Doctor Wood. Modern Wizard of the Laboratory: The Story of an American Small Boy Who Became the Most Daring and Original Experimental Physicist of Our Day-but Never Grew Up

She didn’t know anybody named Hall and was tempted to open the package, but being an estimably honest woman decided not to. The children, even more tempted, since they were sure it contained Christmas goodies, were told to “let it alone”, since “it didn’t belong to them”. Mrs. Buckley didn’t bother to lock the package away or hide it from them. They were obedient children — and somebody would almost certainly turn up to claim it before the holidays were over. There was in fact a family of Halls not far away on the same road, and they had an eighteen-year-old daughter named Naomi, but Mrs. Buckley didn’t know of them. Apparently, either they or the Buckleys (the record on this point isn’t clear) had moved there quite recently…

Young Harold Buckley, seven years old, seems, however, to have known all the time who Naomi Hall was. Perhaps he didn’t tell at home because he hoped she’d never claim the candy — and in that case — well, candy would still be candy, no matter how stale. However, on New Year’s morning, when Harold was sent out on an errand and chanced to meet one of the Hall boys, Naomi’s young brother Leslie, his honesty got the better of him, and he said, “There’s a Christmas present, a box of candy or something, for your sister at our house. Somebody left it by mistake”.

This burst of honesty on Harold’s part saved his little life — saved the Buckley household from wreckage and horror.

Leslie got the package later and started home with it, accompanied by a boy named Steuart Carneal.

Naomi Hall was a generous, handsome, even if just then slightly overplump sister, and both boys hoped to share the candy. Naomi took the package to the kitchen table, and the kids, including Leslie, a younger sister Dorothy, and a toddling baby brother Samuel, gathered around her as she opened it. Mrs. Nora Hall, the mother, stood in the background. The Carneal boy was watching through a kitchen window, hoping to be invited in after the package had been opened. Naomi removed the string, took the paper off, and lifted the box’s lid. There was an immediate and terrific explosion. Naomi was literally torn to pieces; Dorothy and baby Samuel were also killed outright. The table and kitchen floor were a mass of wreckage. The explosion had blown a crater in the earth beneath the floor; had also seriously wounded Leslie. Mrs. Hall lay bleeding and unconscious, with an eye and all her teeth destroyed. The Carneal boy, outside the window, had been wounded too.

The explosion brought the whole village, then the police from Washington, which was the nearest metropolis, and later that same day, the police from Baltimore, since the atrocity had occurred in Maryland. Also hearses and ambulances. When Mrs. Hall had regained consciousness, she said, “I was in the kitchen when Leslie brought the package in. We called Naomi to come in and open the box. We were all grouped around the table expecting to see a box of candy and nuts. Then I saw a white flash, and that is all I remember until I was being picked up on the back porch and put in the ambulance”.

The bomb, while containing enough high explosive to wreck a house and massacre a family, had been directed to Naomi in person. But who would have wanted to murder Naomi? And particularly who could have wanted to murder her, yet had known her so slightly that he didn’t even know where she lived! Naomi had been a simple, friendly, attractive country girl, knowing only simple country people like herself. Here indeed, from many angles, and particularly from that of the method which had been used, was an unlikely murder mystery.