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

“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.”