In the women’s lobby she found Hilda reading a gossip magazine. Hilda smiled broadly. Setting aside the magazine, she escorted Charlotte to her cubicle. After nearly a week, Charlotte was familiar with the routine. After changing into a robe and turban, she waited in the wicker chair while Hilda filled the tub, listening to her talk about the spa where she had worked in Budapest, a hotel spa with a marble tub in every room; four mineral water swimming pools; and dozens of treatments, one of which was a carbon dioxide bath similar to the bath at High Rock. But High Rock’s water was far superior, she said. It was the best-tasting, the best for baths, and the most healthful, radium or no radium, in the world. But for the spa’s menu plans—conversation with Hilda was prone to sudden shifts—she had only criticism. The idea of depriving oneself of food in the name of beauty was alien to the Hungarian soul: apart perhaps from wine, romance, and gypsy music, there was nothing as important to a Hungarian as food. Besides, a woman was intended to be soft and curvaceous. To strive to be anything else was not only denying God’s will, it was denying one’s womanhood. A wistful look would come over Hilda’s Tartar features when she reminisced about the pastry shops of Budapest with their linzer tortes, lekvar cakes, and kugelhopf.
Another of her favorite topics was the movies. She was an avid fan of Charlotte’s and of the Hollywood of the thirties and forties in general. She plied Charlotte with questions: what were the stars’ houses like, what were their clothes like, what were their cars like. But there was little Charlotte could tell her that she didn’t already know. For modern movies, she shared Charlotte’s disdain. She hardly went to the movies at all anymore. She didn’t want to see another maniac hacking another unsuspecting baby-sitter to bits or another mobster blasting away another innocent bystander. Charlotte didn’t blame her. Unlike the movies of her era, which were uplifting and fun, today’s movies were filled with a contempt for human values, a delight in degradation. It seemed to her that Hollywood was filled with vulgar, hateful men who used their position to force their warped vision on the public. It was true that the public went along with it, but she attributed this to the American love affair with the movies. The fact that the public turned out in droves when a good movie did come along was evidence to her of its basic good sense. But it was evidence that was lost on the moguls, most of whom had yet to figure out there was money to be made from quality, decency, and taste.
But it wasn’t about the movies that Charlotte wanted to talk. Her thoughts were on Sperry. If he had killed Adele and Art, he would have had to have crossed the quadrangle, just as she had a few minutes ago. And if he had, someone would have seen him. He would have been in full view of anyone looking out a window, of anyone sitting on the terrace of the Hall of Springs. On the afternoon that Art died, dozens of people had been sitting on the terrace, Charlotte and Jerry among them. Even taking into consideration that their attention had been diverted by the Mineral Man, someone would have noticed Sperry. He might have walked under the colonnades instead of crossing the lawn, but there too he would have been readily visible. And certainly he would have been noticed in the women’s wing of the Bath Pavilion.
Charlotte asked Hilda if she had noticed anyone unusual on the day of Adele’s death.
“I didn’t see anybody,” she replied as she adjusted the spigot. “I was sitting in the lobby, knitting. When it comes time to check, I find her dead.” She rolled back her head and stuck her tongue out of the side of her mouth.
Hilda had missed her calling. She had a vivid way of dramatizing her conversations.
“Is there any other entrance other than the main door? Any way that someone could have entered the building without being seen?”
“No, miss. Only the door to the sun terrace.” She pointed down the hall to the door that opened onto the courtyard between the two wings. But there too Sperry would have been noticed. In good weather, the courtyard was filled with sunbathers.
“And the door to the cellar,” added Hilda. She stood up.
“Hilda, do you think Mrs. Singer looked drugged?”
Hilda’s face clouded over. “I don’t know,” she replied with uncharacteristic abruptness.
Hilda had probably already been grilled pretty thoroughly on this point. She may have felt guilty. It was probably part of her job to notice if the guests looked drugged or ill. Or maybe she was guilty—at the least, of not checking on Adele when she should have.
“Okay, it’s ready.”
Charlotte removed her robe and lowered herself into the steaming water. Hilda arranged the pillow and floated the towel on top of the water. Then she left to fetch Charlotte a glass of mineral water.
Charlotte leaned back. After nearly a week, the experience was old hat: she was no longer surprised by the depth of the tub, the tingly warmth of the water. No longer surprised, but still delighted.
Hilda returned shortly with the glass of water. Then she asked Charlotte if the water temperature was all right, which it was. The floating bathometer read ninety-four point three.
“I come back to check you in fifteen minutes,” she said. Then she shuffled out, closing the door behind her.
As she sipped the water, Charlotte tried to think back to Monday. She had heard a door closing, and footsteps. She was sure the footsteps hadn’t headed toward the lobby. But where? Adele’s cubicle was at the end of the corridor. Frustrated, she gave up and surrendered to the bath. Even on as hot a day as this, the water felt wonderful. Her legs floated to the surface, gleaming with a silver sheen. Tucking them into the toe hole, she was reminded of the strange position of the feet. She removed one foot from the toe hole and watched as it slowly rose to the surface. Out of curiosity, she lifted it out over the end of the tub. Then she did the same with the other foot. To accomplish this comfortably, she had to slide herself forward. But it wasn’t just Adele’s and Art’s feet that had been hanging out, it was also their lower legs. Sliding herself farther forward, she gently eased her legs out over the end of the tub. In order to do so, she had to support her upper body with her arms. Otherwise her head would have gone under. Otherwise her head would have gone under. Suddenly she realized why the victims’ feet had been hanging out over the end of the tub. She slid herself back to an upright position. It was simple! How stupid she had been not to have figured it out before.
Consider the problem of how to drown someone in a bathtub. Granted, such a problem is not one that ordinary people customarily give much thought to, but if they were to consider it, they would no doubt conclude that the most effective way would be to hold the victim’s head underwater. If this were their conclusion, they would be wrong. The victim, who would presumably be averse to the idea of drowning, would scream, fight back—kick, scratch, strike out—thereby calling attention to the fact that someone was trying to kill him. Even if the perpetrator were successful, there would be signs of violence on the victim’s body or on the murderer’s, evidence of a struggle. Circumstantial evidence, to be sure, but evidence enough to raise suspicions. But what if the perpetrator sneaked up on his victim? Sneaked up on him, grabbed his ankles, and jerked his feet into the air. In a tub as deep as this one, the victim’s head would be forced underwater. A little thrashing about, then silence. No struggle, no marks, no evidence—except for the fact that the victim’s feet would be found hanging out over the end of the tub. It would require some strength, but not enough to exclude anyone other than a total weakling.
It was a theory anyway, a theory worth testing. Reaching over to the chair at the side of the tub, Charlotte checked her watch. It was almost three-thirty. Jerry should be back by now.
Emerging from the tub, she pulled a towel from the heated rack and dried herself off. Then she changed into her white sweat suit. On the way out, she explained to Hilda that she had to cut her bath short because of an appointment. Hilda was disapproving. A bath without the rest period conferred only half the benefit. With Hilda’s scolding ringing in her ears, she headed out the big bronze doors. The sun was shining
through the clouds. On the terrace, the string quartet was setting up for the afternoon concert. In the women’s locker room, she changed into her bathing suit. If she was going to play victim, she wanted to be decent. Then she put her sweat suit back on, stuffed a bathing cap into her pocket, and headed down to Jerry’s office, where she found him fiddling with a rusty float valve.
“Toilet fixed?”
Jerry looked up and shook his head in disgust. “For the time being.” He laid the part down on his desk. “Someone’s got to do it, I guess.” He didn’t sound convinced. He invited her to sit down and then took a seat himself.
By contrast with Sperry’s office, Jerry’s was shabby. Paulina only spent her money where it would show. With its chin-up bar and its assortment of other athletic equipment—a push me-pull you, a jump rope, a hand grip—it looked like a high school locker room.
“Andrea told me you’d been here. What’s up?”
Charlotte explained that she had a theory about how Adele and Art had died and that she wanted him to help her test it out. She was purposefully unclear. Jerry agreed and they headed back across the quadrangle. It was now close to four. The boys had gone, leaving behind an armada of soggy bread pills that had been rejected by the surfeited carp. The concert had started—the strains of Bellini’s “Overture to Norma” floated across the lawn—but the terrace was emptier than usual. The lobby of the Bath Pavilion was also deserted. The only person around was Dana, who was mopping the floor. In the women’s wing, they found Mrs. Murray at her station. Jerry asked to use a bath cubicle for an experiment in hydrotherapy. If Mrs. Murray had any questions, she didn’t voice them. But, she said, the cubicles that weren’t still occupied were being cleaned. She suggested they use the VIP suite, a large cubicle reserved for Paulina and for the wives of foreign dignitaries and the like. Escorting them down the corridor, she unlocked the door with a key from a ring that hung from the belt of her white uniform.
The VIP suite was actually two rooms. In addition to the bath cubicle, there was a well-appointed anteroom. A door opened off the anteroom to a private terrace. The fact didn’t escape Charlotte that it was adjacent to the cubicle where Adele had died. Someone with access to the keys could have hidden there awaiting the opportunity to enter Adele’s cubicle unobserved.
Instructing Jerry to wait in the anteroom, Charlotte went into the bath cubicle and started drawing the tub. While the tub filled, she stripped down to her bathing suit and pulled her bathing cap over her tightly wound chignon. When the tub was ready, she summoned Jerry.
Upon entering, he let out a low whistle. “Not bad,” he said, boldly eyeing Charlotte’s figure.
“For an old lady,” she said, smiling.
In fact, Charlotte was quite vain about her figure. It was true that her flesh sagged a bit around her knees and that it hung heavy on the backs of her arms (her so-called bat wings), but time hadn’t affected her high, firm bust and the long, shapely legs that had literally stopped traffic in a famous scene from one of her movies.
“Okay,” said Jerry. “What do you want me to do? Try to kill you?”
“Drown me, to be precise,” she said, lowering herself into the tub.
“How do you want me to do it?”
“That’s up to you.”
Once Charlotte had positioned herself, Jerry stepped up to the side of the tub. “I don’t know what I’m getting myself into here.”
“That’s okay—I’m tough.”
Suddenly Jerry was standing over her. She felt his strong arms trying to push her under, one hand on the top of her chest, the other on her head. She flattened her palms against the bottom of the tub and locked her elbows. Pushing her under in this position was impossible. Stymied, Jerry tried again, this time circling his hands loosely around her throat and pushing her backward. She cuffed him gently on the jaw with her loosely clenched fist.
“This is hard work,” he said, releasing his grip. Then, trying a third time, he put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her down. Turning her head to the side, she bit his arm gently: she didn’t really bite, but rather pressed her teeth into his forearm, which was enough to demonstrate that she could have bitten him hard had she wanted to.
“I give up,” he said. “I’m afraid I might get hurt.”
“Not so easy, is it?”
He looked at her pointedly.
“That’s the purpose of this little experiment. To prove that it’s difficult to forcibly drown a healthy, conscious adult woman by holding her head underwater. The same goes for a man. At least, not without some battle scars. Now,” she said, repositioning herself. “We’ll try it another way.”
“Again?” he protested.
She nodded.
“What do you want me to do this time?”
“Stand at the foot of the tub.”
Jerry complied.
“Now grab my ankles.”
Reaching into the warm water, he took hold of her ankles.
“Now pull.”
Jerry pulled her ankles gently. She slid forward.
“No good,” she said, returning herself to her former position. “You’re being too gentle. Let’s try it again—this time for real. Jerk my ankles, hard. And then push them up into the air so that my head is forced underwater. As if you were forcing me to do a backward somersault.”
His hands tightened around her ankles. “Okay, here goes.”
Charlotte felt her legs being yanked forward. Then she felt her hamstrings stretching as Jerry pushed her legs over her head. The warm, fizzy water rushed into her nose, her mouth. A hand was holding her head under. Try as she might, she was unable to get her head above the surface. Then she felt nothing.
She had blacked out.
10
“Reflex vagal inhibition,” Jerry said. “I should have known,” he added, talking as much to himself as to her.
“What?”
He looked over at Charlotte. “In the blood vessels in the neck”—he took his hand off the wheel to point to the side of his neck—“there are sensors that regulate blood flow. When the head is jerked back like that, it sets the sensors off. The sensors send a message along the vagus nerve to the heart—that’s the nerve that regulates the heartbeat. That’s why you blacked out: reflex vagal inhibition.” He shook his head. “Jesus!”
Charlotte glanced at him. The expression on the face that looked out over the wheel was uncharacteristically grave.
Her experiment had been a success. She was unconscious for only a few seconds, but it was enough to prove her point and to give Jerry a scare. He had been ready to start CPR. She felt fine, but Jerry was still shaken. He had suggested a drink and dinner in town. He was batching it, he explained. His wife and children were visiting her sister in Albany. Charlotte had readily accepted. Delicious as it was, she was sick of spa food.
After they left the Bath Pavilion, Charlotte had gone back to her room to change into civvies—her sweat suit was beginning to feel like army issue. Jerry had picked her up in his car a few minutes later. They were now heading down the Avenue of the Pines. A haze of humidity hung over the golf course and the pink of the evening sky was tinged a peculiar shade of yellow. It looked as if they were in for a thunderstorm.
Jerry continued: “I used to see it all the time. Especially with husbands. They’d put their hands around the wife’s neck in an argument—you know?” He took his hands off the wheel briefly to demonstrate. “The next thing they know, she’s gonzo. It works the same way as a karate chop to the neck. I used to feel sorry for some of those poor guys. They didn’t mean any harm. I remember one guy saying, ‘She just went limp, she just went limp.’”
“Didn’t mean any harm?” said Charlotte cynically. Unlike Jerry, her sympathies didn’t lie with the poor husbands.
“Well, you know. They didn’t mean to kill anyone.” He looked over at her. “So you’re one of those, huh?” Charlotte gave him one of her withering looks, to which he responded with a show of dimples. “Good thin
g I didn’t drown you. I just thought of something else,” he went on. “The CO2 level just above the surface of the water can get pretty high. It can make a person woozy.”
“Meaning what? That they wouldn’t be as alert?”
“Yeah. That it would be easy for someone to sneak up on them. Occasionally clients actually pass out—that’s why the attendants are supposed to check up on them every ten or fifteen minutes.”
So she had been right, Charlotte thought. Hilda wasn’t being evasive—she just hadn’t wanted to admit to not checking up on her client as often as she should have.
Jerry continued: “In the old days, the bath attendants used to hold a chicken headfirst over the tub to demonstrate how much carbon dioxide was in the water. It was a promotion gimmick: the chicken would pass out. Then they’d take it away and it would start flapping and squawking again.”
“It doesn’t sound like much of an advertisement to me,” said Charlotte with a grimace.
“In those days it was. The CO2 was the big attraction. But it was different then: the clients didn’t just come here for a bath—they came for the cure. It was supposed to be good for the heart.”
The car pulled out onto the highway. They were following the same route that the jitney bus had taken the day before.
“What was the cure exactly?”
“A series of baths at increasing temperatures and CO2 levels,” replied Jerry. “We don’t offer it anymore—it’s too time-consuming and nobody believes in it anymore anyway—except the boss lady. She takes the complete cure every June—three baths a day for six weeks.”
“No wonder she’s so hard-boiled.”
Jerry laughed.
In a few minutes they had reached their destination, a restaurant named Lillian’s after Lillian Leonard. Jerry described it as a steak and brew joint and a local favorite. Inside it was paneled with weathered barn boards and decorated with old photographs. Many were of Lillian, whose face had been the most photographed of her day. Among the crowd, Charlotte recognized several of her fellow inmates. She concluded that Lillian’s must rank right up there with Mrs. Canfield’s as a destination for the weak of will.
Murder at the Spa Page 16