The detective who interviewed me introduced himself as Detective Ferguson. He was quite a bit older than the Lieutenant Detective at our own precinct and was a full detective as opposed to a lieutenant. His dark hair was interrupted by two very white streaks at his temples that ran toward the back of his head with a comically sharp line of demarcation, giving him an abstractly skunklike air. Every time he asked me a question, he tapped out the beat of the words on the table between us with his forefinger, as if sending a wire over an invisible telegraph machine. Unlike the Lieutenant Detective, this Detective Ferguson took a straightforward line with his questions. It was a bit unsettling, as I could tell he was unsatisfied with my answers and that we were eventually headed for an all-out impasse.
Even more unsettling was the fact there was also a young patrolman in the room I believe was training to be a detective, and the kid bore a strong resemblance to Teddy. Perhaps I am imagining it, but in my memory, he had sandy hair and an earnest gaze and the same lanky, puppyish body, with narrow shoulders and long limbs he had not quite grown into. To think: Only hours ago I had been drinking cocktails and chatting with Teddy. It had not sunk in yet that Teddy was really dead, and having his twin sit across from me at the interview table did very little to help me come to grips with things. I think I would’ve been more at ease, too, if the kid had talked. If he had, he might’ve demonstrated a funny accent or odd mannerism—something, anything, to dispel the notion the two young men were in any way related—and then the distraction caused by his presence would’ve been alleviated. But as it was, he remained absolutely taciturn throughout the duration of my interview, content to sit in silence and scribble furiously into a notebook. He remained so, that is, until I had my little “episode.”
Of course, now that I’ve had some time to reflect upon the situation, I see the ways in which this interview marked yet one more irreversible turning point for me. In my defense, I was not exactly myself that night. Too much drink and the shock of seeing a body had very likely warped my perception of things. And so I can hardly be blamed for the scene that occurred during my interview. But I suppose it’s important that I tell this part, for I’m sure my outburst helped speed me on my way to the particular institution in which I now find myself. I will try to recount, to the best of my memory, the exchange as it took place.
The interview promised to be interminable, stretching on into the early hours of dawn. Several times the officers and the typist took little breaks, and I was left alone in the interview room, sitting very still as the air around me stagnated, listening to the ticking of the wall clock, my eyelids closing with weariness. I say all this because I believe I also was suffering from sleep deprivation, and this too may help explain my state of mind. In any case, each time the detective reentered the room, he did so with a renewed charge of energy and a fresh stack of file folders, not to mention a fresh cup of coffee. Knowing a little bit about how these things go, I understood they were taking statements from people. Most likely the entire hotel staff had been interviewed, and perhaps some onlookers on the street as well. The detective was biding his time with me while the eyewitness accusations accumulated and strengthened his case.
I believe my own interview went off the rails somewhere around the time the detective informed me that Odalie had already given a statement (Odalie!). I was very confused; this was both good and bad news to me. At first, I felt a flood of relief. I had been worried about her, but if she had indeed given a statement like the detective said she did, then at the very least it meant she was in a physically sound state. And yet when I thought about what had likely occurred on the terrace, my distress over her disappearance very quickly converted into distress over the contents of her statement. I wondered what the police might know about Odalie, feeling anxious over what I ought not reveal. Detective Ferguson pressed on, asking me questions aimed at diagnosing my relationship to Teddy and my living situation with Odalie. It began benignly enough, and I was not uncomfortable when he first took this tack, leaning back in his chair with an open posture and adopting a casual tone as he put some very direct questions to me.
“I take it, Miss Baker, you and Mr. Tricott were carrying on a relationship of a . . . romantic variety?” the detective asked me. My brow furrowed in confusion.
“Sorry—me and who?”
“Theodore Tricott.”
“Oh! You mean Teddy. Romantic! Oh, heavens no. I hardly knew him.”
“Witnesses saw him visiting you at the precinct earlier today. They said you seemed quite familiar, and that your conversation got quite heated.”
“Sounds like Marie has been gossiping! Fine—yes, I talked to him, but he hadn’t even come to see me in the first place. He came to see someone else.”
“Who?”
The hard flint of loyalty kept me silent.
“All right, well. You say he’s a new acquaintance, then. Are you in the habit of inviting men you hardly know to join you for a cocktail in your place of residence?”
“Of course not; don’t be absurd.”
“Do you deny you invited Mr. Tricott over for a cocktail at your apartment?”
“Well, yes—and no, too.”
“Which is it?”
I hesitated, and finally decided to be truthful about my part of things. “Yes, I admit I mixed a drink for Teddy and kept him entertained on the terrace while we waited for my room-mate to return. But no, I didn’t exactly invite him, and it’s not exactly my apartment.”
“Do you mean to say you don’t live there?”
“I live there, but it’s Odalie’s apartment.”
“That’s not what she informed us.”
“Beg pardon?”
The first inklings of true betrayal began to enter my bloodstream, the alternating twinges of disbelief and dread tingling in my veins. Suddenly I was feeling a little light-headed. It was probably a case of dehydration, on account of all the alcohol, I thought.
“May I have a glass of water?” I asked. We took a brief break while Detective Ferguson sent the typist to go get one. I hadn’t paid the typist much mind before, but when she walked back into the interview carrying a tall glass of water I took a closer look at her.
She was somewhere in her mid-twenties and painfully plain. Her hair was the same lackluster shade of light brown as my own, and her features were small and regular, with the exception of her teeth. Her teeth were small but very pointy in the front, and she had an overbite that made her lower jaw stick out ever so slightly. The unfortunate combination of her teeth and jaw gave her an air that was at once both timid and carnivorous, reminding me of an illustration I had once seen in an encyclopedia of a hungry piranha. I did not like the look of her one bit.
“So? Miss Baker?” Detective Ferguson prompted me.
“Beg pardon?” I had difficulty remembering where we had left off and was feeling distracted. I watched the typist slide back into her desk. Immediately her fingers commenced their fluttering over the stenotype keys. I narrowed my eyes at those fingers. They suddenly seemed like spidery, sinister things.
“Miss Lazare informed us you pay the rent on that apartment, and that it’s rented in your name. What do you have to say about that?”
I blinked, but kept my eyes trained on the typist’s hands as they continued to flutter over the stenotype. It seemed to me she was typing even when I wasn’t saying anything. “I say it’s simply not true,” I replied with a frown, wondering where Detective Ferguson was getting his faulty information. Odalie could not have possibly said such a thing.
And then it happened. For the briefest of seconds, the typist allowed her eyes to flicker up at me, and the tiniest flash of a smug smile quivered on her lips. The villainess! I thought, my mind racing. Of course she’s in on it! I mean, after all, I of all people knew how easy it was to tamper with a report, to plant ideas in a detective’s head. Perhaps she had been angling for this, pr
iming this detective for weeks! How could I have been so blind?
“The apartment is let in Odalie’s—I mean, Miss Lazare’s—name,” I informed them. “I don’t suppose it’s any of your business, but that apartment is a bit out of my reach, I’m afraid.” I paused and twisted in my seat to give the typist a meaningful look. “Being that we’re in a similar line of business, I’m sure you can imagine the limits of my salary.” I turned back to the detective. “Odalie has . . . well, family money, you see.” Upon hearing this latter statement, the typist stopped typing, and Detective Ferguson’s protégé suddenly looked up from his notebook.
“That’s a horrible joke, Miss Baker.”
“I’m not aware of making any joke.”
“I don’t see how you can make light of Miss Lazare’s situation, seeing as how she was raised in an orphanage. That seems quite cruel, even for you.”
“What?” I felt myself increasingly conscious of a great chasm opening up somewhere in the floor beneath me. “What? Who told you that?” There was a pause in which no one dared speak and I felt the constellation of conspiracy arranging itself around me from all sides. My heart began to beat faster. “Who told you that?” I demanded again. I sprang up from my chair and whirled about, and suddenly my gaze fell on the typist. “What have you been typing? I know what you’ve been about! You’ve been typing lies about me! Someone—quick! Check her reports! She’s typing lies!” I realized I was now screaming, but I didn’t care. The typist was staring at me, the whites of her eyes revealing her fear, which I took to be a sure sign of her guilt. Suddenly I understood it all. “You think you’ll get rid of me with these lies! You want her for yourself! I know what you’re about!” Before I knew what was happening, I had thrown myself at the typist and my hands were around her neck. Detective Ferguson and the young detective-in-training rushed to pull me off, but it wasn’t until several more officers had charged into the room that they were sufficiently able to sever my hold on her.
Perhaps it will come as no surprise to you that less than an hour later I was ensconced at the institution where I find myself currently. I have resided here now for two and a half weeks, and am officially being held for “further observation purposes,” under the supervision of Dr. Miles H. Benson, the doctor whose name I’ve already mentioned.
The appearance of one’s innocence is a funny house of cards; you start by shifting the smallest thing, and before you know it the whole structure has come crashing down. In my case, it all began with the elevator-boy. I still wonder, sometimes, if it hadn’t been for Clive pointing a finger at me, how the night might’ve played itself out differently. But there are other times when I understand: Elevator-boy or no elevator-boy, my fate was—and had always been—in Odalie’s hands.
22
The slope that leads toward insanity has the paradoxical distinction of being both steep and yet undetectable to the person sliding down it. That is to say, crazy people rarely know they’re crazy. So I can understand it when, while attempting to attest to my own sanity, it just so happens I am not readily believed. Despite all this, I must assure you I am not crazy. It’s true, they caught me at a particularly inconvenient moment, and I can see how it must’ve looked, attacking that fellow typist as I did. But I have had ample time to review the situation now, and I have disavowed all of the nonsense I was spewing at the time of my little “episode.” All of which is to say I see how unlikely it is that the poor woman was meddling with my statement. Even more unfounded is my fantasy that she hoped to unseat me in my role as Odalie’s bosom friend. But that’s the funny thing about treasure—we assume everyone wants what we hold most dear. And yet you really must take me at my word: It was a momentary lapse. In retrospect I understand how my convictions about the other typist merely constituted an extrapolation of my own fears.
My doctor (I believe I’ve already mentioned him—the renowned Dr. Miles H. Benson, M.D., Ph.D.) says I am given to what he calls theories of conspiracy. We humans are categorical thinkers, he says, and we all try to fit our experiences of this world into patterns. Some of us, he says (and by this he means me), will completely overturn reality in an effort to uphold a particular pattern that we prefer. Then he leans back in the metal chair regularly brought into my room for him to sit upon while we chat and later taken away so I won’t get any funny ideas about standing upon it and devising some way to hang myself. He leans back in the chair and lets his glasses slide down his nose, and once that happens I know we are about to segue from the general to the personal. Can you think of how you might be fitting the facts to uphold any particular pet theory, my dear? he asks in that didactic, singsong voice of his.
During our first few chats, I used to challenge him. Can you think of how you might be fitting the facts to uphold any particular theory of your own, Dr. Benson? I simply cannot give credence to his suggestion that the Saint Teresa of Avila Home for Girls has no record of my time there. I do not believe Dr. Benson, or anyone from this so-called hospital, has truly even checked. When I inquired after the name of the nun who was contacted, Dr. Benson mumbled something and promised to “consult his files”—which, of course, he never did. You cannot rob a person of her whole childhood history merely to uphold your belief in my insanity, I would say to him rather accusingly.
But that was during my first few days here, and my complaints fell on deaf ears. Now I sit and let him build a case for his precious “reality.” He is very dedicated to the cause and can often have a very convincing demeanor. Dr. Benson is the proprietor of a very full and spectacular mustache, and I suppose I have a habit of putting my faith in men with formidable mustaches. Dr. Benson’s is nothing quite so grand as the Sergeant’s flamboyantly twisted pair of handlebars, but it is nonetheless quite impressive and lends him an air of authority, and when he tells me his version of my own history, a version I can’t quite seem to recall living, I have become complacent to sit and listen with rapt attention, as though he were spinning out a very mysterious and enchanting fairy-tale. He is so vehement about certain facts—like the fact the orphanage has no record of my growing up there—sometimes I nearly believe him. In fact, I thought perhaps there was a chance I had remembered the name of the wrong saint and sent Dr. Benson chasing my ghost in the wrong direction, that perhaps the place where I’d known Sister Hortense and Sister Mildred (not to mention my poor sweet Adele) was maybe named after Saint Catherine or Saint Ursula. But no, it was most certainly Saint Teresa. Saint Teresa the mystic, who despite all her prim and proper faith was known for her sensuousness as well as for her bouts of madness. Saint Teresa, the patron saint for removing maladies of the head. I know what you are thinking, and I am not so insane that I fail to see the irony in all this.
Of course the dim outlines of Dr. Benson’s fairy-tale ring a bell. I have heard some of this before. According to him my name is Ginevra Morris. I was born in Boston, but shortly after my birth my family relocated to Newport, Rhode Island. If it were at all possible my parents might visit me here, Dr. Benson is sure it would prove helpful, as it would no doubt cause a rift in my fabricated history I would be at pains to reconcile. In laymen’s terms, it would jog your memory, Ginevra, he often says—and because the name is still so unfamiliar to me, I look over my shoulder at the nurse before realizing he means me. But alas, laments Dr. Benson, my parents are deceased; my father passed away two years ago from liver failure, and my mother died last spring in a rather unfortunate automobile accident. (Dr. Benson presented me with the newspaper clippings and took my intense interest in them as further proof of his theory. Remember, Ginevra? How your mother always was a poor driver? The neighbors said it came as no surprise, he urges.)
There is another story Dr. Benson also likes to tell, about an old fiancé of mine. Apparently we had a terrible row the night he died. The circumstances surrounding the young man’s death—his car stalled at an inopportune time while upon some railroad tracks—never did sit quite right with the townspeo
ple. You have to own up to your actions, Dr. Benson advises me. You might’ve been able to vamp the whole town into looking the other way for a time, but that time must end here.
This makes me snort and show all my teeth as I most heartily laugh aloud, a behavior I can tell rattles Dr. Benson. I am hardly a seductress, Dr. Benson, I say with a chuckle. You can see as much with your plain eyes. At this, Dr. Benson remains quiet and stares me down with a skeptical look, and I have to wonder if all the time I spent with Odalie has changed me more than I realize.
Oh, but there’s more to this story! The first time Dr. Benson told it to me in its entirety I almost fainted with utter shock upon hearing the details. I say “almost fainted” because of course I have a very strong constitution and did not faint, though it might’ve been nice to slip into unconsciousness at that juncture in time, just to stop Dr. Benson’s mouth from spewing the hateful narrative as it continued to spring forth. That first time telling it, the good doctor prattled along rather innocuously at first, urging me as he always did to remember my life as Ginevra. You vamped the whole town into looking the other way, he said that day, stroking his mustache as though recalling the story from his own memory, and you nearly had everyone pledging their undying faith in you, too, Ginevra—until you ran off with the train yard switchman. I sat up straight upon hearing this, my brain suddenly racing to fit together what I should’ve suspected all along—Gib! Tell us when he began blackmailing you, Ginevra, Dr. Benson said. Did it begin right away, that first night, out on the train tracks, with the wreck of Warren’s crumpled roadster still steaming and groaning in the background behind you? I looked at Dr. Benson and realized I wished I knew the answer to his question. I felt a fleeting twinge of sympathy for Odalie. So Gib had had her under his thumb the whole time! That arrangement must’ve been excruciatingly painful for her, free-spirited creature that she was. But the fleeting twinge of sympathy I suffered was just that: fleeting, for Dr. Benson’s next line of questions was to have an even greater effect on me, and they have consumed me ever since.
The Other Typist Page 30