss Wade as she reached us. ‘A Merry Christmas to you.’ With this salutation out of the way, she now became a little more natural, and gazed at Jeremiah with warm interest. ‘You must be Jeremiah.’ She extended her hand. ‘I’m your father’s friend, Olive Wade.’

  Jeremiah shook Miss Wade’s hand. ‘How do you do?’ He gazed at her in stark wonder. Her blonde presence lit up the room the way the electrical star on top of the Christmas tree lit its uppermost boughs. ‘Pa’s told me about you.’