Above the bell was a small brass plate with the word “Silverwood” etched into it.
A husky young man dressed in orderly’s white appeared at the door. “May I help you?”
“I’ve come to see Mr. Nicholas Paris,” I said, extracting a business card from my breast pocket and handing it to him.
He studied it.
“Are you expected?”
“I was his late son’s lawyer,” I replied. “He’ll know who I am.”
The attendant looked at me and then opened the door. I stood in a massive foyer. There was a small table off the side of the staircase where he had been sitting. He went to the table, picked up the phone and dialed three numbers.
“There’s a lawyer out here to see one of the patients.” He paused. “Okay, clients, then. Anyway, he’s out here now.” He hung up and said, “Have a seat,” gesturing me to a sofa against the wall beneath a portrait of a seventeenth-century gentleman. I sat down. The attendant went back to his book, something called The Other David. The house was still, but the air was nervous.
“Where are the patients?” I asked.
“Everyone takes a nap after lunch,” he replied, looking up, “just like kindergarten.”
“You a nurse?”
“Do I look like a nurse?” His muscles bulged against his white uniform. “I keep people out there,” he gestured to the door, “from getting in and people in here from getting out.”
“Nice work if you can get it,” I observed.
He grunted and went back to his book.
A moment later, a short, bald man stepped into the foyer from a room off the side. He wore a white doctor’s coat over a pale blue shirt and a red knit tie. He looked like an aging preppie and I was willing to bet that he wore argyle socks. The attendant handed him my business card.
“Mr. Rios,” he said, “I’m Dr. Phillips, the director. Why don’t we step into the visitor’s lounge?”
I followed him into the room from which he had emerged. It was a long, narrow rectangle, paneled in dark wood, furnished in stiff-backed Victorian chairs and couches clustered in little groups around coffee tables. The view from the windows was of a rose garden. A dozen long-stemmed red roses had been stiffly arranged in a vase on the mantel of the fireplace. A grandfather clock ticked away in a corner. Except for us, the room was deserted.
Phillips lowered himself in a wing chair and I sat across from him. The little table between us held a decanter filled with syrupy brown fluid and surrounded by small wine glasses. He poured two drinks. I lifted a glass and sniffed, discreetly. Cream sherry. I sipped, crossing my legs at my ankles like a gentleman.
“Now, then, Mr. Rios, what can we,” he said, using the imperial, medical we, “do for you?”
“I represent the estate of Hugh Paris, the son of one of your patients — “
“Clients,” he cautioned.
“Clients,” I agreed. “At any rate, Hugh Paris died rather — suddenly, and there are some problems with the will I believe I could clear up by speaking to his father, Nicholas.”
Phillips shook his head. “That’s quite impossible. You must know that Nicholas Paris is incompetent.”
“Doctor, that’s a legal conclusion, not a medical diagnosis. I was told he has moments of lucidity.”
“Far and few between,” Phillips said, dismissively. “Perhaps if you told me what you need, I could help you.”
“All right,” I said. “I drafted Hugh Paris’s will which, as it happens, made certain bequests that violate the rule in Shelley’s case, rendering the document ineffective. I had hoped that Mr. Paris, as his son’s intestate heir, would agree to certain modifications that would affect the testator’s intent, at least as to those bequests which do not directly concern his interests in the estate.”
Phillips’s eyes had glazed over at the first mention of the word will. He now bestirred himself and said, “I see.”
“Then you understand my problem,” I plunged on, “I am responsible for drafting errors in Hugh’s will. There’s some question of malpractice — “
Phillips perked up. “Malpractice?” He was now on comfortable ground. “I sympathize, of course, but Mr. Paris is hardly in any condition to discuss such intricate legal matters.”
“I only need ten minutes with him,” I said.
“Really,” Phillips said, lighting a cigarette, “you don’t understand. Mr. Paris is not lucid.”
I could tell our interview was coming to an end.
I tried another tack. “But he’s being treated.”
Phillips lifted an eyebrow. “We can do very little of that in Mr. Paris’s case. We try to make him comfortable and see that he poses no danger to himself or others.”
“Is he violent?”
“Not very.”
“Drugs?”
“The law permits it.”
“You know, doctor,” I said, “even those who cannot be reached by treatment can sometimes be reached by subpoena.”
Phillips sat up. “What are you talking about?”
“A probate hearing, with all the trimmings. You might be called to testify to Paris’s present mental condition and the type of care he’s received here. It might even be necessary to subpoena his medical records. I understand he’s been here for nearly twenty years. That’s a long time, doctor, time enough to turn even a genius into a vegetable with the right kind of — treatment.”
Phillips fought to keep his composure.
“I could have you thrown out,” he said softly.
“And I’ll be back with the marshal and a bushel of subpoenas.”
In an even softer voice he asked, “What is it you want?”
“I want to make sure he’s too crazy to sue me.”
Phillips expelled his breath, disbelievingly. “Is that all?” He rose from the chair. “Ten minutes, Mr. Rios, and you’ll go?”
“Never to darken your doorway again.”
“Wait here,” he said abruptly and left the room. I poured my sherry into a potted plant.
When Nicholas Paris entered the room, the air went dead around him. He wore an old gray blazer over a white shirt and tan khaki slacks. No belt. He might have been a country squire returning from a walk with his white-blond hair, ruddy complexion and composed features — there was more than a hint of Hugh in his face. But then you looked into his eyes. They were blue and they stared out as if from shadows focusing on a landscape that did not exist beneath the mild California sun. I felt the smile leak from my face. Phillips sat him down in a chair, scowled at me and said, “Ten minutes.”
I approached him. “Nicholas?”
He inclined his head toward me.
“My name is Henry. I was Hugh’s friend.”
He said nothing.
I knelt beside the chair and looked at him. It was as if he were standing behind a screen: the thousand splinters refused to add up to a human face. I saw that his pupils were moving erratically. Drugs.
“I was his friend,” I continued. “Your son Hugh.”
He looked away, out the window.
He said in a voice hoarse from disuse, “Hugh.”
“Hugh,” I said.
I kept talking, softly. I told him how I had met Hugh and how much I had cared for him. I told him that I believed Hugh’s death was a murder. I was telling him that I needed to know what, if anything, Hugh had said to him when he visited here.
Nicholas Paris stared out the window as I spoke, giving no indication that he heard anything but the loud chirping of a bird outside.
And then, suddenly, I saw a tear run from the corner of his eye. A single, streaky tear.
He said, “Is Hugh dead?”
He hadn’t known.
“Oh, God,” I muttered. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s enough,” a woman spoke, commandingly, above me. I looked up. Katherine Paris stood, coldly composed, beside me. Her face was red beneath her makeup, and her small, elegant hands were clenched into fists. I glanced up at the doorway. Phillips was standing there and, behind him, two burly orderlies.
I rose from the floor. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Paris.”
She raised a hand and slapped me. “Get him out of here,” she ordered Phillips.
He gave a signal and the orderlies moved in.