The Hanging Hill

85

Early that evening, Doris Ann Norris was at home sitting in her comfiest chair, sipping ice-cold lemonade.

Her weary feet were up on an ottoman; her contented cat was snoozing in her lap.

It had been some day at the library! First the world-famous author Judy Magruder Jennings had dropped by. Then the movie star Meghan McKenna! And the boy with the adorable dog!

Quite a day. She’d been so busy, she still hadn’t gotten around to reading the morning newspaper.

Putting aside her glass, she picked up the paper and flipped through the pages.

Nothing too interesting. Same old, same old. Even the funnies seemed dull.

Then again, she had been brushing elbows with celebrities all day. There wasn’t much in this newspaper or any other that could wow her today.

Eventually, when she reached the pages near the back—the broadsheets cluttered with used car and muffler repair advertisements—she did stumble upon one story that caught her eye:

Magician Nicodemus

Suffers Heart Attack

After Slaying Visitor

Nicodemus. That was the name of the magician Mrs. Jennings and Mrs. McKenna had been researching!

Doris Ann Norris quickly scanned the accompanying block of copy. Apparently, the vaudevillian Artemus Grimes, whose stage name was “Professor Nicholas Nicodemus,” was one hundred and five years old and had been a resident of a mental institution called the Riverstream Hospital for the Criminally Insane ever since he killed a six-year-old magician’s assistant at the Hanging Hill Playhouse back in the 1930s. Before collapsing in his wheelchair from a fatal heart attack, the ancient magician had killed a young man named Habib Mzali, a visitor from Tunisia. The police had not recovered the murder weapon, apparently a knife.

Oh, my. She knew Mrs. Jennings and Mrs. McKenna would want to know about this so she found her sewing scissors and clipped the article out of the paper. She would take it to the theater. First thing tomorrow.