The Chill

Chapter 18

The front doorbell rang. Someone trotted past the office door to answer it. It was getting late for visitors, and I went out and followed the aide along the hallway. The four patients were still watching the television screen as if it was a window on the outside world.

Whoever had rung the bell was knocking now, rather violently.

“Just a minute,” the aide said through the door. She got her key into the lock and opened it partly. “Who is it? Who do you want to see?”

It was Alice Jenks. She tried to push her way in, but the aide had her white shoe against the door.

“I wish to see my niece, Dolly McGee.”

“We have no such patient.”

“She calls herself Dolly Kincaid now.”

“I can’t let you in to see anyone without doctor’s permission.

“Is Godwin here?”

“I think so.”

“Get him,” Miss Jenks said peremptorily.

The girl’s Latin temper flared. “I don’t take orders from you,” she said in a hissing whisper. “And keep your voice down. We have people frying to rest.”

“Get Dr. Godwin.”

“Don’t worry, I intend to. But you’ll have to wait outside.”

“It will be a pleasure.”

I stepped between them before the nurse closed the door and said to Miss Jenks: “May I speak to you for a minute?”

She peered at me through fogged glasses. “So you’re here, too.”

“I’m here, too.”

I stepped out under the outside light and heard the door shut behind me. The air was chilly after the hot-house atmosphere of the nursing home. Miss Jenks had on a thick fur-collared coat which made her figure massive in the gloom. Droplets of water glistened in the fur, and in her graying hair.

“What do you want with Dolly?”

“It’s none of your business. She’s my flesh and blood, not yours.”

“Dolly has a husband. I represent him.”

“You can go and represent him in some other constituency. I’m not interested in you or her husband.”

“But suddenly you’re interested in Dolly. Does it have anything to do with the story in the paper?”

“Maybe it has and maybe it hasn’t.” In her language, that meant yes. She added defensively: “I’ve been interested in Dolly since she was born. I know better than a lot of strangers what’s good for her.”

“Dr. Godwin isn’t a stranger.”

“No. I wish he was.”

“I hope you’re not thinking of taking her out of here.”

“Maybe I am and maybe I’m not.” She dug some Kleenex out of her purse and used it to clean her glasses. I could see a newspaper folded small in the purse.

“Miss Jenks, did you read the description of the revolver that was found in Dolly’s bed?”

She replaced her glasses quickly, as though to cover the startled look in her eyes. “Naturally I read it.”

“Did it ring any bell with you?”

“Yes. It sounded like the revolver I used to have, so I came into town to the courthouse to have a look at it. It looks like mine all right.”

“You admit that?”

“Why shouldn’t I? I haven’t seen it for over ten years.”

“Can you prove it?”

“Of course I can prove it. It was stolen from my house before Constance was shot. Sheriff Crane theorized at the time that it might have been the gun McGee used on her. He still thinks so. McGee could easily have taken it. He knew where it was, in my bedroom.”

“You didn’t tell me all this this morning.”

“I didn’t think of it. It was only theory, anyway. You were interested in facts.”

“I’m interested in both, Miss Jenks. What’s the police theory now? That McGee killed Miss Haggerty and tried to frame his daughter?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him. A man who would do what he did to his wife–” Her voice sank out of hearing in her throat.

“And they want to use his daughter to nail McGee again?”

She didn’t answer me. Lights went on inside, and there were sounds of movement culminating in Godwin’s opening the door. He shook his keys at us, grinning fiercely.

“Come inside, Miss Jenks.”

She stamped up the concrete steps. Godwin had cleared the front room of everyone but Alex, who was sitting on a chair against the wall. I stood unobtrusively in the corner beside the silent television set.

She faced him, almost as tall in heels as he was, almost as wide in her coat, almost as stubborn in her pride. “I don’t approve of what you’re doing, Dr. Godwin.”

“What am I doing?” He sat on the arm of a chair and crossed his legs.

“You know what I’m referring to. My niece. Keeping her cooped up here in defiance of the constituted authorities.”

“There’s no defiance involved. I try to do my duty, the Sheriff tries to do his. Sometimes we come into conflict. It doesn’t necessarily mean that Sheriff Crane is right and I’m wrong.”

“It does to me.”

“I’m not surprised. We’ve disagreed before, on a similar issue. You and your friend the Sheriff had your way on that occasion, unfortunately for your niece.”

“It did her no harm to testify. Truth is truth.”

“And trauma is trauma. It did her incalculable harm, which she’s still suffering under.”

“I’d like to see that for myself.”

“So you can make a full report to the Sheriff?”

“Good citizens cooperate with the law,” she said sententiously. “But I’m not here on the Sheriff’s behalf. I came here to help my niece.”

“How do you propose to help her?”

“I’m going to take her home with me.”

Godwin stood up shaking his head.

“You can’t stop me. I’ve been her guardian since her mother died. The law will back me up.”

“I think not,” Godwin said coldly. “Dolly’s of age, and she’s here of her own free will.”

“I’d like to ask her that question for myself.”

“You’re not going to ask her any questions.”

The woman took a step toward him and thrust her head forward on her neck. “You think you’re a little tin god, don’t you, masterminding my family’s affairs? I say you’ve got no right to keep her here under duress, making us all look bad. I’ve got a position to keep up in this county. I spent the day with some very high-level people from Sacramento.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow your logic. But keep your voice down, please.” Godwin himself was using the slow weary monotone that I had first heard on the telephone twenty-four hours before. “And let me assure you again, your niece is here of her own free will.”

“That’s right.” Alex came forward into the verbal line of fire. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Alex Kincaid, Dolly’s husband.”

She disregarded his hand.

“I think it’s important for her to stay here,” he said. “I have confidence in the doctor, and so has my wife.”

“I’m sorry for you then. He had me bamboozled, too, until I found out what went on in his office.”

Alex looked inquiringly at Godwin. The doctor turned his hands out as if he was feeling for rain. He said to Miss Jenks:

“You graduated in sociology, I believe.”

“What if I did?”

“From a woman of your training and background, I’d expect a more professional attitude toward the practice of psychiatry.”

“I’m not talking about the practice of psychiatry. I’m talking about the practice of other things.”

“What other things?”

“I wouldn’t soil my tongue with them. But please don’t think I didn’t know my sister and what went on in her life. I’ve been remembering things – the way she used to primp and preen Saturday mornings before she came in to town. And then she wanted to move here, to be closer.”

“Closer to me?”

“So she told me.”

Godwin’s face was white, as if all its color had been drawn into the darkness of his eyes. “You’re a silly woman, Miss Jenks, and I’ve had enough of you. I’ll ask you to leave now.”

“I’m staying here till I see my niece. I want to know what you’re practicing on her.”

“It would do her no good. In your present mood you’d do no good to anyone.” He moved around her to the door and held it open. “Good night.”

She didn’t move or look at him. She stood with her head down, a little dazed by the anger that had gone through her like a storm.

“Do you wish to be forcibly removed?”

“Try it. You’ll end up in court.”

But a kind of shame had begun to invade her face. Her mouth was twitching like a small injured thing. It had said more than she intended.

When I took her by the arm and said, “Come on, Miss Jenks,” she let me lead her to the door. Godwin closed it on her.

“I have no patience with fools,” he said.

“Have a little patience with me, though, will you, doctor?”

“I’ll give it a try, Archer.” He took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh. “You want to know if there’s any truth in her innuendo.”

“You make it easy for me.”

“Why not? I love the truth. My entire life is a search for it.”

“Okay, was Constance McGee in love with you?”

“I suppose she was, in a way. Women patients traditionally fall in love with their doctors, particularly in my field. It didn’t persist in her case.”

“This may strike you as a foolish question, but did you love her?”

“I’ll give you a foolish answer, Mr. Archer. Of course I loved her. I loved her the way a doctor loves his patients, if he’s any good. It’s a love that’s more maternal than erotic.” He spread his large hands on his chest, and spoke from there: “I wanted to serve her. I didn’t succeed too well.”

I was silenced.

“And now, gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me, I have hospital rounds in the morning.” He swung his keys.

Alex said to me in the street: “Do you believe him?”

“Unless or until I have proof that he’s lying. He’s not telling all he knows but people seldom do, let alone doctors. I’d take his word ahead of Alice Jenks’s.”

He started to climb into his car, then turned back toward me, gesturing in the direction of the nursing home. Its plain rectangular façade loomed in the fog like a blockhouse, the visible part of an underground fortress.

“You think she’s safe there, Mr. Archer?”

“Safer than she’d be on the streets, or in jail, or in a psycho ward with a police psychiatrist quizzing her.”

“Or at her aunt’s?”

“Or at her aunt’s. Miss Jenks is one of these righteous women who doesn’t let her left lobe know what her right lobe is doing. She’s quite a tiger.”

His eyes were still on the front of the nursing home.

Deep inside the building, the wild old voice I had heard that morning rose again. It faded like the cry of a seabird flying away, intermitted by wind.

“I wish I could stay with Dolly, and protect her,” Alex said.

He was a good boy.

I broached the subject of money. He gave me most of the money in his wallet. I used it to buy an airline ticket to Chicago and return, and caught a late flight from International Airport.