The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes & Impossible Mysteries (33 page)

Towns like Northmont ordinarily would not have attracted a war-bond rally on any large scale, but as it turned out we had a local celebrity hardly anyone knew about. The November election brought us a new mayor, Cyril Bensmith, a slender, vigorous man of forty, a bit younger than me. I’d hardly known him before he ran for office, and I didn’t know him much better now. His family had a small farm over near the town line, almost into the adjoining township of Shinn Corners, which probably explains why I hadn’t heard about him or his boyhood chum Rusty Wagner.

Rusty’d been George Snider at the time. He didn’t become Rusty till he moved to New York and landed the villain’s role in a mildly successful Broadway play. From there he went off to Hollywood and became Paramount’s answer to Humphrey Bogart. He was never as big a star as Bogart, but by April of 1943, with the Allies advancing in Tunisia and many of the younger male stars in the service, Rusty Wagner was doing his part by touring the country selling war bonds. Health problems and his age, just turning forty, had kept him out of the army. When Mayor Bensmith heard he’d be at a rally in Boston he invited his old friend to make a side trip to his hometown.

“Did you hear the news?” my nurse April asked that morning. “Rusty Wagner is coming here for the war-bond drive.”

“We don’t go to many movies,” I admitted, though the town boasted a pretty good theater. “I guess I’ve seen him once or twice.”

“I’m going to help out on the drive,” she said. April’s husband Andre was away in the service and I could understand her urge to get involved.

“That’s good. I’ll come and buy a bond from you,” I promised.

That night at home I mentioned it to my wife Annabel, who showed a bit more excitement than I had. “That’s great news, Sam! Something’s finally happening in this town.”

I smiled at her remark. “A lot of people think too much happens here already. Our murder rate—”

“I wish you wouldn’t blame yourself whenever somebody gets killed in Northmont. I’m sure there were murders here before you ever came to town. I’ll have to ask Sheriff Lens when he and his wife come to dinner.”

The sheriff had been elected to his first term in 1918, just days before the armistice that ended the war. I hadn’t moved to town and set up my practice until a few years later, in January of ’22, and for some reason we’d never really talked much about Northmont’s past crimes.

We dined with Sheriff Lens and his wife Vera every couple of months, and it was their turn to come to our house two nights later. While Vera helped Annabel with dinner in the kitchen I engaged the sheriff in conversation. “Annabel and I were talking the other night about Northmont’s crime rate. How was it before I came here in ’twenty-two? Did you have just as many murders?”

Sheriff Lens chuckled, resting his hand on the glass of sherry my wife had provided. “Can’t say that I remember any at all before you came to town, Doc. Guess you brought ’em with you.” He took a sip from the glass and added, “There was the fire over at the Black Cloister, of course, but no one ever suggested that was murder.”

I’d driven past the burnt-out building several times during the past twenty years, wondering why the county didn’t just tear it down and sell the land at auction. “Exactly what happened there?” I asked.

“Well, it was in the late summer of ’twenty-one. The place had been built late last century as a sort of farming commune for disenchanted monks and other religious men who’d left their various orders but weren’t ready to return to the secular world. Occasionally they took in one or two juvenile offenders if the courts asked them to, on the theory that a hard day’s work might set them straight. Nobody paid much attention to them out there, except about once a month when a couple of them came into town for supplies. They called it the Black Cloister, named for the Augustinian monastery in Germany where Martin Luther lived. After the Reformation the monks moved out but Luther continued to live there, offering shelter to former monks and travelers. Upon his marriage in fifteen twenty-five the building was given to him as a wedding gift.”

“You know a good deal about it, Sheriff.”

“Well, Vera’s a Lutheran even though we were married by a Baptist minister. We got talking about the Black Cloister one night and she filled me in on all that history.”

“I heard my name mentioned,” Vera Lens said as she came in to join us. “Dinner will be ready in three minutes.”

“Doc was just wondering about the Black Cloister,” the sheriff explained.

“Funny you should mention that, Sam. We’re putting together an antique auction for the war-bond rally and someone donated the ornate oak front door from the Black Cloister. You can see it along with the other antiques down at the town hall.”

“Maybe I’ll take a look. When is this all going to happen?”

“Next Tuesday, the twentieth. That’s the day after the Boston rally. They’re tying it in with Patriots’ Day and the Boston Marathon.” Easter Sunday that year was not until April twenty-fifth, the latest it could be.

We took our seats at the table as Annabel came in with our salads. “I was just talking to Vera about the rally,” she told me. “I told her I wanted to help out, too.”

“A lot of people are. April at my office said she’d help. There’s nothing like a movie star to brighten things up.”

“Rusty Wagner isn’t exactly a heartthrob,” Vera remarked, plunging her fork into the salad. “Sometimes his face looks like it went through a meat grinder.”

“He makes a perfect villain, though,” Annabel said. “I saw a couple of his films before we were married.” Turning to me, she said, “Sam, we have to start going to the movies more.”

Somehow the conversation never did get back to the fire at the Black Cloister. It wasn’t until Sunday afternoon, two days before the scheduled rally, when I accompanied Annabel to the town hall and stood before the fire-scorched door, that I remembered the burned building. The thick oak door was indeed a thing of beauty, leaning against the wall. Its front showed a bas-relief of a hooded monk kneeling in prayer, and this is what would have greeted visitors to the Cloister.

“You can see the door was badly scorched in the fire,” Vera said as she came up to join us. We were in the ornate lobby of the town hall, where a score of items of all shapes and sizes had been assembled for the auction.

I ran my fingers over the bas-relief, admiring the carving. “Looks as if there are a few little wormholes in it, though,” Annabel remarked.

There were indeed, toward the sides and top of the door. I pulled it away from the wall, but the back was smooth and unmarked, without a trace of scorching. “What was the story about this fire?” I asked Vera. “It was before I moved here.”

“I was pretty young then myself, but I remember the Cloister as some sort of religious community. There was a fire and one young man died. After that the rest of the community just scattered.”

“Who owns the property?”

“I have no idea. Felix Pond at the hardware store donated the door. He said it had been in the family for years, but I don’t know that they ever owned the place.”

“How does this charity auction sell war bonds?” Annabel asked.

Vera Lens explained. “People bid by purchasing the bonds, so it’s not really costing them anything. They get their money back when the bonds are redeemed. The items are all donated and I don’t imagine they have any great value. But something like this door could be cleaned up and painted and put to good use. Some church might even like it.”

I ran my fingers over the wood once more, again impressed by the workmanship. “I wonder who carved this. Was it someone locally, or perhaps one of the residents at the Black Cloister?”

“It’s possible Mayor Bensmith might know.”

“I think I’ll ask him.”

Cyril Bensmith had a dairy farm on the North Road. His tall, gaunt frame reminded some of Abraham Lincoln, though he’d never thought of entering politics until his wife died a few years earlier. They had no children, and perhaps in search of a new beginning he’d run for mayor and been elected handily. He still worked his farm every day. Being mayor of Northmont was not a time-consuming occupation.

He had just arrived at the town hall and was greeting people with a handshake when I went up to him. “How are you, Sam? Good to see you here. I think the rally on Tuesday’s going to be a big success.”

“It should be,” I agreed, “especially with Rusty Wagner’s appearance.”

“Rusty’s an old friend. I haven’t seen him in years, but we’ve stayed in touch.”

“I was admiring that door from the old Cloister,” I explained, gesturing toward it. “Know anything about it?”

“No more than you. Felix Pond at the hardware store donated it.”

“I was wondering if the carving was by a local person.”

“I couldn’t tell you that. If there’s an opportunity you might ask Rusty when he’s here Tuesday.”

“Rusty?”

“He was living at the Black Cloister at the time of the fire.”

“How old would he have been at that time?”

“Eighteen, I think. Same age as me. He and another boy, Fritz, were caught stealing a car in Hartford. The judge suggested they could avoid jail by spending the summer doing farm work at the Cloister and they agreed quickly enough. That’s how I got to know Rusty. His name was George then, but he never liked it. We saw a lot of each other that one summer, before the fire.”

He moved on to greet others, and I was left with unanswered questions.

On Monday Sheriff Lens stopped by my office in a wing of Pilgrim Memorial Hospital. He was chatting with April as I finished seeing the morning’s last patient and I invited him into my examining room. “Everything set for the bond rally tomorrow, Sheriff?”

“I guess so. Vera’s had me run ragged, picking up donations for the auction.”

“I was talking to our mayor yesterday and he tells me Rusty Wagner was a resident of the Black Cloister. You never did finish about the fire.”

“It was so long ago I can barely remember it now. Like I said, it was the summer of ’twenty-one. The Cloister was home to about a dozen men, some from a Trappist monastery that had closed, and others from various Protestant denominations. They were men with problems or at loose ends. There were also those two kids doing farm work to avoid prison. I guess Rusty Wagner was one of them. The other fellow was killed in the fire.”

“Tell me about it.”

Sheriff Lens sighed. “Don’t you have enough mysteries in the present to satisfy you, Doc? This was no impossible crime or anything. No crime at all, far as I know. The fire started in the kitchen somehow and spread to the rest of the house. It was in the afternoon and the other residents were out in the fields working. Wagner and this other young fellow, whose name I don’t recall—”

“The mayor said it was Fritz.”

“That’s right, Fritz Heck. Anyway, they were preparing the evening meal when it happened. Wagner managed to get out with a few bad burns, but the other boy didn’t make it. I suppose that little scarring on Wagner’s face didn’t hurt when he started playing villain roles.”

That was pretty much all he remembered, but I was still interested in tracking down the origin of that door. I drove over to Felix Pond’s hardware store on my lunch hour and waited while he took care of a couple of customers. Pond was a bristling, bearded man who seemed strong as an ox, constantly carrying lumber and supplies out to waiting wagons. I was not one of his regular customers, but he knew me by sight. “Dr Hawthorne! What brings you here? Got a need for a hammer or screwdriver?”

“Curiosity brings me,” I told him. “I was admiring that door from the old Cloister and they told me you’d donated it. I wondered how you came by it.”

“That’s easy,” he said with a grin. “I stole it, years ago. The place seemed to be just rotting away after the fire. The residents had all scattered and no one was even sure who owned the property. It was a sin to see that fancy door just sit there and decay like that so I took it home with me. Stored it in my supply shed out back and forgot all about it till somebody asked me about it last year.”

“It might be worth some money,” I speculated.

“Sure might! It’s fine workmanship, made by one of the original residents of the Cloister. But I figured I couldn’t really sell it since it wasn’t mine to begin with. When someone suggested I donate it for the bond auction it seemed like a good idea.”

“I’m sure people will bid on it. I might even do so myself.” But then something clicked in my mind. “Tell me, Felix. Did you decide to donate this to the bond auction after you heard Rusty Wagner was going to be here?”

He frowned at my question. “Why would I do that?”

“Someone told me he was living in the Cloister at the time of the fire.”

“Really?” He thought about it. “I guess maybe it was after we heard he was coming. Can’t remember who suggested it, though.”

I left the hardware store, wondering more than ever what was bringing Rusty Wagner back to Northmont.

Tuesday was sunny and mild, a perfect spring day to greet the crowd that had turned out for the war-bond rally. It was nothing compared to the Boston crowd, of course, but I recognized several people from Shinn Corners and other towns who’d driven over for the event. We’d set up a stage in the town square, with a billowing flag bunting as a backdrop. The auction items were all on view, including the Cloister door standing upright against one of the backdrop supports.