The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK™: 23 Classic Mystery Stories

The Monster Brain

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, November 1966.

Modern society has become so automated, it’s amazing how many of the things one does are later scrutinized by an electronic computer. For example, for some time now our state headquarters of the National Association of Underwriters has been routinely feeding punch cards into a computer for every insurance policy issued, and for every claim filed in the state. The data which comes out is mainly useful for statistical purposes, but once in a while something will spill out which suggests a possible insurance fraud. When that happens, the information is relayed to the association’s investigative division, which is where I work.

One Monday morning in mid-October I came to work in a bad mood. Anita and I had gone round and round again the night before about getting married. As usual, the argument had centered about the lack of future in working for a salary and ended with the ultimatum that she would never marry a man who couldn’t support her in luxury.

Sally, our blonde receptionist said, “If that’s a hangover you’re suffering, Mr. Quinn, you’d better get over it in a hurry.”

“It’s not a hangover,” I said, glowering at her. “It’s just the normal distasteful expression I can’t keep from my face every time I look at a member of the female sex. And why should I get over it, even if it were a hangover?”

“You had another fight with your girl,” she said. “The chief wants to see you.”

I smoothed my expression before I entered the chiefs office. He doesn’t like to see anything but happy faces.

Ed Morgan is chief of the investigative division. He’s a grizzled, barrel-chested man of sixty who has headed the division for twenty years and has the reputation of being able to smell an insurance fraud clear across the state. I had been working under him for seven years, since I got out of college, and had become his most trusted investigator.

“Sit down, Tod,” he said. “I’ve got a routine investigation for you. I doubt that anything will come of it, because I can’t work up much of a hunch about it, but the computer people sent some data over, and we have to check it out.”

If Ed Morgan didn’t sense a possible fraud from whatever it was the computer had divulged, there probably wasn’t any. But a lot of our investigations are based less on outright suspicion than on mere thoroughness. We turn up the number of fraud cases we do because we investigate everything which seems even a little off key in insurance claims.

“What did the monster brain turn up this time?” I asked.

“Well, as you know, one of the items keyed on every punch card involving claims is cause of death. Some statistician was tabulating causes of death throughout the state for the past twelve months, and seems to think he found something interesting when he came to typhoid fever. Typhoid is rare these days; there were only seven deaths from it last year in the whole state. Five of them were in the same community. Each was insured by a different carrier, but through the same insurance broker. Each policy happened to be for the same amount too: ten thousand dollars. Headquarters thought the coincidence of cause of death, the insured amount and the broker being identical in all five cases might interest us.”

He handed me a couple of sheets of paper on which a resume of the data from the punch cards had been typed.

The five decedents who had been insured were an eighty-year-old man whose beneficiary had been his son, three women whose beneficiaries had been their husbands, and one eighteen-year-old boy whose beneficiary had been his father. All five policies had been written on different companies by a broker named Paul Manners. The deaths had all taken place during a period of about a month from the middle of July to the middle of August. The addresses of both the deceased and the beneficiaries in all cases were either R.D. 1 or R.D. 2, Heather Ridge.

“Obviously a rural community,” I said. “Where’s Heather Ridge?”

“I didn’t know either until I looked it up,” the chief said. “It has a population of seven hundred and is the seat of Heather County.”

“I don’t know where Heather County is either,” I said.

Morgan grinned. “I’m not surprised. It’s back up in the hills with the moonshiners. The population of the whole county is only about twenty-five hundred. There isn’t even a paved road in the county, although the map shows a couple of presumably good gravel roads. There’s no railroad line to Heather Ridge, and a bus only twice a week, so if you find you have to go there, you’d better drive.”

I glanced at the resume again. “Whoever sent this over has a hole in his head. So the place had a typhoid epidemic this last summer. That’s the logical time to have one. This Paul Manners wrote all the policies because a place that size wouldn’t have more than one insurance broker. And the amounts being the same don’t mean anything. Ten thousand dollars is the most common amount of life coverage.”

“Exactly my reasoning, but we’ve turned up frauds with less to start on. It shouldn’t take you more than a few days to check it out. You may decide after examining the claim correspondence that you don’t even have to visit the place.”

“Okay,” I said, rising. “I’ll get on it right away.”

In the outer office the blonde Sally said, “You look a little more cheerful now, Mr. Quinn. Is your opinion of the female sex improving?”

“It’s just that I have a happy assignment,” I told her. “If things work out the way I hope, I’ll be able to send a lovely young widow to the gas chamber.”

She made a leering face at me.

The insurance carriers all had branch offices in Blair City, fifty miles away. I drove over and by mid-afternoon had examined the files on all five cases.

Everything seemed in order. There was a certified copy of the death certificate in each case, all stamped with the notary seal of an Emma Pruett of the Heather County Clerk’s Office. Each had been signed by the same doctor, Emmet Parks. Checking the policies, I discovered all had been taken out during the previous January and February, and all physical exams had been made by Dr. Emmet Parks. Again this wasn’t too coincidental. It was hardly likely a town of seven hundred would have more than one doctor.

The relatively short time the policies had been in force made me decide to check a little more deeply, though. I revisited each insurance office and asked to look at the canceled claim-payment checks. I was startled to discover that in each case the checks had been endorsed to Dr. Emmet Parks and then cashed by him at the same bank in Holoyke.

I checked my road map and discovered Heather Ridge was about sixty miles from Holoyke. Now why were the checks all endorsed to the doctor, I wondered, and why did he go sixty miles to cash them instead of cashing them in Heather Ridge?

By the time I got back to the state capital, it was too late to do any more that day. I phoned Anita to see if she were interested in going out to dinner, but she was just as icy as the night before. She hung up on me.

I spent a miserable evening brooding over what kind of business I could go into which might make the kind of money Anita demanded. I couldn’t think of any. My education was in liberal arts, and my total experience was in insurance investigation. I finally gave up and went to bed.

The next morning I was at the office of the State Medical Society when it opened.

Dr. Emmet Parks proved to be a member in good standing, and had been for twenty years. He was fifty years old, and had never practiced anywhere but Heather Ridge. He was the only physician in all of Heather County.

If there was fraud connected with the five insurance claims, the only way I could see it had been worked was by mass murder. It seemed highly unlikely that a reputable physician would be a party to that, and equally unlikely that even a rural physician would misdiagnose five murders in a row as typhoid fever. Besides, since each beneficiary was different, it would involve the collusion of all five in murder.

Still, Parks’ signature on all the claim-payment checks bothered me. I decided to keep checking.

When I left the State Medical Society Office, I visited the licensing bureau at the Capital Building. Insurance broker Paul Manners had passed his state examination and had been licensed only the previous November, which made the relative newness of the five policies considerably less suspicious. Since he couldn’t have started selling insurance earlier than November, all it seemed to indicate was that he was a pretty hot salesman.

Checking his file, I discovered he was married but had no children, had a high school education and had been a part-time farmer for the past twenty-five years. During the same period he had worked half-time as a farm appliance salesman in a store in Heather Ridge. According to his application, he planned to continue his part-time farming, but drop his extra job when he became an insurance broker.

A certified true copy of his birth certificate, again bearing the notary stamp of Emma Pruett, showed he had been born in Heather Ridge.

His three references rated his character high. One was from a Reverend Donald Hartwell, one from County Judge Albert Baker, the third from Dr. Emmet Parks.

While it was standard procedure for people to give their family physician’s name when references were required, the frequency with which I was running into Dr. Emmet Parks’ name began to intrigue me.

I took rather detailed notes of the information about Paul Manners contained in his file.

From the Capital Building I went back to association headquarters and gave a computer operator a question to ask the monster brain. Its answer lessened my suspicion. In addition to the five typhoid cases, Paul Manners had placed twenty other policies with various carriers since he had been in business, and all of these insured were still alive. It looked more and more as though the insurance broker had merely had the misfortune to start business in a territory where previously no one had ever been approached by an insurance salesman, had done remarkably well with his virgin territory, but had immediately run into an epidemic.

If it hadn’t been for Dr. Emmet Parks’ signature on all the claim-payment checks, I would have dropped the matter right there. But I had to check that out. I decided to visit Heather Ridge.

I drove up on Wednesday, arriving in the middle of the morning. The town was a good forty miles from the nearest main highway, back up in the hills in rugged, sparsely settled country. The last thirty miles I traveled on washboard gravel road, and I didn’t see a single other car. As a matter of fact, except for power and telephone lines strung on poles alongside the road, I saw few signs of civilization. Occasionally I spotted a farmhouse or a barn, but most of the time the view from the winding mountain road was of steep hills densely covered with pine.

I didn’t see any heather, and Heather Ridge itself turned out to be in a valley instead of on a ridge, although there was a sharp, jagged ridge just north of it.

Later I learned the town and the county had been named after Amos Heather, a trapper who back in the mid-1800s had stood off an Indian attack from it for seven days before he finally lost his scalp.

The town was like something from the last century. There was a town square with a squat, one-story, redbrick courthouse in its center. A half dozen overalled old men chewing tobacco lolled on the low wall edging the courthouse lawn. There were a few tired-looking business establishments ringing the square, but there were no shoppers on the street. Only two vehicles were in sight, both parked in front of the courthouse. One was a 1932 pickup truck, the other a Model T.

The tobacco-chewing old men regarded me with silent speculation when I parked and entered the courthouse.

There was a long corridor running the length of the building, with offices off it on either side, labeled with the familiar titles you see in any courthouse. Most of the doors stood open so that I had to pause and look in to read the lettering on the doors. The sheriff’s office was to the left just inside the main entrance, and directly across from it was the district attorney’s office. Both were empty. I passed other empty offices labeled TAX ASSESSOR, REGISTRAR OF MOTOR VEHICLES, COUNTY RECORDER, COUNTY CLERK and CORONER. Opposite the coroner’s office was an empty office labeled COUNTY JUDGE, and a small, equally empty courtroom.

By then I was halfway down the corridor, and I finally found some sign of life. In a small alcove, behind a counter flush with the left wall of the corridor, a young woman sat before a telephone switchboard. She was a rather plain-featured brunette of about twenty-one or two. A sign hanging above the counter said INFORMATION.

“Morning, miss,” I said. “Is the courthouse closed today?”

“Oh, no,” she said with a smile. “What can I do for you?”

“Where is everybody?”

“Oh, they’re all available.” She indicated the switchboard. “I can have any official you want over here in ten minutes. They don’t hang around here because we have so little business.”

She laughed at my quizzical expression. “Kind of throws you at first, doesn’t it? It took me some getting used to when I first came here. I’ve been in this job only a year. I’m from Holoyke. When I answered the ad for a secretarial position, I didn’t realize I’d be practically running a whole county, but I’m clerk of the court, secretary to the D.A., the county clerk, the county recorder and the coroner, registrar of motor vehicles, switchboard operator and information clerk. My name’s Emma Pruett.”

The woman whose notary seal had been stamped to all the death certificates, I remembered. I said, “Doesn’t anybody but you work around here? You’re the staff?”

“When it’s necessary. The population of the whole county is only about twenty-five hundred, and all the county jobs except mine and the sheriff’s are part-time. The D.A. has his private law practice, for instance, and so does the county judge. The recorder of deeds runs a general store. The coroner’s a practicing physician, and so on. The salaries of none of them are more than a few dollars a month. They hired me to coordinate things. I always know where to reach everybody when something comes up. The sheriff’s usually around, but he happens to be over at the coffee shop at the moment.”

It seemed a rather loose way to run a county government, but with such a small tax roll, it was a lot more practical than paying the salaries of a lot of fulltime employees who had nothing to do.

I said, “If you’re secretary to the county cleric, I guess you won’t have to phone anyone. I just want to look up some death records to establish some insurance claims.”

I handed her one of my cards and she studied it with interest. Then she got up from her chair, raised a gate in the counter and stepped out into the corridor. “Just follow me, Mr. Quinn.”

She led me to the door labeled COUNTY CLERK and into the room. Moving behind a counter there, she asked, “What year?”

“This one. July and August.” I took out my list and looked at it. “The first one is Herman Potter, died July ninth.”

“I remember that name,” she said, lifting a large ledger from beneath the counter. “He was the first typhoid death. Only eighteen years old, too.” She located the proper page and reversed the book so I could examine it.

After studying the entry, which matched my notes in every detail, I said, “Next is Mrs. Henrietta Skinner, July fifteenth.”

She found that entry for me and it also checked out. Mrs. Martha Colvin, Mrs. Helen Jordan and Abel Hicks, who had died respectively on July twenty-first, August third and ninth, also checked out.

“Thanks,” I said. “Do you happen to know an insurance broker named Paul Manners?”

She furrowed her brow, then shook her head. In an apologetic tone she said, “No. I know all of the townspeople by sight, but I still don’t know all their names. Does he live in town?”

“His address is R.D.”

“That would be Ridge Road,” she said. “He probably lives on a farm out that way. I don’t know many of the farmers around here.”

“Where do I find Doctor Emmet Parks? Is his office nearby?”

“Doc? Just go east on Main Street one block. It’s a big frame house on the left. You can’t miss it, because it’s being remodeled into a new clinic and there’ll be workmen around. It’s also right next door to the post office.”

I thanked her again, left the courthouse and drove one block east on Main. It wasn’t hard to spot the doctor’s house. The framework of a long, one-story addition was attached to one side of it and a couple of workmen were lathing the inside walls. Just west of the house, on the side opposite the new addition, was a small, one-room frame building with a sign above the door reading U.S. POST OFFICE.

Parking across the street, I went over and climbed the porch steps. The two workmen stopped pounding and one of them called, “If you’re looking for Doc, he’s next door at the post office.”

At that moment a thin, elderly man carrying a cloth bag emerged from the post office. He was followed by a stocky, gray-haired man with a thick chest. The latter was in shirtsleeves and was smoking a pipe.

As the elderly man tossed his cloth bag into the back of a jeep parked in front of the post office and climbed under the wheel, the pipe smoker said, “See you this afternoon, Joe.” Then he glanced over at the porch and spotted me. As the jeep drove off, he came over and mounted the porch steps.

I asked, “Are you Dr. Emmet Parks?”

He took his pipe out of his mouth to examine me, then gave me a pleasant smile. He radiated such good nature, I instinctively liked him on sight.

“That’s right, young fellow. What can I do for you?”

I handed him a card. “I would like to discuss some death certificates you recently signed in connection with some insurance claims.”

After studying the card, he dropped it into his shirt pocket. “We can’t talk over all this pounding,” he said, indicating the two workmen, who had resumed nailing lath to the inside walls. “Come inside.”

He led me into the house. The front room was set up as a waiting room, but no one was in it.

As we passed through this room to an office, he said with a touch of ruefulness, “I’m not snowed under by patients, despite being the only physician in this county. The people around here are too infernally healthy.” Inside the office he rounded a battered old desk to seat himself behind it and waved me to a chair. Beyond the office wall we could still hear the pounding of nails, but it was muffled enough so that we didn’t have to raise our voices.

After relighting his pipe, he said, “I’d guess you’re about twenty-seven, Mr. Quinn. That close?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Married?”

“No, sir,” I said.

“Don’t wait too long,” he advised. “Eventually you reach a point where you suddenly realize your chance to marry is gone. I’ve reached it. It gets rather lonely rattling around all alone in this big house. And it’ll be even bigger when the clinic’s finished. It’s too late for me to start hunting for a wife now, so all I have to look forward to is a lonely old age. Don’t make my mistake.”

I thought of Anita, and wondered if I would still be trying to talk her into marrying me when I reached the doctor’s age. “I’m agreeable to marriage,” I said. “But my girl doesn’t think I make enough money. She wants me to go into some kind of business for myself before she’ll say yes.”

“Beware of women with expensive tastes, Mr. Quinn. The more money you make, the more expensive their tastes become.”

“This one is worth it,” I assured him.

“The romantic faith of youth,” he said with a rueful smile. “I won’t burden you with more advice, because you wouldn’t take it anyway. Now what death certificates do you want to ask me about?”

“Five deaths from typhoid this last July and August. Herman Potter, Henrietta Skinner, Martha Colvin, Helen Jordan and Abel Hicks. They were all insured for ten thousand dollars, each by different carriers, but through the same insurance broker, Paul Manners.”

Pie took a puff of his pipe. “Uh-huh. What about them?”

“You were the medical examiner for each application, and also signed all five death certificates.”

“Naturally. I’m the only physician in the county. You’ll also find my signature on the coroner’s reports if you want to check. I’m county coroner.”

“It wasn’t that which brought me here.” I said. “All five claim-payment checks were endorsed to you and later cashed by you at a Holoyke bank. Can you explain that?”

Instead of seeming offended, the doctor looked amused. “You came all the way from the state capital just to ask about that, young fellow? They were cashed in Holyoke because that’s where I have my account. Heather Ridge doesn’t have a bank, and Holoyke is the nearest one. As to why they were endorsed to me, you don’t know much about this country, do you?”

“Not much,” I admitted. “It strikes me as a little backward.”

“It’s a century behind the times, Mr. Quinn. Back here in the hills people like lots of room, and don’t trust the outside world. The farms in this area are huge, and largely uncultivatable. Three-fourths of the land is either heavily wooded or straight up and down. Geographically we’re the seventh largest county in the state; in population we’re the smallest. Farmers around here sometimes go months without seeing anyone but their own families. They’ve largely been forgotten by the outside world. Social workers never come prying into the hill country to make sure kids are attending school. Our illiteracy rate is probably fifty percent, although I don’t believe anyone has ever bothered to make a survey. Begin to understand?”

“I’m afraid not,” I confessed.

“Hill people don’t put their money in banks. They hide it under the flooring. That’s why there’s no bank here. It wouldn’t have enough customers to support it. Most hill people wouldn’t have the faintest idea of how to go about cashing a check. They endorsed them over to me so I could cash them in Holoyke and bring back the cash in hundred-dollar bills.”

“Oh,” I said. The explanation was that simple.

After a moment of thought, I said, “I guess that clears it up. I may as well see Paul Manners while I’m here, though. How do I find him?”

“You don’t. He and his wife are in Florida for the winter.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Do people from around here ordinarily vacation in Florida?”

He grinned. “Only Paul. He hit a windfall by becoming an insurance broker, because this is virgin territory. A lot of the townspeople have carried insurance for years, of course, but I doubt that any of the people back in the hills have ever before been approached by an insurance salesman. They wouldn’t have bought from a stranger anyway. Paul was born and grew up in this area, and knows everybody in the county, so they trust him. I guess his commissions financed his Florida vacation.”

“Well, I suppose it isn’t really necessary to see him,” I said. “Everything seems to be on the up-and-up.”

“You may as well complete your investigation while you’re here,” Dr. Parks said. “It would be too bad if your superiors weren’t satisfied, and sent you all the way back to dig some more. I have to make a call near the Potter place. Suppose you ride along and talk to the father of the Potter boy?”

Ed Morgan liked investigations to be thorough, and I thought I should interview at least one of the five beneficiaries to make sure the doctor was telling me the truth as to why all the checks had been endorsed to him.

“All right,” I agreed.

Dr. Parks had to make a call at a farm a few miles out Ridge Road, where a child was in bed with measles. I waited in the car while he was inside. Afterward we drove about four miles farther on, to a well-kept farmhouse.

A tall, knobby-jointed man of about forty-five came from the barn when the doctor drove into the yard. I could also see a woman peeking through the curtains of a kitchen window, but she must have been too shy to come outside, because she stood there without moving all the time we were in the yard.

Dr. Parks introduced the man as Sidney Potter. He shook hands with me diffidently, obviously ill at ease in the presence of a city man.

“Mr. Quinn is an insurance investigator, Sid,” the doctor explained. “He wants to ask some questions about young Herman.”

Sidney Potter’s expression became sad. “The boy was only eighteen, Mr. Quinn. I only took out the insurance on him to save money for him to buy his own farm some day. I got another boy twenty, and I couldn’t leave them both this farm. Doc advised me as how insurance was a way to save, not just get death benefits. I bought it for that, not to make a profit on my own boy’s death.”

“I understand,” I said.

“We all tooken sick, but the Lord chose to save me and Minnie and our older boy, and just took Herman. Doc says the fever was from the well. He had me put some stuff in it, and we ain’t had no trouble since.”

“All the others were traceable to well water too,” Dr. Parks said to me. “I’ve had them all treated and have been regularly testing the water, as well as the water from other wells all over the county. I’m county health officer, among my other duties.”

I wanted to nail things down completely, since I had gone this far. I said, “You got your ten-thousand-dollar insurance payment all right, didn’t you, Mr. Potter?”

The man gave me a suspicious look.

“Mr. Quinn works for the insurance company which sent you the money,” Dr. Parks explained, not quite accurately. “He merely wants to make sure you got the check.” He turned to me. “We don’t have much theft around here, but naturally no one advertises keeping a lot of money around the place. No one aside from me knows Sid was paid an insurance claim. He’s naturally a little hesitant about admitting it to strangers.”

“I see. I won’t tell anyone but my office, Mr. Potter. You did receive the check then?”

“Yeah,” he said reluctantly. “Ten thousand dollars, for which I thank you kindly. I had Doc cash it for me over to Holoyke. It’s hid real good, so you don’t have to worry about nobody but me and Minnie ever finding it.”

“That’s all I wanted to know,” I told him. “I guess that winds up my investigation, Doctor.”

As we drove away, the woman was still peering through the kitchen curtains. Glancing back, I saw a boy of about twenty emerge from the barn, from where he apparently had been watching us all the time we were in the yard. When I called him to the doctor’s attention, he glanced over his shoulder.

“That’s Sid Junior,” he said. “The older boy. He’s as shy of outsiders as his mother. You noticed her standing in the kitchen window, I suppose.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “I can understand how an insurance salesman from outside wouldn’t stand a chance in these parts.”

It was time for lunch when we got back to town. The doctor invited me to lunch with him and took me to a coffee shop on the square, presumably the same one where the sheriff had been when I visited the courthouse.

Dr. Parks knew every customer there, and introduced me to all of them. I met the sheriff, a fat, elderly man named Tom Gaines, District Attorney Charles Hayes, who was a middle-aged balding man, and an assortment of fanners and merchants. We sat at a table with the sheriff and the D.A.

Emma Pruett came in as we were ordering. “Hi, boss,” she said to Dr. Parks, then smiled at the district attorney. “Hi, boss.”

We all rose and the sheriff pulled up a chair for her to join us.

“Sheriff Gaines is about the only person at the courthouse who isn’t my boss,” she said to me. “I’m everybody’s secretary or assistant.”

“That’s right, you do work for Dr. Parks, don’t you?” I said. “You told me you were secretary to the coroner, among your other duties.”

“Plus secretary to the county health officer and the county clerk,” she said. “He’s all three.”

“You’re county clerk?” I asked the doctor in surprise.

“We all wear multiple hats around here,” he said with a grin. “County clerk is quite an important job. It pays a hundred and twenty dollars a year.”

“Doc is also postmaster,” District Attorney Hayes said. “He practically runs the county.”

I gave the doctor another surprised look.

“That’s a tough job too,” he said. “The mail truck from Holoyke arrives at ten each morning. Sometimes there are as many as a dozen letters and packages. I sort the mail from about ten to ten-fifteen, and an old fellow named Joe Husbands delivers it. Joe’s on duty at the post office, except when he’s delivering the mail, to weigh packages and sell stamps. He gets maybe six customers a day.”

“This is a real active place,” Sheriff Gaines said sardonically. “I made eight arrests last year, all either for public drunkenness or disturbing the peace.”

After lunch Dr. Parks drove me back to his house, where I picked up my car. I was entering the square, with the intention of driving around it and continuing on out of town, when I suddenly remembered a remark Sidney Potter had made, and also a comment the doctor had made while we were at the farm. A fantastic thought occurred to me. Changing my mind, I parked in front of the courthouse.

This time Sheriff Gaines was in his office. He gave me a smile of welcome.

“Sheriff, do you know Paul Manners?” I asked.

He looked blank. “Manners? No, I don’t believe so.”

“He’s an insurance broker. Lives out on R.D. 1, or so I was told.”

He gave his head a puzzled shake. “Only one I know around here who sells insurance is Doc Parks. He even sold me my policy.”

My thought hadn’t been so fantastic after all. In fact, it had been the logical answer.

“Thanks,” I said, and left the office.

Emma Pruett was again behind the information counter.

“May I bother you to look at some more records?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said. “It’s a relief to have something to do for a change.”

We returned to the county clerk’s office. Consulting the notes I had taken on Paul Manners, I first looked up his birth registration. He was recorded as having been born on April 2, 1918. On his application for an insurance broker’s license, he had listed his wife’s maiden name as Gertrude Booker and her birth date as June 4, 1920. Sure enough, that record was on file too.

Just to see how thorough the doctor had been, I had Emma check for their marriage record. I didn’t know the supposed date of marriage, but I guessed it would be no earlier than 1936, as Gertrude would have been sixteen then. Starting with that year, Emma checked forward. The record showed they were married in 1940.

I had Emma check for the birth records of all five persons whose death claims had been paid, and found them all in order too. I had no doubt that in the cases of the eighty-year-old grandfather and the three married women, I would find birth records of their spouses and marriage records, but I didn’t bother to look for them.

“Is there more than one undertaker in town?” I asked Emma.

“No, just Gerard Boggs. He’s out past Doc Parks on East Main about a block and a half.”

“Thanks,” I said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

I had a brief visit with the undertaker, then returned to the doctor’s house. He seemed a little surprised to see me, but he courteously invited me into his office.

When we were both seated and he had his pipe going, I said, “I was on my way out of town when something Sidney Potter said, and something you said a few moments later, recurred to me. Potter said you had advised him that insurance was a way to save, and not just get death benefits. He didn’t say Paul Manners advised him. He said you. I might have passed that, merely assuming Potter had come to you for advice after being contacted by the insurance salesman, if you hadn’t mentioned a few moments later that no one but you and Potter knew he had received an insurance check. Now why wouldn’t Paul Manners, who sold the policy and no doubt helped Potter prepare his claim, know that he’d received payment?”

The doctor puffed at his pipe and gazed at me through the smoke. “I forgot about Paul. Of course he’d know.”

I grinned at him. “You’re going to fight until you’re counted out, are you, Doctor? I’ve been back to the courthouse since I last saw you. You did a remarkable job on the records. It’s a matter of legal record that Paul Manners and his wife were both born, grew up and married. All five of those typhoid cases have their lives carefully recorded too. On paper they were all born, grew up, married and died. Except for young Herman Potter, of course. He was just born, grew to eighteen and died.”

The doctor hiked his eyebrows. “What are you talking about?”

“I just came from Boggs’s Funeral Home. He remembers conducting a funeral for Herman Potter, but he never heard of the other four typhoid victims.”

Dr. Parks pursed his lips.

“Furthermore, neither Emma Pruett, Sheriff Gaines nor Gerard Boggs ever heard of Paul Manners, which is a little odd considering he’s the only insurance broker in the county, was born here and lived here all his life. Sheriff says you’ve been selling insurance.”

“Hmm,” the doctor said.

“It was quite clever of you to take me to see Mr. Potter. Herman Potter actually did die from typhoid, didn’t he? I suppose that’s what gave you the idea for the others. You created your own little typhoid epidemic by insuring, and later killing off, people who never existed except on paper.”

Dr. Parks’ pipe had gone out. He relit it and puffed it slowly.

“Why did you risk taking me to see Potter, Doctor? I was ready to leave town. You must have sweated it all the time we were there, hoping I wouldn’t mention Paul Manners. And later, at the coffee shop, you must have sweated even harder.”

He took his pipe from his mouth and regarded me with rueful sadness. “Impulse, Mr. Quinn. I hadn’t thought it through. It seemed wise at the time to lull your suspicions completely, in case future claim payments in this area later came to your attention. The danger of your mentioning Paul Manners to Potter simply didn’t occur to me until after I had extended the invitation. Inviting you to lunch was another mistake. I really didn’t want to, but unfortunately I’m innately courteous, and I didn’t know how to get out of it.”

I studied him with a mixture of amusement and admiration. “This is the most brilliant insurance fraud I’ve ever run into, Doctor. You rightly guessed that insurance companies wouldn’t be suspicious of claims where the doctor who originally examined the applicant also signed the death certificate, particularly from a community this small. But you knew they would never stomach the doctor also being the man who sold the policy. You created a Paul Manners on paper, boned up to pass the state insurance exam and took it in his name. As postmaster you catch every bit of mail coming into Heather Ridge. When letters addressed to the people the fake Manners had given as references came from the state licensing bureau, they were never delivered. You simply forged answers and sent back glowing recommendations. In two cases, that is. You had also given yourself as a reference, so you didn’t have to forge that answer. In the same way, you caught the claim payment checks mailed to the mythical beneficiaries of the four mythical decedents. How many of the other policies you’ve written are on mythical people?”

“About half,” he said in a low voice. “I’ve actually sold only eleven. Up until now the others are rather a financial burden. I’ve been planning to record a few more deaths.”

“Why did you do it?” I asked. “A doctor shouldn’t be that hard up for money.”

He snorted. “In this area the doctor gets paid in eggs and chickens and other produce. Up until now I’ve really needed my salary as postmaster and the fees from my various county jobs. Besides, I wanted to build my clinic.”

After a pause, he added candidly, “A little greed entered into it too. I’ve set aside only half the money, so far, for the clinic. I’ve earmarked the rest for the traveling I’ve always wanted to do. I don’t suppose you’re open for bribery?”

I examined him for some time, and silence built between us. Finally I said softly, “Try me.”

“Hmm,” he said. “How much?”

“Let’s consider the service I can render, in addition to merely keeping my mouth shut, before we arrive at a figure,” I said. “If I go back and give Paul Manners a clean bill of health, it’s extremely unlikely you would ever be caught again. Even if something roused the association’s suspicion again, almost certainly I would be the investigator sent, since I’m already in on the ground floor.”

He gave me his most charming smile. “Your readiness to be bribed leads me to suspect you’re thinking of your expensive young lady. It won’t solve your problem, of course, because no matter how much you earn, she’ll always want more. That’s your affair, however. How much?”

“Fifty-fifty, including the forty thousand you’ve already taken.”

He pursed his lips. “I’ve earmarked twenty-five thousand of that for the clinic. Also the premiums on my fictional policy holders are quite a drain, and I don’t feel expenses should come all from my share. There’s only about ten thousand left to divide.”

“All right,” I agreed. “I’ll settle for five thousand now and fifty percent of all future take, less premium costs. That suit you?”

“It’s considerably better than going to jail,” he said with a smile.

I rose and held out my hand, palm up. “Now if I may have my first five-thousand-dollar fee, I’ll be on my way. I’ll be in correspondence with you.”

Parks got the cash from the bedroom, and we parted cordially a few minutes later, me with five thousand dollars in my pocket and considerably richer future prospects.