"Toward the end of the summer of '35, there was an unusual murder in

Northmont," Dr. Sam Hawthorne began, warming to his subject before he'd even finished pouring the traditional libation. "I know I've told you about a lot of unusual murders over the years, but this one struck me as especially bizarre. It occurred in a farmhouse that was completely unapproachable—a true fortress. As it turned out, the method of murder wasn't nearly as bizarre as the motive behind it."

I'd been making my weekly rounds (Dr. Sam continued) to the few rural patients who still needed house calls, and I'd made a special point of stopping off at the Crawley house. Young Bill Crawley's hay fever was especially bad at that time of year, but there was little I could do for him beyond prescribing one of the new antihistamines just coming on the market. I was mainly interested in the progress of his training for the '36 Olympics to be held in Berlin the following summer. He was the first Northmont resident ever to have a chance at the Olympic team and we were cheering him on.

Bill was a slender, muscular lad of nineteen who'd just completed his first year at Boston University. He'd be going back in a week as a sophomore, and I suppose I was especially interested in his career because he'd mentioned his interest in some pre-med courses. He was a hard worker, whatever he did, and he'd spent the summer, when he wasn't training, working at Kasper's Kennel, cleaning up after the dogs. His parents, Amy and Charles, were proud of Bill, just as they were of his older sister, who was about to enter her final year at Skidmore.

"How's it going?" I called out from the car toward the field next to the house, where Bill was practicing high jumps on a sandy track he'd constructed.

"Fine, Doc," Bill replied, brushing himself off as he strolled over. "I'm right up to the mark."

I got out of the car and walked over to shake hands. "How long before they pick the track-and-field team?"

"Not till the spring, but I've got a good chance." He smiled. "My folks have got the money all saved up."

"Berlin is a long way from here, Bill. Some people say Hitler may be starting a war."

"Not before the Olympics, he won't. I've been reading about it. He wants the Germans to win everything and prove the superiority of the master race."

"Fat chance of that."

"I don't know, Doc. Some people around here, like old man Frankfurt, think Hitler will be good for the German people. I heard him say he's giving them back the sense of pride they lost after their defeat in the war."

"That's rubbish," I told him. I had no liking for Rudolph Frankfurt, a paranoid little man who lived behind an electrified fence and locked doors, guarded by a dog, in the belief that an American anti-Nazi element was out to kill him. But there was no point in pursuing unpleasant subjects. "How are your folks?" I asked him.

"Fine. Dad's gone into town for some wood."

Charles Crawley was a carpenter, much in demand among Northmont's homeowners trying to keep things together in the face of the Depression. Although his work provided a reasonably steady income, it was still a wonder that he'd been able to save enough to send his son off to the Olympics.

"Give them my best, will you?" I said. As I was getting back into the car,

I asked, "The hay fever bothering you much?"

"Not today. It comes and goes."

"Good—maybe you're growing out of it. I've had patients who have, you know." As I drove away, I could see him strolling back to the sandy track to continue his practice.

My route back to town took me right by Frankfurt's farmhouse fortress, as Sheriff Lens liked to call it. It was the old Muller place, with fields unworked in a decade, but folks still thought of it as a farm and resented Frankfurt's decision to let it stand idle. The little man seemed to have no gainful employment, which led to the wildest of notions. Some said he was a spy or a member of the Bund, planted here by Hitler himself for the day when America and Germany would again be at war.

I didn't worry much about those stories. Rudy Frankfurt was no friend of mine, but he was an occasional patient and he'd always been civil enough. I thought the fence and dog and locked doors made him more of a victim than an enemy, and certainly no one to be feared.

Driving past that day, I slowed down at the locked gate, noticing a car parked behind the bushes across the road. There was someone in it, and that seemed odd, but I hardly gave it a second thought. The flag on Frankfurt's mailbox, mostly invisible from the waiting car, was down. No mail today, unless it had been picked up already. I'd been hoping to spot Frankfurt in the yard, if only to confirm that his health was good. He had no telephone to summon me if he needed a house call, though he was in pretty good shape for a man of fifty-one. I stopped by the mailbox and got out for a moment, walking back to check that the gate was really locked. I glanced at the curtained windows of the house some hundred feet away, then walked back to my car and got in.

There was the beep of a horn behind me and Paul Nolan went by, driving his delivery truck from Spiggins' Grocery. We exchanged waves as he kept going, throwing up a trail of dust from the dry roadbed. I smiled and shook my head, remembering Sheriff Lens' complaints about young Paul driving too fast on the back roads. Seeing him reminded me that I had to stop at the grocery myself. I'd promised my nurse, Mary Best, that I'd pick up some oranges and eggs to save her a stop on the way home. The old general stores had passed from the scene in Northmont. They'd been replaced by the more specific grocery and hardware and feed stores, and big Mike Spiggins had been in the right place at the right time. The Depression hadn't hurt him a bit, because people always had to eat.

Paul's delivery truck was already in its parking place next to the store when I pulled in. I drew a line with my finger through the coat of dust on its side as I walked into the grocery and picked up one of the wicker baskets Mike kept near the entrance for his customers. Picking up the oranges and eggs for Mary and some bread and milk for myself, I carried the basket up to the cash register.

Mike Spiggins glanced up from a note he was reading. "What do you make of this, Doc? It came in the mail from Rudy Frankfurt. He wants some groceries delivered an' he even sent along the key to the front gate."

"I just passed his place and didn't see any sign of him," I said. I took the note and read the handwritten shopping list of a dozen or so items on a sheet of beige paper with Frankfurt's name and address printed at the top. Beneath the list was typewritten CAR LAID UP. PLEASE DELIVER. USE KEY FOR

FRONT GATE. BEWARE OF DOG.

"He's left me lists like this before, while he shopped in town," Spiggins worried, "but he never mailed me one along with his key. Maybe he's sick. Why else couldn't he come down and open the gate himself?"

"That's a good question," I said, remembering the strange car I'd seen parked across the street from the farmhouse.

Paul Nolan came out of the storeroom carrying a carton. He was a gawky young man who'd graduated from high school with Bill Crawley. His folks didn't have the money to send him to college, so he'd gotten a job at the grocery. "Where do you want the chicken soup, Mr. Spiggins?" he called out.

"Put it there in the corner. I'll shelve it later. We got an order here from Rudy Frankfurt. Came in the mail. You got time to run it up there later today?"

"Sure, Mr. Spiggins."

"What time will that be?" I asked. "Maybe I should follow you out, Paul

—see if he's all right."

He thought for a moment and then shrugged. "Around four?" "I'll be back then," I told him.

The whole business seemed strange to me, and I was more concerned than ever about the man I'd seen watching Frankfurt's farmhouse. I wondered if there really was something wrong with his car or if he was just afraid to come out. Of course, he must have come as far as the gate to leave the letter in his box for the postman to pick up.

I was passing Grayson's, the only decent garage in town, and decided to stop. "Heard anything about Frankfurt's car?" I asked when the mechanic slid out from under a Buick he was working on. His name was Tyler and he had thick black hair on his arms.

"Sure—it's all ready. He hasn't picked it up yet, though."

"What was wrong with it?"

"Trouble with the gear shift."

"When did he bring it in?"

"Two days ago. Wednesday afternoon around four."

If Frankfurt's car was ready, I wondered why he couldn't pick it up and then go for his own groceries. Of course, he had no phone, so maybe he didn't know it was ready. I thought about that as I drove back to my office, enjoying the cool sunshine of a New England afternoon at summer's end.

Mary saw me pull into my parking space and came out to meet me. She looked as attractive and efficient as ever, but the slight flush of her cheeks warned me that something was wrong. "I was hoping you'd get back, Sam.

There's a patient waiting to see you."

"Who's that?"

"Gretchen Pratt, the girl Bill Crawley's been going out with."

I was hardly one to keep up with the town's latest teenage romances, but I did know the Pratt girl. She'd graduated from high school with Bill Crawley and was often out at his folks' place while he trained for his shot at the Olympics. Apparently they'd remained friendly even during his year away at college. "What's the matter with her?" I asked.

"She thinks she may be pregnant. She's very upset."

Mary hadn't exaggerated. As soon as I saw the girl's tear-stained face

I knew she was really suffering. "Hello, Gretchen." I patted her shoulder. "Tell me about it."

Through her tears, I finally got the whole story—of her deep love for Bill and her missed period and the terrible effect this might have on his chances for the Olympics.

"Does Bill know about it?" I asked her.

"Not yet. I don't know how to tell him."

"Well, let's do some tests first and make sure it's true. You may be worrying over nothing."

She was a pretty blonde girl who'd been a cheerleader in high school. Like so many in her class, she hadn't gone on to college but had taken a job instead. Hers, at a local insurance agency, I knew didn't pay well, and in a town like Northmont all she had to look forward to was marriage to some local boy. Most girls would have jumped at the chance of trapping Bill Crawley into walking down the aisle, but she was too decent for that. She was thinking only of Bill, and of how this new life might affect his future.

While I examined her, she even murmured something about an abortion, but I chose to ignore that.

"We'll know tomorrow," I said finally, labeling the test tube.

"Not until then?"

"It takes time. We have to inject a sample of your urine into a rabbit. If the rabbit's ovaries show signs of pregnancy, the test is positive. Fortunately, the hospital lab in this building keeps rabbits for the A-Z test.

Otherwise we'd have to send your specimen away."

"Why do they call it that? Because it's the start and finish?"

"It's not the finish of anything, Gretchen," I told her. "The test is named for a pair of German doctors who developed it—Aschheim and Zondek."

She stood up. "Will you call me as soon as you know?"

"Either Mary or I will call you."

She left the office with a downcast expression that could have broken your heart. I wanted to make it right for her, make her an innocent child again, but that wasn't something I could do.

"How did it go?" Mary asked me.

"How do you think? Did you see that look on her face? Take this over to the hospital lab for an A-Z. I have to ride out to Rudy Frankfurt's place." "What's wrong with him?" I had to smile at her tone. "Nothing, I hope," I said.

As I pulled up behind Spiggins' Grocery, Paul Nolan was pitching a stone at a stray mutt sniffing around his truck. He had all Frankfurt's groceries in a single cardboard box which he placed in the open back of the truck next to a roll of canvas and a set of golf clubs. "You stop for a few holes at the Country Club?" I asked him.

"The town course is more my speed," he said. "I was afraid that mutt was going to grab one of them. He's always around here for handouts. Mr. Spiggins called Kasper's Kennel, but they haven't come after him yet." The kennel served as the town's dogcatcher in addition to supplying trained police dogs like the big German shepherd at Rudy Frankfurt's place.

"Are you going to deliver those now?"

"Yeah. You comin' along?"

"I'll follow in my car."

"I'd like to drive one of them sometime," he said, nodding toward my red Mercedes.

"Go to medical school," I suggested. The car was one of the few luxuries of my bachelor existence.

I stayed well behind him on the drive out to Frankfurt's place, mainly to avoid the cloud of dust he raised from the road. He stopped at the gate and got out with the key. As he jiggled the metal barrier to make sure it was locked before inserting the key to open it, I happened to glance across the road at the clump of bushes. A car was parked there once more, but it was a different one. The watcher had changed from a blue Dodge to a tan Chevy.

I turned off the ignition and got out, striding purposefully toward the Chevy. For the first time, I could make out the man inside, leaning back in the seat with a fedora covering his brow as if he were asleep. I jerked open the unlocked door on the passenger side. "Maybe I can help you find what you're looking for," I told him.

He glared at me from under the fedora and flipped open a leather case to show me a small gold badge and an identification card. All I had time to see were the words, Federal Bureau of Investigation. "Get out of here, buddy.

Keep driving," he said.

"I'm a doctor," I told him. "I'm going in there."

"What's wrong with him?"

"Nothing that I know of. I'm just checking on him."

Paul Nolan had closed the gate without locking it and was proceeding up the road in his delivery truck. Almost at once the German shepherd was after him, barking and growling as he nipped at the tires. The federal agent laughed. "Better go rescue that kid."

I agreed and hurried to the gate, pushing it open wide enough to admit my car. As I passed through the gate the dog seemed to grow confused at this wealth of targets. He turned his attention to me, chasing down the road to intercept me and leaving the delivery truck free to pull out of sight around the corner of the garage.

I paused a while to keep the dog occupied while Paul got the groceries inside, but after a few minutes Paul appeared around the garage, motioning to me. "He's not answering the bell, Doc."

"Maybe he's not home," I said. As I left the car, the German shepherd started for me. I slipped off my coat and was wrapping it around my arm for protection when Paul ran up with a double handful of dry dogfood.

"He could be just hungry," he suggested, tossing it on the ground. "Spiggins ordered two big bags of it."

Indeed that seemed to be the case. The dog ceased his attack and fell upon the food instead. I sighed with relief and followed Paul back to the side door of the house.

"The door's locked and he doesn't answer," he told me.

I peered in at the window, seeing something that sent a familiar shiver down my spine. "Stand back—I'm going to break the glass."

"What?"

"There's a body in there, on the floor."

During the hours that followed, we established that Rudy Frankfurt had been killed by repeated blows on the head with an axe handle found near the body. He'd been dead somewhere between thirty-six and forty-eight hours, which meant Wednesday evening or Thursday morning. Somehow I wasn't surprised when Sheriff Lens completed his inspection of the house and returned with the word that all doors and windows were locked tight.

"What about the fence?" I asked him.

"That, too, Doc. The current is on full force in that electric wire along the top. Nobody got over that one."

"A locked gate, a seven-foot-high electrified fence, a guard dog, and a house with all its doors and windows locked. It's impossible."

Sheriff Lens shifted the belt over his stomach. "You've had tough ones before, Doc. What do you want me to do?"

I thought about that. "Frankfurt was alive Wednesday afternoon when he brought his car to the garage. Either he walked back here or he got a ride. See what you can find out from the garage man." As an afterthought,

I added, "And the postman who delivers his mail."

"Huh?"

"He wrote a note to Mike Spiggins and sent his gate key along so the groceries could be delivered. Maybe the postman can remember picking up that letter from his box by the gate."

"What are you going to do?"

I suddenly remembered there was one other witness, perhaps the best witness of all. "Come with me for a few minutes, Sheriff."

As it turned out, we didn't need to walk down the road to the gate for a confrontation with the federal agent. I opened the door and there he was, fedora and all.

"What's going on here?" he asked, showing his identification once more.

Sheriff Lens peered down at the name. "Special Agent Steven Bates.

What can I do for you, sir?"

"Are you the sheriff here?"

"That's right."

"We've had this house under surveillance for the past two days. It's a matter of national security."

"I guess you'll have to be more specific than that."

The agent eyed the sheriff with growing irritation. "What's happened here?" he demanded.

"Man named Rudy Frankfurt has been murdered, sometime within the past couple of days."

I interrupted with a question. "There are two of you watching the house, aren't there? I saw another car earlier."

Bates turned toward me. "Who are you?"

"Dr. Sam Hawthorne. I found the body."

He nodded. "You came over to my car earlier."

"I'd noticed two different cars parked in the bushes. It looked suspicious."

"We suspect that Rudolph Frankfurt may have had some connection with an organization called the German-American Volksbund. They're meeting somewhere in rural New England this weekend, and my partner and I were assigned to watch this place. There are other teams at other locations." He addressed his explanation to Sheriff Lens, ignoring me.

"We've never had any trouble like that here," the sheriff said, scratching his head. "There've been stories about Frankfurt from time to time, but nothing criminal."

"Have you found any weapons in the house?"

"One hunting rifle, nothing else. We found lots of food, even three bags of dogfood in the garage, but no guns, no phone, nothing mechanical."

"I think my partner and I better take over that aspect of the case. I can call and have him here in fifteen minutes."

"No telephone," Sheriff Lens told him again. "What?"

"Frankfurt didn't have a telephone. He was something of a hermit. He went into town only when he had to, lived behind this electric fence with a guard dog."

I stretched my luck by interrupting again. "If you and your partner have been here for two days, you must have seen the killer."

He turned toward me again. "We took up our station at five P.M.

Wednesday afternoon. No one's entered or left since then."

Sheriff Lens sighed. "Where does that leave us, Doc?"

"I'm not quite sure," I said. "Why don't you check with that postman? I'll talk to the garage man again."

Then we had to step aside while they carried Rudy Frankfurt's body out of the house.

As soon as I arrived at my office on Saturday morning, I telephoned

Gretchen Pratt with the news. "The A-Z test was positive, Gretchen."

There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line, but when she spoke her voice was reasonably controlled. "I didn't really doubt it," she said.

"What about Bill?"

"I told him last night. I was that certain what the result would be."

"How did he take it?"

"I don't know. He was quiet, thoughtful."

"Could you both come in to see me this afternoon? It might help to talk this over before you tell your parents."

"What if Bill won't come?"

"We're pretty good friends. Ask him to take an hour off from training." "All right, Doctor."

Mary was standing in the doorway when I hung up. "You're here early for a Saturday."

"I got the lab results and I wanted to phone Gretchen Pratt."

"Positive?"

I nodded. "She took it pretty well. I asked her to come in this afternoon with the Crawley boy." I shook my head. "They're so young to be parents,

Mary."

"Nineteen. My sister was married at nineteen. They're doing fine."

"He's supposed to start his second year of college next week. He's training for the Olympics next summer."

She sat down in the patients' chair. "What I want to hear about is the murder. Rudy Frankfurt bludgeoned to death with an axe handle?"

"That seems to be it. I haven't checked the autopsy results yet."

"That place is like a fortress. How did the killer get in?"

I drew up my yellow pad and started making notes, as much to clarify my own thinking as to answer her question. "The last person to see Rudy alive other than his killer was the garage man—that fellow named Tyler. He says Frankfurt brought his car in around four and then left, alone, to walk back to his farm. That walk would have taken him about thirty minutes. He needed groceries, including dogfood, but obviously he didn't want to carry them. When he arrived home, he wrote out a list, enclosed his gate key, and mailed it to Spiggins', leaving the envelope in the box at his gate. Starting at five that afternoon, two FBI agents were watching that gate, and nobody came or went."

"So he was killed before five?"

"I don't know. That supposes one of two possibilities. First, that he returned home to catch the killer inside his house, intent on robbery. But that's unlikely because how would the killer have gotten over the fence, past the dog, and into the house?"

"What kind of dog is it?"

"A trained German shepherd, purchased from Kasper's Kennel two months ago. Sheriff Lens found the bill of sale. Furthermore, if Frankfurt was killed when he returned home, how could he have written out the shopping list? He didn't write it before he left or he'd have dropped it at the grocery store in person."

"What's the second possibility?" Mary asked.

"That the killer was waiting outside and Frankfurt let him in when he returned. The dog didn't attack the man because Frankfurt was with him. The trouble is, we have the same problem. When did Rudy write the shopping list?"

"Are you sure it's his handwriting?"

"Yes. Sheriff Lens recognized it and so did Paul, the delivery boy. If we figure the time it took for writing the list, walking it to the gate, and coming back to be killed, that hardly leaves time for the killer to escape before the

FBI agents began their surveillance at five o'clock."

"But it could have been done."

"Only if the autopsy shows he died late Wednesday afternoon." I stretched my tense muscles. "Dr. Wolfe should have the results by now. I think I'll walk down to see him."

Dr. Wolfe had a mane of white hair and a chip on his shoulder, especially when it came to me. I'd had a run-in with him earlier that summer when the Medical Society had threatened to suspend my license to practice and our relations were still a bit cool. He was on the staff of Pilgrim Memorial Hospital and my office was in one wing, so it was natural that we ran into each other often.

"Well, Dr. Hawthorne—what brings you here?" he asked, looking up from his desk.

"I was wondering if you'd completed the Frankfurt autopsy yet," I told him.

"Playing detective again?"

"The dead man was a patient of mine. Naturally I have an interest in his death," I answered stiffly.

He sighed and picked up the paper in front of him. "What do you want to know?"

"Time of death, cause of death."

"Cause of death, repeated blows to the head which caused massive bleeding in the brain. He would have been unconscious at once and dead soon afterward. The time I would place at midnight Wednesday, give or take four hours either way."

"That late? He couldn't have been killed before five o'clock Wednesday afternoon?"

"No, sir. You know the criteria for determining time of death. Food in the stomach, extent of rigor mortis. As I'm sure you learned at medical school, the stiffening of the body after death is determined by several factors, including the temperature of the surroundings. Rigor wears off after a time in the same manner. Frankfurt died somewhere around midnight on Wednesday."

"All right," I said, accepting it.

"By the way, did you or Sheriff Lens turn the body over after it was found?"

"Of course not. The sheriff may have lifted it slightly to see if there was anything under it, but it was returned to its original position. Why do you ask?"

"It's probably nothing," he said dismissively. "You found him on his back, but there's some bruising on the front of his body, as if blood had settled there after death. I thought he might have been turned over."

"Not that I know of."

"Perhaps the killer returned and did it."

Sure, I thought, he got into that fortress not once but twice.

I went back to my office and phoned Sheriff Lens. After running through the information I'd gotten from the garage repairman and Dr. Wolfe's autopsy, I asked about the postman. "Does he remember picking up a letter from Frankfurt's mailbox?"

"He's pretty sure there was one on Thursday. He remembers feeling something heavy inside and wondering what it was."

"Any chance he used the key himself to enter the grounds and kill Frankfurt?"

The sheriff snorted. "Who, Purty? The man's afraid of dogs, Doc. And rightly so, after the number of times he's been bitten. He stays right in his car when delivering the mail, just leaning out to fill the boxes along the road. He'd never have gone in there with that German shepherd! Besides, he don't deliver the mail at midnight."

"No, I suppose not. Thanks, Sheriff."

In the afternoon, I had other things to think about. Bill Crawley and Gretchen arrived around two, both of them somber and self-conscious.

"What do you want to do, the both of you?" I asked them.

"We want to get married," Bill said at once.

"Then do it."

"Our parents—" Gretchen began.

"You've got a little time yet to think about the best way to approach your folks. I'll speak with them if you'd like me to. Or perhaps you'd prefer your minister." We discussed the possibilities for the next half hour, but in those days, in a town like Northmont, they were distinctly limited. Either there was a marriage or Gretchen would go off somewhere to have the baby, giving it up for adoption after that.

Neither of them favored such an alternative. "If I have the baby, I want to keep it," Gretchen said firmly. "The only problem is with Bill. He starts school again next week."

"Boston's not far. I can be home every weekend, and I'll get a job—"

"In the middle of a Depression?" she questioned. "And what about the Olympics?"

"Berlin means nothing to me. In fact, if all those Germans are like Rudy

Frankfurt, I guess I'd rather stay away." "He was murdered, you know," I told him.

"I heard about it. He made some remark to me at the grocery store one day about Germans being the superior race. I almost slugged him. I would have if he'd been ten years younger."

I rubbed a hand over my tired eyes. "Where were you around midnight on

Wednesday, Bill?"

"If it was midnight, I was home in bed."

"Are you still working at Kasper's?"

"I finished up yesterday. I leave for school on Monday."

I got up and walked around the office, peering out at the sky. It was one of those times when I wished I was anywhere but Northmont. "What's your high-jump record now, Bill? I'll bet you can go over seven feet."

"Well, sure—"

"You know, of all the people in this town I'll bet you're the only one who could have murdered Rudy Frankfurt."

Gretchen gasped and Bill was on his feet at once. "What are you saying? I never killed anyone!"

I forced myself to sit down again. "Consider the facts, Bill. Frankfurt lived inside a virtual fortress. There's a seven-foot fence with a live electric wire on top running all around his property. The yard is patrolled by a German shepherd who won't hesitate to attack. And the house beyond that is locked. There was a key to the gate floating around in the mail, but two FBI agents took turns watching that gate during the entire period. No one entered. Somehow the killer had to come over that fence and get by the dog. "You could have done it, Bill. You could high-jump a seven-foot fence without touching that electric wire. And you could get by the dog because he knew you. Frankfurt purchased him from Kasper's Kennel just two

months ago when you were working there."

Bill turned to Gretchen. "Do you believe I killed Frankfurt?"

"Of course not! You wouldn't hurt a fly! Dr. Sam, he doesn't even go hunting!"

"But you just admitted you wanted to punch him, Bill. You could have gone over the fence and passed the dog with a friendly pat on the head. Once you were at the door, Frankfurt would have recognized you and opened it, if only to see what you were doing there. The door would have locked automatically as you left, and you could have made your escape the same way, past the dog and over the fence." "He didn't do it," Gretchen said firmly.

"Unless you're ready to believe in the impossible, there's no other explanation," I told her.

"Are you going to tell this to Sheriff Lens?" Bill asked, looking frightened for the first time.

"I have to tell him, if I'm convinced that's what happened," I told him.

I sat alone in my office after I'd sent them off to let me think, but before long Mary confronted me. "Don't those kids have enough trouble without your theories?" she said.

"It's more than a theory," I insisted.

"Oh, yes?" she challenged. "I can think of another one right off the top of my head. Frankfurt got hit by a car while he was walking home. The driver didn't stop and Frankfurt managed to stagger into his house before he died, living long enough to write his shopping list."

"Come on, Mary—he was killed with an axe handle. He wasn't killed by a car." But I was remembering Dr. Wolfe's mention of the blood going to the body's lowest points after death. There was something I wasn't seeing, something that should have been obvious.

"You can't pin half your proof on that dog," Mary said. "Would he even remember Bill Crawley after two months?"

"Dogs often remember—" I began, and then stopped. "The dog! I never thought of the dog!"

"What about him, Sam? You said he was mean-looking."

"Not that dog, Mary—the other dog!"

I slipped into the passenger seat of Paul Nolan's delivery truck just as he was starting out on his last Saturday run.

"Want me to drop you off somewhere, Dr. Sam?" he asked, surprised.

"I just want to ride for a bit, Paul."

He shifted gears and pulled out of Spiggins' parking lot, heading along Main Street toward the town square. "Got any theories about the Frankfurt killing yet?" he asked. "That's your sort of impossible crime, isn't it?"

"I've helped Sheriff Lens with a few of them," I answered, "but sometimes with a crime like this there's one angle you just can't figure out, no matter how hard you try."

"You mean the way he got into that farmhouse?"

"I know how he got in, Paul. What I want to know is why. Why did you kill Rudy Frankfurt?"

The steering wheel jerked in his hands and we almost went up on the sidewalk. He twisted it back in time and tightened his grip on it. "What are you talkin' about, Doc?"

"You killed Rudy with that axe handle, Paul. I know all the details about how you did it."

"That's crazy."

"Let me tell you about it, then. Around four o'clock on Wednesday afternoon, Rudy Frankfurt brought his car into the garage to have the gear shift adjusted. He was walking home from there—about a half hour walk— when you happened along in your truck and offered him a ride. He accepted, and somewhere along the way you stopped the truck, got him to step out, and beat him unconscious with that axe handle. You thought he was dead then, though he didn't actually die for several hours. You wrapped him in a canvas cover you kept in the back of the truck, then planned to bring the body back to his farmhouse, unlock the gate with his keys, and

probably leave the body there if you couldn't get past the dog."

"You and me—we found the body in the house!" he reminded me.

"That was because you returned to find someone parked in the bushes watching the gate. Perhaps you returned several times during the night in hopes of getting in. When it became clear the watchers, whoever they were, didn't intend to leave right away, you devised a scheme to get in there. You found one of Frankfurt's old shopping lists at the grocery and typed those instructions on the bottom. Then you removed the gate key from the ring in the dead man's pocket and enclosed it in an envelope with the grocery list. In the darkness, you could reach the mailbox without being seen by the man in the car because it was partly hidden from his view."

"How would I know which was his gate key?"

"It didn't really matter. You knew you'd be delivering the groceries, and if you'd guessed wrong you'd try the other keys from his pocket. As it turned out, I decided to come with you. This was both an advantage and a disadvantage. I could testify to your innocence, but I might also see something you didn't want me to see. Luckily for you, I was questioning the man watching the house when you struggled with the gate keys and I was busy with the dog when you pulled out of sight for a minute or two— long enough to unlock the door with Frankfurt's key, carry him inside, and close the door so that it locked itself. You didn't have time to return the keys, but that didn't matter. The man was in his own house and needn't have had the keys in his pocket."

"Where did I have the body all this time?"

"Hidden somewhere from Wednesday until you returned it to your truck on Friday afternoon, wrapped in that canvas. I finally remembered that other dog sniffing around the back of your truck before you loaded the groceries in. He could smell it, couldn't he?"

Paul pulled over to the side of the road and for just a minute I wondered if he would attack me. "You're basing all this on a dog, Doc?"

"Two dogs, really. When Frankfurt's dog attacked me, you came running out with dogfood. You said he was hungry, and you were right. How'd you know that? How'd you know Frankfurt hadn't been there to feed him? And why did Frankfurt order more dogfood when there was plenty in the garage? When we check, we'll probably find he didn't need most of the things on that old shopping list. And I think we'll also find that the words on the bottom of the shopping list were typed by a machine at the grocery store. There was a lot of dogfood at Frankfurt's place, but there sure wasn't a typewriter."

"Why would I kill him?"

"That's what you're going to tell me. It wasn't just the act of killing him. You went to considerable risk so he'd be found inside his fenced-in farm. You could have just buried the body in the woods. It was almost as if—"

And then I saw it all too clearly. "You graduated from high school with Bill Crawley and Gretchen Pratt, didn't you? This whole thing was planned for one reason—to frame Bill for a murder he didn't commit. You heard him arguing with Frankfurt in the grocery, and you knew Bill was the only person in town who could leap a seven-foot fence. The dog coming from

Kasper's Kennel was a bonus that fit right into your scheme."

He was close to the breaking point, close to tears. "I'll say he did it!" he shouted. "I'll still say he did it, no matter what you say!"

He'd wanted me to find the evidence pointed to Bill Crawley, just as I had done. He wanted to frame Bill for the killing. "You wanted Gretchen,"

I said softly.

"God, I've always wanted her, ever since grammar school. First I was going to kill him, but I knew she'd suspect me. I decided nobody would care about that old German. Even if Bill wasn't convicted, there would always be the suspicion he did it. It would ruin his Olympics chances."

"You're too late, Paul. They'll be married within the month."

He shouted something, and started beating me with his fists. I leaped from the truck, fearing for my life. But he didn't come after me. Instead, he drove away alone, speeding down the country road toward some dark destiny only he could see.

"The police in the next state picked up Paul the following day," Dr. Sam concluded. "He was allowed to plead guilty to a manslaughter charge because of his age and he received a twenty-year sentence." The FBI agents returned to Washington and Bill Crawley returned to college. He and Gretchen were married in October. By the time he went to the Olympics in Berlin the following summer, he was a proud father. He didn't win a medal, but he finished fourth in one event, and that was good enough for him.

"Next time I'll have a more peaceful story for you, about a puzzle that didn't seem to involve a crime at all."