The Case of the Murdered Mystic

Joseph Horner composed himself on his floor cushion, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and began to clear his mind. A practitioner and teacher of Eastern mysticism and meditation, Horner followed the same meditation routine every afternoon at four-thirty. Clear the mind, then focus, focus. Within minutes his concentration was so complete that he was oblivious to everything but his thoughts. Too oblivious...
Upon entering the Horner house, Inspector Roger Goldstein was led by a uniformed officer to the meditation room. Horner, clad in a T-shirt, loose pants, and a robe, had been facing the door, but he now lay forward in a pool of blood. The hole in his left temple showed where the bullet had struck.
The room was small and sparsely furnished. A row of lit candles graced the mantelpiece over the empty fireplace behind the dead man. The wall on Horner's left had the room's one window, closed and uncurtained. The small end table beside it was bare except for another lit candle. The opposite wall had a small print of India. A wooden chair occupied its far corner. A thin Persian carpet covered the floor, and Horner's cushion was placed squarely in its center.
The household staff awaited Goldstein in the sitting room down the hall. Raji Mookerjee, 19, was Horner's personal assistant as well as a devout Buddhist. He wore chinos and a blue denim shirt.
"I was in the kitchen preparing whole-wheat bread when I heard a strange noise," he said. "It took me a few moments to realize it might be a shot. So I went to check on Mr. Horner and saw him lying face down in blood. I guess I screamed or something. Leona came out from this room, joined me at the doorway, and sent me to find Vivian and call the police. I ran upstairs to the library, where Vivian was working, told her what had happened, and called 911 while she ran downstairs."
"That's right, inspector," said Leona McCarriston, 58. The Horner housekeeper wore a large cleaning smock and red-framed glasses. Her graying hair was in a bun. "I was dusting this room when I heard Raji scream. So I went out and found him in the doorway of the meditation room, staring at poor Mr. Horner. I knew Vivian was working upstairs, so I sent him up to tell her and to call the police.
"I was a medic nurse in Vietnam," she continued, "so the sight of the body didn't shake me much. The window was open at the time, so I went to it to see if I could spot the shooter. No one was there. After throwing the window closed, I checked Mr. Horner, but he clearly could not be helped. That's when Vivian came to the door. She, Raji, and I then stayed together and awaited the arrival of the police."
"You, I take it, are Vivian?" Goldstein asked the other woman there, a willowy woman in her thirties with granny glasses.
"Yes, inspector," replied Vivian Bell. "I'm Mr. Horner's literary assistant. I was transcribing notes in the library upstairs, listening to Mozart on my headphones, when Raji burst in. I had heard no shot or scream, and had to take off my headphones to hear him. He said Mr. Horner had been hurt downstairs. While he went to the phone, I ran downstairs and found Leona checking Mr. Horner. We went to the sitting room, where Raji joined us a moment later, and waited."
Goldstein glanced around the sitting room. Several items looked dusted, and a large dustrag rested on the end of a sofa. Leaving the three with a uniformed officer, he visited the kitchen down the hall and noted the partially kneaded dough and the cold oven. In the library, he looked briefly at the scrawled transcription sheets and the cassette player with headphones. An unmarked cassette tape was stopped about a third of the way through.
The gravel path outside the window of the murder room revealed little. The afternoon had been overcast, with a blustery north wind, and the lack of sun glare enabled Goldstein to see clearly through the undamaged window into the room. It would have been a clean shot from here with the window open, he thought to himself.
Paul Breslin, Goldstein's partner, crunched up the path to his side.
"About time you arrived," Goldstein said. "Any background on Horner?"
"Not much," said Breslin. "He was an expert on Eastern religions. Wrote a few books, gave lectures, had several students. We're getting names now. Every afternoon he meditated - facing east, of course."
"OK." Goldstein started back down the path to the front door. "Let's look in the house for the gun. I think this was an inside job."