The Strawstack Murders
Page 10
A curving graveled path wound past well-kept lawns, green and velvet-smooth, and neat flower beds bright with early asters and late petunias. Beyond doors of brightly polished glass, bronze plates announced to the public the names of those philanthropists who endowed the institution. It was a pity Marian wasn’t there to notice how prominently the name of Breen was featured. Mrs. Breen was a patroness, and her husband was a member of the board, and there were their names inscribed in Roman letters and on enduring bronze.
The lobby of Grosvenor Hospital was precisely what I expected. Chintz curtains hung in cheerful array, there was a rose-colored carpet to cover the floor, there were soft, deep divans and chairs. Some of the people who occupied the chairs and languidly leafed through magazines were clad in dressing gowns or fetching negligees, but to my unpracticed eye the clientele appeared to be in a remarkable state of health.
At a recessed switchboard sat a girl who wore a nurse’s uniform. She was a very pretty girl, and she recognized Simon. She rose quickly, advanced upon us, and, almost before we realized what she was doing, had hurried us through the lobby and into a small adjoining office. She even remembered to leave the door ajar so she could watch her board.
Then in a low, quick voice she said, “Forgive me, Dr. Hargreaves, but I was afraid your being here might excite the patients. This place has been a madhouse. We’ve tried to keep the newspapers from the patients, but you know how bad news travels. Poor Doctor Smedley is frantic.”
Somehow I felt no particular sympathy for Dr. Damon Smedley. And that lobby had not been my own idea of a madhouse. Simon said dryly, “I’m sorry, Kate, I hadn’t realized that Dr. Smedley was particularly fond of Dorothy Fithian.”
“Oh, it isn’t Dorothy,” replied the youthful Kate before she thought. She flushed. “I suppose,” she said a trifle defiantly, “that doesn’t sound too well. But it’s true enough. I—I guess all of us are thinking principally of Dr. Anderson. He has a remarkable gift for research. Now that’s finished, isn’t it? Nothing, can ever be the same again.”
She had struck me as a hard and modern young person, but suddenly I saw her eyes were full of tears.
I said, impulsively, “You can’t help by worrying, child.”
“I suppose not.” She rejected my sympathy to say fiercely, “If only I hadn’t gone to the window. I could have stayed in my chair as well as not. How I wish I had!” We looked bewildered. She said, “It was I who saw Dr. Anderson go off with Dorothy. Curiosity is a curse, I guess. I was on duty last night when Dr. Anderson went through the lobby. Usually we kidded a lot, but he didn’t say a word to me, just banged the door and rushed outside. I—I guess I was surprised. Anyway I left the switchboard a moment to watch him through that window on the drive.”
I guessed the sort of curiosity which had ailed her, but Simon was a blundering male. “What an odd thing to do, Kate.”
“Unlucky you mean,” replied the girl in a bitter voice. “Dorothy was waiting in that mustard-colored car the newspapers are talking about so much. She was smoking a cigarette and wearing that wine-colored hat and cape of hers. I—I’ve admired that outfit. I suppose Kirk admired it, too.”
Again I sensed the emotion which had enabled the watching girl to observe in such detail. Simon remained obtuse. “Nonsense, Kate. The window is a good twenty feet from the drive, and the car was curtained.”
“I’m telling you what I saw,” she said dully, “when the car door opened and Kirk got in and they drove away. It was five past nine. He was due back at twelve last night. I covered him till half past one and then one of the patients had a sinking spell, and I had to phone for Dr. Smedley. It was nearly four o’clock when the police telephoned and told us why he hadn’t come back.”
A light flashed on the switchboard, and she stepped out to attend to it. I had barely time to whisper to Simon, “Be careful what you say,” before she returned with the news that Dr. Smedley wanted to talk with us, and had suggested that we use the rear stairs to his third floor office.
“First,” I said awkwardly, “I’d like to ask a question. Dr. Anderson telephoned my house and talked to Dorothy at eight o’clock. Did you put through that call?”
“Yes,” she said curtly.
The hostility of her manner warned me off. I carefully picked my words. “Evidently he desired to speak to my sister, Mrs. Brierly. She—I—we both have been puzzled as to what he wanted.”
“If you are trying to ask,” the girl said clearly, “whether I listened in on Kirk’s conversation, I didn’t. Last night or any other time. I have never heard of Mrs. Brierly. I knew he was calling Dorothy because I was familiar with the number. Sometimes before I could break my own connection I would hear him call her name. He’s telephoned her frequently in the last two weeks.”
With that she left us.
8
Doctor Smedley’s office, a large, well-lighted, beautifully furnished room, was a handsome frame for a most unhappy man. I have seldom seen so many newspapers. A long mahogany desk was almost buried under a drift which overflowed to the carpeted floor. A divan in the—corner, doubtless placed there so that Dr. Smedley could relax from the strain of his responsibilities, contained another pile. Three wastebaskets were full. It was eleven o’clock in the morning and Doctor Smedley, surrounded by reading matter, still wore evening clothes.
He remembered to apologize for his attire and to explain he hadn’t slept a wink. He even managed to express a little perfunctory sympathy for me, before he began to sympathize with himself. “What’s to happen to Grosvenor? What’s to happen to our drive for funds? This publicity is ruinous!” He groaned. “A staff doctor becomes involved with a nurse, and everyone is saying he’s murdered her and escaped in a stolen car. What are the patients to think? The Board of Directors?”
He glared at me as though I had the answer.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” I said meekly.
Doctor Smedley gave me an unpleasant look, as though somehow I were at fault for everything. “I felt in the beginning,” he said, “it was a mistake to put Miss Fithian on your case. Of course I didn’t anticipate…”
“You put her there,” I said tartly.
“I!” He seemed shocked. “I can only defer to the patient’s wishes, Miss Tilbury. Surely you must know the nurse I originally chose for you was Miss Clark, a steady, sensible woman. It was your sister who insisted upon Miss Fithian.”
This was news to me. “My sister,” I said, “was probably impressed by Dorothy’s references. I understand she nursed young Ted Breen through appendicitis.”
“That must have been before my time,” said Dr. Smedley sourly. “Not,” he added quickly, “that Miss Fithian wasn’t capable. I am saying nothing against her ability, but I would not have chosen to work on a case with her.”
“You had her in your hospital,” I pointed out.
He looked pained. “Miss Fithian,” he said finally, “was a legacy to me from my predecessor as head of Grosvenor. She was capable, popular with a certain class of patient, and I kept, her on. But in my opinion she wasn’t—ah—temperamentally fitted to a career in nursing. It's a hard thing to say of the dead,” continued Dr. Smedley almost angrily, “but Dorothy Fithian was a highly material young woman. In my six years here I repeatedly observed that spirit—observed that she seemed less interested in the recovery of her patients than in obtaining a substantial parting gift.”
His words gave me an unpleasant little start. I am not unduly vain, but even so it had not occurred to me that to certain people my chief attraction might be my income. My eye met Simon’s.
“I didn’t know,” he said, “that Marian was acquainted with Dorothy before your illness.”
“She wasn’t,” I replied, and suddenly realized what he was getting at. I turned to Dr. Smedley. “How, if you didn’t bring Dorothy to the house, did my sister ever get to hear about her references? Surely Marian didn’t come here to the hospital and personally interview your nursing staff.”
“Then how does it happen,” I inquired, “that Dorothy came instead?”
There was a lengthy pause. Then, “Miss Fithian did a highly unethical thing!” said Dr. Smedley with extreme irritation. “She learned Miss Clark had been assigned your case and she took it upon herself to telephone your sister. The result was that she talked herself into the job and Miss Clark out of it. I was greatly annoyed, but Mrs. Brierly, once her mind is made up, can be most determined.”
I could see Simon thinking that medical practice in Washington was very different from medical practice in Vermont. He looked fixedly at Dr. Smedley. “How did Dorothy Fithian learn that Miss Tilbury was ill and needed a nurse? Surely you didn’t discuss the case with her. Did Miss Clark?”
“No,” said Dr. Smedley slowly. “I fancy Miss Fithian’s information came from another source.” He hesitated, and was visibly embarrassed.
“I may as well be frank,” he said then abruptly. “I believe it must have been Miss Tilbury’s brother-in-law who discussed the case with Miss Fithian. Indeed I’ve wondered whether it wasn’t he who suggested that she telephone Mrs. Brierly and apply for the position.”
I felt as though the floor had been cut away beneath me. I caught the edge of Dr. Smedley’s desk to steady myself.
“You must be mistaken, Dr. Smedley. Dorothy Fithian was a stranger to all of us.”
“I was afraid,” the physician said unhappily, “you and Mrs. Brierly weren’t aware of the situation. I—I felt rather sure of it. Not,” he added hurriedly, “that there was anything wrong in Mr. Brierly’s—ah—acquaintanceship with Miss Fithian. I am certain there was not. As a matter of fact I introduced the. two myself, long before your illness. Sometime last spring. Mr. Brierly and I were lunching together, he dropped by the hospital, and Miss Fithian happened to be in my office.” Dr. Smedley gave me a look of deep dejection. “But possibly you can understand why I wasn’t too pleased to have Dorothy Fithian under your roof, Miss Tilbury.”
“Under my sister’s roof, you mean!” Shock and anger fought in me, and anger won. “Why haven’t you spoken to me of this, Dr. Smedley? Why didn’t you speak at the time?”
“Please, Miss Tilbury. You were much too ill to be disturbed by family matters. As for your sister, what was I to say to her? I never,” Dr. Smedley spoke firmly now, “—interfere between man and wife. A doctor who stirs up domestic friction doesn’t stay in practice long. There’s such a thing as professional ethics.”
I was far too angry with Dr. Smedley to take in the full significance of his information or to be a prey to those doubts and fears which were to assail me later. I opened my mouth to express my own ideas on the subject of ethics.
But Dr. Smedley spoke first. Quite deliberately he said, “I think, Miss Tilbury, you overestimate the importance of Fred Brierly’s interest in Miss Fithian, an interest which I seriously doubt went beyond half a dozen lunches or an occasional gift of flowers.” He looked me full in the eye. “Under the present circumstances it’s an awkward situation but not, I feel, important. Indeed,” he said, “I considered the whole matter so completely unimportant that I quite forgot to mention your brother-in-law’s name to the authorities.”
That stopped me. I sat very still, and faced the fact that Fred had shared half a dozen lunches with Dorothy and sent her flowers weeks before she entered my house. And Dorothy now was murdered. I remembered how Marian had introduced Fred to the nurse, and how he hadn’t said a word of any previous acquaintanceship, but instead had greeted her as one greets a stranger. What would Inspector Chant make of such a situation? Would he consider it unimportant?
Dr. Smedley had flung his bombshell, and had nothing more to say. Presently Simon and I departed from the luxurious office and left him sitting there. We descended the same rear stairs that we had been requested to use when going up. Wide, carpeted stairs as befitted Grosvenor Private Hospital. These stairs looked in on airy sunlit halls, and rows and rows of numbered doors. Everything seemed very quiet. The white-clad nurses who flitted along the corridors paused occasionally to gather into little knots but their conversations were quick and furtive. A red-faced man was wheeled by on a stretcher, and I heard his loud complaint that he had been denied his morning paper. A woman shaped like a dinner-bell, starched and creaking, suddenly appeared from nowhere and caused three younger nurses to part in hasty guilt. No one noticed us as we neared the second floor.
My thoughts were with Fred Brierly. I was preoccupied with what I was to say to him when next we met, but as we reached the second floor something happened which put my brother-in-law from my mind.
Simon pointed out that we were passing the staff physician’s living quarters, and, glancing into the hall, I saw the sign on the door. The door was directly off the stairs and the sign was thumb-tacked to the wooden frame. “Do not disturb,” it commanded in printed capitals and underneath a hasty hand had written, “This means you and you and you!” It was signed “Dr. Anderson.”
I can’t explain the impulse which made me leave the stairs just to stand before that door and examine that mute and unrevealing sign. Nevertheless I stood there for several seconds, while Simon called impatiently. My eyesight isn’t really good, and the sign was rather low. I crouched to get a better look. I was in that undignified position when suddenly the door opened. Jeremy Chant looked out at me. His expression was unsurprised.
“How do you do, Miss Tilbury,” he said politely. “Unfortunately the key-hole is a little small. Were you thinking of coming in?”
9
There was a rather awful silence. Then I think that I surprised Inspector Chant. I said, “Thank you very much, I believe I will,” and stepped into the bedroom which Dr. Kirkland Anderson had quit the night before. I selected a chair and sat in it. The inspector’s mouth dropped open. Behind him, in the hall, I caught a glimpse of Simon’s horrified face.
“Margaret! What in the world—”
“Inspector Chant,” I said equably, “asked me in. I daresay he wants to tell us what he has learned about the murder. Isn’t that correct, Inspector?”
Chant managed to nod. “Won’t you join us, Dr. Hargreaves? We’re rather cramped in here, but if you’ll take the other chair I’ll gladly stand.”
Simon sat down in the other chair. I looked around. The room was nicely furnished, scrupulously clean but so small that the two chairs, a bed, a student’s desk and a minute chest of drawers crowded it. Evidently the architect who laid out Grosvenor thought of fledgling doctors as midgets, or, at any rate, as considerably smaller than the average patient.
There were two photographs on the chest of drawers, one of Anderson himself in his graduating gown, his expression remote, mature and serious. Even in the photograph it was evident that he was extremely blond. The other photograph, an enlargement of a snapshot, showed a handsome girl, broad-shouldered, taller than the average, standing on a beach. She had quantities of long, fair hair. This, I was to discover, was Nancy Anderson, the physician’s only sister. A bathrobe was draped upon the bed, a pair of slippers lay under it. Upon the desk were piles of paper neatly stacked, covered with small meticulous writing.
Beyond the desk an open door revealed a laboratory quite unlike those to which movie-going had accustomed me. The place where Dr. Anderson had spent uncounted hours was bare, not too spacious, uncarpeted and blazing white. It was hung with shelves which contained retorts and tubes and big glass jars of alcohol; it was lined with cages in which small, furry creatures moved to and fro. I don’t like rodents even when they’re caged, and I didn’t like the looks of various unpleasant objects floating in the jars of alcohol.
The inspector was watching me, and waiting.
“Possibly,” I said with dignity, “I should explain what I was doing in the hall just now. I was simply looking at that sign outside, wondering why and when Dr. Anderson had put it there.”
Chant’s gaze was half perplexed and half admiring. “You’re a remarkable woman, Miss Tilbury. I have been wondering about that very point myself. I know when he posted the sign—just a moment before he left the hospital—but if we knew why we might be farther along in this case.”
It struck me that he looked tired, and also that his manner was surprisingly friendly. I had felt, when he left Broad Acres a few hours before, a definite enmity in his attitude toward my family. His flat statement that Marian was a liar stuck like a thorn in my memory.
“First of all,” the inspector’s smile was almost winning, “—you’ll be relieved to hear that I’ve changed my mind about Mrs. Brierly. Certain developments,” he added slowly, “have led me to conclude that your sister is, just as she said, unable to explain the meaning of that telephone call.”
I looked at him. Was his disarming manner merely a strategic shift? Or was his candor real? I said firmly, “My sister is anxious to clear up the mystery, as of course we all are.”