16. A Young Detective's Adventures: The Deaths of the Three Mrs. Fitches

Smith, a new detective, wanted to investigate the deaths of the three Mrs. Fitches. However, he was stopped by his chief, Hutch. Why did Chief Hutch do this? Does Smith investigate successfully? Does he find out whether murder has been committed?

My Chief was very old-fashioned. He dressed in a uniform rather than in plainclothes as we did during our training. He was very conservative and did not like the officers on his force to have opinions that differed from his.

As I was waiting to meet him for the first time, I could hear the voice of a hysterical woman coming through the thin walls:

"But, Chief Hutch, I know it was no accident ... none of them were, sir."

"Well, we have no proof, Mrs. Munsing, and we don't work here on suppositions and guesses, you know. We have to have facts in order to act."

"Yes, I know, sir, but I think that if you would just ask some questions ... "

"Thank you, Mrs. Munsing, we'll get someone on it for you. Thank you very much for coming in here today and sharing your concerns with us." He showed her to the door, and as he passed me, he stopped and looked at my white shirt and tie. A smile crossed his face. "We're in Flagstaff, Detective Smith, not on Fifth Avenue. You're going to get pretty hot in that neck choker."

"Yes, sir."

"Now, Mrs. Munsing, you just go on back to Mr. Fitch's house, and my advice to you is not to mention that you came down here to see me."

"Oh, I wouldn't, sir. I wouldn't. And I don't want you to tell anyone that I came here. I might lose my job."

The Chief sat behind a very small desk which made him look much bigger than he was. He didn't invite me to sit down nor did I ask if I could. I stood in front of his desk while he began to yell the rules of the office. The cardinal rule was DON'T MAKE TROUBLE. Don't look for trouble. Don't make waves.

I was glad to get back to Mrs. Johnson's (my landlady's) house that night. I wondered if she would be glad to have me, knowing that I was a low man on the totem pole at the police station. I sat on the porch and watched the traffic in the street. It was a side street, so only a few cars would pass. More people walked here than drove. One of the pedestrians was the woman I had seen in the police station that afternoon. She was carrying a huge sack of groceries.

"Hello!" I yelled to her from the porch.

She dropped her sack and looked around. She saw me and nervously bent over to pick up the groceries that had fallen all over the sidewalk. I raced to her side to help her. "I'm so clumsy," she offered as an excuse.

"I'm sorry I frightened you."

"Oh, my nerves have been on edge ever since Mrs. Fitch was killed. I mean, ever since she had the accident."

I stopped picking up oranges and looked at her. She met my eyes.

"I shouldn't have said that. I have no right to say that. Excuse me. I must be going."

She had not remembered me from the police station that afternoon; she was too concerned about her job and the possibility of being seen talking to a total stranger. She gathered her bags and hurried up the street. I returned to the porch and began thinking about the newspaper article that my sister had shown me before I left New York: ARIZONA HEIRESS KILLED IN FALL.

That evening at dinner I casually asked Mrs. Johnson about the Fitches. I especially wanted to know about the stepdaughter and the three wives.

"Yes, indeed, Mr. Fitch had three wives all richer than Rockefeller, they say. When he married his first wife, he didn't have a penny. Her father was dead set against her marrying that no-good Fitch. He tried to keep them apart. He even sent her to a girls' school in Switzerland or some place like that. But when she became twenty-one, she inherited her grandfather's money; and when she came back to Flagstaff, she had married Fitch. She also came back from Switzerland with a daughter. It almost killed the old man. He was in the hospital for weeks. He was going to have his lawyers cancel the marriage or disinherit the daughter. But he died in his sleep one night ... and you know, she, the first Mrs. Fitch, died shortly thereafter, too. She was flying a plane that disappeared in the mountains. It was never found again."

"Well, who was the second Mrs. Fitch?"

"She was a wonderful woman; she loved children and took them for rides on her horses into the hills. It was just after one of those rides that she died. Yes, she was really thirsty and Mrs. Munsing brought her out some nice lemonade. Well, she drank that lemonade and never got up from her chair. I tell you, no one felt like having lemonade for a while."

"Did no one think that the drink may have been poisoned?"

"Well, of course we did. But Mr. Fitch and the Police Chief determined it was some food poisoning from the little sandwiches that she had taken on the trip with her. You know they got really bad from the heat."

"And Fitch inherited her money, too?"

"Yes, indeed. She had lots of money. She owned practically the whole town. There wasn't anyone growing up who wasn't paying rent to her family. And since she was the only child, her husband got it all. The same thing with the third wife who fell to her death.

"Clever, isn't he? Always marrying these rich women who have no other relations. Seems kind of strange that they all died, but I guess stranger things have happened."

The next day at noon, I went again to the local newspaper office and asked to see the newspapers from the time of the deaths of the three Fitch wives. That afternoon I was called into the Chief's office.

(to be continued)

From The Great Preposition Mystery, ed., Lin Lougheed,

Washington, D.C., 1981.