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any kind on Frank’s neck or throat.”
    This wasn’t the opening I had hoped for, as Granger replied loftily: “That means nothing. Many cases of strangulation leave no marks. All I know is that Frank was dead, and that his brother confessed to the crime. It was an open and shut case.”
    â€œIt certainly seems to have been,” I said. “The police certainly did no investigation.”
    â€œWhy should they have? They had their man. It would have been just a waste of effort.”
    â€œNo autopsy was performed,” I pursued.
    Once more Granger shrugged. “What of it? It would simply have caused additional pain to the family, and in their situation they certainly didn’t need that.”
    â€œSo you don’t think,” I pursued, “that there’s any chance that James confessed to a crime he didn’t commit?—that he was taking the rap for someone else?”
    Granger’s face was suddenly transformed into a mix of puzzlement, anger, and fear. “What sort of nonsense is that? Who was he ‘taking the rap’ for?”
    â€œThat’s what I’m asking you.”
    â€œRubbish. It’s all rubbish.”
    â€œYou don’t think, for example, that Frank might have been poisoned?”
    â€œPoisoned?” Granger almost exploded. “How? By whom?”
    â€œWell, an autopsy might have told us something.”
    To this Granger merely barked a gruff laugh.
    â€œCould somebody have slipped him something in his food?” I said. “Given him a hypodermic injection?”
    Again Granger looked at me with a certain condescending pity in his eyes. “Mr. Scintilla, you’ve been reading too many detective stories. Things like that don’t happen. How could there have been any opportunity to do such a thing with all these people about? There must have been eight or nine or us, not to mention the servants.”
    â€œI’m aware of that.” I sighed heavily. “There was never a time when anyone was alone with Frank that evening?”
    Granger gave me an expression of mild incredulity. “I have no idea, Mr. Scintilla. It was twelve years ago. I can’t remember many of the details at this point in time.”
    â€œBut it could have happened?”
    â€œWell,” Granger said grudgingly, “anything could have happened. But I doubt that it did.”
    It was clear I wasn’t going to get anything from this fellow—not without more information. But I began to suspect there was information out there to get—and once I had it, I might be able to shake something out of this dapper physician.
    This case was beginning to smell worse and worse. Too many people were trying to prevent me from coming to grips with what had actually happened on that night of March 19, 1924. Too many people seemed to have something to hide.
    And the person who had the most to hide was languishing in Rahway State Prison. So that’s where I was headed.

Chapter Seven
    Getting to Rahway from Pompton Lakes was not in any sense direct, and for a hardened Manhattanite like myself it seemed at times as if I were lost in the backwoods of Arkansas or South Carolina. It always comes as a shock to city dwellers how much of our immense nation is still rural—not suburban, but actually rural. Farmers tending plots large and small, their dilapidated red barns in such alarming states of disrepair that a puff of wind would seem enough to bring them tumbling down; sheep farms, pig farms, cattle farms, dairy farms—even here in New Jersey they were all doing their bit as the breadbasket of the country, a thankless task that these stoic tenders of the land performed year after cheerless year as their fathers and grandfathers had done before them.
    After leaving the dismal penumbra of Paterson, I skirted the prosperous towns of Montclair and Bloomfield—the haven of the state’s social aristocracy, just as Princeton