Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 122, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 745 & 746, September/October 2003

The Problem of the Interrupted Seance by Edward D. Hoch

The Dr. Sam Hawthorne series having recently reached the early 1940s (with cases related as recollections of an older Dr. Sam), EQMM, founded in 1941, gets a mention in this one as part of the historical setting. Here, once again, Dr. Sam is confronted with an impossible crime of the “locked room” variety. Mr. Hoch is in his thirty-first year of consecutive contributions to this magazine, and the stories just keep getting stronger.

Despite a few morale-boosting events like Doolittle’s April bombing of Tokyo and the RAF’s bombing of German cities, during those early months of 1942 the war was going badly (Dr. Sam Hawthorne told his companion when they had settled down with their usual small libations). The Japanese had taken all of the Philippines, Hong Kong, and most of the East Indies. In North Africa, Rommel’s tanks seemed unstoppable.

In Northmont, in the first six months of my marriage to Annabel, the war and everything else seemed far away. Gasoline rationing had begun in seventeen states in mid May, and was sure to spread soon. But the crime rate in Northmont had actually seemed to fall since the December tragedy that had claimed the life of our maid of honor. Sheriff Lens had his own theory about the improved social climate, attributing it to the fact that many of the town’s young punks had enlisted or been drafted. Some of the enlistments had come following the news that one of Northmont’s own was missing in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

His name was Ronald Hale and he’d been a seaman aboard the ill-fated battleship Arizona. Though the attack angered the entire country, the blow was felt hardest in hometowns such as Northmont, and in families such as Ron Hale’s. His mother Kate, a patient of mine, was devastated by the news. It was early June when she came to me for a checkup, the first since her son had been confirmed dead.

“You’ve had a bad time, Kate,” I told her. “How are you sleeping?”

“Not well, Dr. Sam. I think about him all the time, going down with his ship in what he thought was a safe harbor.”

“I can give you something to help you sleep, but the rest is up to you. How is Art taking it?” Art Hale wasn’t a patient of mine but I knew him from the town council, on which he’d served for several years.

“Better than me, now, but he had a terrible time at first. Back in January and February he just went away for days at a time. Our son’s death was confirmed to us in mid April, before the official casualty list was announced on May first. When Art got the news, he went through it all again. I think he was drinking heavily while he was gone, but he never admitted it.” I took her blood pressure, which was higher than normal, and gave my usual words of caution. But I could see her mind was elsewhere. “Can I talk to you about something, Dr. Sam?”

“Anything at all. That’s what I’m here for.” I expected some sort of sexual secret, which wasn’t too unusual in my experience.

Instead she told me, “I’ve been to Boston to see a psychic.”

“What?” My face must have reflected my surprise.

“A woman there contacted me several weeks ago and claimed she could communicate with the dead. I... I really think she might be able to reach Ron.”

“Kate,” I said, not unkindly, “you can’t believe in such things. People like that are just out to get your money.”

“I know. That’s what Art told me when I suggested the possibility. I didn’t dare tell him I’d already been there for two sessions with this woman.”

“Who is she?” I asked.

“Her name is Sandra Gleam, or at least that’s what she calls herself. ‘Sandra Gleam — Lifting the Veil of the Afterlife.’ She’s a woman in her late forties, about my age, and she does seem to get results.”

“What sort of results?” I asked with more than a little scepticism.

“She’s contacted an Indian guide on the other side who says he can bring Ron to talk to me.”

“And of course you paid her for this?”

“Certainly. I’d give a great deal to actually speak with my son again.”

“And your husband knows nothing of this?”

She took a deep breath. “I haven’t told him, and that’s my problem. Sandra Gleam feels she needs to conduct a small séance at our home, with just my husband and me taking part. She says that would be the most comfortable setting for Ron.”

I shook my head, more in sorrow than in reprimand. “Kate, you don’t know what you’re getting into here. The woman is a charlatan. She’s using all sorts of trickery.”

“How do you know that? You’ve never even met her.”

“I know the way psychics operate.”

“When she was in her trance I could see ectoplasm above her head.”

“Gauze coated with phosphorescent paint.”

“A small seashell appeared on the table as a sign from my son, even though I was holding both her hands.”

“But the room was dark?”

“Mostly,” she admitted. “There was a dim light so I could see there was no one else in the room.”

“She had the shell hidden in her mouth, or perhaps even regurgitated it from her stomach. It’s a trick some mediums are quite skilled at.”

Kate Hale pondered this for a moment. “I have to do it. I have to take the chance that she’s on the level.” An idea seemed to light up her face. “Look here, Dr. Sam, since you know so much about this, could you attend the séance, too? If you’re there to prove she’s not a fake, my husband might go along with the idea.”

I shook my head. “I think I’d have to say no to that, Kate. It falls far outside my duties as a physician.”

She gave a reluctant sigh. “All right. Thank you for listening to me, at least.”

My wife Annabel was Northmont’s only veterinarian, and Annabel’s Ark had become a haven for creatures of all shapes and sizes. That afternoon, following a house call at a farm near there, I stopped by the Ark on my way home and found her removing a painful thorn from a cat’s paw. “Much the way Androcles would have done it,” I suggested.

“I’m far gentler than Androcles, or hadn’t you noticed?”

“I’m on my way home. You coming soon?”

She sighed and glanced over at the row of cages where her assistant was treating a large German shepherd. “I’ve got at least another hour here. Then I’ll be along.”

“I’ve got an idea. Let’s meet at Max’s for dinner. Say, seven o’clock?”

“Sounds perfect!” she readily agreed. Max’s Steakhouse was our favorite restaurant in Northmont, the scene of our December wedding reception.

I changed my clothes and arrived at Max’s about fifteen minutes early. Annabel hadn’t yet come in and I was surprised to see Kate Hale and her husband seated in one of the booths. It seemed foolish to ignore them, so I said hello as I passed. Arthur Hale immediately stood up to greet me. “Hello, Doctor. Could you join us for a drink?”

“I’m meeting my wife. She should be here momentarily.”

“Sit down anyway, until she comes.”

I signaled Max so he’d know where I was and then joined them in the booth. “Nothing to drink for me,” I told them. “I’ll wait for Annabel.”

Art Hale was a scholarly type who wore gold-rimmed glasses and smoked a pipe. He was around fifty, maybe a few years older than his wife, and when he wasn’t busy on the town council he worked at a small printing business he owned that employed about a dozen people. “Kate has been telling me about her visits to this woman in Boston. She said she discussed it with you today. What’s your opinion of it?”

I was reluctant to be dragged into a family dispute, but I felt I should repeat what I’d already told Kate. When I’d finished, she joined in. “Art feels the same way you do, Dr. Sam, and I’ll admit you may be right. But what harm is there in finding out? All she’s asking to come out here and hold a seance at our house is three hundred dollars, plus her travel expenses.”

“Three hundred dollars is a lot of money,” Hale murmured.

“To talk to our son? To hear his voice one more time?”

“Kate—” His voice was pleading now. “Be reasonable.”

“If you’re so afraid the woman is a fraud we can ask Dr. Sam to be present.”

“I don’t—”

But I’d barely started my objection when her husband’s face brightened. “Would you, Doctor?”

“This is a bit out of my line,” I protested.

“Nonsense! You have quite a reputation as a solver of mysteries. Isn’t this the same thing, in a way?”

“If you suspect some sort of fraud is being perpetrated you need to call on Sheriff Lens, not me.”

“Maybe both of you could be there,” Kate suggested.

I saw a way out of this entanglement. “If you can convince Sheriff Lens, I’ll go along with it, too.” It seemed a sure bet that the sheriff would have nothing to do with such a thing.

That’s where I was wrong.

Sheriff Lens phoned me the following afternoon. “Hello, Doc. Still surviving married life?”

“There’s nothing like it,” I assured him. “Have you decided to run for another term?” It was a question I asked every four years and the answer had always been yes. He’d been elected sheriff for the first time in 1918, almost four years before I came to Northmont, and was completing his sixth term.

“In a weak moment I promised Vera I wouldn’t run again this time. She says twenty-four years is enough for anyone, but hell, Doc — what would I do? Retire to a farm and raise chickens? I told her with the war on and all I had to serve one more term and she agreed.”

I had to chuckle silently at that. I couldn’t imagine Northmont with someone else as sheriff. “Anyway,” he went on, “what I called about is this seancé business with Art Hale and his wife.”

“Forget about it, Sheriff. I told them I’d come if you did, but it was just a way of getting out of the whole thing. I’m sorry they lost a son, but I can’t encourage them. It’s obvious this Sandra Gleam is just out for their money. She wants to do the seancé here so she can get a look at their home and decide how much she can get out of them.”

“Isn’t that all the more reason we should be there to protect them and expose her?” the sheriff argued. “Who could do it better than us?”

I had to admit he had a point. “Do you really want to do this?” I asked.

“I think we should, Doc.”

I sighed in surrender and asked, “When is she coming?”

“Saturday. She’ll stay with them overnight and return to Boston on Sunday.”

“Is she driving down?”

“Taking the train. Gasoline is scarce with the rationing and all.”

As a physician, I was allowed a bit more gasoline than the average person, but I had to display the colored sticker Iwas issued for it on my front windshield. Train travel was becoming more popular, especially for our town, far removed from any commercial airport. “All right, Sheriff. If you’re game, so am I.”

Art and Kate Hale met the train with Sandra Gleam on board late Saturday afternoon. As it turned out, that was June 6th, exactly six months since our wedding day, and Annabel had expected us to celebrate with dinner out or at least a private evening at home. All I could promise her was that I’d return as early as possible, and that didn’t go over well.

I picked up Sheriff Lens in my Buick and we set off for our destination. “Been listening to the news, Doc? There are rumors of a big sea battle out around the Midway Islands in the Pacific.”

“I hope we’re winning.”

I’d been to the Hale home a few times on house calls, and I was familiar with the impressive brick facade. It had once been a church perched on a hilltop at the end of Meadow Lane. No one seemed to remember what had happened to the congregation, but it had been remodeled into a private home in the 1920s. The layout was a bit awkward and they’d ended up with a windowless storage room across from the kitchen. Some thought the house had been partitioned that way to provide a so-called “thunder room” for those afraid of violent storms, but others offered a more prosaic explanation. The house had been remodeled during prohibition and a garage had been turned into the windowless room to serve as a storage area for cases of illegal scotch smuggled into the country.

In any event, it was empty to the bare walls and concrete floor now, except for a single card table and three folding chairs. An open bottle of white wine and three glasses stood on the table. A ceiling light provided the only illumination. Art and Kate Hale had been awaiting our arrival, and quickly introduced us to Sandra Gleam. As Kate had said, she was a woman in her late forties, with jet-black hair worn to shoulder length. Her figure was surprisingly trim and her dark eyes seemed to study each of us intently. She wore a long black dress with a pink scarf at her neck. It was her only touch of color. She was not the sort of woman I would have wanted for an enemy, yet she had a certain animal attraction. The three chairs around the card table told me that she had already excluded the sheriff and me from the seancé.

“Dr. Hawthorne,” she said when we were introduced. “Kate has told me much about you. I have looked forward to this meeting.” I tried to read her eyes, but it was impossible. She might have been flirting with me, for all I knew.

“And I look forward to sitting in on your seancé,” I informed her.

“Alas, that will not be possible tonight. If I am to have any success in reaching the spirit of Ron Hale, only his closest flesh-and-blood relatives can be present.”

Sheriff Lens didn’t like the sound of that. “Look here, I have to be certain that no crime is being committed.”

Sandra Gleam turned her eyes to him for the first time. “Does the town of Northmont have an ordinance against communicating with the dead?”

“Well, no,” he admitted.

“Or trying to help people through their bereavement?”

“No. But we do have laws against swindling and confidence games.”

The dark-haired woman turned toward Mrs. Hale and her husband. “Have I tried to defraud you? Have I asked for any money other than my rather modest fee?”

“Certainly not!” Kate was quick to insist. Art Hale remained silent.

I had to come up with something to justify our presence. “If we can’t be part of the seancé, you must allow us to search this room, to make certain no sort of trickery is concealed here.”

The woman shrugged. “It’s their room, not mine. I am entering it for the first time.”

The windowless room was about the right size for a car, though if there had been a garage entrance it was gone now. The walls were all solid and the overhead light was too high to reach without a ladder. The card table and chairs were closely examined by the sheriff and me, but there was nothing hidden in or under them.

“Are you satisfied?” Sandra Gleam asked.

I looked at her long black dress, well aware that it could conceal all the tricks of a medium’s trade. “Would you be willing to allow Mrs. Hale to frisk you?” I asked.

The woman smiled slightly at my suggestion. “Only if I could do the same to her.”

“Look here—” Art Hale started to protest, but his wife stopped him.

“That’s fine with me,” she agreed. “Let’s get to it.”

While the medium stood still and raised her hands above her head, Kate Hale ran her own hands down the slender body, taking special care to feel around the legs. At one point Sandra Gleam slipped her feet out of her shoes so they could be searched as well. When Mrs. Hale lifted one of her feet she laughed. “I’m a bit ticklish there.”

Then Sandra repeated the procedure with Kate Hale, who seemed a bit embarrassed by the groping hands but did not complain. “All right,” her husband said, turning to Sheriff Lens. “You might as well search me as well.”

When all the searching was finished, nothing unusual had been found. Sandra’s purse remained on the kitchen counter and Hale had left his wallet and keys there, too. The women had no pockets in their dresses, and Hale’s pockets held only a handkerchief and his leather eyeglass case.

I asked about the wine and was told that Sandra had brought it. “Some cooks drink a bit of white wine while they prepare a meal,” she told me. “My bottle serves the same purpose.”

I held it to the light but there was nothing else in the bottle. I took a sip and agreed it was wine and nothing else. “A very good wine,” I complimented her.

“Then we are ready,” Sandra Gleam announced, filling the three glasses. Turning to the sheriff and me she said, “The Hales and I will now adjourn here for the seancé. You may stand guard at the door if you wish.”

But before they could begin, an odd thing happened. It was still daylight on this June evening, and the sound of a bell reached our ears. It was not the doorbell, but an irregular ringing that seemed to come from the street. Kate Hale knew at once what it was. “That’s the knife grinder. Sheriff, could you get those two paring knives I left on the kitchen counter and take them out to him? I left some money there, too.”

Sheriff Lens seemed to hesitate at performing this household chore and I immediately said, “You stay here, Sheriff. I’ll do it.”

I found the knives and hurried out to the curb. Pete Petrov, the knife grinder, stopped his wagon when he saw me. “What’re you doing out this way, Dr. Sam?”

“Visiting a patient,” I told him. “Sharpen these two for her, will you?”

“Sure thing!” He took the knives and operated the foot pedal on his grinder, holding the blade close enough to send sparks flying. After a moment he repeated the process with the second blade. “There you are! Good as new.” I took the paring knives and paid him. “Say hello to Mrs. Hale for me,” he called as he moved on with his wagon, pulling the bell cord to announce his passing.

“Thanks. I’ll do that.”

I went back inside and returned the paring knives to the kitchen counter by the stove. Sheriff Lens was standing by the closed door of the storeroom. “I heard some mumbling but now it’s silent,” he reported.

“Did they lock the door?”

“No, but no spirits from the beyond are getting by me, Doc.”

I smiled. “You’re not supposed to keep them out. Sandra Gleam wants them let in.”

We waited for several minutes, listening for a sound, but all seemed quiet behind the door.

Finally the sheriff asked, “Think we should take a look, Doc?”

“It’s only been about fifteen minutes so far. Seancés can go on longer than that.”

I paced around a bit longer, and then sat down to glance through the Hales’ magazines. They had the latest issues of Life and National Geographic, along with an issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, which had begun publication the previous fall. I skimmed through it and was settling down to read a story by Stuart Palmer when there was a thump from the closed room.

“Are you all right in there?” Sheriff Lens called out, but there was no answer. He turned the knob and slowly pushed the door open.

I could see that the overhead light was still on. Art Hale was slumped over, his head on the table. Kate had toppled off her chair and was lying unconscious on the floor. Sandra Gleam was upright in her chair, her head back and the pink scarf a mass of blood. Her throat had been cut.

It took us a few moments to revive Kate and Art Hale. Both seemed drowsy and possibly drugged. Neither could remember anything after drinking the wine and joining hands with Sandra for the beginning of the seancé.

“One of you better remember something,” Sheriff Lens told them. “You two were alone with her in this room and I was guarding the only door. No one else could have killed her. And she sure didn’t kill herself. There’s no knife.”

I’d examined Sandra Gleam and confirmed that she was dead. Now I searched carefully around the body, the chairs, and the table. There was no knife. “I’m afraid we’ll have to search you both again,” I told them.

Careful not to be too invasive, I went over Kate’s clothing and felt along her body. She was my patient, after all, and I’d examined her body many times. There was no weapon of any sort. I watched while Sheriff Lens did the same with her husband. He removed the handkerchief and eyeglass case from Hale’s pocket, sliding the glasses partway out, then going over his body with nimble fingers. There was no doubt in my mind that neither of them could have concealed a knife or even a razor blade. And why would they? What motive could they have had for killing this woman?

Still, I had to consider every possibility. I took a couple of tongue depressors from the bag I always carried and checked Art’s and Kate’s throats with a small flashlight. “What’s the purpose of this?” Hale demanded.

“Say ah, please.”

He did as he was told and his wife followed along, too. “I had to be sure neither of you slid a knife down your throat.” I explained.

“You think I’m a sword-swallower or something?” he asked.

“I had to rule out the possibility.”

“And Kate? Did you ever hear of a female sword-swallower?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” I told him. “There was a woman named Edith Clifford, around the turn of the century, who was said to have swallowed up to sixteen short swords at one time. She was with the circus. Both of you seem in the clear, though. Let’s move out of here and let the sheriff call in his people.”

While Sheriff Lens was on the phone, Art Hale headed for the kitchen to retrieve his wallet, with Kate close behind. “I know I didn’t kill that woman and there were only two of us in the room with her. Art, did you—?”

He turned on her then. “No, I didn’t, Kate. If anyone killed her, it was you.”

I quickly intervened. “This will get us nowhere. We have to think this out.”

Kate moved to the kitchen counter and picked up a sharpened paring knife. “Where’s the other knife?” she asked.

“It’s right there someplace. The grinder man sharpened both of them and I left them for you.”

But there was only one knife now. The second knife had vanished. Though the sheriff and I searched the kitchen, there was no sign of it, not even in the drawer with the other cutlery. “We’d better check these two again,” he said.

I agreed, and we went over Hale and his wife even more carefully the second time. But the missing knife did not reappear. “My God!” Kate Hale suddenly gasped, as if she’d just realized the full import of what had happened. “Could one of the spirit guides have taken it and killed her with it?”

Sheriff Lens scoffed. “I’d believe in an invisible man before I’d believe in spirits.”

“But even an invisible man couldn’t have picked up the knife and carried it into that room,” I said. “You were already guarding the closed door when I returned with the sharpened knives.”

“Forget the knife, then, Doc. One of these two had to have killed her.”

“With what? You can’t cut a throat like that with a fingernail.”

“What about those wineglasses?”

We all reentered the room and examined the glasses and bottle, but there were no sharp edges, no cracks. All three glasses were nearly empty, and I sniffed them. Then I put a drop from the bottle on my finger and touched it to my tongue. “I can’t be certain, but it seems likely there was something in the wine that put you both to sleep.”

“Sandra poured it herself,” Kate Hale told us. “Why would she want to knock us out?”

“Perhaps so she could rig up some spiritualist trickery,” I suggested. “She may have planned to awaken you when she was ready.”

“Come on, Doc,” Sheriff Lens objected. “If you think she let another person into the room, it just couldn’t be!”

“Maybe not a flesh-and-blood person,” Kate said, “but she was dealing with spirits.”

“Kate—” her husband began.

“I know you don’t believe me, but what other explanation is there? She summoned a spirit who took my sharpened paring knife from the kitchen counter, came in here, and killed her with it.”

“Why would the spirit do that?” I asked, trying to reason with her. “She was their friend.”

Her husband was exasperated by the whole business. “Let’s stop imagining spirits. There are none. The woman obviously cut her own throat. There’s no other explanation.”

“Then what happened to the knife?” Sheriff Lens asked.

“Perhaps it was made of ice that melted and mingled with the blood from her throat.”

I shook my head. “Ice wouldn’t have been sharp enough for that wound, and everyone was searched, remember? No one could have been hiding an ice dagger.”

“She might have used a razor blade and swallowed it as she lay dying.”

“After cutting her throat? Hardly, Mr. Hale.” But his bizarre suggestion had triggered something in my mind. In addition to sword-swallowers, there were people who could swallow things like razor blades. Either of the Hales might have taped a razor blade to their leg that might have escaped our search. They might have used it to cut Sandra Gleam’s throat and then swallowed it.

“What are you thinking, Doc?” the sheriff asked.

“If it’s all right with you, I’d like to take Mr. and Mrs. Hale down to the hospital for a fluoroscope examination.”

“An X-ray?”

I nodded. “Just to make certain there are no sharp objects in them.”

Art Hale grumbled a bit, but I drove them to the hospital after the sheriff’s deputies and the coroner arrived. I was careful not to let them out of my sight, not even for a restroom visit, until after I’d given each of them a full-body X-ray scan. There were no razor blades or any other weapons hidden either inside or outside their bodies. Whatever had killed Sandra Gleam was still in that room, or had been removed by some method I couldn’t imagine. I thought about a case I’d investigated during my early days in Northmont, involving a man’s throat cut by a slender fishing line. But there was nothing of the sort here, nothing that could be found in two body searches and a fluoroscope examination.

I wanted to go back and examine that windowless room again, before the Hales returned to the house. The sheriff solved the problem for me when he requested that the couple accompany him to his office to make a full statement. I asked Hale for the key to his house in case the deputies were gone from there. He took the ring of keys from his pocket and puzzled over them. “I can’t see close up without my glasses. It’s a Yale lock.”

“This one,” I said, detaching it from the ring. “I’ll get it back to you.” I left them with the sheriff, checking first with my nurse April to make sure there were no emergencies.

The coroner and the deputies were still at the Hale house. Watching them work, I realized how much Sheriff Lens had improved on his investigative techniques during my twenty years in Northmont. One of the deputies even took a small sample of grit he’d noticed on the concrete floor. “If it was a spook, he may have brought something over from the other side,” he said. I couldn’t argue with that.

“How about your measurements?” I asked. “Any chance there could be a secret panel or hidden closet here?”

“Nothing like that, Doc. These walls are solid, the floor’s concrete, and the ceiling has only the single light fixture.”

I carried a stool from the kitchen and climbed up to take a look at that fixture. The frosted glass globe screwed on over two light bulbs. Nothing had been disturbed. Next I went to the light switch by the door and unscrewed the switch plate. There was space enough for a small knife or razor blade behind it, though I saw nothing but a spider hurrying to escape into the woodwork.

Nothing.

The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if the answer might lie not in Northmont but in Boston.

Annabel was not happy when I told her I was driving two hours to Boston the following morning and might have to remain there overnight. I knew she couldn’t accompany me. There was too much work to be done at the Ark. “Why was this woman killed?” I asked. “That’s what I need to know. If Kate Hale realized she was a fraud, why would she go to the trouble of luring her to Northmont to kill her in this manner? And why would her husband kill her without at least seeing what her game was?”

“But who can you talk to in Boston?” Annabel wondered.

“Mrs. Hale says there was a sister. Maybe I can learn something from her.”

The news from Midway was encouraging the following morning, and our naval victory overshadowed a report that the Japanese had landed a small force on two of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. The weather was good for my drive into Boston, and the Sunday traffic was at a minimum. I located Sandra Gleam’s address without difficulty, an apartment she’d shared with her sister in one of the big old buildings overlooking Boston Common.

Josephine Gleam answered the door. “Are you from the police?” she immediately asked. “They’ve already been here once.”

I introduced myself and explained that I was helping the Northmont sheriff investigate her sister’s murder. Josephine was attractive and probably younger than Sandra, a tall, slim woman with long brown hair and bangs.

“This has been a terrible shock to me,” she said in a familiar Boston accent, “but I must tell you right off that we weren’t really sisters. Sandra and I were very close, but the Gleam Sisters only existed on stage.”

“Stage?”

“Vaudeville. Do you have any idea who killed her?”

“Not yet,” I admitted. “We’re working on it.” She invited me in and I took a seat facing her. “Do you perform seancés, too?”

“That whole business was a—” She caught herself, perhaps not wanting to speak ill of her friend. Then, after an awkward moment of silence, she began again. “Sandra and I had a vaudeville act together about ten years ago. That’s when we became the Gleam Sisters. It was a mind-reading thing. I would wander through the audience in my spangled tights, holding up items like a pocket watch or a necklace, and Sandra would try to identify the objects while blindfolded. Of course, my patter always contained a key-word clue that we’d worked out in advance.”

“You’re telling me the act was a fraud?”

She grew restless, fidgeting in her chair. “It was vaudeville. We were there to entertain, just like the magicians. Everyone knew it was an act.”

“All this was Sandra’s idea?”

“Well, yes, I guess it was. We were both younger then. She thought having a vaudeville act was a great way to attract guys.”

“You weren’t married?”

“Not then, but Sandra always had guys around.”

“When did she start this spiritualism business with the seancés?”

Josephine shrugged. “Vaudeville died and she just drifted into it, went from reading minds to speaking with the dead. I guess she viewed it as a natural progression.”

“Did you help her with this?” I asked.

“No, no. I’m a secretary at the state capitol. We shared this apartment, but then we went our separate ways. I was married for a few years and when that went bad she took me in.”

I consulted some notes that I’d made. “Kate Hale, the woman who lost her son at Pearl Harbor, said that Sandra contacted her about a seancé. Do you know just when that was?”

She thought about it. “I could find out. She kept a record of all her contacts. Not men friends, just her spiritualist business. She watched the newspapers all over southern New England, checking the casualty lists from the war. When someone was confirmed dead, she telephoned the next of kin and offered her services.”

“It was a cruel sort of confidence game.”

“Sometimes I think she really helped those people.” Josephine had gone to a desk in one corner of the room and while she spoke she glanced through Sandra’s appointment book. “Here it is! She telephoned Kate Hale in Northmont on April twenty-fifth and invited her to attend a seancé here. Mrs. Hale came to Boston two weeks later, on May eighth, and returned a week after that for a second seancé.”

“Did you know that Sandra was planning a seancé at the Hale home in Northmont?”

“No. I was quite surprised when the police told me that. She rarely conducted her sessions anywhere but here. I know, because I usually had to stay out of the way when she scheduled one.”

“Was there anyone who disliked Sandra, who might have had a motive for killing her?”

“Not that I know of.”

I asked her a few more questions but learned nothing of interest. Sandra Gleam’s life seemed as much a riddle as her death. I drove back to Northmont later that afternoon.

“We’re up against a stone wall, Doc,” Sheriff Lens told me the following morning. “Either Hale or his wife must have killed her, but what happened to the weapon? Is it possible they acted together? And what was their motive?”

“If they wanted to kill her, they would hardly have done it in their own home under these impossible circumstances. There’s something we’re not seeing here.”

“What about that knife grinder, Pete Petrov? Might he have sneaked into the room somehow after he sharpened those knives for you?”

“Only if he could walk through walls. What about that bottle of wine? Did you have it analyzed?”

He nodded. “It contained a mild but fast-acting sleeping powder, likely put there by one of those three.”

“I tasted just a drop before the seancé and it seemed all right to me, but the sleeping powder might have been added later, by either Hale or his wife. Surely Sandra Gleam didn’t do it.”

“Only two real suspects and we can’t solve this thing! Any suggestions, Doc?”

“Just that we go back to the Hale house and keep looking. Maybe something will jump out at us.”

The June weather had turned unusually warm, and Kate Hale already had roses in her garden when we pulled up in the sheriff’s car. “Aren’t they beauties?” she asked. “This is a new bush I planted in Ron’s honor. I think he would have liked that.”

“We’re sorry to bother you again,” the sheriff told her, “but there are still a great many questions to be answered.”

Her husband had noticed our arrival and joined us at the rose garden. “Any leads yet?” he asked. The bright sun reflected off the silver frames of his glasses and he put up a hand to shield his eyes.

“Nothing. I’m sure it’s not news that the two of you are the prime suspects. Nobody else got in or out of the room.”

“We were both unconscious,” Art Hale pointed out.

I shook my head. “One of you didn’t drink your glass of wine until after you’d cut Sandra Gleam’s throat. Let’s go in the house.”

They both seemed reluctant to face more questioning. “I didn’t kill her,” Kate Hale said. “So it had to have been Art.”

He glared at her. “Kate...”

“Inside,” Sheriff Lens ordered, herding them both toward the door.

I took the opportunity to have another look at their kitchen, where that sharpened paring knife had vanished so mysteriously. For some reason, it didn’t seem mysterious at all anymore. I’d wakened that morning remembering that I’d placed the knives on the kitchen counter near the stove. Sure enough, there was a narrow space, little more than a quarter of an inch, between counter and stove. “Do you have a flashlight?” I asked Hale.

He produced one and I pointed it between the cupboard and the stove. At the bottom, resting on the floor, was the missing paring knife. “That’s a mystery solved,” I told them.

“It must have fallen there,” Hale decided.

“Or been put there by the killer. One of you came into the kitchen after we found Sandra’s body, saw the knives, and pushed one of them through the crack between the counter and stove. It could only have been the killer who did it, to strengthen the illusion of a spirit taking the knife to cut Sandra’s throat.”

“Which one of them, Doc?” the sheriff asked. “You know, don’t you?”

“Yes, I know.”

We’d settled down around the kitchen table, like old friends, and Kate was even brewing a pot of coffee for us. “You see,” I began, “the motive was the key to it all. Even though Sandra Gleam might have been trying to swindle you both out of some money, that hardly made a motive for murder. You could merely have walked away, told her you were through with seancés. No, it had to be something else. When I thought about my conversation yesterday with Sandra’s roommate and old vaudeville partner, I knew what it was.”

“How could you?” Kate Hale asked.

“The dates weren’t right. According to Sandra’s appointment book, she first called you about your dead son on April twenty-fifth and you attended your first seancé in Boston on May eighth, returning a week later. The two of you were notified of Ron’s death in mid April, but the announcement to the press didn’t come until May first. Sandra watched the papers for the lists of casualties, but she couldn’t have learned of your son’s confirmed death as early as April twenty-fifth — not from the papers, at least. In fact, since we live in a small town two hours from Boston, it’s safe to say that the only way Sandra Gleam could have learned the confirmation of your son’s death at that early date was if one of you two told her.”

“Wait a minute!” Art protested. “She might have found his name on an earlier list of the missing.”

I shook my head. “Seancés are only for communicating with the dead. One of you had to have told Sandra your son was confirmed dead. It could hardly have been you, Kate, or there’d have been no reason for her to carefully record calling you on April twenty-fifth. But you told me Art was badly affected by the report that Ron was missing in action at Pearl Harbor. He went off for several days in January and February, and then again in April, when the tragic news was confirmed. You thought he was drinking, and perhaps he was. But I believe he drove to Boston for his drinking, and there he met Sandra Gleam, a woman always on the lookout for men.”

The blood had drained from Kate’s face as I spoke. I knew I was putting her through hell, but there was no other way. “He told Sandra, and she contacted you for a seancé, Kate. When you finally told him about it, he must have been furious, though he may not have shown the full extent of his anger. Perhaps he got on the phone to Sandra and told her to stay away from his wife and not even think about journeying to Northmont. He knew she was after money, and what better way to procure it? I imagine she had a whole series of expensive seancés in mind, and if you tried to stop her she’d have gone right to Kate and revealed you as an adulterer.”

“That’s a great deal of speculation,” Art Hale told me. “Can you prove any of it?”

“You were the first to return to the kitchen counter for your wallet and keys, when that paring knife was made to disappear. But I can do better than that. I can show that you and only you could have murdered Sandra Gleam.”

He smiled slightly. “Without a weapon? With Sheriff Lens guarding the door?”

“You had a weapon, and Sheriff Lens of all people should have guessed what it was.”

The sheriff seemed baffled by my words. “I should have guessed? Why me?”

“Because Art cut the blackmailing Sandra Gleam’s throat with a broken lens from his eyeglasses.”

Hale’s face turned ashen as I ticked off the points on my fingers. “As I noticed the other night at Max’s Steakhouse, your regular eyeglasses have gold frames. The ones you’re wearing now — an extra pair, no doubt — have silver frames. And in the hours after the murder you wore no glasses at all. You even commented to me that you were unable to choose the correct key up close without your glasses. The sheriff found them in your leather case, in your pocket, after the killing, but as I remember, he only pulled them partway out of the case.”

“How could he have done it, Sam?” Sheriff Lens wanted to know.

“By drugging the wine after I’d taken a sip, while we were distracted by the knife grinder’s arrival. He then pretended to drink while Kate and Sandra really did. When they’d dozed off, after several minutes he took Sandra’s scarf, which he would have known she’d be wearing, covered his fingers while he broke a lens of his glasses, and then held the largest piece with the scarf while he cut her throat with it. The scarf protected his fingers against getting cut, as well as helping shield him from the blood. Then he drank the wine and collapsed along with his wife. Even if we’d taken the glasses from their case we might not have noticed immediately that there was a lens missing.”

“What happened to the broken glass?” the sheriff wanted to know. “Are you telling me he swallowed it?”

“No, I’m telling you he ground it to dust underfoot, against the concrete floor. Ask your deputy about that sample of grit he gathered from the floor.”

That was when Kate turned to him. “Art, is this true?”

“She was blackmailing me, Kate, and using our heartbreak over Ron’s death to bleed us for money. After the pain of his death, I couldn’t stand to have you learn I’d found comfort with another woman. If I hadn’t killed her, it would have gone on and on.”

It was a sad case with a sad ending. Sheriff Lens and I barely spoke at first, after Art had been taken away. Finally the sheriff said, “There were only the two of them with Sandra, Doc. He must have known Kate would be certain of his guilt.”

“Not necessarily, Sheriff. It was a chance he had to take. If he could make the crime seem impossible, perhaps she’d believe someone from the spirit world really had killed Sandra. That was why he hid the paring knife when he had a chance, to strengthen the impossibility of it.”

When I saw Annabel that evening she told me a cat had died at the Ark that day. “I actually cried a bit, Sam. She was such a pretty thing. Do you ever shed any tears about murder victims?”

“I had no tears for Sandra Gleam,” I said, and then sat down to tell her about it.