“No, but I think it was a blackjack made with wet sand.”
He frowned again. “That’s just an amateur deduction, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I’d better mark it, weapon unknown. What did this purse look like?”
“Brown lizard with a gold clasp.” She described the contents and estimated her total loss at seventy-five dollars.
“Next time something like that happens, phone the police immediately, Miss”—he consulted his report—“Miss Keating. Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”
“At the hospital.”
“Oh. Oh yes. You’re a nurse?”
“A doctor.”
“A doctor.” His expression was bitter. “I’ve seen so many doctors lately you’d think I’d be able to spot one at a glance. My wife . . .”
“Yes, I know about her. She’s had a rough time.”
“Plenty rough.”
“These bone operations are tricky, but she ought to be out soon.”
“I . . .” He seemed a little dazed by her sympathy. It was as if he intended to deliver a speech against doctors and illness and medical bills and had somehow missed his cue. “Well. Well, I’ll get in touch with you if we discover anything.”
She went out, her heels tapping briskly on the marble tiles. Everything in the building seemed to be made of marble or iron or stone; hard, cold materials that symbolized the hard, cold quality of impersonal justice.
At the end of the corridor an old man was standing half-hidden behind a pillar, as if he wasn’t certain whether to advance further into the building, or to dart out again. He took a bandana out of his coat pocket and wiped his face and stepped back behind the pillar so that only a part of his sleeve was visible.
Charlotte said, “Tiddles?”
The old man stared at her, white with surprise.
“What are you doing here, Tiddles?”
“Nothing.”
“You weren’t arrested or anything?”
“No—no . . .” He wiped off his face again and put the bandana back in the breast pocket of his coat leaving the tip of it sticking out very nattily. He had on a brand-new green suit and a bow tie. He’d combed his hair and shaved. The suit was too big for him—the sleeves touched his knuckles and the trouser cuffs brushed the floor—and he kept fingering the bow tie nervously as if to assure himself that it was still there, that it hadn’t dropped off or been stolen. He smelled of bay rum and wine and moth balls.
“You’re all dressed up,” Charlotte said.
“Do I look good?”
“You look fine.”
“You have to look good to come to a police station. Otherwise—well . . .” His shoulders moved eloquently under the pounds of padding. “I got the suit from a friend of mine, he had to buy it to go to a classy wedding last year. You have to look respectable at a police station. The police don’t like me. I’ve been picked up a couple of times, nothing serious, just making a little noise and having a few too many. Even so. Even so, they hold things against a man.” He looked at her anxiously. “This tie is a little young for me.”
“Not at all.”
“People are judged by their clothes. If you look like a bum you get treated like a bum. They won’t believe anything you tell them.”
“What are you going to tell them?”
“About Violet,” he said. “About how they murdered her.”
“Why do you think that?”
“She never came home. And Voss is nervous. Nervous as a cat.”
“I see.”
“And this morning he said to me that I’d have to move out, he wasn’t going to rent rooms anymore. Take my word, Voss is nervous. And the two of them . . .”
“Two?”
“The roomer, name of Eddie. The two of them talked all night down in the kitchen where I couldn’t hear. They’re suspicious types, always figuring that someone is spying on them.”
There was a moment’s silence before Charlotte spoke again. “I wouldn’t tell the police that Violet was murdered. They’ll ask for evidence and you haven’t any.”
“The evidence of all my senses.”
“Tell them only what you know for certain—that she didn’t come home last night.”
“You think that’s best?”
“Yes. If you make a wild accusation that you can’t prove they might consider you a crackpot.”
“Which I’m not.”
“No.”
“Never have been and never will be a crackpot.”
He walked off down the hall, his trouser cuffs picking up the dust from the marble floor.
Charlotte had an impulse to follow him, to lend her support to his story, but she held back. He could tell it alone. Her presence might only raise questions: Back again, Miss Keating? Oh, it’s a disappearing girl this time. And what’s your connection with the girl and with this old man?
Tiddles was all right. He could manage by himself.
On her way back to the office she drove past Voss’s house. The windows and doors were closed, the blinds drawn. Someone had taken in the rocking chair from the porch and removed from the window the sign that had said, Clarence G. Voss. Phrenology and Palmistry. Fresh-Cut Flowers for Sale. Piano Lessons.
She stopped the car and got out and walked up to the house, rapidly, as if she were trying to keep ahead of her better judgment.
The doorbell had jammed again but she didn’t bother fixing it this time. She pounded on the door with her fist. Half a dozen Negro children gathered on the sidewalk to watch her, curious and silent, their eyes popping with questions.
The door opened slightly and a woman’s voice said roughly through the crack, “What do you want?”
“I’m looking for Violet O’Gorman.”
“She’s not here.”
“Well, is Mr. Voss in?”
“He ain’t around, either.” She opened the door far enough to stick her head out, and yelled at the children on the sidewalk. “You kids beat it, see? I don’t want none of you niggers hanging around here.”
The children departed, hiding their mortification under wide white grins.
“Are you Mrs. Voss?” Charlotte asked.
“Yeah, not that it’s anybody’s business.” She stood with her right hand on her hip, and her left on the door, ready to slam it shut. She had a dead-white skin with a heavy blotch of rouge running from each cheekbone to the hairline above her ears. Her thin mouth had been fattened with lipstick. It looked grotesquely young and voluptuous growing on the ageing face. “I don’t get the point of standing here,” she said bitterly. “If you want Violet, look for her. I ain’t the little sneak’s mother.”
Charlotte raised her eyebrows. “Sneak?”
“I said to Clarence, get that creepy kid out of here before I go batty. No, he says, no. He’s got an angle, he says. Ha. He’s got more angles than a pretzel and not one of them’s ever paid off. Money. Money, that’s what I want. Just once before I die I’d like some money!”
Poverty and disease had desiccated her mind. Nothing would ever grow there again.
Charlotte was repelled by the woman but she felt, too, a sense of compassion. (Lewis was sometimes annoyed by this compassion. He distrusted it, he couldn’t believe that it wasn’t some kind of neurosis: “Naturally you can afford to make excuses for and feel sorry for people, Charley, because you’re not involved. No one could ever really touch you.”)
Watching Mrs. Voss’ ruined face Charlotte realized that money was the only thing for her to hope for. She couldn’t ask for the return of her beauty, her health, her youth. Money was the symbol and substitute for all three. And it was possible. There was money all over the place—a dime in a slot machine at the right time, a tip on the right horse, the right number on a lottery ticket, the right angle.
Charlotte wondered about
Voss’s angle on Violet. There must be money involved, but it wasn’t Violet’s. “My uncle says I can go to court and make the man pay a lot of money,” Violet had said in the office yesterday. “My uncle says I can ruin him forever.” That must be Voss’s angle. But Violet, instead of going to court, had run away.
“Well, what do you think you’re staring at, anyways?” Mrs. Voss muttered. “I don’t have to stand around being stared at.”
The door slammed so hard that the porch shook and a frightened jay flew out squawking from under the eaves.
6
When she returned to her office after lunch the Wheeler boy and his mother were already waiting in the reception room. The boy was sitting silent over a comic book while Miss Schiller talked to his mother. Miss Schiller always attempted to diagnose, advise and cure the patients in the reception room before they even reached Charlotte’s office.
“. . . castor oil,” she was saying. “I’ve seen some of the most frightful warts disappear with castor oil—oh, here’s doctor now. Good afternoon, doctor.”
“Afternoon,” Charlotte said. “You can come right in, Mrs. Wheeler, and you, Tommy.”
The boy was a handsome twelve-year-old, small for his age, and timid. His mother was a giant of a woman. When she sailed into the office with Tommy behind her she looked like
a three-masted schooner towing a dinghy.
“Sit down, Tommy. Up here on this table.”
He sat down. He was trembling.
“Troubled with warts again, are you? Let’s have a look at them.”
She held a magnifier over the boy’s hands. The warts had multiplied in clusters all over his knuckles and the joints of his fingers.
“Let’s see now. I took off two of these with an electric needle about a year ago, didn’t I?”
He said in a whisper, “Don’t do that again.”
“I won’t. There are too many this time.” She turned to Mrs. Wheeler. “I think we should try some bismuth shots.”
“Shots?” Mrs. Wheeler’s mouth gaped. “Oh no! Tommy’s scared to death of shots. Aren’t you, Tommy?”
The boy let out a whimper.
“See? He’s just terrified of needles, he’s always been from the time he . . .”
“Nobody likes shots, Tommy.” Charlotte touched his shoulder reassuringly. “Have you ever given yourself a good hard pinch?”
“I guess.”
“That’s about how much this will hurt.”
He pinched himself on the forearm, thoughtfully. “That’ll be okay I guess.”
He was reasonable, Charlotte thought, but he’d been exposed to so much emotion at home that it was only a matter of time before he got out of control.
She worked as fast as she could, talking to distract his attention. But in the end she had to call in Miss Schiller and all three of them held the boy forcibly on the table while Charlotte inserted the needle into his hip. When it was over Miss Schiller was sweating and Charlotte had a scratch on her wrist and Mrs. Wheeler was like a huge flabby ghost.
“He gets another shot in a week,” Charlotte said. “And next time I’d let him come alone. He can ride his bicycle over.”
“He hasn’t got a bicycle,” Mrs. Wheeler said. “I consider them too dangerous.”
“Most things are, if you want to worry about them,” Charlotte said crisply. “Tommy’s a big enough boy to come here by himself, aren’t you, Tommy?”
He put his sleeve over his eyes in shame, and his mother led him out.
There were two people waiting in the reception room, a woman with a tiny baby, and a good-looking man about thirty-five with bright blue eyes that were slightly narrowed as if in amusement. Though Charlotte had never seen him before, she had a sense of recognition. A moment later she realized, with a kind of pleasant shock, that he looked enough like her to be her brother.
He saw the resemblance, too, and one corner of his mouth turned up slightly in a half-smile. Then he dropped his eyes and kept them fastened on the large manila envelope that was lying across his knees.
Charlotte turned to the woman with the baby. “Mrs. Hastings, you can go inside with Miss Schiller now. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
When the door had closed behind them the man got up and crossed the room. “Dr.
Keating?”
“Yes.”
“My name’s Easter. I’m from the police department.”
“Oh.”
“You reported the loss of a purse.”
“Yes.”
“We’ve found one. It doesn’t exactly fit the description you gave but it had a card inside with your name on it.”
“One of my professional cards, you mean?”
“No. Your name and office address were typed on it, not printed.”
“There was no card like that in my purse.”
“Take a look anyway,” Easter said. He put the manila envelope on Miss Schiller’s desk and opened it. The purse slid out. It was brown but it wasn’t lizard, and instead of a gold clasp it had a plastic zipper and a shoulder strap. It gave off an odor that Charlotte couldn’t immediately identify, a kind of sea smell.
“It’s not mine,” she said.
“‘But you recognize it?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Your friend did.”
“Friend?”
“The old character who calls himself Tiddles. He says this purse belongs to Violet O’Gorman.”
“Perhaps it does.” She tried to look casual under his curious stare.
“According to this man, Tidolliani, Mrs. O’Gorman was a friend of yours; in fact you were trying to locate her last night and you couldn’t.”
“She wasn’t a friend. She came to me yesterday afternoon as a patient.”
“What was the matter with her?”
“She was pregnant.”
“Married?”
“She’d left her husband.”
“Did she want you to look after her during her term and delivery?”
Charlotte looked at him dryly. “Not exactly.”
“I see.”
“I refused to help her, in that sense. But I intended to do as much for her as I could.”
“Intended?”
“I had a phone call and while I was answering it Violet left by the rear door. That’s why I went to see her last night. She seemed pretty desperate in the afternoon. She wasn’t mature enough to realize that her situation wasn’t particularly unusual or hopeless. People would have helped her, and there are several agencies that . . .”
“Look,” he said with a satiric smile. “You’re trying to persuade yourself, not me. I didn’t write the laws dealing with unwanted kids.”
From inside the office came the sound of Miss Schiller’s voice, strangely different, talking to the baby: “She’s so sweet. She’s sutz a wee dumpling!”
Charlotte said, “What happened to Violet?”
“She’s dead.”
“How?”
“She came in with the tide this morning. Or most of her did, anyway. Part of her right arm is gone.”
“Are you deliberately trying to horrify me?”
“I’m just telling you. You should be used to that sort of thing.”
“You never get used to it,” she said simply. “Each time it’s new.”
He looked away, his face grim. “As for her purse, a couple of kids found it caught on one of the pilings down at the wharf. There was nothing in it but the card with your name on it. Which is odd, considering the number of things women usually carry around. Maybe the kids who found it helped themselves, but I doubt it. They would have dropped the purse back into the water if they’d taken anything out of it, instead of bringing it to us.” He slid the purse back into the envelope. “Well, I’ll let you get on with your work.”
“There’s no rush. Please—I’d like to hear more about Violet.”
He let out a queer, muted chuckle. “Doctor, there isn’t anymore. She was in a spot, she killed herself, she’s in the morgue. End of Violet.”
Charlotte glanced up at him with dislike. “A neat summing up. Does dealing with death make you so callous?”
“I hate it. I’m afraid of it, too.” He picked up the manila envelope and put it under his arm. “Have you noticed, by the way, that we look alike?”
“No.”
“We do. I hope it doesn’t turn out that we’re long-lost siblings. That,” he added with a long deliberate stare, “would be a damn shame.”
Charlotte turned abruptly and went into her office. Violet was dead, in the morgue. “People would have helped her and there are several agencies that . . .” “Look, you’re trying to persuade yourself, not me.”
The Hastings baby was lying on the table kicking her legs and waving her arms. Charlotte picked her up and held her against her shoulder—the Hastings baby—or Violet’s baby—or Violet, herself.
7
The Ballards lived in a canyon below the fogline. By five-thirty, when Charlotte arrived, the fog had already covered the sun and the air was moist and cold.
Three of the collies met her at the door. They didn’t bark because Gwen had told them to be quiet, but they sniffed Charlotte’s medical bag and her shoes, and one of them, a huge, handsome sable, planted his feet on her chest and studied her face with grave curiosity. His gold and white nose was at least five inches long. Charlotte stroked it gently.
“Oh, that Laddie,” Gwen said, laughing. “Down, Lad.”
She was wearing a blue silk housecoat that brushed the floor, and though she seemed a little nervous, she looked as well as she usually did. She had always been tiny and very thin. She traded on her size and made sure she kept it. She wore little heelless slippers and she dieted constantly, dulling her appetite with gallons of hot, strong tea.
“Down, Laddie boy,” Gwen repeated. “I just can’t teach him to stay down. He won’t listen. I guess he knows I love him best.” She took the dog’s front paws and lowered him to the floor. “He’s my baby. Shake hands with Dr. Keating, Lad.”
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