by Ed McBain
“Estelle Lasser didn’t kill her husband, if that’s what you think.”
“No one said she did.”
“Then why do you want to know about her condition? She’s been hopelessly out of her mind since September 1939 when Tony left for—” Matthewson clamped his mouth shut. “Never mind,” he said. “I wish you’d get out of here, sir. I wish you would leave me alone.”
Hawes continued to sit calmly on the other side of Matthewson’s desk. Calmly he said, “Dr. Matthewson, we are investigating a murder.”
“I don’t care what you—”
“We can bring charges against you for impeding the progress of an investigation, but I would prefer not to do that, sir. I’ll tell you simply that it is entirely within the realm of possibility for Mrs. Lasser to have killed her own husband. It is also within the realm of possibility for Anthony Lasser to have—”
“Both of those suppositions are entirely absurd,” Matthewson said.
“If they’re so damn absurd, sir, maybe you’d like to tell me just why.”
“Because Estelle hasn’t been able to recognize her husband or anyone else since that September in 1939. And Tony Lasser hasn’t stepped out of that house on Westerfield Street since he returned home from Virginia in June 1942. That’s why. You are dealing with a delicately constructed symbiosis here, Mr. Hawes, and if you tamper with it, you are liable to destroy two people who have known enough misery in their lives.”
“Tell me about it,” Hawes said.
“I have told you all I care to tell you. I will contribute nothing further to your cause. I ask you in all humility to please, please leave these people alone. They could not possibly have had anything to do with the murder of George Lasser. If you lift this rock, Mr. Hawes, you will find only blind, albino creatures scurrying helplessly from the sun. I beg you not to do that.”
“Thank you, Dr. Matthewson,” Hawes said.
He rose and left the office.
Hawes was not a firm believer in old adages, but there was an old adage that ran to the tune of “Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire,” and there sure as hell seemed to be a lot of smoke gushing up from Estelle Lasser and her son Tony. The first thing that occurred to Hawes was the possibility that someone had lodged a complaint against Estelle before she’d been institutionalized in 1939, so he ambled over to the New Essex Police Station, introduced himself, and asked to see their records for that year. The New Essex Police, always anxious to cooperate with big city detectives—ha!—happily opened their files to him, and Hawes spent a slow hour and a half perusing the misdemeanors and felonies that had plagued that fair hamlet back in the good old days. Unfortunately Mrs. Lasser had committed neither felony nor misdemeanor; nowhere in the records was there listed any official complaint against her. Hawes thanked the police and walked over to the New Essex Hospital, where he similarly requested a look at their voluminous medical files.
An ambulance call had been made to the home of Mr. George Lasser, 1529 Westerfield Street, on the night of September 11, 1939. Mrs. Lasser had been admitted to the hospital at 8:27 P.M. for observation and had been transferred to Buena Vista, in the city, for further tests on September 13, 1939. Hawes thanked the clerk in the records room and then walked to the railroad station. He had a quick hot dog and orange drink at a stand there and then caught the 12:14 back to the city. He changed his seat three times, moving to a different car each time because it seemed someone on the railroad had decided to turn up the air conditioning. This was perfectly reasonable since the system probably hadn’t been functioning properly during July and August and, it now being January, what better time to check it? But Hawes nonetheless changed his seat three times, seeking warmth, and finally found a facsimile of it by concentrating on the crossed legs of a redhead for the remainder of the trip.
The psychiatrist he spoke to at Buena Vista was a youngish man who had been at the hospital for no more than five years and who did not remember Estelle Lasser. He was reluctant to open the hospital files without either a court order or a release from the patient, but Hawes explained that he was seeking information which might be pertinent in a murder case and that he was certain he could obtain the necessary court order simply by making the necessary trip downtown. The psychiatrist was still reluctant to dig out Estelle Lasser’s records because he was fully aware that she could sue him for divulging this information to the police, but Hawes assured the psychiatrist that Mrs. Lasser was still ill and hardly in condition to go suing anyone. With a great deal of muttering and head-shaking, the psychiatrist went to the files and informed Hawes that Mrs. Lasser had indeed undergone a series of psychiatric tests during the month of September in 1939. The doctor looked up at this point and mused that Hitler was invading Poland at about that same time. Hawes nodded and agreed that it sure was a small world.
“Can you tell me the facts of the case?” he asked.
“Yes, certainly. On September 11, 1939, about a week after her young son had been sent off to school, Mrs. Lasser—”
“What school was that? Does it say?”
“Yes. Soames Academy. In Richmond, Virginia.”
“That’s a private school, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Go on,” Hawes said.
“Well, Mrs. Lasser tried to kill herself, that’s all,” the psychiatrist said. “I see.”
“It turned out that this was the third time she’d attempted suicide since her son had left for school at the beginning of September. This time her husband really became alarmed and called for an ambulance. She was taken to the hospital in New Essex. They made the preliminary examination and then suggested that we conclude the tests. We have a greater psychiatric facility here, you see.”
“I see. And what was the diagnosis, Doctor?”
“She was a schizophrenic of the paranoid type,” the doctor said.
“And the disposition of the case?”
“We told Mr. Lasser that his wife needed extensive hospitalization and therapy and asked that he commit her to an institution. He refused, apparently upon the advice of his family physician. We asked for a legal commitment.”
“What’s the difference?” Hawes asked.
“Well, if a person is legally committed, it means that she cannot be returned to society until the director of the hospital recommends her release.”
“And would her case then go before the court?”
“Not unless there were criminal charges pending. I don’t believe there were any here.” He consulted his records. “No, there were none. Her release, then, would have been left entirely to the discretion of the hospital director.”
“Where was Mrs. Lasser sent? To a state hospital?”
“No, sir. Mr. Lasser requested that she be sent to a private institution. The request was granted by the court.”
“The court? I thought you just said—”
“Yes, Mr. Hawes, the court. There were no criminal charges, you understand, but a legal commitment must be requested in a court. In this state a superior court. And two qualified psychiatrists must sign the commitment papers.”
“Aren’t private institutions expensive?” Hawes asked.
“What?”
“Private institutions. Are they…?”
“Well, yes, they are.”
“How much do they cost?”
“Well, a good one will charge somewhere between two and three hundred dollars a week.”
“And was Mrs. Lasser sent to a good one?”
“Yes, sir. She was sent to the Mercer Sanitarium, right here in the city. It has an excellent reputation.”
“I see,” Hawes said. “Thank you very much, Doctor. You’ve been most helpful.”
The Mercer Sanitarium was on a tree-lined side street in Riverhead, at the other end of the city. Hawes had gone from the squadroom to New Essex, which was about fifteen miles east of Riverhead, and then to the Buena Vista Hospital, which was about fifteen miles west of Riverhead, and then back uptown again to
the tree-lined side street upon which sat the huge white Georgian Colonial surrounded by a simple black wrought-iron fence. There was no sign outside the sanitarium, nor were there any whitefrocked attendants or nurses in evidence. The fence around the place was low enough for a child to have leaped. There were no bars or wire mesh on any of the windows fronting the street. In short, there was no indication—save for the fact that it was the only building on the block—that this was a place for the mentally ill.
Hawes announced himself to a receptionist wearing a white nurse’s uniform, telling her he was a detective, and showing her his shield and his ID card. The receptionist seemed singularly unimpressed. She asked Hawes to please be seated, and then she opened a huge mahogany door and was gone for several moments. When she returned, she asked Hawes if he would mind waiting just a short while, and Hawes said he wouldn’t mind waiting and then glanced at his watch. This was Friday, the beginning of the weekend, and he had a dinner date with Christine.
At the end of what seemed like a half hour but what was actually ten minutes, the mahogany door opened and a very goodlooking woman in a tailored blue suit, perhaps forty-five years old, her brown hair pulled to the back of her head in a severe bun, a pleasant welcoming smile on her face, stepped into the small entrance alcove and said, “Detective Hawes?”
Hawes rose from where he was sitting on the bench. “Yes,” he said, and extended his hand. “How do you do?”
“How do you do?” the woman said, taking his hand. “I’m Mrs. Mercer. Won’t you please come in?”
He followed Mrs. Mercer through the doorway and into an office paneled with the same rich mahogany as the door. She gestured to a paisley wing chair in front of a very large desk, the top of which was covered with a sheet of glass perhaps a half-inch thick. The desk was piled high with what Hawes assumed were case histories in worn blue binders. A framed diploma on the wall behind the desk advised Hawes that someone named Geraldine Porter (he figured this was Mrs. Mercer’s maiden name) had been graduated from Boston University with a Bachelor of Science degree. A second framed document told him that Geraldine Porter Mercer (he’d been right about the maiden name) had completed the course of study for a Master’s degree in psychology at Cornell University. There were other framed documents on the wall, all of which were awards or commendations of one kind or another from groups as disparate as the AMA and Hadassah, some acknowledging the high standards and service to the medical community of the Mercer Sanitarium, and others honoring Mrs. Mercer personally.
“Yes, Detective Hawes, what can I do for you?” she asked. There was a broad a in her speech, partially obscured by years of living here in Riverhead. Hawes smiled in recognition, and she smiled back at him and said, “Yes?”
“Boston,” he answered simply.
“Close,” she said. “West Newton.”
“The same thing.”
“Possibly,” Mrs. Mercer said, and smiled again. “You still haven’t told me why you’re here.”
“A man named George Lasser was killed last Friday afternoon,” Hawes said. He watched her face. Not a trace of recognition flickered in the blue eyes. The full mouth remained placid. There was in her manner only an attitude of polite expectancy. She said nothing. “His wife’s name was Estelle Valentine Lasser,” Hawes said.
“Oh,” Mrs. Mercer said. “Yes.”
“Does the name mean anything to you?”
“Yes. She was a patient here.”
“That’s right.”
“Yes, I remember. This was quite some time ago, Mr. Hawes.” She smiled and said, “Do I call you Mr. Hawes or Detective Hawes—which? It’s a little puzzling.”
“Whichever you prefer,” Hawes said, smiling back.
“Mr. Hawes then,” she said. “Oh, I would say Mrs. Lasser was with us in the very early days of the sanitarium. My husband opened the hospital in 1935, you see, and this must have been shortly after that.”
“Mrs. Lasser was committed in 1939,” Hawes said.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Can you tell me about it?”
“Well, what would you like to know?”
“How much did she pay?”
“What?”
“This is a private hospital,” Hawes said. “How much was Mr. Lasser paying for her care in 1939?”
“Well, I wouldn’t know exactly. I would have to check our records. As a matter of fact, I doubt if they’d go back that far.”
“Your financial records, do you mean?”
“Yes. Our medical records go back to the beginning, of course.”
“Well, can you make a guess at what your charges were in 1939? Approximately?”
“I would say a hundred dollars a week. Or perhaps a hundred and a quarter. Certainly no more than that.”
“And Mr. Lasser agreed to pay these charges?”
“I assume so. His wife was a patient here, so I assume…”
“Did he ever miss any payments?”
“I really don’t know. Mr. Hawes, if this is important, I’ll see if we have the records. But I—”
“We can check it later,” Hawes said. “Can you tell me how long Mrs. Lasser was a patient here?”
“She was released in June 1942 on the recommendation of my husband.”
“And was your husband convinced at that time that Mrs. Lasser was legally sane?”
“Legally sane is a meaningless phrase,” Mrs. Mercer said. “It has been forced upon the medical profession by our courts. If you mean did my husband believe Mrs. Lasser was ready to return to her family, yes, my husband believed so. If you mean did he believe Mrs. Lasser would no longer attempt to harm herself or anyone else, yes, my husband believed so. Moreover, this was an opportune time for her to return home. Her illness started when her son left for school, you know. Or at least that was when it first made itself manifest. Well, her son was eighteen and returning home from school that June. My husband’s timing was very carefully calculated. Naturally he had no way of foreseeing what would happen to Tony.”
“What did happen, Mrs. Mercer?”
“Well…have you met him?”
“Yes.”
“He has developed a phobic reaction to the outdoors,” Mrs. Mercer said.
“Which means?”
“Which means he will not leave the house.”
“Will not, or cannot?”
“Cannot, if you prefer.”
“I’m asking, Mrs. Mercer. Is his leaving the house a matter of choice? Or would it be impossible for him to leave it?”
“From what I understand, Mr. Hawes—and I assure you we have not done a follow-up on Mrs. Lasser since, oh, 1945—from what I understand, Tony Lasser has not left that house in New Essex since he returned from prep school in June 1942. That is a long, long time, Mr. Hawes. Are you familiar with the nature of phobic reactions?”
“No, not exactly.”
“A phobia is really—well, how can I put it?—a binding of anxiety. Once the anxiety is bound—”
“What’s anxiety?” Hawes asked.
“Ah, a twentieth-century man who doesn’t know the meaning of anxiety,” Mrs. Mercer said, and smiled.
“Is that bad?”
“If you’ve never experienced it, it’s good,” she answered. “Anxiety is a state of apprehension or psychic tension found in most forms of mental disorders. In Tony Lasser’s case, he has chosen to deal with his anxiety by accepting the symptoms of a phobia instead.”
“But why won’t he leave the house?” Hawes asked.
“Because it would be extremely painful for him if he did.”
“In what way?”
“He might begin trembling or sweating. He might suffer palpitations. He might feel faint or might actually faint. He might experience a sinking sensation in his stomach…” Mrs. Mercer shrugged. “In other words, extreme anxiety.”
“But in spite of all this, could he leave the house if he wanted to?”
“Well…”
“I mean, if
the house were on fire, for example, he probably would try to get out, isn’t that so?”
“Probably, yes. Depending upon how strong his phobia is. Generally speaking, I suppose we could say that the real fear of fire, the immediate presence of fire, might be stronger than any phobic reaction in such a person.”
“Then Lasser could have left the house,” Hawes said. “He could have murdered his father.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Mrs. Mercer said, and shrugged. “Possibly. There would have been a great deal of anxiety involved, of course. But possibly he might have risked that if the urge to kill were strong enough.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Mercer.”
“I think it’s possible he left the house, Mr. Hawes. I do not, however, think it’s very probable. Tony Lasser is not a patient of ours, so I don’t really know much about the origins and meaning of his phobia. But I do know that the last time he left that house, in 1939, his mother tried to kill herself. It is not very probable that he would try it again.”
“You mean he’s afraid she might try suicide again?”
“Oh, that’s much too surface, Mr. Hawes. If the answer were that simple, I doubt very much there’d be a phobic reaction at all. I would rather suggest that perhaps he would like her to try suicide again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Perhaps he wants his mother dead. But he knows that if he leaves the house, she may attempt suicide again. This would grant his secret wish, and the prospect of such a wish coming true is so frightening, and brings on such an anxiety, that he develops a phobia instead.”
“It sounds very complicated,” Hawes said, and sighed.
“Human beings are very complicated, Mr. Hawes. Even welladjusted ones.”
“I suppose so,” Hawes said, and smiled. He rose and extended his hand. “Thank you very much for your time, Mrs. Mercer. I know you’re busy.”
“But must you go?” she asked. “My husband is at a staff meeting right now, but he should be down shortly. We generally have tea at four.” She smiled. “An old Boston custom, you know.”
“Yes, I heard about the party you had there,” Hawes answered.
“Won’t you stay?”
“I was raised drinking tea, Mrs. Mercer,” Hawes said.