“It turned out that this was the third time she’d attempted suicide since her son had left for school at the beginning of September. This time her husband really became alarmed and called for an ambulance. She was taken to the hospital in New Essex. They made the preliminary examination and then suggested that we conclude the tests. We have a greater psychiatric facility here, you see.”
“I see. And what was the diagnosis, Doctor?”
“She was a schizophrenic of the paranoid type,” the doctor said.
“And the disposition of the case?”
“We told Mr. Lasser that his wife needed extensive hospitalization and therapy and asked that he commit her to an institution. He refused, apparently upon the advice of his family physician. We asked for a legal commitment.”
“What’s the difference?” Hawes asked.
“Well, if a person is legally committed, it means that she cannot be returned to society until the director of the hospital recommends her release.”
“And would her case then go before the court?”
“Not unless there were criminal charges pending. I don’t believe there were any here.” He consulted his records. “No, there were none. Her release, then, would have been left entirely to the discretion of the hospital director.”
“Where was Mrs. Lasser sent? To a state hospital?”
“No, sir. Mr. Lasser requested that she be sent to a private institution. The request was granted by the court.”
“The court? I thought you just said—”
“Yes, Mr. Hawes, the court. There were no criminal charges, you understand, but a legal commitment must be requested in a court. In this state a superior court. And two qualified psychiatrists must sign the commitment papers.”
“Aren’t private institutions expensive?” Hawes asked.
“What?”
“Private institutions. Are they…?”
“Well, yes, they are.”
“How much do they cost?”
“Well, a good one will charge somewhere between two and three hundred dollars a week.”
“And was Mrs. Lasser sent to a good one?”
“Yes, sir. She was sent to the Mercer Sanitarium, right here in the city. It has an excellent reputation.”
“I see,” Hawes said. “Thank you very much, Doctor. You’ve been most helpful.”
The Mercer Sanitarium was on a tree-lined side street in Riverhead, at the other end of the city. Hawes had gone from the squadroom to New Essex, which was about fifteen miles east of Riverhead, and then to the Buena Vista Hospital, which was about fifteen miles west of Riverhead, and then back uptown again to the tree-lined side street upon which sat the huge white Georgian Colonial surrounded by a simple black wrought-iron fence. There was no sign outside the sanitarium, nor were there any whitefrocked attendants or nurses in evidence. The fence around the place was low enough for a child to have leaped. There were no bars or wire mesh on any of the windows fronting the street. In short, there was no indication—save for the fact that it was the only building on the block—that this was a place for the mentally ill.
Hawes announced himself to a receptionist wearing a white nurse’s uniform, telling her he was a detective, and showing her his shield and his ID card. The receptionist seemed singularly unimpressed. She asked Hawes to please be seated, and then she opened a huge mahogany door and was gone for several moments. When she returned, she asked Hawes if he would mind waiting just a short while, and Hawes said he wouldn’t mind waiting and then glanced at his watch. This was Friday, the beginning of the weekend, and he had a dinner date with Christine.
At the end of what seemed like a half hour but what was actually ten minutes, the mahogany door opened and a very goodlooking woman in a tailored blue suit, perhaps forty-five years old, her brown hair pulled to the back of her head in a severe bun, a pleasant welcoming smile on her face, stepped into the small entrance alcove and said, “Detective Hawes?”
Hawes rose from where he was sitting on the bench. “Yes,” he said, and extended his hand. “How do you do?”
“How do you do?” the woman said, taking his hand. “I’m Mrs. Mercer. Won’t you please come in?”
He followed Mrs. Mercer through the doorway and into an office paneled with the same rich mahogany as the door. She gestured to a paisley wing chair in front of a very large desk, the top of which was covered with a sheet of glass perhaps a half-inch thick. The desk was piled high with what Hawes assumed were case histories in worn blue binders. A framed diploma on the wall behind the desk advised Hawes that someone named Geraldine Porter (he figured this was Mrs. Mercer’s maiden name) had been graduated from Boston University with a Bachelor of Science degree. A second framed document told him that Geraldine Porter Mercer (he’d been right about the maiden name) had completed the course of study for a Master’s degree in psychology at Cornell University. There were other framed documents on the wall, all of which were awards or commendations of one kind or another from groups as disparate as the AMA and Hadassah, some acknowledging the high standards and service to the medical community of the Mercer Sanitarium, and others honoring Mrs. Mercer personally.
“Yes, Detective Hawes, what can I do for you?” she asked. There was a broad a in her speech, partially obscured by years of living here in Riverhead. Hawes smiled in recognition, and she smiled back at him and said, “Yes?”
“Boston,” he answered simply.
“Close,” she said. “West Newton.”
“The same thing.”
“Possibly,” Mrs. Mercer said, and smiled again. “You still haven’t told me why you’re here.”
“A man named George Lasser was killed last Friday afternoon,” Hawes said. He watched her face. Not a trace of recognition flickered in the blue eyes. The full mouth remained placid. There was in her manner only an attitude of polite expectancy. She said nothing. “His wife’s name was Estelle Valentine Lasser,” Hawes said.
“Oh,” Mrs. Mercer said. “Yes.”
“Does the name mean anything to you?”
“Yes. She was a patient here.”
“That’s right.”
“Yes, I remember. This was quite some time ago, Mr. Hawes.” She smiled and said, “Do I call you Mr. Hawes or Detective Hawes—which? It’s a little puzzling.”
“Whichever you prefer,” Hawes said, smiling back.
“Mr. Hawes then,” she said. “Oh, I would say Mrs. Lasser was with us in the very early days of the sanitarium. My husband opened the hospital in 1935, you see, and this must have been shortly after that.”
“Mrs. Lasser was committed in 1939,” Hawes said.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Can you tell me about it?”
“Well, what would you like to know?”
“How much did she pay?”
“What?”
“This is a private hospital,” Hawes said. “How much was Mr. Lasser paying for her care in 1939?”
“Well, I wouldn’t know exactly. I would have to check our records. As a matter of fact, I doubt if they’d go back that far.”
“Your financial records, do you mean?”
“Yes. Our medical records go back to the beginning, of course.”
“Well, can you make a guess at what your charges were in 1939? Approximately?”
“I would say a hundred dollars a week. Or perhaps a hundred and a quarter. Certainly no more than that.”
“And Mr. Lasser agreed to pay these charges?”
“I assume so. His wife was a patient here, so I assume…”
“Did he ever miss any payments?”
“I really don’t know. Mr. Hawes, if this is important, I’ll see if we have the records. But I—”
“We can check it later,” Hawes said. “Can you tell me how long Mrs. Lasser was a patient here?”