The Investigation (S5E2)

In 1934, police were initially baffled by the murder of Elliott Speer. Then, one day, while an investigator was combing over the bookshelves in Speer's study, he happened upon a murder mystery that blew the case wide open.

Above: Ford Cottage in the 1920s. Home to the headmaster of Mount Hermon since 1911, the brick mansion became the unlikely scene of a murder on September 14, 1934.

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SHOW NOTES

Investigators and police photographers examining the broken window to Elliott Speer’s study. The murderer stood outside and waited until Elliott was standing before discharging his shotgun from the tree line (out of frame).

The September 23, 1934 issue of the Daily Boston Globe printed this schematic map of the Mount Hermon campus, illustrating the supposed route of the killer’s car to and from Ford Cottage. This bit of amateur cartography recalls the kinds of visual aids that Golden Age mystery novels furnished to their readers. Note that Holbrook Hall—situated on the lower right-hand side—is designated simply as “Administration Building.”

Postcard of Crossley Hall, a large dormitory. On September 14, only a handful of Mount Hermon’s students had returned from summer vacation. Of those who were on campus at the time of the murder, almost all of them were in Crossley, meeting with various faculty members. Crossley Hall is located along the right hand edge of the Globe’s map.

This specific postcard was sent on October 15, 1934—just a month after the homicide. The reverse side reads: “Dear Nancy, I have nothing to say. Bill."

Mount Hermon’s post office was a hangout spot for staff. On the evening of September 14, 1934 two married couples were chatting outside the building when they witnessed a dark sedan driving toward and away from the direction of Ford Cottage. The post office appears on the lower left hand side of the Globe’s map.

Each September, Headmaster Elliott Speer wrote a welcoming address to Mount Hermon pupils. His final address to the community appeared posthumously, thanks to the efforts of student journalists and editors. Above is a copy of his first-ever address, written in 1932.

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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Manuscript Materials & Archival Documents

--Moody, Frances Wells. Northfield Recollections. Northfield, MA: Dickinson Memorial Library (loc 929.2 Moody).

--Speer, Robert Elliott. Robert Elliott Speer Manuscript Collection. Princeton, NJ : Princeton Theological Seminary:

*Clippings and Mimeographed Material : Northfield schools. 1917-1942. - Northfield and Mt. Hermon Reports (Series VII: Clippings and Mimeographed Material. Subject File; Box 130, File 130:6).

*Letters Concerning Elliott Speer, 1915-34 (Series II: Correspondence; Box 25, File 25:5).

*Letters Concerning Elliott Speer, 1934 (Series II: Correspondence; Box 26, File Box 27, File 27:1-8).

*Letters Concerning Speer, Elliott. 1898 (Series II: Correspondence; Box 25, File 25:6).

*Letters: Family letters, 1911-1936. Folder 2 (Series II: Correspondence; Box 20, File 20:7).

--Various census records, passport applications, war records, yearbooks, birth and marriage certificates, Mount Hermon ephemera.

Books & Dissertations

--Amende, Coral. The Crossword Obsession: The History and Lore of the World’s Most Popular Pastime. New York: Berkley Books, 2001.

--Carter, Burnham. So Much to Learn. Gill, MA: Northfield Mount Hermon School, 1976.

--Coyle, Thomas. The Story of Mount Hermon. Mount Hermon, MA: The Mount Hermon Alumni Association, 1906.

--Curry, Joseph Robert. Mount Hermon from 1881 to 1971 : An Historical Analysis of a Distinctive American Boarding School. Ph.D. dissertation: University of Massachusetts Amherst, 1972.

--Day, Richard Ward. A New England Schoolmaster: The Life of Henry Franklin Carter. Bristol, CT: The Hildreth Press, 1950.

--Edwards, Martin. The Golden Age of Murder. London: HarperCollins, 2015.

--Edwards, Martin. The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books. Scottsdale, AZ: Poisoned Pen Press, 2017.

--Marsden, George. Fundamentalism and American Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.

--Piper, John F.  Robert E. Speer: Prophet of the American Church. Louisville, KY: Geneva Press, 2000.

--Straton, John Roach. The Menace of Immorality in Church and State. New York: George H. Doran, 1920.

--Symons, Julian. Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel, a History. London: Faber & Faber, 1972.

--Symons, Julian. The Detective Story in Britain. London: Longman, Green & co., 1962.

--Walley, Craig. Murder at Mount Hermon: The Unsolved Killing of Headmaster Elliott Speer. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004.

--Woodthorpe, R. C. Una bala para el señor Thorold. Tr. María D. A. de Derisbourg. Buenos Aires: Clarín/Emecé, 2015.

Periodical Articles

--Carter, Burnham. “The Study of a Murder,” in Yankee: October 1977, p. 102

--“Dogs Reveal Speer Killer As Household Intimate,” in Daily News (New York, NY): Sep. 19, 1934, p. 11

--“Headmaster Murdered Just as in Novel,” in Daily Express (London, UK): Dec. 4, 1934, p. 1

--Lyman, Loren D. “Mystery Deepens in Speer Slaying” in New York Times : Sept. 20, 1934, p. 48.

--Manchester, Harland. “The Headmaster Murder Mystery” in American Mercury: August 1934, p. 410

--“Mount Hermon Opens,” in The Northfield Herald : September 28, 1934, p. 1

--“Ousted Student Sought in Death of Elliott Speer,” in New York Herald Tribune : Sept. 16, 1934, p.15.

--Pearson, Edmund. “Say, Who D’ye Think Done This, Anyhow?” in New York Herald Tribune: July 21, 1935, p. F3

--“Says Speer Suspect Set Clocks Ahead,” in New York Times : Dec. 8, 1934, p. 7.

--“Speer’s Killer ‘To Be Seized Next Monday’” in Daily News (New York, NY): Dec. 1, 1934, p.6

--Taylor, John Jr., “Elder Jailed Despite Denial,” in Daily Boston Globe: May 27, 1937, p.1

--Taylor, John Jr., “Letters to Fore in Speer Case,” in Daily Boston Globe: Dec. 5, 1934, p. 1

--Taylor, John Jr., “Thrash Norton, Elder Threat: Dr. Cutler Says Dean Angry at Peek Story” in Daily Boston Globe : July 27, 1937, p. 1

--"Thomas Elder Takes the Stand,” in Waterbury Evening Democrat: July 27, 1937, p.1

--Thompson, Craig. “Eder Is Acquitted on Assault Charge,” in New York Times : July 29, 1937, p.1

--Approximately 400 additional pieces, from publications such as: The Boston Globe, The Brattleboro Daily Reformer, The Burlington Free Press and Times (Burlington, VT), Daily Express (London, UK), Daily News (New York, NY), The Daily Recorder-Gazette (Greenfield, MA), The Inverness Courier, New York Times, The Northfield Herald (Northfield, MA), The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Springfield Daily Republican, The Springfield Sunday Union and Republican, The Washington Times…and a few dozen others.

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TRANSCRIPT

This is Part 2 of a 5-part miniseries on the mysterious 1934 death of boarding school headmaster Elliott Speer. Please listen to Part 1 before proceeding on to this episode.

Policeman Richard Hiller knew his way around the Mount Hermon School for Boys, a Christian boarding school in Northfield, Massachusetts. About thirty minutes earlier, circa 9:15 PM, on September 14, 1934, police were notified that somebody had shot and killed Mount Hermon’s headmaster, Elliott Speer. Hiller left the police station just minutes after the call came in and sped toward campus from the nearby town of Shelburne Falls. Hiller was aware that Holbrook Hall was the business and administrative center of the school—and therefore the location of Elliott’s office, where he believed the crime to have occurred. Hiller was tense as he pulled up to the building. Even though it was Friday night, the parking spots were mostly full, the windows lit up. Hiller entered the front door, accompanied by two colleagues, walking briskly into a large, shared office and approaching Francis Bayley, a math teacher in his twenties. “Where is Mr. Speer?” Officer Hiller asked, with obvious signs of urgency in his voice. Mr. Bayley had no idea. Headmaster Speer was probably at home.

The math teacher called out to a man with white hair and round spectacles, standing nearby, “Tom, where is Elliott?”

The other man was Dean Thomas Elder, second in command after Headmaster Speer.

“I don’t know,” he replied, “I suppose up to his home. I’ll find out.”

As the dean picked up the phone and dialed, the police officers scanned their surroundings. Observing the large number of staff members who were working as though nothing had happened, Hiller realized that the shooting had taken place somewhere else. He and his colleagues jumped in their cars and headed for Ford Cottage, the residence of the Speer family.

When the phone rang at Ford Cottage, Elliot’s father-in-law, Herbert Welles, picked up. Dean Thomas Elder was on the other end of the line. Was Elliott there? Mr. Welles paused to collect his thoughts. He happened to know that Dean Elder had spent much of the previous year recovering from a heart attack. Welles was afraid that the shocking news of Elliott’s death might harm the aging dean. Out of an abundance of caution, he replied that Elliott was not available to come to the phone at the moment. Remembering the urgency of the police officers, Elder insisted on speaking to the headmaster. By now, Mr. Bayley and several other teachers were milling around Elder in Holbrook Hall, hoping to discover the cause for the alarm. Elder would not take no for an answer, demanding to speak with Elliott. Welles, sensing the futility of any further deflection, revealed what had happened a little over an hour before. Dean Elder hung up and looked at Mr. Bayley. “Come with me,” he said. Elder put his finger up to his lips and gestured toward everyone else in the office, letting Bayley know that the others should not hear what he was about to say. The math teacher followed Elder outside, where the dean told him: “Something has happened to Elliott Speer.”

Today, we’ll hear about the immediate aftermath of Elliot’s shooting, the police investigation into the baffling crime, and the debut detective novel that blew the case wide open. This is The Art of Crime, and I’m your host, Gavin Whitehead. Welcome to part II of Murder by the Book . . .

The Investigation

The Crime Scene

When Officer Hiller finally arrived at the crime scene, he found the household in a state of shock. David Birdsall greeted him at the door. Elliott’s body was lying, motionless, in the hallway. Seated at the bottom of the staircase, his wife, Holly, clasped his hand in hers. The two men passed by her as Birdsall guided them to Elliott’s study. Hiller surveyed the orderly bookshelves, before his eyes fastened on a seven-inch hole in the windowpane. The wall opposite was scarred with pockmarks, buckshot still lodged within them. Hiller approached the shattered window. Though the night was exceptionally dark, he could still tell that the window was about seven feet from the ground. He turned to his fellow policemen and suggested that they begin searching outside, using the headlights on their patrol car for illumination. With the aid of this artificial light, Hiller and company scoured the area around the study window. They were disappointed to see that it was paved, which meant the perpetrator would not have left footprints. Behind them was a thick grouping of trees, including a 100-year-old maple, where Elliott had hung a swing for his three daughters.

During this preliminary investigation, Hiller received invaluable assistance from Mount Hermon senior Robert A. Whitelaw. Whitelaw worked part-time at Holbrook Hall, and he was one of few students who were not in their dormitories that Friday evening. It’s unclear when Whitelaw joined the investigation, but he more than likely spoke to police when they arrived at Holbrook Hall to ask after Elliott, prompting him to team up with the authorities. It was exceptionally dark and foggy that night, and the investigators turned on the headlights of cars parked around Ford Cottage to light surroundings. Yet visibility remained low, even with the added illumination, so Whitelaw walked around the Cottage to the six-car garage out back to flick on a set of exterior lights. Inside the garage, Robert flipped the light switch, but nothing happened. He tried again, still nothing. The teenager went to the fuse box to investigate, and swiftly identified the source of the problem: somebody had taken out every single fuse.

Around this time, Dean Elder and Mr. Bayley arrived at the Cottage, having driven there in the dean’s car. Soon, District Attorney Joseph T. Bartlett was also on the scene, taking charge of the investigation with the help of the State police. Thirty-nine years old, Bartlett had a serious, intelligent face, adorned with round spectacles and topped with a head of slicked-back hair. He and the State Troopers set to work examining the crime scene and interviewing everyone in the Cottage.

It soon became clear that it was just too dark to continue searching outdoors, so the district attorney made the decision to postpone further investigation of the area outside the house until the morning. Instead, at 2:00 AM, he had students woken up in their dorms for questioning. He departed Ford Cottage at around the same time that Elliott left home for the last time. Holly did not let go of his hand until police removed the body. In an effort to shield her daughters from news of their father’s murder, Holly stayed downstairs with the servants, helping to wipe her husband’s blood from the walls and floor.

The Next Morning

The authorities resumed their investigation the following morning. As police fanned out across campus to interview students and staff members, veteran ballistics expert Captain Charles Van Amburgh analyzed the crime scene. Examining the trajectory and the scatter pattern of the ammunition, Van Amburgh identified the murder weapon as a twelve-gauge shotgun. He also deduced several vital details about how the crime had been carried out. At some point in the evening, the killer positioned themselves outside the study window. Because the window was located seven feet above ground, the murderer had to shoot upward at a steep angle. For this reason, they could not hit Speer while he was sitting at his desk. The unknown stalker either waited for Elliott to stand and perhaps fetch a book from his shelves or somehow induced him to rise from his chair—say, by tapping on the window. When Elliot rose to his feet, the killer situated himself fifteen feet away, next to the old maple tree. Then, the shooter fired the gun, projecting nine buckshot pellets through the window and into the victim’s torso. One of these pellets pierced Elliott’s lung and heart. Van Amburgh was also able to conclude based on the way that the ammunition clustered together that the murder had used a firearm with a “choke muzzle,” a device that prevents the pellets from scattering and thereby increases the deadliness of the weapon.

Van Amburgh notified the D.A. of his findings, and later that morning, police began a frenzied search for a twelve-gauge shotgun in every room of every building on campus, including barns, abandoned structures, and the homes of employees. They also enlisted the help of students to conduct a sweep of the 1,200 acres of pastures, meadows, and woodlands on the chance that the killer had discarded the firearm outdoors. Police even drained an out-of-the-way pond in hope of recovering the shotgun—an action that would take on added significance in a few weeks’ time.

During their door-to-door interviews on the Mount Hermon campus, police unearthed five potential eyewitnesses. Having spoken with the Speers’ Bulgarian housemaid, Mrs. Florence George, investigators learned that the killer had run away from Ford Cottage immediately after the shooting, probably cutting through a patch of trees to a getaway car parked nearby.

Located on the road that leads to the Cottage, the post office was a hangout for school employees. On the evening of the murder, William Dierig, Mount Hermon’s head carpenter, and Daniel Bodley, manager of the school’s laundry, gathered outside the post office with their wives for a long chat. Around 8:15, they saw a boxy black sedan drive by, in the direction of Ford Cottage. Several minutes later, they heard a gunshot in the distance. Since September was high season for skunks, the two married couples assumed that someone was trying to kill or scare one that had strayed onto their property. Shortly after, the same black sedan speed past the group, this time temporarily blinding them with its headlights. They could not see the driver, nor had they taken note of the license plate number; they couldn’t even swear to the car’s make and model. Even so, this evidence gave investigators insight into the killer’s methods and narrowed down the timeline of the crime.

A Murder Investigation With Many Tentacles

From the outset, investigators deduced that the murderer had to have been familiar with the layout of Mount Hermon. In the first place, Ford Cottage was relatively isolated. The killer would have needed to know it was there. The shooter had also managed to navigate the woodlands surrounding the Speer’s home on an evening so dark that visibility was nearly zero. The perpetrator, who seemed to know Elliott’s nightly routine, had almost certainly canvassed the house ahead of time and may have even removed the fuses from the garage to ensure that nobody could see them lurking outside.

That said, based on the early phases of the investigation, it appears that the D.A. and state police were hoping to pin the crime on an outsider. From the start, the case attracted international media attention. The press breathlessly disseminated every new development, no matter how meaningless, and District Attorney Bartlett was only too happy to let them in on even the most far-fetched theories. To judge from the news coverage, police conducted a bumbling, scattershot investigation, one that groped across the U.S. and even extended its flailing tentacles into Ontario, where Elliott’s family had spent their summer vacation.

The authorities initially focused their attention on two groups: (1) recently expelled students and (2) fired faculty members. Within a day of the killing, state police traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts to talk to a recently terminated Mount Hermon teacher, who produced an ironclad alibi for the evening of September 14. A handful of similar inquiries failed to unearth a homicidal teacher, or shed any light whatsoever on the mystery.

On the student end of things, authorities asked Dean Thomas Elder, second in command at Mount Hermon, to compile a list of former pupils with disciplinary issues. This line of inquiry had police knocking on doors across the Eastern Seaboard. In Boston, they pulled a young man from Alabama off a train bound for Springfield, Massachusetts and detained him for questioning. They arrested another teenager in Philadelphia. Yet another lead put investigators onto the trail of a Mount Hermon alumnus currently studying at Washington and Lee University, in Virginia. According to rumor, the college student had spoken about “twenty-one punishments” that he was going to mete out on Mount Hermon faculty. He claimed to have already carried out seven of these castigations and allegedly vowed that, for his eighth act of revenge, “I’m going to get Speer.” However, the university’s dean provided an alibi, stating that on September 14 this suspect was on the Washington and Lee campus for most of the day. Since this was the case, he would have had to have taken a flight up to Massachusetts to arrive at Mount Hermon in time to shoot Elliott. Lucky for the young college student, the fourteenth was a foggy day in Virginia, (as it had been at the Northfield Schools), and all flights at the nearby airport had been cancelled.

Soon, investigators ran out of disgruntled former students to run down, so they began to pursue the possibility that the murder was carried out by a psychologically troubled or developmentally disabled madman. The September 20 edition of the Boston Globe reported that District Attorney Bartlett was rounding up shell-shocked WWI veterans on the suspicion that one of them may have killed Speer because of the headmaster’s pacifist beliefs. Mount Hermon’s school doctor, meanwhile, was questioned about the psychiatric issues and cognitive deficits of current students. On September 16, the New York Daily News wrote that authorities were devoting particular attention to pupils “classified as ‘mentally retarded’.” There were several other fruitless—and very public—attempts to lay blame at the feet of locals with disabilities or histories of mental illness.

As these avenues failed to further the investigation, speculation swirled that an ideologically motivated assassin may have committed the crime, a murderous zealot who might just strike again. A feeling of unease blanketed both the Mount Hermon campus and the surrounding area. A round-the-clock guard was posted outside the headmistress’s house at the Northfield Seminary for Girls to prevent a repeat of the Ford Cottage shooting. An internal memo written by the missionary organization that employed Elliott’s father informed its members: “It cannot be known if this was one single crime or if there is some malice or mania which may lead to another. Up to this time there is nothing that points to the perpetrator of the deed or gives any explanation of it.” The most dramatic symptom of collective anxiety came on Wednesday, September 19, when a panicked headmaster in Bedford Falls called the police to report that somebody had opened fire on him while he was driving his car. Subsequent investigation would show that his automobile had actually been the target of flying gravel, not a bullet. Nevertheless, as the New York Times noted, this incident reflected the state of high alert that marked life in the region: “The fear is general, almost approaching a belief, that somewhere in the hill communities of Northern Massachusetts, a fanatic or a murderer with a shotgun is at large and that it is possible that he may have other figures marked for slaughter.”

Despite the early emphasis on outsiders of various kinds, it’s also clear that investigators never discounted the possibility that the murder of Elliott Speer was an inside job. They quizzed everyone on campus about the firearms they owned and their whereabouts on the evening of the 14. Discreetly, they asked about peoples’ interpersonal relationships with the murder victim and about rivalries within the Mount Hermon community. Judging by newspaper accounts, the district attorney spent the better part of two weeks casting around in vain for a solution to the mystery. We’ll hear more after a quick break.

The news media relentlessly advanced the theory that clannish tensions between fundamentalists and liberals at Mount Hermon were the root cause of Elliott Speer’s murder. The New York Times proved especially dogged in this regard. Just two days after the shooting, the Grey Lady informed its readers that, “Investigators were understood to have been told that there was a bitter factional fight within [Mount Hermon] … which was founded by the Evangelists…in which the forces supporting Mr. Speer were victorious two years ago.” The Times did not stop there. It discussed Elliott’s relaxation of the strict rules that had been the norm at Mount Hermon since the Victorian era. These changes, it claimed, “angered conservative followers of the school’s founders.” Then, it devoted an entire section of the article to the controversial campus visit of Norman Thomas, modernizing Episcopal minister and national leader of the Socialist party: “Investigators assert there is a possibility that one of Dr. Speer’s opponents, maddened over the prospect of the opening of another term Monday under what he regarded as an unfit leader, might have goaded himself into the shooting.”

The general public also chimed in with their pet theories, inundating police and newspapers with theories ranging from the mildly loopy to the operatically off-center. Falling into the latter category was a letter sent directly to Mount Hermon School for Boys. In a variation on the liberal-fundamentalist rift motif, its author opined: “I am convinced, and felt this way from the first, that he was killed by outsiders who came there for the purpose, and as a result of Dr. Elliott [sic] having dismissed some student. One paper stated the student at the time he was expelled had threatened to get even. This student was probably planted in that school on purpose to make trouble or spread communism and rebellion among the other students. . . . Communists have planted such so-called students in all institutions over the country.”

As speculations of this kind raged, people living in the reality-based world strove to keep the coming school year on track while also mourning the deceased. In a clear illustration of the Speer family’s reach and influence, letters and telegrams of condolence flooded in by the hundreds—from Ohio, Florida, Hawaii, Mexico City, and Mumbai. Robert Speer and his wife came to Mount Hermon for the first of two memorial services at the school’s chapel on September 16 and helped relocate Holly and her daughters to New York City the following day. The older students on campus redoubled their efforts to roll out the year’s first edition of the school newspaper, which included a message that had been written by Elliott just before his death. It read, in part: “Greetings and Welcome! From 500 homes and for 5,000 reasons, Hermon men will be arriving on the Hill to start the new year. During your days here, we hope Hermon will be a home to you.” Teachers and a handful of seniors helped 249 first-year students move into their dormitories on September 17. The rest of the student body began filtering back into campus on the 18. Against the backdrop of unspeakable loss, classes started on time, on Thursday the 19, less than a week after the shooting. After a quick break, we’ll hear about the unlikely amateur detective who broke the case wide open.

Fry Guy

Wilfred Fry—Chairman of Mount Hermon’s Board of Trustees—found out about the murder the same way as his colleagues. Upon leaving Ford Cottage on the night of the killing, Dean Elder phoned Fry directly, at approximately 9:30 PM. At the time, Fry was in his vacation home in New York. A Mount Hermon graduate (class of 1896) and a high-ranking executive at the Philadelphia advertising firm Ayer & Son, he was the kind of guy you could count on to drop everything and do whatever he could to help manage an emergency. A solid man with a round, serious face and spectacles, he slicked back his hair—thinning at the temples—and steeled himself for the trials ahead. With the aid of his trusty personal chauffeur, the Board’s President drove all night from New York to Northfield, Massachusetts, where he checked in early the next morning at the Northfield Inn.

Later that afternoon, Fry was driven to Holbrook Hall, where he dispatched a series of telegrams to board members. By Sunday the sixteenth, more than half of the trustees would be in town for the first of several memorial services for Elliott Speer. They would also have to meet to discuss the matter of Elliott’s replacement. While sending out his communications, Fry bumped into Dean Thomas Elder, second in command at Mount Hermon, who appeared eager to talk with him. Elder leaned in and said in a confidential tone, “Now, Wilfred, I suppose the Trustees will want me to carry on just as though Elliott were away for an absence as I always have done. He, as you know, left matters very largely in my hands.”

Fry responded with caution. While the Board would no doubt want Thomas Elder to continue as dean, it was far from a given that they would appoint him as the new headmaster. Some trustees had already hinted that Elder was too old and—considering his poor health, including his recent heart attack—too infirm for the job. Others suggested that he lacked the right personality type or educational background. Because of these and other reservations, it was important for Fry not to signal to Elder that he was the heir apparent to the position of headmaster.

So Fry made some noncommittal pleasantry and politely changed the subject. Something had stuck out to him about Dean Edler’s appearance: he was wearing two bandages on one of his fingers. “Did you injure yourself, Tom?” he asked.

“Oh, that is nothing.” The dean replied. With his question deflected, Fry dropped the subject, thinking nothing of it.

When the trustees gathered at the inn in the small hours of Sunday morning, they talked about who would replace Elliott as headmaster of Mount Hermon. As dean, Thomas Elder was technically next in line. However, as Fry had anticipated, the Board wanted to bypass him in favor of a more appealing candidate. After weighing various options, the Board decided to hold off on appointing a new headmaster, preferring instead to entrust the school temporarily to a committee of three members. This body would guide Mount Hermon through its most immediate difficulties and pave the way for the appointment of a new headmaster later in the year. The committee would consist of Dean Elder, Professor Nelson Jackson (Chair of the Math Department), and David Porter (the newly appointed Chair of the Bible Department).

It was Fry’s job to contact the three men and invite them to a meeting at the Northfield Inn later that day, following Elliott’s memorial service. He picked up the phone and called Thomas Elder. Fry knew that Tom would be disappointed to learn that the Board was effectively passing him over for a promotion. “Tom, the Executive Committee would like to meet Mr. Porter, yourself and Mr. Jackson at quarter to twelve.” Dean Elder, understanding that he would be sharing power with the two teachers, sounded less than enthusiastic. He asked Fry if the two of them could speak in private before the meeting.

Fry agreed. Elder and Fry greeted each other in the dean’s office at Holbrook Hall. It fast became clear that Elder hoped to relitigate the issue of Elliott’s replacement. In a hesitating cadence, he said, “You know, Wilfred, that Elliott always used to leave matters completely in my hands. He used to tell me I could run the school as well as he, or words to that effect.” Sensing the delicacy of the situation, Fry stated in no uncertain terms and with an air of finality that the Board of Trustees was empaneling an interim committee to run the school. Vexed by this unwelcome news, Dean Elder threatened to resign on the spot. Fry talked him down from that cliff and convinced him to accept his spot on the committee.

Then, the conversation took a sudden twist: “I wonder if I would be breaking Elliott’s confidence if I showed you some correspondence that we have had,” Elder said.

Fry replied that you couldn’t really break a dead man’s confidence.

Elder responded, “You know [Elliott and I] used to talk things over very intimately, and back some weeks ago we had a long conference and we agreed to put in writing the results of that conference confirming our impressions each to the other. Here are two letters, my letter to him and his to me.”

Elder handed over two documents, both of them typed. The first letter—dated February 18th , 1934—was on the dean’s professional letter head. It began, “Dear Elliott, At your request I am writing, with reluctance, my understanding of our recent conversation and also reiterating in writing the views which I expressed to you verbally. First, may I say thank you for the generous statement you made to me relative to increase in salary and certain perquisites to begin next July. You are generous and kind. I am particularly grateful for your gracious offer regarding the pension which you promised in case of a breakdown in my health and for the extension of the pension in part to my wife for her life if I should be taken.”

Elder’s letter to Elliott went on to discuss various goings-on at the school, often taking a critical tone. For example, Elder grumbled about the liberal teachings of the Bible Department, where (according to Elder) teachers led students to believe that Jesus was no different than Gandhi, in that both were equally noble. Such lessons, Elder implied, would make the founder of Mount Hermon, the late Reverend Moody, roll over in his grave. Elsewhere, ostensibly paraphrasing what Elliott had confided to him, Elder records direct and at times insulting criticisms of several members of Mount Hermon’s faculty and staff.

Fry turned to the second letter, purportedly written by Elliott himself on February 19 of the same year. It was even harsher in its criticism of Mount Hermon employees and more effusive in its praise of Dean Elder. Typed on the headmaster’s official letterhead, it began, “Dear Tom: To prevent any misunderstanding and for your own confidential use, I am confirming our recent conversation…As I told you, I think you are woefully underpaid and while I cannot begin to offer you what you have been offered by other institutions in the past, I am going to raise your pay beginning next fiscal year as follows: $4,000 per year plus your fuel, electricity and care of your lawn; if at any time you continue to make a fool of yourself by working too hard, as I fear you will, I shall use all my influence with the Trustees to retire you on $3,000 per year as long as you live and if you should die before Mrs. Elder, to pay her from the time of your death $1,500 a year so long as she lives.” Beat for beat, Headmaster Speer’s letter referred to the same topics as the dean’s, trashing the same staff members in brutal terms.

Something about the tone and content of these letters seemed iffy to Fry. Still, he regained his mental bearings and told Dean Elder that these documents could not possibly change the mind of the trustees, who were dead-set on the idea of the interim committee. Then, in a flash of inspiration, Fry asked, “May I have these letters? I should like to study over them.” Though clearly reluctant to hand over the letters, Dean Elder agreed. “Why, yes,” he replied, “If you don’t think I am breaking confidence with Elliott.”

For the next week, Fry made inquiries into these letters. The president of the Board of Trustees asked Elliott’s friends and family about the late headmaster’s relationship with Dean Elder. Everyone, from Holly Speer to other trustees, agreed that Elliott found Elder difficult and unpleasant to work with. According to some, Elliott knew that Elder disapproved of the liberal reforms he had made to Mount Hermon, making nice to the headmaster’s face only to gripe about him behind his back. Others noted that Elliott didn’t find Elder particularly competent or trustworthy. One trustee even confided to Elder that Elliott could not wait for Elder to retire. This same board member added that Elliott had told him that the dean’s heart attack had rendered the older man psychologically unstable, so much so that Speer came to view Elder as “a problem [that] should be eliminated” from the school.

Fry showed the letters he had borrowed from Elder to a select few individuals to see what they had to say about them. Four main objections came up time and time again. First, tone. Everything sounded uncharacteristically friendly toward Elder and hostile toward other Mount Hermon staff.

Second, style. The letter supposedly written by Elliott sounded nothing at all like the former headmaster. At one point, the letter defended Elliott’s policy allowing teachers to smoke in designated locations, noting that Dean Elder disapproved: “You are all wrong about the tobacco. I think it is all right for the young teachers to smoke. Your idea that they ‘should not go to classes seeped in tobacco when boys are not permitted to use it’ is all bunk!” Almost everyone who read over the document agreed that Elliott would not have used a slang term like “bunk.” This was just one instance of such language in the letter.

The third objection related to the substantial raise and retirement benefits that Elliott had apparently promised to Elder. Apart from this letter, there was no paper trail to substantiate these perks. This raised eyebrows because the headmaster would have had to consult the treasurer’s office along with the Board of Trustees before making such a pledge. Furthermore, Elliott supposedly promised privileges that no dean had previously enjoyed at Mount Hermon, including cost-free fuel and lawn maintenance. This treatment was traditionally reserved for the headmaster. Then, there was the reference to Elliott’s plans to be away from the school with increasing frequency. What was that about? Elliott had renounced his post as President of the Northfield Schools specifically so that he could make a difference on campus in a hands-on, day-to-day way as headmaster.

As for the fourth and final objection: though typed on the stationery of the headmaster, the letter from Elliott was conspicuously unsigned.

Taken together, these observations backed up what Fry had originally suspected: The letters were inauthentic. Fry could not miss the dark implication of this conclusion: if forged, these documents were only of value to Elder if Elliott were no longer alive to dispute them. Despite everything he had learned, Fry nevertheless hesitated to go to the authorities with the letters. Worried about the likelihood of a media frenzy, the reputation of Mount Hermon, as well as Elder’s prominence in the community, Fry sat on these dubious missives for several days. Finally, friends and fellow trustees prevailed on him to speak up. On September 27, just under two weeks after the homicide, Fry shared the results of his private inquiry with D.A. Bartlett.

Clue on the Bookshelf

Another curious clue came to light around the same time that Elder presented his fishy letters to Fry. In an early examination of Elliott’s library, an unnamed investigator paid careful attention to the titles on the shelves. Among the volumes was a novel with a yellow dust jacket, an illustration of a gothic-style quad on the cover: The Public School Murder, by R.C. Woodthorpe. Whoever happened upon this book removed it from the shelf and probably skimmed the blurb on the inside of the jacket. The novel eventually found its way to District Attorney Bartlett, who thumbed through its pages with mild interest. As we discussed in the previous episode, Woodthorpe’s mystery involves the murder of the universally reviled, despotic Headmaster Thorold.

D.A. Bartlett’s heart must have stopped when he reached the description of the headmaster’s murder. On the first Saturday of the new school year, Headmaster Thorold is working late in his study on a pitch-black evening. The killer apparently breaks into the campus ROTC building and steals a rifle before sneaking over to the headmaster’s home. The murderer positions himself outside Thorold’s study and opens fire, shooting through the study window. Then, the criminal flees into the night while the headmaster succumbs to his wounds inside. The murder of Headmaster Thorold was almost identical to that of Elliott Speer.

As District Attorney Bartlett investigated Elliott’s reading habits, he suspected that this was no coincidence. Elliott had a habit of loaning crime novels to anyone who would take them. And the D.A. soon had reason to believe that Speer had lent The Public School Murder to the man who became the prime suspect in the headmaster’s homicide: Dean Thomas Elder.

Next time, the police close in on Elder and hold an inquest to determine whether or not to indict him.