Miranda calmed down a bit and we did as Vera suggested while the women carefully searched each other. Miranda wasn’t hiding the envelope and neither were the others.
“That’s everybody,” Anson Waters said. “Now what, Hawthorne?”
“It’s not everybody, it’s only five people. There’s still you and me, Mr. Waters.”
“You think I stole my own letter?”
“You registered the letter, insuring its value for ten thousand dollars. Now suppose there was never a bearer bond in it. Suppose it was just an empty envelope and the only bond was the one you brought in to add to the envelope. The post office loses ten thousand dollars, which could be a big help to you with the market plunging.”
“An empty envelope! That’s absurd! Even if it were true, how would I make an empty envelope disappear?”
“You might have written the address with disappearing ink. If Vera noticed an empty envelope on the floor with no address on it, she might have put it in a drawer or thrown it away.”
But of course Vera spotted the flaw in my reasoning at once. “Even if the address faded away, it would still have its stamps on it, and the registry notice. I’d have known it was the same envelope.”
She was right and I had to admit it. “That still leaves me,” I said. “I know I didn’t steal the envelope, but the missing bond could have been removed and folded into a small packet. It might have been slipped into my pocket without my knowing it. I think it’s time somebody searched me, and I guess you’re the most likely one, Sheriff.”
While he was at it Sheriff Lens searched Hume Baxter and the banker too. There was no envelope and no bearer bond, except the second one Waters had brought with him. I searched the sheriff in turn, with the same result.
“Seven people,” Anson Waters snorted, “and seven solutions to the mystery! Only trouble is, all seven of them are wrong! What do you do next, Hawthorne, examine us with a stethoscope? Maybe one of them ate my bond.”
“I hardly think so,” I answered seriously. “Paper would dissolve in the stomach acids and the bond would be destroyed.”
Waters turned toward Vera. “I’m holding you personally responsible for my bond!”
“Do you want to mail the other one to your broker?”
“I wouldn’t trust you with it! I’ll take the train to New York tonight and deliver it personally!”
With those words the banker stormed out, leaving the rest of us standing there. For the first time the strain of the morning began to show on Vera Brock. She seemed close to tears as she said, “And I wanted my opening day to be such a success. Now it’s ruined.” April seemed embarrassed by this sudden show of emotion. “I’d better be getting back to the office, Dr. Sam,” she decided. “A patient might have been tryin’ to reach us.”
“Good idea,” I agreed. It was time for me to leave too. There was no solution to this mystery of the missing envelope.
I fell into step beside Miranda as she walked along Main Street. “I’m sorry the way things went in there,” I said quietly. “I didn’t really think you stole the letter.”
“Oh, didn’t you? Your performance certainly fooled me! I felt as if I were on my way to jail.”
“Miranda, I—”
“It’s all over between us, Sam. I think I knew it before today.”
“It’s not over unless you want it to be.”
“You’re not the same man you were last summer, Sam.”
“Maybe you’re not the same either,” I answered sadly.
We parted at the corner and I crossed over to my office. Sheriff Lens came around the back of the building and headed me off. “You got a minute, Doc?” he asked me.
“Sure, Sheriff. I just finished apologizing to Miranda, so I’d better do the same with you. I didn’t really think you hid that letter in your package, but I had to look everywhere.”
“I understand,” he assured me, “but Vera’s plumb upset about the whole business. She’s afraid Washington might even remove her as postmistress if she loses a ten-thousand-dollar letter on opening day.”
“Does it concern you that much, Sheriff?” I asked him.
“Well, yeah. You know, Doc, Vera’s a mighty attractive woman for her age. An old coot like me gets lonesome after all these years as a widower.”
A light began to dawn. “You mean you and Vera Brock—?”
“Oh, she loses patience with me sometimes, like this morning, but most times we get along fine. I been over to her house a few times...” His voice trailed off and then started again. “You know I’m not much of a detective, Doc. Not much of a sheriff, either, if the truth be known. Maybe the town’s gettin’ too big for the likes of me.”
“You’re an important part of the town, Sheriff.”
“Yeah, but I mean now Vera’s in trouble an’ I don’t know no way of gettin’ her out of it. Damned if I know who stole that envelope, or how. We searched everywhere.”
“Yes, we did,” I agreed. “We searched the floor and the desk and all those pigeonholes and the mail sacks. We searched Baxter’s drop cloths and painting gear. We searched under the counter and even under Miranda’s skirts. We searched every single one of us. I’m ready to swear there’s no place in that post office where the letter could have been hidden, and yet there’s no way it could have left the post office either. There were no mail pickups while we were there, and no one left the place during the crucial period.”
“Then you’re as baffled as I am, Doc?”
“I’m afraid so,” I admitted. “Maybe I do better with murder cases when you have a motive staring you in the face. This theft has a universal motive — anyone can use ten thousand bucks, even banker Waters.”
“Well, if you think of anything that might help her, Doc, we’d sure appreciate it. Both of us.”
“I’ll try, Sheriff.”
As I went on into my office I thought that was the most human moment I’d spent with Sheriff Lens in the seven years we’d known each other.
And maybe if one romance had died at the post office that morning, another had been strengthened.
The worst of the Wall Street panic was over by noon, as banks decided to pool their resources and support the market. Stock prices even rallied a bit in the afternoon, and April returned from a trip to the bank with the report that Waters was actually smiling.
I had only one appointment scheduled after lunch, and when my patient had been sent on her way I got my collection of Edgar Allan Poe down from the shelf and reread “The Purloined Letter.” But it told me nothing.
In Vera’s post office all letters were suspect and all had been examined. There was no letter in plain view that we had missed.
I’d failed Vera Brock and Sheriff Lens. Most of all, I’d failed myself.
At the end of the day April came in to say good night. It was starting to drizzle outside and I hardly recognized her in her new raincoat.
“You look so different,” I said.
“Coats do that sometimes.”
Coats.
After she’d gone I sat at my desk and thought about coats.
Was it possible?
Already it was growing dark outside, and night would fall within the hour. If I was right this time, there was an easy way to prove it before I told anyone else and made a bigger fool of myself. I locked up my office and walked down Main Street through the damp drizzle.
When I reached the post office I peered through the big front window and wondered how to go about getting inside. Vera had left a small light burning toward the back and it cast an eerie glow over the fresh pink walls. I supposed there might be an alarm system on the doors, though I could see no evidence of one.
But if I was right about the hiding place of the stolen letter, the thief would return tonight too. Maybe all I had to do was wait.