The Ivory Grin

Chapter 17

I climbed the front steps of Dr. Benning’s house and rang the doorbell. The hole I had punched in the corner of the pane had been mended with cardboard and scotch tape. Dr. Benning came to the door in shirtsleeves, with suspenders dragging. His uncombed hair was a fringe of withering grass around the pink desert of his scalp. He had the air of a beaten old man, until he spoke. His voice was crisp and impatient: “What can I do for you? Weren’t you in my waiting-room yesterday afternoon?”

“This isn’t a professional call, doctor.”

“What kind of call is it? I’m just getting up.”

“Haven’t the police contacted you?”

“They have not. Are you a policeman?”

“A private detective, working with the police.” I showed him my photostat. “We’re investigating the murder of a colored girl named Lucy Champion. She visited your office yesterday afternoon.”

“You followed her here?”

“I did.”

“Do you care to tell me why?” In the harsh morning light his eyes were pale and strained.

“I was hired to.”

“And now she’s dead?”

“She got away from me. When I found her again, late yesterday afternoon, her throat had been cut.”

“It’s curious you didn’t get in touch with me before. Since she was my patient, and I was apparently one of the last persons to see her alive.”

“I tried to last night. Didn’t your wife tell you?”

“I haven’t had a chance to speak with her this morning. She isn’t well. Come in, though, won’t you? If you’ll just give me a chance to finish dressing, I’ll be glad to help you in any way I can.”

He ushered me into the waiting-room. I heard his slippered feet diminuendo up the stairs to the second floor. Ten minutes later he came down, dressed in a creased blue store suit, and freshly shaved. Leaning on the receptionist’s desk in the corner, he lit a cigarette and offered me the package.

“Not before breakfast, thanks.”

“I’m foolish to do it myself. I warn my patients about smoking on an empty stomach. But that’s the way of us doctors. Preventive medicine is our watchword nowadays, and half of us are still dying prematurely of overwork. Physician, heal thyself.” Benning had put on a professional manner along with his clothes.

“Speaking of premature death,” I said.

“I shouldn’t be chattering.” His quick smile held remnants of boyish charm. “It’s a bad habit I’ve fallen into, from trying to establish rapport with my patients. Now about this patient, Miss Champion. You say her throat was cut, Mr. – is it Archer?”

“Her throat was cut, and it’s Archer.”

“Exactly what sort of information do you want from me?”

“Your observations, personal and professional. Was yesterday the first time she came here to your office?”

“I believe it was the third time. I have to apologize for the condition of my records. I haven’t had trained help recently. And then so many of my patients are one-time cash patients. It’s in the nature of a general practice among, well, poor people. I don’t always keep full records, except in the cash-book. I do recall that she was in twice before: once in the middle of last week I think, and once the week before that.”

“Who referred her?”

“Her landlady, Mrs. Norris.”

“You know Mrs. Norris?”

“Certainly. She’s often done practical nursing for me. Anna Norris is the finest type of Negro woman, in my opinion. Or dark-complected woman, as she would say.”

“Her son is suspected of this murder.”

“Alex is?” He swung one nervous leg, and his heel rapped the side of the desk. “Why on earth should he be under suspicion?”

“He was on the scene. When they arrested him, he panicked and ran. If he hasn’t been caught, he’s probably still going.”

“Even so, isn’t Alex an unlikely suspect?”

“I think so. Lieutenant Brake doesn’t. Alex was intimate with the girl, you know. He was going to marry her.”

“Wasn’t she much older?”

“How old was she?”

“I’d say in her middle twenties. She was a registered nurse, with several years of experience.”

“What was the matter with her?”

A length of ash fell from his untended cigarette. Absently, he ground it into the carpet with the toe of his worn black shoe. “The matter with her?”

“What were you treating her for?”

“It amounted to nothing really,” he answered after a pause. “She had an intestinal complaint which I think was caused by a slight colonic spasm. Unfortunately she knew too much about illness, and too little. She magnified her trouble into a malignant disease. Of course she had nothing of the sort, nothing more than a mild psychosomatic ailment. Do you follow me?”

“Partly. Her symptoms were caused by nerves.”

“I wouldn’t say nerves.” Benning was expanding in the glow of his superior knowledge. “The total personality is the cause of psychosomatic ills. In our society a Negro, and especially a highly trained Negro woman like Miss Champion, is often subjected to frustrations that could lead to neurosis. A strong personality will sometimes convert incipient neurosis into physical symptoms. I’m stating it crudely, but that’s what Miss Champion did. She felt cramped by her life, so to speak, and her frustration expressed itself in stomach cramp.” He paused for breath.

“What was she doing here in Bella City?”

“I’d like to know myself. She claimed to be looking for a job, but I don’t think she was registered in California. I’d give a good deal for a social history on her.”

“She was from Detroit. Her family is poor and pretty ignorant. Does that help?”

“It doesn’t tell me much about her psychic life, does it?”

“Why is her psychic life important?”

“I could see that fear of illness wasn’t her only phobia. She had a deeper and more general fear which expressed itself in various ways. I tried to explain that to her, to give her some insight, but she wasn’t equal to it. She broke down and cried on my shoulder. Then it came out about her other fears.”

“What was she afraid of?”

He spread his hands like a lecturer. “It’s hard to say. I’m not a psychiatrist, though I do try to keep up with the literature.” He looked around his shabby waiting-room, and an obscure impulse made him add: “Which is more than you can say for my colleagues in this desolate town.”

“Was her fear real or imaginary?”

“Precisely the question I can’t answer, without knowing more about her.” His eyes clouded with thought. “Fear is always real subjectively. The true question about fear is whether it’s relevant, justified by the situation. In this case it seems to have been. Miss Champion believed that she was being hunted, that she was marked for death.”

“Did she give you any details?”

“No. I didn’t have time to gain her confidence. She failed to mention these persecution fears at all until her last visit, yesterday. You’ve been investigating her life and death, Mr. Archer. Was she really being hunted down by someone? Someone who finally caught her?”

“I don’t know. I was trailing her myself, and I did a poor job of it and she caught on. If she was full of fear, that might have been enough to set her off.” I asked a question I didn’t want to ask: “You don’t think she could have killed herself out of pure funk?”

Dr. Benning began to pace back and forth along a worn path that cut across the carpet from one door to the other. When he stopped an faced me, he looked ill at ease: “I’ll be frank with you. I was concerned about her in that sense, which is why I did my best to allay her fears.”

“You thought she had suicidal tendencies?”

“I took into account as a possibility. That’s all I can say. I’m no psychiatrist.” He spread his hands palms upward in a gesture of awkward helplessness. “Was the wound consistent with suicide?”

“It was pretty deep to be self-inflicted. Brake or the deputy coroner can answer that question better than I can. And Brake will want your statement.”

“I’m ready now, if you’re going to the station.”

I said I was. Benning went into the hall and got his hat. With his bald head covered he looked a good deal younger, but neither handsome nor well-heeled enough to be married to the woman he was married to.

He called up the stairs before we left: “I’m going out, Bess. Do you want anything?”

There was no answer.