Do Evil In Return

5

After breakfast Charlotte dropped Miss Schiller and her suitcase at the office and went on to Mercywood hospital to make her morning calls. Lack of sleep never bothered her. When she pushed through the heavy swinging doors of the hospital she looked fresh and alert.

In a private phone booth in the corridor downstairs she looked up Voss’s number and dialed. Though she heard the phone being lifted off the hook at the other end, no one answered.

“Hello. Hello. Is this 2-8593?”

“Yes.” It wasn’t Voss. This voice was high and quavering, the voice of someone very old or very frightened: “Violet? Violet?”

“No,” Charlotte said. “It’s Violet I want to speak to.”

“She went away.”

“She went away where?”

But the line was dead. Charlotte hung up impatiently. Damn the girl, she thought, I’ve wasted hours on her already. I have work to do.

It was half-past ten by the time she finished making her rounds of the wards. When she returned to her office she found that Miss Schiller had done nothing in her absence; she hadn’t even opened the mail. It was quite obvious that Miss Schiller had spent the morning telephoning all her friends, telling them what had happened and probably a few things that hadn’t.

Flushing under Charlotte’s gaze, Miss Schiller picked up her appointment book.

“The little Wheeler boy’s coming in at two,” she said. “His mother says he didn’t pass and she thinks it’s because he’s so self-conscious about his warts. She wants you to take them off.”

Charlotte made a noncommittal noise. The Wheeler child’s only trouble was an hysterical mother.

“Oh, and Mrs. Ballard phoned, doctor. She had one of those palpitating spells during the night and she wants you to come over before office hours this afternoon.”

“Call her back and tell her I won’t be able to make it before five-thirty or six.”

“I told her you were booked straight through practically and you weren’t feeling well.”

“I’m feeling perfectly well,” Charlotte said. “And I wish to God you’d forget about last night.”

Miss Schiller looked injured. “Well. Well, I must say.”

“Have you a list of the house calls I have to make before lunch?”

“Here it is.”

Charlotte looked over the list. The patients were all women. The majority of her patients were women and children, a fact that irritated her, since she wanted a more general practice. She said, “I’ll be seeing Mrs. Connelly last. You can get in touch with me there if anything turns up.”

“Yes, doctor.”

“After that I’ll have to go down to the city hall and report the loss of my purse.”

“You could phone, right from here.”

“If I do they’ll send a policeman out.”

“Oh. That wouldn’t look nice, would it?”

“Not particularly.”

“I’ll call Mrs. Ballard then, doctor. A lovely person, isn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Just lovely, I think.”

Charlotte gave her a sharp glance. It wasn’t possible that Miss Schiller knew...? No, of course not. She was just chattering, as usual. To Miss Schiller, Mrs. Ballard was simply a regular patient whose husband paid her bills promptly and in person, and sometimes dropped in to talk with the doctor about his wife’s condition. Having Gwen as a patient was becoming more and more unbearable. But it had to be borne; there was no way of getting out of it. Charlotte had suggested to her several times that she consult another doctor, a nerve specialist, but Gwen had been sweetly adamant: “Oh no, Dr. Keating. I have the greatest faith in you!”

I won’t go, Charlotte thought. I’ll send someone else — Parslow or James — I refuse to go.

When she passed the mirror in the corridor on her way outside she saw that her face was pale and pinched-looking; it was beginning to show the strain, not of the past night, but of the coming afternoon.

The police department occupied the rear half of the city hall.

Charlotte knew by sight the sergeant on duty at the desk, a man named Quincy. His wife had been in a traction cast at Mercywood for several weeks and Charlotte frequently met him in the corridors looking rather ineffectual and down at the heel. In uniform, behind his desk, he seemed larger, and his tone was brusque and officious.

He reprimanded Charlotte for her delay in reporting the stolen purse.

“We might have picked the man up last night,” he said, frowning.

“You might have. It’s not likely that he’d hang around afterwards, though.”

“You can’t expect protection unless you co-operate with the police. The least people can do is report things on time.” He tapped his knuckles irritably with a pencil, as if he wished they were hers. “You say you were closing the garage door when the assailant struck you from behind and ran off with your purse.”

“Yes. I wasn’t seriously hurt, as you can see.”

“It’s assault, anyway. Did you see the weapon?”

“No, but I think it was a blackjack made with wet sand.”

He frowned again. “That’s just an amateur deduction, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I’d better mark it, weapon unknown. What did this purse look like?”

“Brown lizard with a gold clasp.” She described the contents, and estimated her total loss at seventy-five dollars.

“Next time something like that happens, phone the police immediately, Miss—” he consulted his report — “Miss Keating. Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”

“At the hospital.”

“Oh. Oh yes. You’re a nurse?”

“A doctor.”

“A doctor.” His expression was bitter. “I’ve seen so many doctors lately you’d think I’d be able to spot one at a glance. My wife...”

“Yes, I know about her. She’s had a rough time.”

“Plenty rough.”

“These bone operations are tricky, but she ought to be out soon.”

“I...” He seemed a little dazed by her sympathy. It was as if he intended to deliver a speech against doctors and illness and medical bills, and had somehow missed his cue. “Well. Well, I’ll get in touch with you if we discover anything.”

She went out, her heels tapping briskly on the marble tiles. Everything in the building seemed to be made of marble or iron or stone, hard cold materials that symbolized the hard, cold quality of impersonal justice.

At the end of the corridor an old man was standing half-hidden behind a pillar, as if he wasn’t certain whether to advance further into the building or to dart out again. He took a bandana out of his coat pocket and wiped his face and stepped back behind the pillar so that only a part of his sleeve was visible. Charlotte said, “Tiddles?”

The old man stared at her, white with surprise.

“What are you doing here, Tiddles?”

“Nothing.”

“You weren’t arrested or anything?”

“NO... no...” He wiped off his face again and put the bandana back in the breast pocket of his coat leaving the tip of it sticking out very nattily. He had on a brand-new green suit and a bow tie. He’d combed his hair and shaved. The suit was too big for him — the sleeves touched his knuckles and the trouser cuffs brushed the floor — and he kept fingering the bow tie nervously as if to assure himself that it was still there, that it hadn’t dropped off or been stolen. He smelled of bay rum and wine and moth balls.

“You’re all dressed up,” Charlotte said.

“Do I look good?”

“You look fine.”

“You have to look good to come to a police station. Otherwise — well...” His shoulders moved eloquently under the pounds of padding. “I got the suit from a friend of mine, he had to buy it to go to a classy wedding last year. You have to look respectable at a police station. The police don’t like me. I’ve been picked up a couple of times, nothing serious, just making a little noise and having a few too many. Even so. Even so, they hold things against a man.” He looked at her anxiously. “This tie is a little young for me.”

“Not at all.”

People are judged by their clothes. If you look like a bum you get treated like a bum. They won’t believe anything you tell them.”

“What are you going to tell them?”

“About Violet,” he said. “About how they murdered her.”

“Why do you think that?”

“She never came home. And Voss is nervous. Nervous as a cat.”

“I see.”

“And this morning he said to me that I’d have to move out, he wasn’t going to rent rooms any more. them...”

“Two?”

“The roomer, name of Eddie. The two of them talked all night down in the kitchen where I couldn’t hear. They’re suspicious types, always figuring that someone is spying on them.”

There was a moment’s silence before Charlotte spoke again. “I wouldn’t tell the police that Violet was murdered. They’ll ask for evidence and you haven’t any.”

“The evidence of all my senses.”

“Tell them only what you know for certain — that she didn’t come home last night.”

“You think that’s best?”

“Yes. If you make a wild accusation that you can’t prove they might consider you a crackpot.”

“Which I’m not.”

“No.”

“Never have been and never will be a crackpot.”

He walked off down the hall, his trouser cuffs picking up the dust from the marble floor.

Charlotte had an impulse to follow him, to lend her support to his story, but she held back. He could tell it alone. Her presence might only raise questions: Back again, Miss Keating? Oh, it’s a disappearing girl this time. And what’s your connection with the girl and with this old man?

Tiddles was all right. He could manage by himself. On her way back to the office she drove past Voss’s house. The windows and doors were closed, the blinds drawn. Someone had taken in the rocking chair from the porch and removed from the window the sign that had said, clarence g. voss. phrenology and palmistry. fresh-cut flowers for sale. piano lessons.

She stopped the car and got out and walked up to the house, rapidly, as if she were trying to keep ahead of her better judgment.

The doorbell had jammed again but she didn’t bother fixing it this time. She pounded on the door with her fist. Half a dozen Negro children gathered on the sidewalk to watch her, curious and silent, their eyes popping with questions.

The door opened slightly and a woman’s voice said roughly through the crack, “What do you want?”

“I’m looking for Violet O’Gorman.”

“She’s not here.”

“Well, is Mr. Voss in?”

“He ain’t around, either.” She opened the door far enough to stick her head out, and yelled at the children on the sidewalk “You lads beat it, see? I don’t want none of you niggers hanging around here.”

The children departed, hiding their mortification under wide white grins.

“Are you Mrs. Voss?” Charlotte asked.

“Yeah, not that it’s anybody’s business.” She stood with her right hand on her lip, and her left on the door, ready to slam it shut. She had a dead-white skin with a heavy blotch of rouge running from each cheekbone to the hairline above her ears. Her thin mouth had been fattened with lipstick. It looked grotesquely young and voluptuous growing on the ageing face. “I don’t get the point of standing here,” she said bitterly. “If you want Violet, look for her. I ain’t the little sneak’s mother.”

Charlotte raised her eyebrows. “Sneak?”

“I said to Clarence, get that creepy kid out of here before I go batty. No, he says, no. He’s got an angle, he says. Ha. He’s got more angles than a pretzel and not one of them’s ever paid off. Money. Money, that’s what I want. Just once before I die I’d like some money!”

Poverty and disease had desiccated her mind. Nothing would ever grow there again.

Charlotte was repelled by the woman but she felt, too, a sense of compassion. (Lewis was sometimes annoyed by this compassion. He distrusted it, he couldn’t believe that it wasn’t some kind of neurosis: “Naturally you can afford to make excuses for and feel sorry for people, Charley, because you’re not involved. No one could ever really touch you.”)

Watching Mrs. Voss’s ruined face Charlotte realized that money was the only thing for her to hope for. She couldn’t ask for the return of her beauty, her health, her youth. Money was the symbol and substitute for all three. And it was possible. There was money all over the place — a dime in a slot machine at the right time, a tip on the right horse, the right number on a lottery ticket, the right angle.

Charlotte wondered about Voss’s angle on Violet. There must be money involved, but it wasn’t Violet’s. “My uncle says I can go to court and make the man pay a lot of money.” Violet had said in the office yesterday. “My uncle says I can ruin him forever.” That must be Voss’s angle. But Violet instead of going to court, had run away.

“Well, what do you think you’re staring at, anyways?” Mrs. Voss muttered. “I don’t have to stand around being stared at.”

The door slammed so hard that the porch shook and a frightened jay flew out squawking from under the eaves.