“Not at all. When I can’t treat a patient to my satisfaction I recommend someone else.”
“Well, I won’t have anyone else, so there. Imagine me at a nasty psychiatrist’s, telling him everything. Oh, I’d die!”
Charlotte drew on her gloves. Throwing words at Gwen was like throwing bubbles; they burst before they got anywhere. “I’m glad I was able to help in some way,” Charlotte said. She felt such tension and weariness that she was ready to weep. You’re so honest, doctor, so honest... “Take the capsules and the medicine and try not to worry too much about the spells. I don’t think they’re serious.”
She went out to the hall and picked up her medical bag, and Gwen and the dogs followed, Gwen looking a little hurt by her departure, like a disappointed child.
“Oh, it’s a shame you have to leave, doctor. Dinner’s ready, and it would be easy as pie to set another place. Lewis will be home any minute now.”
“Thanks. I...”
“Another time, perhaps?”
“Yes.”
“I know,” Gwen said gently, “that Lewis would love to have you.”
“That’s — nice.”
“Good-bye, now.”
“Good-bye.”
Outside, the fog had thinned, but the sky was darkening.
8
She had a late dinner at home alone. The house was dead and quiet. She put some records on the Capehart to drive away the silence, but the silence stayed in ambush underneath the music waiting to spring at her between records.
She hadn’t heard from Lewis all day. (Such a long day, she thought. It seems a week since I had breakfast with Miss Schiller this morning and saw Tiddles in his green suit at the police station... A long day for me, and a long night for Violet, a long, dark forever... Don’t think, don’t think about it. It wasn’t your fault.)
Lewis always phoned her once or twice during the afternoon. They didn’t talk long — they were both busy — but the calls reassured Charlotte. They made her feel that she was loved, that she wasn’t just playing around with a married man; she was in love and so was Lewis, and it was their bad luck that he was already married when they met. She hadn’t called him at his house for a long time; she had to look up the number in the telephone directory before she dialed.
Lewis answered, sounding falsely genial as he always did before he identified a caller. It was part of his public personality. “Hello. This is Lewis Ballard.”
Charlotte spoke fast “I want to see you. Can you come over?”
“Sorry, you must have the wrong number.”
“Does that mean you can’t?”
“That’s right. This is 5-5919.”
“Darling — Lewis, I...”
But he’d already hung up.
It wasn’t his fault, she thought. He had to hang up; Gwen was there listening. Even so she felt rejected, and a little cheap. “Sorry, you must have the wrong number, toots.” “Maybe I have, bud.” She went over and sat in Lewis’ chair, holding the palms of her hands over her eyes.
The front door was still open, as she’d left it to air out the house after she’d cooked dinner, and the wind slid across the floor and chilled her legs.
She went to the door to close it. Two men were coming through the gate into the walled garden. The taller one bolted the gate carefully behind him and wiped his hands on his trousers. The other man was small. He moved through the shadows with furtive delicacy like an elf and his ears stuck out from his red baseball cap, pale enormous blobs of wax silhouetted against the dark trees.
He flitted across the flagstones towards the light of the open door, a moth of a man. It was too late to dose the door. Too late and too futile. The little man could fly through a window, drop from a chimney, crawl out of a crack and scamper through an evil dream.
“Remember me? Eh?”
“You’re Mr. Voss.”
“Sure, that’s right.” He jerked his thumb towards his companion. Charlotte saw that both men were wearing crudely sewn mourning bands on their sleeves. “This here’s my pal, Eddie O’Gorman.”
“I’ve seen Mr. O’Gorman before.”
O’Gorman stepped into the circle of light. Though he was still young his face was a record of violence and neglect, the nose broken, the left ear a mash of tissue, the cheeks pitted with acne scars.
He held his fists clenched against his heavy thighs. “You seen me where?”
“At Mr. Voss’s house. You were watching me through the rails of the banister.”
“Yeah? What’s so wrong about...”
“Now, now, Eddie,” Voss said and turned to Charlotte. “Poor Eddie’s upset. He got bad news today, real bad. Didn’t you, Eddie?”
“Yeah.” Eddie touched the mourning band on his sleeve with a convulsive gesture, as if he wanted to rip it off.
“His wife died,” Voss said. “Killed herself. But maybe you already heard about Violet.”
“Yes, I have.”
“Poor little Violet. Who’d of thought she’d of done it the way she did? It came as a terrible shock to Eddie. Didn’t it, Eddie?”
“Sure.”
Voss explained to Charlotte, “He don’t talk much anyway, don’t talk at all when he’s grieving, he gets speechless, he...”
“What do you want?” Charlotte said. “Why are you here?”
He looked a little injured by her abruptness. “Well, I figured, me and Eddie figured, that maybe you hadn’t heard about Violet, and being you were so interested in her you’d like to know before you read about it in the newspaper.”
“Well, you’ve told me. Thanks, and good night.”
“Now wait a minute.” Voss’s face creased in a malevolent little pout. “Now that’s no way to treat a couple mourners. Is it, Eddie?”
Eddie coughed, holding one hand over his chest. “We could talk better inside. This night air ain’t so good for my bronichal tubes.”
“It won’t kill you,” Charlotte said. “It’s the same as day air.”
“Say, you’re a doctor. Say, what’s it mean when you get up in the morning and cough and cough and then maybe an hour later you’re O.K. again? Do you think that’s serious?”
She started at him through the screen door. This was Violet’s husband. “He hit me with a lamp,” Violet had said... “He’d take me back, he likes to have me around, somebody to bully.” She glanced at the telephone ten feet away, hoping it would ring so that she could establish contact with someone. It didn’t ring, and she was afraid to go over and pick it up; the action might precipitate trouble.
“Well?” Eddie scowled. “Is it serious? You think maybe I’m a lunger?” His mouth twitched nervously at one corner. Eddie was scared to death, and violence was the denial of his fears.
“No,” Charlotte said. “The cough is probably caused by a post-nasal drip. That is, when you’re sleeping phlegm accumulates at the back of your nose and drips into your throat. In the morning you cough it up.”
“What’s that word again, what I got?”
“Post-nasal drip.”
“How about that. Say, Voss, this dame knows her stuff, takes one look at me and says post-nasal drip, just like that.”
“Oh, shut up,” Voss said. “For Christ’s sake I got symptoms, too, only I don’t yap about them when there’s business to be done.”
Charlotte repeated, “Business?”
“Not business, exactly. You see, poor Violet didn’t have many friends, only Eddie and me and the wife, and you. Violet was one swell kid, she don’t deserve to have a pauper’s funeral, no flowers or nothing. Funerals come high nowadays. I was around pricing them this afternoon, and boy, those undertakers are sure raking in the coin. Though some of those caskets were real beautiful. Weren’t they, Eddie?”