Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 122, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 745 & 746, September/October 2003

The news from Midway was encouraging the following morning, and our naval victory overshadowed a report that the Japanese had landed a small force on two of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. The weather was good for my drive into Boston, and the Sunday traffic was at a minimum. I located Sandra Gleam’s address without difficulty, an apartment she’d shared with her sister in one of the big old buildings overlooking Boston Common.

Josephine Gleam answered the door. “Are you from the police?” she immediately asked. “They’ve already been here once.”

I introduced myself and explained that I was helping the Northmont sheriff investigate her sister’s murder. Josephine was attractive and probably younger than Sandra, a tall, slim woman with long brown hair and bangs.

“This has been a terrible shock to me,” she said in a familiar Boston accent, “but I must tell you right off that we weren’t really sisters. Sandra and I were very close, but the Gleam Sisters only existed on stage.”

“Stage?”

“Vaudeville. Do you have any idea who killed her?”

“Not yet,” I admitted. “We’re working on it.” She invited me in and I took a seat facing her. “Do you perform seancés, too?”

“That whole business was a—” She caught herself, perhaps not wanting to speak ill of her friend. Then, after an awkward moment of silence, she began again. “Sandra and I had a vaudeville act together about ten years ago. That’s when we became the Gleam Sisters. It was a mind-reading thing. I would wander through the audience in my spangled tights, holding up items like a pocket watch or a necklace, and Sandra would try to identify the objects while blindfolded. Of course, my patter always contained a key-word clue that we’d worked out in advance.”

“You’re telling me the act was a fraud?”

She grew restless, fidgeting in her chair. “It was vaudeville. We were there to entertain, just like the magicians. Everyone knew it was an act.”

“All this was Sandra’s idea?”

“Well, yes, I guess it was. We were both younger then. She thought having a vaudeville act was a great way to attract guys.”

“You weren’t married?”

“Not then, but Sandra always had guys around.”

“When did she start this spiritualism business with the seancés?”

Josephine shrugged. “Vaudeville died and she just drifted into it, went from reading minds to speaking with the dead. I guess she viewed it as a natural progression.”

“Did you help her with this?” I asked.

“No, no. I’m a secretary at the state capitol. We shared this apartment, but then we went our separate ways. I was married for a few years and when that went bad she took me in.”

I consulted some notes that I’d made. “Kate Hale, the woman who lost her son at Pearl Harbor, said that Sandra contacted her about a seancé. Do you know just when that was?”

She thought about it. “I could find out. She kept a record of all her contacts. Not men friends, just her spiritualist business. She watched the newspapers all over southern New England, checking the casualty lists from the war. When someone was confirmed dead, she telephoned the next of kin and offered her services.”

“It was a cruel sort of confidence game.”

“Sometimes I think she really helped those people.” Josephine had gone to a desk in one corner of the room and while she spoke she glanced through Sandra’s appointment book. “Here it is! She telephoned Kate Hale in Northmont on April twenty-fifth and invited her to attend a seancé here. Mrs. Hale came to Boston two weeks later, on May eighth, and returned a week after that for a second seancé.”

“Did you know that Sandra was planning a seancé at the Hale home in Northmont?”

“No. I was quite surprised when the police told me that. She rarely conducted her sessions anywhere but here. I know, because I usually had to stay out of the way when she scheduled one.”

“Was there anyone who disliked Sandra, who might have had a motive for killing her?”

“Not that I know of.”

I asked her a few more questions but learned nothing of interest. Sandra Gleam’s life seemed as much a riddle as her death. I drove back to Northmont later that afternoon.

“We’re up against a stone wall, Doc,” Sheriff Lens told me the following morning. “Either Hale or his wife must have killed her, but what happened to the weapon? Is it possible they acted together? And what was their motive?”

“If they wanted to kill her, they would hardly have done it in their own home under these impossible circumstances. There’s something we’re not seeing here.”

“What about that knife grinder, Pete Petrov? Might he have sneaked into the room somehow after he sharpened those knives for you?”

“Only if he could walk through walls. What about that bottle of wine? Did you have it analyzed?”

He nodded. “It contained a mild but fast-acting sleeping powder, likely put there by one of those three.”

“I tasted just a drop before the seancé and it seemed all right to me, but the sleeping powder might have been added later, by either Hale or his wife. Surely Sandra Gleam didn’t do it.”