The Doctor Makes a Dollhouse Call

by Robin Hathaway

  By eleven, the house was quiet. I was reasonably certain that everyone was asleep. The TV was still on. But people often fall asleep in front of the TV. I had to get out of there. At some point, during that long, tedious, tortuous evening, Mrs. Doyle had come in again to use the facilities. And on her way out, she had turned off the light. That was good. No neighbor would see me emerging from a lighted bathroom window. The stiffness and soreness of my muscles prevented me from descending with agility. I dropped clumsily into the bushes and disturbed a neighbor’s dog. But his barks subsided quickly. At eleven-thirty, to the best of my knowledge, I left the premises under cover of darkness—without being seen.

  As I made my way home, I had time to reflect. More than a dog had been disturbed that night. For the first time, one of my carefully laid plans had been upset. Totally disrupted, I should say. But I would make another. And I would make the disrupter pay.

  Mrs. Doyle heads my list.

  CHAPTER 35

  Fenimore had not slept well. His dreams had alternated between Carrie and Horatio. In one, Carrie had been dragged off by Viet Cong soldiers. In another, Horatio had been mowed down by a gang of teenagers riding mammoth bicycles.

  He got up, dressed, and went downstairs. Sal followed him. But she was not happy. Six A.M. was not her normal time for rising. He made a cup of tea and carried it into his office. Sal did not even bug him for her breakfast. She settled into his battered armchair and went back to sleep.

  Around eight o’clock Fenimore stretched, yawned, and closed the thick, red tome, Harrison’s Textbook of Medicine, and ambled out to the kitchen. Sal stretched, yawned, and followed him. With a paper cup he scooped some Kitty Chow out of a bag and poured it into her metal dish. The hard pellets hitting the sides sounded like machine gun fire. When he poured his own Grape—Nuts into a china bowl, they sounded much the same. He turned on the radio. Jointly munching, they listened to the news. Or rather, the lack of news. It was a quiet month globally. This month, all the action was on the home front.

  And he was doing nothing about it!

  He hurled the china bowl at the sink. It glanced off and crashed to the floor. Sal jumped. Cautiously, she went to examine the scattered bits and shards. Fenimore snatched her up and carried her out of the room before she could cut her feet.

  CHAPTER 36

  Jennifer made her way down the slice of beach she had discovered, far from the throngs of tourists. She had chosen this secluded spot to read her latest letter from Andrew undisturbed. When she began his letter she was quite relaxed, enjoying a peaceful moment between twilight and sunset. A well-deserved respite, after a day spent haggling with booksellers in French, a language in which she was far from fluent. But as she read on she began to grow uneasy. The Pancoast case was not going well. There had been another murder. Five in all. Bad enough. But it was the tone of the letter that alarmed her. She had never heard her friend sound so discouraged. He seemed to take the blame for the failure to discover the murderer entirely upon himself. There wasn’t a speck of banter in the whole letter.

  When she finished reading the letter, Jennifer folded the pages hastily and stuffed them into her beach bag. She gathered up her towel and her sunglasses and shoved her feet into her sandals. Then, like a harried sandpiper, she scurried up the beach.

  A seagull squawked. If an expert in French seagullese had been on hand, he would have interpreted the sound to mean “Ensuite?” (What next?).

  CHAPTER 37

  When Fenimore walked into Rafferty’s office, the detective glanced up. “You look like the wrath of God. What’s wrong? A misdiagnosis?”

  “No.” He grabbed a chair. “No diagnosis.”

  “That’s worse. Tell the poor bastard to get a second opinion.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Why not? I thought you docs did that all the time. Shared the responsibility. Team work. Isn’t that what group practice is all about?”

  “I practice solo, remember. And I don’t know the patient.”

  Rafferty put aside the report he had been working on and looked at his friend.

  “Remember the two aunts and the dollhouse murders?”

  He nodded. “The one in which you were coddling some of the prime suspects?”

  Fenimore winced.

  “Did you get to the bottom of that?”

  Fenimore shook his head. “The state police are on it now. They’re into fingerprints and DNA. I can’t help feeling the answer doesn’t lie in the lab, but in here.” He tapped his forehead.

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning—the psychology of the murderer.” Fenimore looked his friend in the eye. “Is there such a thing as a motiveless murder?”

  Rafferty considered. “Occasionally—you run into a psychopath. Someone who murders for the fun of it. The thrill of it. Or … the art of it. Murder for murder’s sake, you might say. But even that is a motive of sorts.”

  Fenimore nodded. “De Quincy wrote a whole essay on the art of murder.”

  Rafferty rolled his pen between his palms. “No, Fenimore, when you get down to it, there is no such thing as a motiveless murder. Even a psychopath has his reasons—warped though they may be. No one murders for nothing.”

  Fenimore sighed.

  “Your murderer has a motive, all right. You just haven’t uncovered it.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” Fenimore sounded exhausted. “But can’t a motive be unconscious? I mean, there must be murderers who are in the dark about their own motives. Take Gregory Peck in Spellbound, for instance. It took horrendous efforts on Bergman’s part to uncover his motive.”

  “But he wasn’t the murderer, remember? He just thought he was. That old chestnut was the theme of that film—you can’t commit a crime while drugged or under the influence that you wouldn’t commit when you’re sober.”

  “You disagree?” asked Fenimore.

  “Emphatically. In real life your hard drinker commits plenty of crimes he wouldn’t dream of when he’s sober. So does the druggie. It’s bullshit.” He jabbed his memo pad with his pen. “Now, you’re getting into the realm of criminal psychology. Would you like to talk to one of our experts?”

  “Can’t hurt.”

  Rafferty pressed a buzzer on his desk and spoke into his intercom. “Is Dr. Landers in?”

  “I think so,” came the rasping reply.

  “Ask the doctor to step into my office.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  While waiting for Dr. Landers, they discussed the ball scores. The Phillies were enjoying an early spring spurt. Rafferty was elated. Fenimore predicted doom later in the season.

  “You asked to see me?” A tall, blond woman in a trim navy suit stood in the doorway.

  “Dr. Landers, come in. This is my friend, Dr. Fenimore.”

  “The famous investigator?”

  Fenimore coughed. “Unofficially.”

  “You’ve solved a number of very difficult crimes—unofficially.” She smiled, shaking his hand warmly.

  “Right now he’s involved in a case he can’t solve,” Rafferty said maliciously. (He was a trifle put out by Dr. Landers’s open admiration for his friend.) “He has a question for you. Is there such a thing as a murderer with no motive? Or, at least, no conscious motive?”

  She frowned. “Oh yes. The motive can be totally unconscious. For example, if they suffer from multiple personalities, it’s possible for them to commit a crime in the guise of one personality and have no memory of it or motive for it when under the guise of another personality.” She sat down in the chair Fenimore hurriedly drew out for her. Rafferty noticed (and not for the first time) that even the most liberated females never objected to Fenimore’s old-fashioned courtesies. Even though he wasn’t much to look at, he had a certain charm with women.

  “I ran into such a case just recently,” the psychiatrist continued. “A respectable businessman murdered his wife. He had a second personality—that of a hardened criminal. One day he mistook his wife for an informe
r and shot her. When he woke up, or rather, returned to his businessman personality, he was horrified to find his wife dead. He had no memory of having killed her. And, of course, the businessman had no motive for killing her.”

  “Fascinating,” murmured Fenimore. “Does premeditation play any part in such murders?”

  “Oh no,” Dr. Landers said. “Their murders are almost always unplanned and impulsive. And—there’s usually no attempt at concealment afterward. The murderer is in a state of shock or trauma over what he or she has done.”

  “I see.” Unfortunately, this description did not fit a murderer who preceded each murder with a meticulously arranged scene in a dollhouse.

  “I have a book in my office describing such cases. I’d be glad to lend it to you,” Dr. Landers offered.

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  “Perhaps we could discuss this over lunch,” she added, preceding him through the door.

  He was half out the door when Rafferty stopped him.

  “Some free medical advice, Doc. No late lunches. What you need is a long nap.” He winked. “Alone,” he added.

  Rafferty, a happily married man, was under the misapprehension that Fenimore, a bachelor, led a full and varied sex life. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. But he was not about to enlighten his friend. “Thanks,” he said. “Send me a bill.”

  Rafferty waved him away.

  Fenimore took the first part of Rafferty’s advice. No lunch. Not in deference to Rafferty, but because he wanted to get on with his case and he thought the type of criminal Dr. Landers had described was a dead end. He was convinced now that the Pancoast murderer had only one personality—a single, diabolical one—and a definite motive. It was up to him to find it. Only then would he be able to identify the murderer.

  Out of courtesy, he read a few of the case histories in Dr. Landers’s book. But he soon laid it aside and began to doodle on his scratch pad. He scribbled the names:

  Emily

  Judith

  Mildred

  Susanne

  After leaving a space, he added halfheartedly:

  Frank

  Carrie

  Beside each name, he wrote “motive” and drew a large question mark in the style of each person. Emily’s was slender and willowy, Judith’s—rounded and sturdy, Susanne’s—tailored and conventional, Frank’s—robust and strong, Mildred’s—flashy and flamboyant, Carrie’s—perky and sharp.

  Then, following the second part of Rafferty’s advice, he fell sound asleep in his chair.

  He woke abruptly, heart pounding. He had dreamed he was surrounded by giant question marks resembling sickles—blood dripping from their blades. Slowly, they were closing in on him.

  He did not need Dr. Landers to interpret his dream.

  CHAPTER 38

  MAY

  Jennifer pulled at her skirt, ran her hand through her newly cropped hair, and pressed the bell. She hadn’t seen him for several months and he wasn’t expecting her. She was about to press the bell again when the door opened.

  “Hey!” Horatio.

  “Hey,” she replied weakly.

  “Come on in.” He stepped back to let her pass. “Nobody’s home.” He followed her into the waiting room. “Doyle’s at the Shore and Doc’s making rounds. How’s Europe?”

  “Still intact.”

  “Meet any Frenchmen?”

  Jennifer thought of the string of ancient, garrulous booksellers she had wined and dined in an effort to acquire rare books. “A few.”

  “Cool.”

  Sal looked up from her place on the windowsill.

  “Hi, Sal.” Jennifer waved.

  The cat looked away, out the window.

  “She’s a moody old thing,” Horatio apologized, rubbing Sal’s head. He sprawled on the sofa. “You’re back early, aren’t ya?”

  Jennifer sat rather stiffly on her straight-backed chair. “A little.”

  “Can I getcha something?” He suddenly recognized his position as host.

  “I am thirsty. Would he have a Coke?”

  “I’ll check.” He disappeared to the kitchen. Jennifer heard him breaking ice from a tray. She went to join him.

  “You don’t have to wait on me.” She grabbed a glass from the cupboard and held it out to receive the ice cubes. As he was returning the tray, she caught sight of the contents of the freezer compartment. A steak and a box of French fries. Below, in the refrigerator part, nestled among the cans of Coke, lay a jug of cheap wine. (Fenimore had simple tastes.)

  They took their drinks back to the waiting room. Horatio drank his from the can. “Did you eat a lot of crap suzettes and stuff?” He stretched out on the sofa.

  “I had horse meat in Paris.”

  Horatio made an unattractive gagging noise.

  “It’s really very good. You wouldn’t be able to tell it from cow meat if it weren’t for the signs.”

  “Signs?”

  “In France, if a restaurant serves horse meat they have to display a sign out front with a horse’s head. It’s usually painted gold or bronze.”

  Horatio shook his head. “How could you eat it?” His acquaintance with horses was limited to those ridden by members of the Philadelphia police force (which he observed from a respectful distance) and the sorry nags that pulled the buggies full of tourists around Independence Hall.

  “Cows are nice too,” she said.

  “I’ve never seen a cow.”

  Suddenly, Jennifer was acutely aware of the confines of Horatio’s world. He had probably never been to a farm. He had probably never seen the ocean either.

  “I’ve seen an elephant though. My dad took us to the zoo once.”

  “I’ve never tried elephant,” Jennifer said blandly. “But in this town in Italy, I had ravioli at a little restaurant. It was delicious. But when I came out I passed the door to the kitchen. It was wide open, and hanging on the wall from hooks, skinned and waiting for the meat grinder, were three cats!”

  Sal stopped in the midst of a wash and stared at Jennifer.

  Horatio laughed. “She heard that.”

  Jennifer heard something else. A key in the lock. She sat more rigidly upright.

  “There’s the doc,” Horatio said, unnecessarily.

  When Fenimore came down the hall, the three occupants of the waiting room looked at the doorway expectantly. As always, the doctor paused to glance in and see if there was a stray patient he should greet. He didn’t see Jennifer at first. Her chair was off to his right.

  “Look who blew in.” Horatio nodded at Jennifer.

  He turned.

  “I came back a little early,” she murmured apologetically. “Dad was tired of baked beans and tuna and sent me an SOS.”

  “Well …” Fenimore pulled himself together and spoke heartily. “That’s great. Why don’t we all go out and celebrate.” He included Horatio and Sal with the sweep of his hand.

  But Jennifer had caught his first look and her self-confidence was restored. She sent Horatio a warning glance.

  “Sorry, man.” The boy rose languidly. “I have plans.” He disappeared down the hall toward the front door. They didn’t speak until the door slammed behind him.

  “What do you feel like? French, Italian?” he asked.

  “You know,” she said, “I’ve had my fill of Continental cuisine. What I really crave is something American.”

  “Cheese steak?” He grinned.

  “Well, maybe not quite that. How about a juicy steak, French fries, and a bottle of wine?”

  Fenimore was thoughtful. “In that case, I don’t think we need to go out. I have all those ingredients right here.”

  “What a coincidence.” Jennifer maintained a poker face.

  “But the steak is frozen,” he said.

  “How long will it take to defrost?”

  “An hour or so.”

  “We could start on the wine.”

  “Don’t move.” Fenimore disappeared into the kitchen. When he
returned with two glasses brimming with wine, Jennifer had moved onto the sofa. She looked especially well, he thought. She had a slight tan, picked up on the Mediterranean beaches. Her eyes seemed to have picked up some of the intense blue of the Mediterranean Sea as well. And her hair was different. Close-cropped, revealing the lovely curve of her head. Setting the glasses down on a table covered with last year’s magazines, he joined her on the sofa. On impulse, he ran his hand down the back of her head. “New cut?”

  She nodded.

  “Paris?”

  She nodded again.

  “Too bad.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “It can’t be repeated.”

  “I can always go back.”

  “Not right away.”

  “No …”

  Sal, deciding enough was enough, jumped from the windowsill and padded over to the sofa, careful to give Jennifer a wide birth. (She had not forgotten the ravioli story.) She leapt onto the vacant cushion next to Fenimore and rubbed her head against his thigh.

  “Hey!” Fenimore reached back with one hand to remove her.

  “Careful!” Jennifer warned. “She’s jealous.”

  Fenimore let go of Jennifer and placing both hands under Sal’s forelegs, raised her to eye level. “You’re not jealous, are you?”

  “Growrrr!” She snarled and twisted.

  He dropped her like a hot potato.

  “I told you.” Jennifer was lounging back on the sofa, observing them through narrowed lids. She looked like a cat herself—a fragile, blue-eyed feline.

  “How much do you weigh?” He surveyed her.

  “What a question.”

  “Seriously.”

  “About a hundred and twelve.”

  In his mind’s eye, Fenimore compared her to an equivalent weight at the gym. Jennifer’s weight was distributed differently, of course. Without warning, he scooped her up and started for the stairs.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Testing my strength.”

  “But it’s not good for you.”