Do Evil In Return

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 O.K., 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. Se’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 any more. 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.