A Deadly Affection

by Cuyler Overholt

  “I don’t want to tell her about the disease. Or the Fiskes. Not until we’re sure. She has enough to deal with already.”

  “You’re the doctor,” he said with a shrug.

  A few moments later, we pulled up alongside Eliza’s cell. She was hunched on the far end of the iron bed, dressed in coarse prison issue. She lifted her head on sight of me but made no move to get up.

  The assistant retrieved a small stool from further down the hall and set it in front of the cell door. “There’s only the one, so you’ll have to take turns.”

  “Can’t we go in inside?” I asked. “I’m her doctor. I’d like to examine her while I’m here.”

  “Sorry, miss, but thems the rules.”

  Simon slipped a dollar bill into the young woman’s hand. “And the best part of rules is breaking them, don’t you think?”

  She glanced down the hall as her hand folded over the bill. “You’ve got fifteen minutes,” she said, inserting her key into the lock.

  Simon picked up the stool and ushered me into the cell.

  I hurried in and knelt before Eliza. Her eyes seemed glazed over, and her face was dreadfully pale. “Eliza, how are you feeling? You look exhausted.”

  “I can’t sleep,” she said, massaging her temple with a trembling hand. “I hear things moving at night. I think it must be rats.”

  “Try throwing some coffee grounds around your bed, if you can get some,” Simon suggested, drawing up beside me. “Mothballs would be even better.”

  She frowned up at him uncertainly.

  “This is Mr. Shaw,” I said, getting to my feet. “He’s the Tammany election captain for your district. He’s here to see if he can help.”

  She sat up a little straighter, smoothing a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

  “I had to tell him, Eliza,” I added. “About Joy and the doctor. He needed to know if he was going to help.”

  “Don’t worry,” Simon said. “I’m not going to repeat anything to the police. But I would like to hear your story firsthand.”

  Her large eyes were fixed on his face. Whatever she saw there seemed to reassure her, for she nodded solemnly and said, “All right.”

  “Good!” I said, relieved that everyone was getting along. “Then let’s get started.” I positioned the stool in front of her and sat down so that Simon had to stand behind me. Though I couldn’t very well object to his asking questions, I intended to remain firmly in charge. “We don’t have much time, Eliza, so why don’t you begin by telling Mr. Shaw what you heard while you were waiting for Dr. Hauptfuhrer in the examining room?”

  She did as I asked, repeating everything she’d told me in the detaining cell at the magistrate’s court. I listened with half an ear to make sure nothing had changed in the retelling, watching at the same time for any signs of chorea I might have missed earlier. This, however, proved to be a frustrating exercise. According to the literature, early symptoms could be as subtle as an exaggerated gesture, or a moment of unexplained clumsiness, or even just excessive restlessness. I didn’t know how I was supposed to distinguish the normal from the early-symptomatic with any certainty. That slow rotation of her shoulder, for instance; was that an involuntary muscle contraction, or was she just stretching her neck? And what about the slight tremble in her arm when she wiped the back of her wrist across her forehead? Did that indicate an early loss of muscular control, or was it merely a product of shock and fatigue? Only in hindsight, it seemed to me, could the existence of disease at this early stage be absolutely confirmed or denied.

  There was no question, however, that she wasn’t well. She kept rubbing her temples as she labored through her narrative, squinting up over my shoulder at Simon as if through a haze of pain. I could hear the intake of her every breath and see her teeth clench with the effort of continuing.

  “Eliza,” I finally broke in, as she swayed on the thin cot, “are you all right?”

  “I’m feeling a little dizzy.”

  “Have you had anything to eat?” I asked, beginning with the simplest explanation.

  “Some soup last night.”

  “What about breakfast?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “You need to eat, to keep up your strength.”

  “I just couldn’t,” she repeated, her eyes welling with tears.

  Remembering the congealed substance I’d seen on the trays in the hallway, I understood why she might find the thought of breakfast upsetting, although I guessed her teary response was a product of underlying exhaustion as well. “I’ll talk to the warden before we leave about bringing you some proper food on my next visit.” I smiled encouragingly. “And some mothballs.”

  She nodded, but her expression was so distant, I couldn’t be sure she was even listening.

  Twisting around on the stool, I murmured to Simon, “We’ve got to do something. She’s sick, and this place isn’t helping.”

  “What do you think is wrong with her?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know; it could be the grippe, or something she ate. But whatever it is, if we don’t do something soon, I’m afraid it will only get worse.”

  “There’s an infirmary downstairs. We could ask them to bring her down.”

  Prison infirmaries weren’t known for a high standard of care under the best of circumstances; with the prison currently overcrowded, the likelihood that she would get even cursory attention seemed slim. “I doubt they could do much for her here. Is there any way we could have her moved to a private facility?”

  He looked at Eliza for a long moment, his lips pursed, then back at me. “I’d like to ask her a few questions.”

  I supposed I couldn’t very well refuse. “Fine, but try to keep it short,” I said as I reluctantly gave up the stool. “We don’t want to overtax her.”

  “Don’t worry. This won’t take long.” He settled himself onto the stool, propping his elbows on his splayed knees, looking utterly at ease on the awkward little seat as I hovered anxiously behind him. “Mrs. Miner, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get straight to the point.”

  “All right,” she said evenly.

  “Did you kill Dr. Hauptfuhrer?”

  I clucked in dismay, trying to step around him. “What kind of a quest—”

  “No,” Eliza replied. “I didn’t.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you for hating him,” he said. “He took your child from you.”

  “I don’t hate him. I never did. I just didn’t want him to take her.”

  He studied her for a long moment, saying nothing, while she steadily returned his gaze. “You told the police you arrived at the doctor’s before office hours. Why so early?”

  “I’d waited for so long,” she said softly. “Once I made up my mind to ask him, I just couldn’t bear to wait any longer.”

  “For your prescription, you mean?” he asked with a frown. “Were you in pain?”

  “No, I mean I couldn’t wait to ask him where Joy was.”

  Simon scratched his head. “So you’re saying that the reason you went to the doctor’s office that morning was actually to ask him about your daughter?”

  I shifted uneasily on my feet. I hadn’t told Simon that part, fearing he’d distort its importance.

  Eliza glanced at me over his shoulder. “Why, yes, didn’t Dr. Summerford tell you? She was the one who gave me the idea, after class. She said I had a right to know what happened to my baby. I’d always felt too ashamed to ask, but Dr. Summerford made me see it differently. I don’t think I’d ever have found the courage without her.”

  “Is that right?” he asked slowly. “And what exactly did Dr. Summerford say, if you recall?”

  “Oh, I remember it very clearly,” she answered, her face luminous in its pallor. “She said that Dr. Hauptfuhrer should have let me keep Joy, and that he was the one who’d acted badly
, not I.”

  “Actually,” I broke in from behind Simon’s shoulder, “I believe what I said was—”

  Simon threw a hand up into the air to silence me. “So when you went to see the doctor,” he continued, “you were of the mind that what happened was his fault, and that you had a right to know your daughter’s whereabouts. Is that about right?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “It must have been quite a letdown when he wouldn’t tell you.”

  “Oh, but he was going to.”

  “Really? You mean he agreed?”

  “Well, not at first. But then I told him that if he didn’t, I’d let everyone know what he’d done.”

  “And that did the trick?”

  “Yes. I suppose he believed I’d do it, although I wasn’t really sure at the time.”

  “So there was no more need to argue.”

  “That’s right.”

  He leaned back on the stool. “You must have been very convincing.”

  She hesitated, apparently confused by his tone. “Yes. I suppose.”

  “And did he tell you where your daughter was?”

  “Well, no, he went into his office first to get her records. I’d told him I wanted proof, so that I could be sure he was telling me the truth. And that’s—that’s when somebody killed him.”

  “That’s when somebody killed him,” Simon repeated. “Somebody who’d been waiting inside his office all along.”

  She nodded.

  He squinted up at the ceiling. “But didn’t you say the doctor went into his office earlier to finish up some business, after he let you into the examination room?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “And there was no one with him then?”

  “I don’t think so. At least, I didn’t see anyone through the connecting door when he went in.”

  “We believe the murderer came in later, through the side door,” I said. “While the doctor was in the examining room with Eliza.”

  “I didn’t see anything about that in the police report,” Simon said.

  “That’s because Maloney left it out.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “I don’t know,” I shot back. “Why don’t you ask him?” I saw his shoulder muscles stiffen.

  “Mrs. Miner,” he continued, “you said you heard a shout. Is there any other evidence you know of—besides the dead body, I mean—that suggests another person was in that room with the doctor?”

  “She told you, she heard the door slam,” I answered.

  His hand shot back up into the air. “Mrs. Miner?”

  She looked uncertainly from Simon to me. “I heard the door slam,” she repeated faintly.

  Simon turned then and looked at me. I didn’t like the expression on his face.

  “Time’s up,” said the matron’s assistant, appearing at the door.

  “We’re not finished,” I told her.

  Simon stood. “I’ve heard enough.”

  “Wait.” I dug a dollar out of my purse and pushed it through the bars to the assistant. “Just five more minutes; please.”

  She pocketed the money with a nod. “Just five, then. I’ll wait at the end of the hall.”

  Dropping back onto the vacated stool, I asked Eliza, “Did you ever feel the slightest desire to harm the doctor, at any time? Tell us the truth.”

  “No, never.”

  “Did you take the sword off his desk?”

  “No.”

  “Not even just to threaten him?”

  “I never touched it, I swear! I never even knew he had a sword until I saw it lying there on the floor.”

  “And you had no other way to find out Joy’s whereabouts, isn’t that true? If you killed the doctor, you would destroy your only chance of finding her.”

  She nodded, biting her lip.

  I shot a defiant look at Simon over my shoulder.

  “Ask her about Dr. Huntington,” he said.

  I turned slowly back to Eliza. “Did Dr. Hauptfuhrer ever ask you to be examined by another physician?”

  “No,” she answered with a frown. “Why would he?”

  I hesitated, choosing my words with care. “He seemed to think you might have inherited a…a certain condition from your father, that might make you more prone to violence. Apparently, he’d been planning to have an expert examine you.”

  “He never said anything about it to me,” she muttered, rubbing her stomach with the heel of her hand. She seemed distracted, as though attending to some internal discomfort.

  “Eliza,” I asked again, peering into her face, “are you all right?”

  She winced, then bent forward with a stifled moan.

  “What is it?” I exclaimed as she started rocking back and forth on the cot.

  She groaned again, bending lower over her knees.

  “Are you having stomach cramps?” I asked, remembering the putrid food on the breakfast trays. “Eliza, please, talk to me.”

  Suddenly the rocking stopped, and she sat back up. Her eyes were wide and staring in her chalk-white face.

  The matron’s assistant had appeared at the door. “What’s the matter with her?”

  “I don’t know.” As I started getting up from the stool, Eliza’s eyes fluttered shut and her head dropped toward her chest. Before I could reach her, she keeled to one side and slid off the bed, landing in a heap on the floor.

  “Eliza!” I cried, kneeling beside her.

  “I’ll get the matron,” the assistant said and dashed off down the hall.

  I grasped Eliza’s wrist, trying to determine whether she had fainted or had had some kind of seizure. There was none of the loss of muscle tone I would have expected with an atonic seizure, nor did she have an elevated pulse. In fact, it seemed abnormally slow.

  “Eliza,” I said, patting her cheek. “Eliza, wake up…”

  She was still unconscious when the matron arrived a few minutes later, followed by two men with a stretcher. The men picked her up by the armpits and dragged her into the corridor, where they dumped her onto the waiting stretcher.

  “I’m coming with her,” I said as they started down the hall.

  “Visitors aren’t allowed in the infirmary,” the matron said, waving me off.

  “But I’m her doctor.”

  “Dr. Orly will see to her,” the matron said firmly, blocking my path.

  I didn’t know who Dr. Orly was, but I had no intention of leaving Eliza in his hands. I swiveled around to ask Simon if he could get the warden to assign her to my care, but to my astonishment, the corridor behind me was empty. Simon had disappeared.

  Chapter Sixteen

  He wasn’t anywhere in the annex. Nor did I see him in the courtyard, or in the main building when I was escorted back inside. As I emerged from the Centre Street entrance, I looked up and down the street—and just caught a glimpse of him disappearing around the corner.

  I started after him, zigzagging through the clusters of reporters and lawyers and bondsmen’s runners loitering outside the prison wall. He was walking quickly with his head bent forward and his hands jammed into his pockets. I broke into a run and caught up to him under the connecting bridge. “Simon, wait!”

  He turned. I stopped short at the look of cold fury on his face.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he spat out.

  “If you’re referring to my conversation with Eliza at the mission,” I said, trying not to cringe, “I didn’t believe it was relevant.”

  He shook his head. “Here I was thinking that you might have changed, that you might actually care what happens to this woman, when all the time, you were just trying to save your own arse.”

  “That’s not true! I do care what happens to Eliza!”

  He thrust his face into mine. “All
you care about is what people would say if they thought you’d provoked a patient to commit a murder.”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “Is it? You convinced an unstable woman that her doctor had betrayed her, and the next day, that doctor was dead.”

  “Eliza isn’t a murderer.”

  He straightened. “I suppose you’re going to tell me she doesn’t have the disease either.”

  “That’s right, I am.”

  “People don’t drop into a dead faint for no reason.”

  “They don’t do it because they have Huntington’s chorea either! It’s not a symptom of the disease.”

  “If you’re so sure she’s innocent, why were you afraid to tell me her real reason for seeing the doctor?”

  “I was concerned that you might draw the wrong conclusion, just as you have done.”

  “Right. So you’ve never entertained the possibility that she might have actually killed him?”

  “Of course I have. I’ve been asking myself whether she could have done it from the moment I found out she was arrested. And I still say the answer is no.”

  “What a load of malarkey,” he said with disgust. “You can’t even be honest with yourself, can you? You’re too much of a coward to admit you made a mistake—a mistake that may have cost a man his life. Well, I’ve had enough of you and your lies. Good-bye to you, and good riddance.” He wheeled around and started across the street.

  I watched him go for the space of several pounding heartbeats, before ten years of pent-up anger let loose inside of me. I started after him, reaching him just as he was climbing the opposite curb and pulling him around by his coat sleeve. “Who do you think you are to speak to me like that? You, of all people! What right do you have to question my honesty?”

  A horn blared behind me. I turned to see an electric motorcar bouncing toward me over the rough pavement and leaped up on the sidewalk.

  “What right?” Simon asked, landing beside me. “Can your memory possibly be that short? I suppose you thought it was very amusing, putting ridiculous ideas in the stable boy’s head, bringing his blood to a boil before you tossed him out like so much dirty dishwater to go off on your grand tour.”