Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 1. Whole No. 767, July 2005

The Problem of the Secret Passage by Edward D. Hoch

The work of some authors travels well. Edward D. Hoch’s work has found homes abroad in both Europe and Asia: His Nick Velvet series was once adapted for French television, and his Dr. Sam Hawthorne stories have been translated for three Japanese collections, with a fourth currently in the works. A second U.S. collection of Dr. Sam stories, More Things Impossible, is forthcoming from Crippen & Landru.

It was Annabel’s idea from the beginning (Dr. Sam Hawthorne told his guest over a bit of sherry), and I don’t know how I ever let myself get talked into it. The time was early May of 1943, some months after our hard-won victory on Guadalcanal. Axis forces were surrendering in North Africa and there was a tentative air of optimism on the home front for the first time since Pearl Harbor.

Annabel had returned home late from her animal hospital and I’d made a start at preparing dinner. “Out!” she ordered, seizing the skillet from my unresisting hand. “Go read your paper or something!”

“I was only trying to help.”

“You’ll have plenty of chances for that. I had lunch today with Meg Woolitzer and she’s stopping by in an hour. We have to be finished with dinner by then.”

Meg Woolitzer was editor of the Northmont Advertiser, a weekly paper that appeared each Thursday free of charge. It was delivered to front porches in the town itself, and farmers could pick it up at several area stores. Since buying the paper a year earlier with money from a small family inheritance, she’d been trying to upgrade it into a real newspaper. That was something the town had lacked since the bankruptcy of the Northmont Blade. Annabel helped support them with regular ads for her Ark, and she’d become friendly with Meg.

“Let me guess,” I said, picking up a copy of the Boston news-paper that I read each evening. “She wants me to take an ad.”

“Nooo,” Annabel replied with a sly lilt to her voice. “It’s something else. Don’t worry, it’s nothing bad.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

Meg Woolitzer was a bright young woman in her early thirties, tall and brown-haired with a take-charge attitude. I sometimes saw her at town meetings, where she always had an opinion and wasn’t afraid to voice it. When she arrived at our house that evening she was carrying a briefcase full of newspapers and was accompanied by Penny Hamish, an attractive younger woman who was the paper’s assistant editor. “How are you, Sam?” she said, greeting me with a peck on the cheek. That should have warned me there was trouble brewing.

“Fine, Meg. Just the usual round of spring colds. You’re looking well, and you too, Penny.”

“We’ve been busy with new ideas for the paper. I was telling Annabel over lunch that it’s time Northmont became more involved with the war effort.”

“We’ve sent a great many boys overseas,” I pointed out.

“I mean something that everyone can take part in. Something to build community spirit.”

“We’ve had war-bond drives.”

“But we haven’t had a scrap-metal drive like most other places. Scrap metal is important to the war effort right now. Every family in this town probably has something they could contribute — old radiators, car and truck parts, outmoded farm equipment, lead pipes, and gutters.”

“Even metal washboards!” Penny chimed in.

“Meg is going to promote a scrap-metal drive in the Advertiser,” Annabel explained. “I think it’s a wonderful idea.”

Meg Woolitzer dove into her briefcase for some newspapers. “Look here, this is what gave me the idea. A paper in Rochester, New York, runs a weekly feature with a big picture of someone dressed like Sherlock Holmes, with the deerstalker hat, the cape, the pipe, and even a magnifying glass. He goes around the city searching for scrap metal to be donated to the war effort. He even has a name — Unlock Homes! Isn’t that clever?”

I studied the pictures and shrugged. “No harm in it if it does some good.”

Annabel took over the conversation. “All Meg needs is someone to dress up like this and play Unlock Homes.”

“Who—?”

“I told her you’d be glad to do it.”

“Me! Is this a joke?”

“Don’t you see how perfect you’d be, Sam? You’re the best detective in Northmont, and the most famous. Everyone will see the pictures and start searching for scrap metal so you’ll come to their house.”

“I’m a doctor,” I tried to remind them. “Sheriff Lens handles crime.”

“But this isn’t crime,” Meg pleaded. “It’s for the war effort. You’d make a perfect scrap-metal Sherlock! Your initials are even the same — S. H.”

It took a half-hour for them to wear me down, but finally they succeeded. Meg promised to come up with the costume and props, and I agreed to try it at least once. “After that you can get someone else and not show his face. Your readers will think it’s still me.”

“We’ll see,” she replied. “I’ll try to line everything up for this Saturday. That way we can run the first picture in next week’s edition.”

And that’s how I contributed to the war effort.

Saturday morning a dense, chilly mist hung over the fields. Until spring arrived in earnest the local farmers had little to do, churning the meager milk supply into butter and making sure the cows had enough to eat. Even the town’s single school bus sat idle on Saturday, and as we passed Seth Grey’s house I saw him working on something under its hood. Meg gave him a beep of her horn and he glanced up, grinning. Annabel and I occasionally saw them together at Max’s Steakhouse.

“We’re going to the Cartwright place,” Meg Woolitzer said as we’d started out. “It’s pretty far out but the old man told me he has lots of scrap metal for us.”

Annabel wanted to check in at the Ark first, to see how a sick parrot was doing, but promised to meet us at the Cartwright house in an hour. “Don’t worry,” she assured me. “I won’t miss the debut of Unlock Homes.” I growled something in return, still wondering how I’d been talked into a stunt like this.

There was a small panel truck in the Cartwright driveway when we arrived, with a sign on its door that read Gardenware Sales. It was the time of year when the traveling salesmen made their rounds and I knew old Cartwright prided himself on his garden. He was probably a regular customer of theirs. The house itself resembled something out of Nathaniel Hawthorne, with three floors and a great gabled roof. It could have used a coat of paint, but otherwise seemed in good shape.

“Has he ever shown you the secret passage?” Meg asked as we walked up the front steps.

I shook my head. “He’s never been a patient of mine, claims he doesn’t believe in doctors. Except for his hearing, he’s been healthy for nearly eighty years so I can’t argue with that.”

“I did a story on his garden last summer and he showed me around outside. He’s a nice old man.”

“That he is,” I agreed as the front door swung open in response to our ring. Cartwright’s one employee was a middle-aged man I knew only as George, who lived there with him and assumed the combined duties of butler, cook, and gardener.

“Come right in,” he told us. “Mr. Cartwright is expecting you.”

I’d donned the deerstalker and cape in the car, but if he thought my costume was odd, he said nothing. Perhaps he believed I was only trying to keep warm, though it certainly wasn’t chilly inside the oak-paneled foyer. We followed him into the library, Meg lugging her bulky Speed Graphic because she had no budget for a photographer. “I’ll have to train Penny to do this,” she said.

Aaron Cartwright, whose hearing was now so bad that he used an ear trumpet, sat in an overstuffed chair against a wall of books. His visitor, a balding man in a gray suit, was brandishing a molded clay object about nine inches high that looked for all the world like a birdbath for crickets. “This is our Empire model. Notice the intricate design around the base.”

“Come in, come in!” Cartwright said, putting down the ear trumpet so he could offer both hands to Meg Woolitzer. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Meg. Sit right down!”

“I hope we’re not interrupting anything.”

“Of course not! Mr. Snyder here was just leaving.”

Snyder put down the miniature birdbath and took an order pad from his briefcase. “Should I put you down for two of our Empire models, Mr. Cartwright?”

“Certainly, certainly!”

“What will you do with birdbaths that small?” Meg asked him.

Cartwright put the trumpet to his ear. “Speak louder, dear,” he requested, and she repeated her question. He laughed. “No, no! This is only a miniature that the salesmen carry with them as samples. The ones I’m buying will be full-sized.”

“You’ll have delivery in about three weeks,” Snyder promised, reaching for his sample.

But Aaron Cartwright was faster, batting away his hand with the ear trumpet. “Let me keep it for now, while I plan the rest of my garden. You can pick it up next time.”

The salesman agreed but looked unhappy. Obviously the old man was a good customer. “When I return, I’ll have a full selection of annuals and shrubs for you, too,” he promised. “Will you be going away this summer?”

Cartwright laughed. “Where would I go? Over to fight the Nazis? I’ll be right here with George.”

The servant showed him out and I picked up the miniature birdbath to admire it, surprised by its weight. “This must weigh three or four pounds.”

“That’s natural-deposit Ohio clay; they use authentic molds from early in the century.”

“His garden is a thing of beauty,” Meg told me.

“Who are you, fella?” Cartwright asked, glaring at me. Though we’d met before, he didn’t recognize me in my costume.

Meg answered for me. “This is Dr. Sam Hawthorne.”

“Doctors! Don’t have anything to do with doctors! My health is fine.”

She smiled. “He’s not here about your health. I’m going to use him in a photograph for the newspaper. You’ve heard of Sherlock Holmes?”

“Used to read about him all the time.”

“Well, Sam here is Unlock Homes. He’s going to uncover scrap metal to help the war effort. You told me on the phone you had some old radiators and other things. I want to run a picture of Sam, dressed as Sherlock Holmes, uncovering these things.”

Aaron Cartwright snorted. “Nothing to uncover. It’s all back in the barn. George can show you. But wouldn’t you rather take a picture of my secret passage? That’s the sort of thing Holmes would find.”

“He’s right about that,” I agreed.

“Well, we can take a look at it,” Meg said with some hesitation.

Cartwright grinned, showing off a row of yellow teeth. “My father had it put in when he built the place, back in ’ninety-seven,” he told us, rising from the chair with some difficulty. “My wife was still alive then, and I didn’t move here till she died twenty years ago. I hated to see this place just standing empty. That’s when I put in forced-air heating and took out the radiators and bought the old Hamish farm to add to my acreage.”

“Where is this secret passage?” I asked.

“Right in front of you.”

“The bookcases?” I knew that English mansions sometimes covered doors with bookshelves, but I hadn’t encountered anything like that in Northmont until now. He gripped one of the bookcases and swung it out from the wall, revealing a dark staircase leading up.

He turned a switch just inside the passage and a light went on above us. “This is neat!” Meg decided. “Sam, take out your magnifying glass and I’ll get a picture.”

I kept telling myself I was doing it for the war effort as I assumed the pose at her direction. She lifted the Speed Graphic and the flashbulb momentarily blinded me. “Where does it lead?” I asked Cartwright.

“Up to my bedroom. I keep the other end locked so no one can sneak in on me at night. Combination lock that only I can open. My father was a poor sleeper and he liked the idea of coming down here to work or read without disturbing the household. Come along and I’ll show you.” We followed him to the top where a plain metal door without even a knob blocked our passage. “You see? My bedroom is on the other side.” We went back down the stairs and found George waiting at the bottom. “But it’s the barn you want to see. George, show them our scrap metal and make any arrangements Miss Woolitzer wishes. I’m pleased to be rid of it.”

“You’re not joining us?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Can’t take the cold air anymore. Bad for my lungs.”

We followed George out the back door and across the damp grass to the old barn, probably unused for decades. “How long have you been with Mr. Cartwright?” I asked, making conversation. He was a familiar figure in Northmont, but I didn’t even know his last name.

“Ten years now. I’m his nephew, George Chabber. You’ve probably seen me around town.”

“Glad to meet you formally,” I said, half turning to shake hands. “Your uncle is doing pretty well for his age.”

“He gets by. I’m a light sleeper and if he needs me I’m right there.”

We heard a horn honking behind us and turned to see Annabel pulling up behind Meg’s vehicle in the driveway. “I see I’m just in time,” she called out, hurrying to catch up.

George Chabber unlocked the barn door and ushered us into a dismal, cobwebby area filled with a lifetime’s treasures. I recognized an old buggy, half hidden behind rotting bales of hay, a china cabinet with a broken glass door, a sofa with the stuffing pulled apart by rats. “Here are the radiators,” George said, yanking away an old horse blanket to reveal them. “Don’t know why he kept them all these years.”

“This’ll make a great picture,” Meg decided. “Sam, if you could just get over here with your magnifying glass—”

“Do I have to?”

“You do! It’s your contribution to the war effort,” Annabel reminded me.

And so it was. The picture appeared on page one of the following Thursday’s paper, showing me in costume standing by the china cabinet and peering through my magnifying glass at the uncovered radiators. Meg Woolitzer’s scrap-metal campaign was launched. All that morning I had people calling me Unlock, starting with my nurse April. It didn’t last too long, though, because that was the day we found Aaron Cartwright murdered.

The call came in to my office just before ten. “Agitated male,” April said, covering the phone’s mouthpiece. “Says he needs the detective. Think he’s calling for Unlock Homes?”

I made a face and reached for the phone. “Dr. Hawthorne here. What can I do for you?”

“Doc, it’s George Chabber, out at the Cartwright place. I think something’s happened to my uncle. I think he’s badly injured or dead.”

“What happened?”

“He went to bed at his usual time, a little after ten, but he wasn’t up before six like he usually is. I waited till nine o’clock and then went into his room. His bed had been slept in, but he wasn’t there. I went down to the library and tried the door, but it was bolted from the inside. He did that occasionally when he didn’t want to be disturbed. I knocked on the door but he didn’t answer, so I went away. I started making breakfast, knowing the aroma of coffee usually attracted him. But this time it didn’t. Finally I looked in the keyhole and saw him on the floor, all bloody. I called the sheriff and thought I should call you, too.”

“I’ll be out as soon as I can,” I promised. I hung up and turned to April. “Something’s happened to old man Cartwright. George wants me out there.”

“You have an eleven o’clock with Mrs. Hennisey,” she reminded me.

“Try to shift her to tomorrow. If she needs someone today, maybe Lincoln Jones can see her.” Lincoln, Northmont’s first black doctor, had recently gone into private practice and we sometimes helped with each other’s patients.

“I’ll call her.”

I grabbed my black bag, aware that Aaron Cartwright might still be alive behind his library door, and hurried out to my Buick. It was a few years old now, suffering badly on our bumpy country roads, but I knew there was no chance of getting a new car until the war ended. At least my status as a physician earned me extra gasoline under the government’s rationing system.

It had been raining off and on all morning and my wipers were going. Sheriff Lens’s car pulled into the Cartwright driveway just ahead of mine and it took me a moment to notice that a familiar truck was already there. It was Snyder’s Gardenware Sales vehicle that I’d seen on my earlier visit, and I saw that Snyder himself was at the door speaking with George Chabber.

“You got a call, too?” Sheriff Lens asked me, trying to dodge the raindrops as he hurried toward the porch.

I nodded. “George phoned me. I brought my bag in case Cartwright’s still alive.”

“This way,” George said, motioning us to follow him inside. Snyder started to say something, but thought better of it, remaining on the porch.

“What did Snyder want?” I asked.

“To see Mr. Cartwright. I said he was indisposed.”

The library door was solid oak. It would have taken a truck to get through it. I dropped to my knees and peered through the keyhole. Cartwright’s body was visible, as George had said. It was on the floor near his desk, with a great deal of blood. “We have to get in there,” I said. “What about the windows?”

“All the ground-floor windows are barred. Cartwright’s father built it like that to protect his valuable antiques.”

“The volunteers have a battering ram at the firehouse,” Sheriff Lens said.

“There must be another way.” I turned to George. “What about the secret passage from his bedroom?”

“He kept it locked at all times, and only he had the combination.”

“Let’s go upstairs and have a look.”

George led the way to a closed door at the top of the stairs. “That’s my room across the hall. I sleep with the door open in case he needs something at night.”

He led us into the old man’s bedroom. The rumpled sheets gave evidence that he’d slept at least part of the night. There was a telephone next to the bed, and a small radio. However, I was more interested in the bookcase built into the wall opposite the foot of the bed. If I had my bearings right, it would hide the entrance to the secret passage. The bookcase pulled easily away from the wall on oiled hinges, but it revealed only a solid metal door with a combination lock.

“You don’t know the combination?” I asked George.

“No idea. He told me once that he was the only one who ever used the passage, so no one else needed to know it.”

The sheriff peered over my shoulder and gave a snort. “You won’t be getting in there without a combination. The man really wanted his privacy.”

“Let’s go back downstairs and put some muscle into that door,” I suggested.

It took the combined strength of Chabber, Sheriff Lens, and myself to splinter it after several tries. “It was bolted, all right,” the sheriff said, examining the mechanism dangling from the splintered wood. “Looks like you’ve got another locked room on your hands, Doc.”

I hurried to the body, but one look at his crushed skull told me Aaron Cartwright had died instantly. He was crumpled on the rug, fully dressed, and the weapon was not far away. The miniature birdbath lay there, caked with blood and hair. George Chabber’s face had gone white at the sight of it. “How could this have happened? I never heard a thing.”

“You’d better get that salesman in here from the front porch,” I told him.

“How long do you think he’s been dead, Doc?” the sheriff asked.

“A few hours, at least. This blood has dried.”

Then I saw something else on his desk. It was that morning’s copy of the Northmont Advertiser, unfolded to show my front-page picture as Unlock Homes.

I glanced around at the walls of the library, feeling that someone might be watching us. After the sheriff finished calling his office for help, I suggested he search the room for a possible hiding place. “The killer may still be here.”

He did as I said, with one hand resting on his service revolver. “No one’s hiding here,” he reported.

“Try pulling those other bookcases.” He did, but none of them moved. I sighed and said, “Then there’s only one place he could be hiding — in the secret passage.”

“How could that be, Doc?”

“It’s the only possibility. The killer had to be in this room to swing that clay birdbath at Cartwright’s head. This door was solidly bolted from the inside, and no one is hiding in the room.” I carefully swung open the bookcase, revealing the secret passage. “We know there’s a locked steel door at the top, without even a knob on this side. The killer has to be trapped on this stairway.” I snapped on the light, as Cartwright had done on my previous visit.

“Come out of there!” Sheriff Lens ordered, raising his revolver.

There was nothing but silence from above. We moved slowly up the wooden staircase, the single bulb above casting an eerie glow on our path. When we reached the top, it was as it had been before, a solid steel door without a knob, like the inside of a safe. I pushed on it but it didn’t budge. The passage was empty.

A secret passage leading off of the secret passage? Nothing was beyond imagining. The sheriff and I went over every inch of the stairs and wall and ceiling, but there was no other passage. I’d run out of ideas.

We went back down to the library and I saw that Meg’s assistant, Penny Hamish, had arrived. “What’s happened here?” she asked me. “I saw the sheriff’s car and now—” She glanced in at the body on the library floor and then looked away.

“Aaron Cartwright’s been killed,” I told her. “You’d better phone Meg with your scoop.”

“Not much of a scoop when it’s a weekly paper,” she complained. “It’ll be old news by next Thursday.” But she spotted the telephone on a side table beneath a banjo clock and gave the number to the operator.

I turned my attention to Mr. Snyder, the birdbath salesman. He looked rumpled and unhappy, no doubt regretting he’d chosen this morning to return. “What brought you back here?” I asked.

“I needed my sample, so I brought him a picture of it, hoping that would satisfy him till the real birdbaths arrived.”

Sheriff Lens grunted. “You won’t be getting it for a while now. It’s a murder weapon and we’ll need it as evidence.”

Snyder started to protest, but saw that it was useless. Penny hung up the phone and told us Meg Woolitzer was on her way. “She’s bringing her camera.”

“No shots of the body,” the sheriff said. “She knows better than that.”

Snyder was growing restless. “Can I go now?”

“I’d like to ask you some questions first,” I told him. “What time did you arrive here?”

“Just after ten o’clock. I didn’t come earlier in case he was a late sleeper.”

“Mr. Cartwright was usually up before six,” George told us again. “That’s why I was so surprised when he didn’t appear for breakfast.”

“You heard nothing in the night?” I asked. “No sounds of a struggle?”

“Nothing.” He hesitated and then added, “Once, toward morning, I thought I heard the phone ring, but I may have been dreaming. It didn’t ring a second time.”

Sheriff Lens took me aside and said, “Doc, this Chabber guy has got to be involved. He was alone in the house with Cartwright when the killing took place.”

“What about the locked room?”

“He had three or four hours to figure out a gimmick before he called you and me.”

I sighed. “Don’t you see, Sheriff, that being alone in the house with Cartwright is enough to point to his innocence? Since the killing couldn’t have been suicide, it would have been to George’s advantage to suggest an intruder by leaving the front door ajar. Alternatively, he could have used those hours to dispose of the body, hiding or burying it. Creating the illusion of a locked room is the last thing he would have done.”

“This locked room is no illusion, Doc.”

“I know.”

The sheriff’s deputies and a photographer had arrived, along with the coroner. The birdbath weapon was being checked for fingerprints, though I was pretty certain they’d find none. Before long Meg Woolitzer arrived, accompanied by Seth Grey. That was a surprise, though I knew she and the school-bus driver were seeing each other. “What happened here?” he asked me.

“Somebody killed Aaron Cartwright,” I said, gesturing toward the library where the coroner was making it official.

“I was at Seth’s house when Penny phoned me,” Meg explained, not bothering to say how her assistant knew where to find her. “He gave me a ride over.”

“Your newspaper was on his desk, with my picture on the front page. The doors were locked and the windows barred.”

“Do you think the killer was taunting you, challenging you to solve another locked-room murder?”

“I don’t know. It’s a possibility. But we have to remember the murder weapon, that miniature birdbath, was in the room already. It was nothing the killer brought along. That implies the killing might have happened on the spur of the moment rather than with premeditation.”

“What time was he killed?”

“I’d guess about three or four hours before we found him. No later than seven o’clock.”

She glanced over at the body and then quickly away. “But he’s dressed. He’s not wearing nightclothes.”

“George says he was an early riser. There also might have been a phone call from someone. He could have been expecting a visitor.”

“But who? And why?”

“You were the one who chose this place for launching your scrap-metal drive. I hate to ask you this, Meg, but where were you around six this morning?”

She flushed a bit and answered, “I spent the night with Seth. I was at his house. I like to relax on Wednesday nights after the paper goes to press. We had a few drinks and I got sleepy. I guess Wednesday nights are my weekend.”

“Penny knew you were there? That’s where she phoned you.”

“Penny knows my habits.”

I glanced at Seth Grey, standing off to one side. He answered my unspoken question. “She was at my house all night. I can tell you she didn’t have anything to do with this business.”

“All right.” Penny Hamish had come up to join us and I left them. Sheriff Lens was in the front hall with Snyder. The salesman was anxious to be out of there, pleading that he had other calls to make.

The sheriff took me aside. “What do you think about this Snyder fellow, Doc? It’s quite a coincidence he turned up here just as Cartwright was being killed.”

“But what motive could he have to kill a good customer? Would he have used the miniature birdbath, the very object he came to retrieve, as a murder weapon?”

“I don’t know, Doc, but what other explanation is there? Do you think Cartwright heard a prowler and came down to look around?”

“I think he’d have sent George down to investigate a prowler.”

“Then where are we?”

“Let me think about it, Sheriff. There’s something here we’re not seeing.”

I went out to my car, maneuvering it around a lineup that now included Snyder’s truck, Sheriff Lens’s car, vehicles for his deputies and the coroner, and Seth Grey’s car. Aaron Cartwright had probably not had that many visitors at once in his lifetime.

Annabel came home early from the Ark when I told her what had happened. She could see that I was troubled, believing somehow that my photograph in the Advertiser had caused Cartwright’s death. “You can’t blame yourself, Sam. And you can’t blame Meg for running that picture. The idea that someone killed him in a locked room as a challenge to you is ridiculous.”

“Then why was the paper left there, unfolded to show my picture on the front page?”

She couldn’t answer, but told me, “Think it through, Sam. Put yourself in the killer’s position, inside his skin. That’s what I try to do sometimes with my sick animals.”

I smiled at her. “Does it help?”

“Once in a while it does.”

“All right. Taking all the facts as we know them, someone might have phoned Cartwright in the early morning. That someone could have been the killer. Cartwright let them into the house and library, perhaps bolting the door so George wouldn’t disturb them.”

“What time would this have been?”

“Somewhere around six, probably. No earlier, or he’d have turned on the library lights. But it’s full daylight by six this time of year. It couldn’t have been much later than that because of the dried blood and condition of the body.”

“This birdbath weapon was in the room, so the killing probably wasn’t premeditated. Someone called him, they met in the library, and the killer bashed his skull in.”

“Then what?” I asked. “The windows were barred, the door was bolted on the inside, and the secret passage — even if the killer knew about it — led only to a solid steel door without a knob.”

And even as I said the words the whole thing clicked into place. I knew how the killer escaped from the room, and I knew who it had to be. I even had a pretty good idea of the motive.

“I’m going out for a while,” I told Annabel.

“Don’t do anything foolish, Sam.”

“I’ll try not to.”

I drove over to Meg Woolitzer’s office, a storefront near the town square that served as the paper’s editorial office. Though it was late afternoon of her publication day, I was pretty sure she’d be at work, preparing a story on Aaron Cartwright’s murder. She looked up as I entered, a trace of sadness in her smile. I could see Penny at work in the back office.

“Hello, Sam. I’m sorry about what happened. I’d hate to think your Unlock Homes photo had anything to do with it.”

I pulled out a chair and sat down opposite her desk. “I’m afraid it had everything to do with it, Meg. I thought I should come over and tell you about it.”

“You know how the killer got out of that room?”

“I do. More important, I know how that copy of the Advertiser got into the room.”

“What?”

“No one thought to question how your paper could have been on Cartwright’s desk as early as six in the morning. It’s only delivered to houses in town, not as far out as his place. And even the town copies probably aren’t delivered that early. I questioned your whereabouts this morning because it occurred to me that the only way the Advertiser could have gotten into that house by six A.M. was if the murderer brought it.”

“You’re saying I killed him?”

I looked beyond her at Penny Hamish, who’d come to the door to listen. “No, Meg. I’m saying that Penny killed him.”

She stepped into the room to face me. “Because of the newspaper? Because I would have had an early copy of it?”

“Partly that, yes. But if the killer brought the paper along and unfolded it to show Cartwright that picture, it was to confront him with it. You weren’t along when Meg took the picture, but when you saw it you noticed something familiar, didn’t you? Not the stack of old radiators Unlock Homes had uncovered, but what was just behind me in the photo — an antique china cabinet with a cracked glass door. I remembered that Cartwright bought the old Hamish farm some years back to add to his property. That was your family’s place, wasn’t it? And I suspect the familiar china cabinet came from there. Whatever you thought happened to it, you had no idea it was rotting away in Aaron Cartwright’s barn. You may have seen the photo in the office earlier, but you didn’t recognize the china cabinet until you saw it in print. You phoned Cartwright early this morning and demanded to see him. He was fully dressed — a hint that he was receiving a woman visitor — and let you in himself, taking you into the library and bolting the door so George wouldn’t interrupt. Then you argued, and in a fury you grabbed that miniature birdbath and hit him with it.”

Penny Hamish wet her lips nervously and I knew that my reconstruction was mostly accurate so far. “If I killed him, how did I get out of that locked room?” She was challenging me, but I was ready for her.

“The room wasn’t locked,” I said simply. “Not then.”

“Not locked?” Meg repeated.

“With a female guest arriving at six in the morning to see him, old Aaron didn’t want to leave his room and walk past George’s open bedroom door. Surely the young man would have awakened from his light sleep. Aaron used the combination only he knew to open the steel door to the secret passage. He descended to the library that way and watched for your arrival. Since there was no knob or combination dial on the interior, he had to leave the door open. No doubt the bookcase door downstairs was left ajar, too. After you killed him—”

“He told me he’d return the cabinet if I — if I had sex with him. He put his clammy hand on my arm and that’s when I hit him.”

“Penny!” Meg went to her then, wrapping protective arms around the young woman.

“You feared that George might have been attracted by the noise, so you couldn’t unbolt the door and go out that way. Instead, you went up through the secret passage to his bedroom, closed the metal door behind you, and hid there, perhaps under the bed.”

“Yes,” she muttered.

“After George checked the room and went downstairs to phone the sheriff and me, it was easy for you to sneak out and remain hidden upstairs until the rest of us arrived later. Then you acted as if you’d just come in, and phoned Meg to report the killing. But when I left, I noticed all the cars in the driveway, and there wasn’t one for you. Where did you park it, Penny?”

“Down the road behind some bushes. I didn’t want people to see my car in his driveway at six in the morning.”

“He’d made advances to you before?” Meg asked.

“God, he was old enough to be my grandfather!” She turned to stare me down. “That’s the one thing you got a bit wrong, Dr. Hawthorne. He bolted the library door so George wouldn’t interrupt while he tried to seduce me.”

Meg shook her head. “You were a fool to go there alone, Penny.”

“When I recognized our china cabinet in that picture I was just so furious! He claimed someone broke in and stole it from our old house, and there it was, all the time.”

“What do we do now?” Meg Woolitzer asked me.

Before I could speak, Penny answered for me. “Call Sheriff Lens. And then go to press with an extra edition, Meg. I’ll give you an interview for the front page. That should be enough to make the Advertiser into a real paper!”

Copyright (c); 2005 by Edward D. Hoch.