by Matthew Head
“Well, I see you can’t make much rebuttal on that story. After all, if the boy was after wrapped pictures—”
Dr. Gollmer said quietly, “Oh, but I can.”
“But you haven’t.”
“No. Because as I have said, it would only have made more trouble. But there is something I know, and I can tell you.”
He paused long enough to select a starting point, and then said, “I came home that afternoon and noticed only that the little pictures had been collected. In the clutter of my room there was no reason to notice that the ‘Venus’ also was gone. I spent very little time in my house that day, and I spent that little time in my bedroom; I only passed through my living room. And that night, too, when I came home, I only passed through, and went into the bedroom. But the next morning when I went out, I heard about the affair at the auction the night before. Naturally I was horrified, and I went to my house immediately. And listen to me, Dr. Finney, and Mr. Tolliver—I tell you that every object in my house had been examined, and examined with care. Everything had been put back exactly in place, but in a house such as mine was then, one can see where the dust was disturbed. In my bedroom even I did some dusting, but I believe that it too had been entered, as well as the living room. I believe that my bureau drawers had been opened and their contents examined.
“Now that is not the work of a houseboy whose mistress is waiting impatiently in the heat outside, in her car. That was the work of Madame de St. Nicaise, who is a woman of morbid hatred, of morbid curiosity, a woman who, and I say this as a doctor to you, Dr. Finney—a woman who is sick with hatred and jealousy and frustration, deeply sick. I tell you that when I went through my house, alone that morning, I felt her there, and that my flesh crawled when I saw all the little signs of her lifting and examining things. Perhaps I grew morbid, Dr. Finney, but as I saw the signs of her all through that house, I began to imagine her there, fondling my fetishes, fingering my linen, and I could imagine the staleness of her body in the air, even that. And knowing that she had breathed in that room, it was almost as if I could hear it, the short, suppressed, excited breathing of the snooper, and I tell you I could not take that air into my lungs, and I went out and sat on the steps of my porch, holding my head, and feeling my stomach turn.
“Then I began to think it out, and I began to be certain what had happened. I think that Madame de St. Nicaise dispatched the boy to my door while she waited in the car. Certainly she would never have entered the house in my presence, or even have set foot in my yard, if I had been there. But I think the boy brought back to her the note, which he of course could not read. It told her that the house was empty. I think that then she looked around her; she saw how protected it is in my driveway; bushes and vines conceal everything, and nobody could see her enter the house. She got out of the car and perhaps went into the house with the boy, but I think she told the boy to wait. And then, in my house, she had a delightful time, spying on old Gollmer, poking into his things, hunting out the little intimacies. What she felt when she unwrapped the big picture in the corner, and saw the ‘Venus’ for the first time, you can imagine. Such triumph, such a beautiful feeling of evil discovery, such a full-born incredibly fortunate opportunity, ready-made, to disgrace old Gollmer and with him, Liliane. Because surely you know that she hated Liliane, although she would never openly speak one word against Morelli’s wife, as she openly slanders me. Not that she refrained through loyalty, you understand—through self-interest. You say you saw her this morning. But what you have not seen is what I saw, before Liliane died, when I was in the house every day or several times a day, and could watch Madame de St. Nicaise while I also watched my patient. I tell you Madame de St. Nicaise is sick; she is very sick, sick with her body that no man has touched, and sick with her little ambition to be a great lady —she is love-sick and hate-sick. It is a kind of nymphomania of hate, and that is what she felt when she saw the ‘Venus’—the excitement of approaching fulfillment, the discovery of the instrument for expressing her passion. Yes, I call it a passion. Both of us, Liliane and old Gollmer, in one stroke. I think she rewrapped the picture, and called the boy, and delivered the pictures to the hall.”
Miss Finney murmured, “Of course, her boy could be questioned.”
“Hah!” said Dr. Gollmer. “Naturally you do not believe that, not for an instant. In the affair of the cat, for instance, the word of my boy who brought the kid-gut counted for nothing, but Madame invited that the word of her boy should be accepted, to say that she had burned the string before I offered to have tests made on it. With Madame de St. Nicaise the word of the indigène is to be accepted or rejected as it suits her purpose. And in any case, this community could never solicit native testimony; it would be too dangerous a precedent. For that matter, if the testimony were given, Madame de St. Nicaise is capable of threatening her boy and dictating his testimony.” He managed to smile and said, “Now I am talking like Madame de St. Nicaise, who says that old Gollmer’s boy will say what he is told to say. No, there was nothing to do but let the matter lie. And what I believe, I believe only from knowing Madame de St. Nicaise, and from seeing that my house had been gone over, object by object.”
“Your door was unlocked. Anybody could have done that during the day.”
“Of course. I told you my position was indefensible. I told you I have not even tried to establish anything except that Liliane did not pose for the picture and that it was collected by mistake. But Madame de St. Nicaise says that I put the ‘Venus,’ wrapped, where the boy would see it; that I left the house so that the mistake might occur; that if it had not occurred at this auction, I would have seen to it that it occurred at a later one; that I was determined to have my revenge on her, after our quarrel about the cat, by disgracing the family. And you can imagine her, Dr. Finney, the way in which she would deny the possibility of Liliane’s having posed for the picture, in such a way that it would be obvious to the listener that Madame de St. Nicaise really thought Liliane had posed, but was lying for the sake of the family honor. No, she had to have both of us, both at the same time.”
“And you haven’t told all this to anyone at all?”
“No one,” he said, and stopped abruptly. Then he said, “Except Liliane.”
“Liliane! When?”
“That is the answer to your question,” he said, “as to why Liliane insisted on having me. I have told you that I liked her; I found her sweet and agreeable, always, always eager to give pleasure, and incapable of giving pain. And that she thought I had deceived her, that she should even think that perhaps I had exhibited the picture intentionally—that I could not tolerate. For that matter I had deceived her to some extent, in asking her to pose for the head, when I meant to use it as I did, even for my own pleasure only. When she left town, when she went to South Africa after the scandal of the auction, I wrote her a letter—”
“Where’d you get her address?” Miss Finney snapped out, although I wouldn’t even have wondered.
“You are quick, Dr. Finney,” Gollmer said. “I got it from Morelli.”
“Morelli! But you didn’t tell him all this?”
“I insisted to him that I had never intended the picture to be seen by anybody but myself. I told him what was the truth, that I wanted to apologize to Liliane for asking her to pose for the head, without telling her how I planned to use it.
“Well, for—and how did Morelli take all this?”
“At first, very angry. Then, very polite and reasonable.”
“He did give you the address?”
“Yes, and I wrote Liliane.”
“You apologized and so on. But did you tell her what you’ve told us about Madame de St. Nicaise?”
Gollmer looked extremely uncomfortable and said, “Dr. Finney, we all make mistakes. We all begin to feel sorry for ourselves. After this affair, I was ruined. Perhaps when I wrote Liliane—I was even tempted to tell it all to Morelli—I did hope that it would somehow come out through her, and that Madame de St
. Nicaise would receive some of the humiliation and calumny which she deserved as much as I did—more than I did, of course. But primarily I wanted to clear myself in Liliane’s eyes. I could not stand it that she should think of me as she must have done.”
“And you did clear yourself.”
“If I had waited only a couple of weeks, I need not have written the letter. That was the time when suddenly I went on the tour with the French anthropological expedition. It was a godsend. Among other things,” he said half humorously, “it brought me Lala and Baba. I came back much rested, and even with a little money. I might have then been able to refrain from writing Liliane. But as it was, I had already written. And when Liliane came back, I saw her very briefly on the street.”
He stopped here and turned to me. He said abruptly, “Do you think Liliane changed, Mr. Tolliver, while she was in South Africa?”
“Yes, some,” I said.
“How? In what way?”
“Since you ask, in an important way, I think. I’ve been thinking a lot about her, lately. She was quieter, for one thing. I didn’t see much of her, though. I’ve been away part of the time since she got back, and we somehow just didn’t happen to go to the same places.”
“That was because she went to so few places,” Dr. Gollmer said. “And of course you heard the rumors about her.”
“About what happened in South Africa?”
“Yes, of course. Well? Do you believe them?”
I said uncomfortably, “But Dr. Gollmer, you know how people always talked about Liliane. They were just the usual rumors—the usual kind that attached themselves to Liliane.” I said to Miss Finney, “I haven’t mentioned this to you. When we talked about Liliane I hadn’t got to that part. Miss Finney was curious about Liliane, of course,” I said to Dr. Gollmer, knowing I was doing all this rather messily, “and I’ve been—”
Dr. Gollmer said, “You say, ‘the usual rumors that attached themselves to Liliane.’ In other words, you heard she had had lovers down there—or, specifically, a lover. Did you believe it?”
I really squirmed. Because I had believed it. I believed it because Liliane seemed so changed. Not in looks—she was as bloomingly healthy, as pink-gold and ivory as ever, but she had lost something of the quality of naïveté, some of the almost childlike air of direct and curious and unselective interest in life which she had had before. I had imagined that she had had a love affair, not a sordid tumble in the sheets or an experimental investigation of amorous indulgence, but a real love affair, and I was glad. I think I felt all this because I had understood, up there on the platform at the Funa that day, how easily it might happen, how innocently it might happen, and how sweet it could be. And as a matter of fact I had hoped it was true, and I had felt it was true because of the change in Liliane. I had hoped it was true in spite of the fact that any love affair which doesn’t have time to fade out into mediocrity and indifference is going to end in sadness, and I felt it was true because I felt some of this sadness in Liliane, and because, the time or two that I saw her, our meeting at the Funa seemed so far away, as if something more important had intervened for her, just as it had for me. And I think all of this should explain why, when Dr. Gollmer asked me, “Did you believe it?” I said, “No.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“I just don’t think she was—easy, the way one always heard.”
Dr. Gollmer smiled. “I beg your pardon, young man,” he said. “I did not mean to turn this into an inquisition. But I wanted to make a point here. It is about the technique of slander used by Madame de St. Nicaise. Where did these stories of Liliane’s lovers originate? Do you know anyone—anyone at all who was in South Africa while Liliane was?”
“Yes. Jeanne, the daughter. Liliane went down there to put her in school.”
Dr. Gollmer looked startled for a moment, but then he said, “We will disregard Jeanne. To suspect a child of eighteen—well, of course, it is a possibility, but in this case I think not. What I am getting at is that it was Madame de St. Nicaise who began these South African legends. On several occasions, even to old Gollmer, and as I have said, I hear less gossip than most people—on several occasions acquaintances would say to me, You’ve heard about Liliane’s affairs? In South Africa? And I would say, No. Then I would be told—the vague rumor, the shadowy lover, the ambiguous misbehavior—but credible, always credible, of a body like Liliane’s. I would say, Where did you hear this? The answer would be Here or There, but twice it was Madame de St. Nicaise. Mind you!”
“But she wouldn’t!” I objected. “She’s stupid, but not that stupid. She wouldn’t circulate a rumor about Liliane. You just said, about the ‘Venus,’ she would always deny Liliane posed for it—” and then I saw light and said, “Oh, of course.”
“Yes,” said Gollmer. “The same. I would say to my gossiping acquaintance, What! From Madame de St. Nicaise herself! and Oh, they would say, of course she was denying it. A fine way to start a rumor, Mr. Tolliver, a classic way. Invent it for yourself, then deny it—all virtue, all rectitude, all loyalty! That was always Madame de St. Nicaise—and all scheming, lies, evil.”
As he spoke I could see a monstrous head of Madame de St. Nicaise, the eyes glittering, the lips retracted, then moving rapidly in the grimaces of speech, then the end of the tongue darting out and back.
I heard Miss Finney saying in a matter-of-fact voice, “We got off the track somewhere, Doctor. You said you saw Liliane on the street after she got back.”
Dr. Gollmer took a deep breath, and I came up to the surface myself, shaking off the specter of Madame de St. Nicaise. “Yes,” Dr. Gollmer said. “We spoke only a few words. She thanked me for the letter, and told me that she believed me. But whether she ever mentioned it to Madame de St. Nicaise, or to Morelli, I very much doubt. She was never one to make any trouble that could be avoided. But when she became ill, and insisted on having me, that is why. She wanted to do that much to re-establish me in the position I had lost through Madame de St. Nicaise and her slandering. Liliane,” he said, “Liliane—” and he spoke with a kind of despair and humility “—I only hope it did not cost her her life.”
“Nonsense,” Miss Finney said. “You treated her the way practically any other doctor would have.”
“I was too casual,” he said. “Even this time, too casual.”
But it wasn’t Dr. Gollmer’s casualness that Miss Finney and I were thinking about, and both of us knew it. We were all three silent for a while, but I knew for sure that Miss Finney had been thinking of Madame de St. Nicaise when she shivered a little and sat up straighter, with an air of finishing the interview, and said, “I knew that woman was stupid, and I knew she was malevolent. I haven’t really learned anything new about her, except that she is everything I thought she was to a more intense degree. She used to make me just plain mad.” She looked at Dr. Gollmer and said, “But now I think she scares me a little bit.”
“You may take the word of old Gollmer, Dr. Finney, that she is something to be frightened of. Like many dangerous people, she appears only comic, or a little pathetic. But there is a rest home in Thysville, you certainly know—Dr. Chaubel’s mental hospital called a rest home, and if Madame de St. Nicaise were my patient, I think she would go there for observation.”
“I’d hate the job of getting her there,” Miss Finney said. “Dr. Gollmer, you saw Morelli and Madame de St. Nicaise together while Liliane was ill. What do you think?”
Dr. Gollmer said, “What I think is what anybody who knows the history of that family should think, after one glimpse of Morelli and Madame de St. Nicaise together. I have said nothing about it, since I have always tried, this afternoon as always, to say nothing at all against Madame de St. Nicaise except where she was directly concerned with me, where she has directly sought to do me harm. But you have asked, and I will say this: that the woman is hopelessly enamored of Morelli, that she was probably hopelessly in love with him even when her sister was alive; that in Morelli now she has conc
entrated everything—the love she bore her sister, the desire she has always had for him, even the love she bears his daughter. And if she could marry him, and have the position in full recognition which she has filled for so long in half-measure—if she could stop being a kind of housekeeper, and become Madame Hector Morelli, established in her own home—if she could have that, she could have a life worth having. Her whole life centers in Morelli. Especially,” he said, and he wasn’t without a little satisfied malice here, “since the passing of poor Mimette.”
“Yes,” said Miss Finney. “And Morelli? What is she to him?”
“My dear Dr. Finney,” Gollmer said, “to any man, especially to a man who has had a wife like Lillane, Madame de St. Nicaise could only be a rather dull and unlovely object which is not discarded because it has become indispensable around the house.”
He rose now and said, “It is, of course, a great relief to me to have said these things at last.” He said unnecessarily and a little pompously, “I hope you understand that it is a tribute to your integrity as a doctor and as a person.” I had risen too, and he turned to me and took my hand. “Perhaps in a very small way, also, a tribute to your whisky, Mr. Tolliver, and certainly an acknowledgment of my belief in your discretion, as vouched for by Dr. Finney.”