All three of the collies sat down and offered their paws with an air of polite boredom. Charlotte shook hands with each of them, feeling, as she always did when she came to this house, that she was entering an unreal world where values were reversed and the dogs kept Gwen as a pet.
“Are you feeling better?” Charlotte asked.
“Oh yes. Much.”
“Good.”
“I’ve made tea. . . . I love tea.”
Charlotte left her medical bag in the hall and followed Gwen into the sitting room. The dogs came, too; they went everywhere that Gwen went.
The room belonged to Gwen; there was nothing of Lewis here or anywhere in the house except his study. Gwen had braided the oval rugs herself, woven the textile for the slip covers, made the pieces of petit-point and sewed the ruffled chintz drapes. Milk glass and pewter, chintz and maple suited her, and the furniture was scaled to her size. Everything was small and fragile, and Gwen looked both picturesque and right sitting in the spindly maple chair with one foot resting delicately on a petit-point footstool. (No wonder Lewis bought me the big leather chair, Charlotte thought. There’s no place here for him to sit.)
The tea table was set with Gwen’s best Spode, and the tea was already made, the pot protected against the chill of the fog by a yellow wool cozy Gwen had made herself.
The dog, Laddie, came and put his chin on Gwen’s lap. She stroked his heavy white ruff as she talked. “In fact, I feel so much better really, I guess it was silly of me not to cancel your call. But . . .”
She put her head on one side, in a kind of winsome, you-know-me gesture. Her fair hair had thinned and sallowed, and her fine white skin was loose beneath her chin, but she had the mannerisms of a woman who had once been beautiful. Her history was written on her face and illustrated by her artful, fluttering hands. At eighteen she had had the world at her feet—she was the most popular debutante in Louisville; she had clippings to prove it—but the world had gradually deserted her. She had had nothing to offer it but her youth.
At forty she lived for her house and her dogs, and sometimes in the middle of the night she had spells of terror. Her pulse was so fast it couldn’t be counted; her body twitched; her head took fire. Twice Charlotte had been called in the night and found her like this and given her a sedative. There was nothing organically wrong with Gwen’s heart. Her symptoms were typical of the cardiac neurotic and couldn’t be tracked down by a doctor who had had no special psychiatric training.
“Was this attack like the others?” Charlotte felt for the pulse in Gwen’s wrist. It was still rapid, nearly a hundred.
“A bit worse, I think. Oh, I was frightened—what’s my pulse?”
“Just about normal. Have you been taking the capsules and medicine I prescribed?” The medicine was a sedative and the capsules contained estrogenic hormones, but Gwen wasn’t the kind of patient you could tell these things to. She would certainly misinterpret the hormones, Charlotte thought grimly.
Gwen looked vague and a little hurt. “I try. I take them when I can remember. But I have so much on my mind. Winkie’s having pups again in six days. It’s going to be a huge litter, perhaps a dozen. She’s so heavy she can hardly . . .”
“You should be especially careful to remember the capsules. After all, you’re more important than Winkie or her pups.”
Gwen let out a little cry. “Why, that’s just what Lewis says! He’s always telling me, look after yourself, darling. Remember you’re much more precious than any dogs.”
Precious. Darling. The words stung Charlotte’s ears. She’s lying. He wouldn’t call her . . . But why not? They were married: they lived together day after day; there must be some tender moments. Perhaps some very tender ones, though Lewis claimed there weren’t.
She said, without expression, “It might be a good idea to cut down on stimulants like tea and coffee and coke.”
“I try, I really do. But then I love my tea so much . . . It’s ready now if you’d like some, doctor . . . ”
“Thanks, I would.”
The tea was lukewarm and so strong it coated Charlotte’s tongue and the roof of her mouth. She drank it fast and put the empty cup on the table.
Gwen’s hands had a bad tremor. Because she fluttered and fussed so much by nature, the tremor wasn’t noticeable until she picked up the empty cup to refill it. The cup rattled in the saucer like hail against a window.
“Are you still dieting?” Charlotte asked.
“Well, not very much. I have to, a little bit. I’m so tiny every pound shows. I mean, one avocado and there’s an inch around my hips.”
“You’re underweight. I advise you to skip the diet, for a while.”
“I’ll try.”
“I can’t do anything for you, Mrs. Ballard, if you won’t help yourself. There’s not much use in paying me five dollars for a prescription and then leaving it to gather dust on the bathroom shelf.”
Gwen clapped her hands with delight like a child. “Oh, that’s what I like about you, doctor. You’re so outspoken and so honest.”
“Am I? Thanks.”
The dogs sensed something, a tension, an excitement in Gwen’s laugh. They crowded her, raising their noses for attention, their wagging tails sweeping across the teacups and the ashtray. They were more than Gwen’s dogs, Charlotte thought. They were part of Gwen herself—each of them like a separate sympathetic nervous system, feeling everything that Gwen felt.
“Mollie, you bad girl,” Gwen said. “You’ve spilled the ashes. Settle down, now, all of you, and behave yourselves, or I’ll put you out in your dog run.”
The dogs quieted but they wouldn’t leave her. They followed her around the room as she turned on the lamps, as if they were expecting something out of the ordinary.
Charlotte rose, too, and began brushing the silky white collie hairs from the front of her dress. “Though it sounds pretty hackneyed, I think your real trouble may be nerves, Mrs. Ballard.”
“Oh, please call me Gwen. After all, we’ve known each other nearly a year now.”
“Nervous disorders aren’t really in my field and I suggest that you consult someone else.”
“I won’t be shunted off to some so-called specialist. You’re too modest, doctor. You don’t realize how much good you do me. Why, after one of your visits I feel just wonderful. Lewis notices it, too. He said one day, Dr. Keating’s a regular tonic for you, Gwen darling.”
Gwen darling. “That only proves my point. I don’t actually do anything for you. I’m a kind of emotional sedative, a reassurance.”
“Why, I believe you’re right.”
“That’s why I recommend a—nerve specialist.”
“You mean a psychiatrist?”
“Yes.”
Gwen smiled. But the smile wasn’t real and the dogs knew it; they stood with their plumed tails between their legs and watched and waited.
“But I don’t want to,” she said. “I can never do anything I don’t want to.”
“There’s no longer any stigma attached to going to a psychiatrist, you know. As a matter of fact it’s become a mark of distinction—only rich people can afford to.”
Gwen’s tone was playful. “Now doctor, you’re only trying to get rid of me, ’fess up. You think there are so many really sick people in the world that you’re wasting your time on me and my silly old spells.”
“Not at all. When I can’t treat a patient to my satisfaction I recommend someone else.”
“Well, I won’t have anyone else, so there. Imagine me at a nasty psychiatrist’s, telling him everything. Oh, I’d die!”
Charlotte drew on her gloves. Throwing words at Gwen was like throwing bubbles; they burst before they got anywhere. “I’m glad I was able to help in some way,” Charlotte said. She felt such tension and weariness that she was ready to weep. You’re so honest, doctor, so honest
. . . “Take the capsules and the medicine and try not to worry too much about the spells. I don’t think they’re serious.”
She went out to the hall and picked up her medical bag, and Gwen and the dogs followed, Gwen looking a little hurt by her departure, like a disappointed child.
“Oh, it’s a shame you have to leave, doctor. Dinner’s ready, and it would be easy as pie to set another place. Lewis will be home any minute now.”
“Thanks. I . . .”
“Another time, perhaps?”
“Yes.”
“I know,” Gwen said gently, “that Lewis would love to have you.”
“That’s—nice.”
“Goodbye, now.”
“Goodbye.”
Outside, the fog had thinned, but the sky was darkening.
8
She had a late dinner at home alone. The house was dead and quiet. She put some records on the Capehart to drive away the silence, but the silence stayed in ambush underneath the music waiting to spring at her between records.
She hadn’t heard from Lewis all day. (Such a long day, she thought. It seems a week since I had breakfast with Miss Schiller this morning and saw Tiddles in his green suit at the police station. . . . A long day for me, and a long night for Violet, a long, dark forever . . . Don’t think, don’t think about it. It wasn’t your fault.)
Lewis always phoned her once or twice during the afternoon. They didn’t talk long—they were both busy—but the calls reassured Charlotte. They made her feel that she was loved, that she wasn’t just playing around with a married man: she was in love and so was Lewis, and it was their bad luck that he was already married when they met.
She hadn’t called him at his house for a long time; she had to look up the number in the telephone directory before she dialed.
Lewis answered, sounding falsely genial as he always did before he identified a caller. It was part of his public personality. “Hello. This is Lewis Ballard.”
Charlotte spoke fast. “I want to see you. Can you come over?”
“Sorry, you must have the wrong number.”
“Does that mean you can’t?”
“That’s right. This is 5-5919.”
“Darling—Lewis, I . . .”
But he’d already hung up.
It wasn’t his fault, she thought. He had to hang up; Gwen was there listening. Even so she felt rejected and a little cheap. “Sorry, you must have the wrong number, toots.” “Maybe I have, bud.” She went over and sat in Lewis’ chair, holding the palms of her hands over her eyes.
The front door was still open, as she’d left it to air out the house after she’d cooked dinner, and the wind slid across the floor and chilled her legs.
She went to the door to close it. Two men were coming through the gate into the walled garden. The taller one bolted the gate carefully behind him and wiped his hands on his trousers. The other man was small. He moved through the shadows with furtive delicacy like an elf and his ears stuck out from his red baseball cap, pale enormous blobs of wax silhouetted against the dark trees.
He flitted across the flagstones toward the light of the open door, a moth of a man. It was too late to close the door. Too late and too futile. The little man could fly through a window, drop from a chimney, crawl out of a crack and scamper through an evil dream.
“Remember me? Eh?”
“You’re Mr. Voss.”
“Sure, that’s right.” He jerked his thumb towards his companion. Charlotte saw that both men were wearing crudely sewn mourning bands on their sleeves. “This here’s my pal, Eddie O’Gorman.”
“I’ve seen Mr. O’Gorman before.”
O’Gorman stepped into the circle of light. Though he was still young his face was a record of violence and neglect, the nose broken, the left ear a mash of tissue, the cheeks pitted with acne scars.
He held his fists clenched against his heavy thighs.
“You seen me where?”
“At Mr. Voss’s house. You were watching me through the rails of the banister.”
“Yeah? What’s so wrong about . . .”
“Now, now, Eddie,” Voss said and turned to Charlotte. “Poor Eddie’s upset. He got bad news today, real bad. Didn’t you, Eddie?”
“Yeah.” Eddie touched the mourning band on his sleeve with a convulsive gesture, as if he wanted to rip it off.
“His wife died,” Voss said. “Killed herself. But maybe you already heard about Violet.”
“Yes, I have.”
“Poor little Violet. Who’d of thought she’d of done it the way she did? It came as a terrible shock to Eddie. Didn’t it, Eddie?”
“Sure.”
Voss explained to Charlotte, “He don’t talk much anyway, don’t talk at all when he’s grieving, he gets speechless, he . . .”
“What do you want?” Charlotte said. “Why are you here?”
He looked a little injured by her abruptness. “Well, I figured, me and Eddie figured, that maybe you hadn’t heard about Violet, and being you were so interested in her you’d like to know before you read about it in the newspaper.”
“Well, you’ve told me. Thanks and good night.”
“Now wait a minute.” Voss’s face creased in a malevolent little pout. “Now that’s no way to treat a couple mourners. Is it, Eddie?”
Eddie coughed, holding one hand over his chest. “We could talk better inside. This night air ain’t so good for my bronichal tubes.”
“It won’t kill you,” Charlotte said. “It’s the same as day air.”
“Say, you’re a doctor. Say, what’s it mean when you get up in the morning and cough and cough and then maybe an hour later you’re okay again? Do you think that’s serious?”
She stared at him through the screen door. This was Violet’s husband. “He hit me with a lamp” Violet had said. . . . “He’d take me back, he likes to have me around, somebody to bully.” She glanced at the telephone ten feet away, hoping it would ring so that she could establish contact with someone. It didn’t ring, and she was afraid to go over and pick it up; the action might precipitate trouble.
“Well?” Eddie scowled. “Is it serious? You think maybe I’m a lunger?” His mouth twitched nervously at one corner. Eddie was scared to death, and violence was the denial of his fears.
“No,” Charlotte said. “The cough is probably caused by a post-nasal drip. That is, when you’re sleeping phlegm accumulates at the back of your nose and drips into your throat. In the morning you cough it up.”
“What’s that word again, what I got?”
“Post-nasal drip.”
“How about that. Say, Voss, this dame knows her stuff, takes one look at me and says post-nasal drip, just like that.”
“Oh, shut up,” Voss said. “For Christ’s sake I got symptoms, too, only I don’t yap about them when there’s business to be done.”
Charlotte repeated, “Business?”
“Not business, exactly. You see, poor Violet didn’t have many friends, only Eddie and me and the wife, and you. Violet was one swell kid, she don’t deserve to have a pauper’s funeral, no flowers or nothing. Funerals come high nowadays. I was around pricing them this afternoon, and boy, those undertakers are sure raking in the coin. Though some of those caskets were real beautiful. Weren’t they, Eddie?”
“Sure.”
“We thought of a white satin casket with maybe a great big horseshoe made of purple violets.”
“Gee,” Eddie said, “that’d be pretty.” He touched his nose tenderly. He felt swell. Here, all this time he’d been worried about being a lunger and it was just his post-nasal drip.
“So,” Voss said, “that’s why Eddie and me came here. We figured Violet had a few friends, maybe we’d take up a little collection, buy a couple wreaths, stuff like that.”
“How much?” Charl
otte said flatly.
“I hate to think about cold cash, with Violet where she is. Still”—he shrugged—“that’s what makes the world go round. Who am I to try stopping it?”
“How much?”
“Say $300.”
There was a long silence before Charlotte spoke. “That would buy a great many wreaths.”
“Sure, but consider the casket.”
“I haven’t got three hundred dollars.”
“You can get it. You have a friend.”
“I have quite a few friends.”
“One special friend, though.”
“Several.”
“One very special.”
“Stop it,” Charlotte cried. “You must be crazy to think I . . .”
“Three hundred dollars wouldn’t mean a thing to him. Or to you. Think of poor Violet.”
“I only saw the girl once in my life.”
“But you helped kill her,” Voss said, quite pleasantly. “She came home yesterday and she says, ‘I’ve been to the doctor only she won’t help me, I wish I was dead.’ ”
“I think you’d better leave,” Charlotte said, trying to keep her voice steady. “This sounds like extortion.”
“Now wait a minute, that’s a nasty word. Ain’t it, Eddie?”
“It sure is. I don’t like it.”
Voss fingered the mourning band on his sleeve. “We came here as Violet’s friends because we wanted to give her a good send-off. Christ, we even got to pay a minister. How far do you think three hundred dollars will go?”
“I don’t know or care.”
“Don’t act so snotty or you will. You’ll end up caring plenty.” He turned to Eddie. “Extortion, she says. How about that?”
“How about it, that’s what I say.”
A mockingbird began to chatter from his perch on the lemon tree, abusing the invaders.
“You’d both better go home,” Charlotte said, “and start thinking up some new angles.”
“We don’t have to,” Voss said. “The angles are all there, and they ain’t nice, lady, they ain’t nice at all.”
“You’re very vague.”
Do Evil in Return Page 5