“Better count on more time with her than less, then,” he said. “This little stunt she pulled today — well, I doubt that it was really a try for a knockout. Whenever she’s ready for that, if she ever is ready, I think she’ll stay in the background and have someone else do it.”
I said yes, I supposed he was right. He made an impatient little gesture, as though I had said something annoying.
“But we can’t be sure, Britt! We can’t say what she might do since she probably doesn’t know herself. Look at what’s happened to you so far. She couldn’t have planned those things. They’ve just been spur of the moment — pulled out of her hat as she went along.”
I made no comment this time. He went on to say that he’d done some heavy thinking about Manny’s vanishing for a year after her husband’s death. And there was only one logical answer as to where she had been and why.
“A private sanitarium, Britt, a place where she could get psychiatric help. Her mind started bending with the trouble her husband gave her, and it finally broke when he died — or when she killed him. I’d say that your telling her you were married was more than she could take, and it’s started her on another mental breakdown.”
“Well,” I laughed nervously, “that’s not a very comforting thought.”
“You’ll be all right as long as you’re careful. Just watch yourself — and her. Think now. Everything that’s happened to you so far has been at least partly your own fault. In a sense, you’ve set yourself up.”
I gave that a moment’s thought, and then I said all right, he was right. I would be very, very careful from now on. Since I had but one life to live, I would do everything in my power to go on living it.
“You have my solemn promise, Jeff. I shall do everything in my power to keep myself alive and unmaimed. Now, just what are you doing along that line?”
“I’ve done certain things inside your house,” he said. “If there’s ever any trouble, just let out a yell and you’ll have help within a minute.”
“How?” I said. “You mean you have the place bugged?”
“Don’t try to find out,” he said. “If you didn’t know, Miss Aloe won’t, and if you did, she would. You’re really pretty transparent, Britt.”
“Oh, now, I don’t know about that,” I said. “I—”
“Well, I do know. You’re not only just about incapable of deceiving anyone for any length of time, but you’re also very easy to deceive. So take my word for it that you’ll be all right. Just yell and you’ll have help.”
“I don’t like it,” I said. “Suppose I couldn’t yell? That I didn’t have time or I wasn’t allowed to?”
Claggett laughed, shook his head chidingly. “Now, Britt, be reasonable. You’ll have a full-time nurse right in the house with you, and she’ll be checking on you periodically. It’s inconceivable that you could need help and be unable to get it.”
It wasn’t inconceivable to me. I could think of any number of situations in which I would need help and be unable to cry out for it. And, for the record, one of those situations did come about. It did happen, the spine-chilling, hair-raising occurrence I had most feared. And just when I was feeling safest and most secure. And I could see no way of hollering for help without hastening my already-imminent demise.
All I could do was lie quiet, as I was ordered to, and listen to my hair turn grayer still. Wondering, foolishly, if I could ever get an acceptable tint job on it, assuming that I lived long enough to need one.
But that is getting ahead of the story. It is something that was yet to happen. Tonight, the night of which I am writing, Claggett pointed out that he was only a detective sergeant and that as such there was a limit to what he could do for my protection.
“And I’m sure the arrangements I’ve made are enough, Britt. With you staying on the alert and with a good, reliable nurse on hand, I’m confident that—” He broke off, giving me a sudden sharp look. “Yes?” he said. “Something on your mind?”
“Well, uh, yes,” I said uncomfortably. “About the nurse. I’d like to have the one who’s on duty tonight. That kind of pretty reddish-haired one. I... I, uh... I mean, she needs the job, and...”
“Not a chance,” Claggett said flatly. “Not in a thousand years. I’ve got another nurse in mind, an older woman. Used to be a matron at the jail a few years back, I’ll have her come in right now, and you can be getting acquainted tonight.”
He got up and started toward the door. I said, “Wait a minute.”
He paused and turned around. “Well?”
“Well, I’d kind of like to have the reddish-haired girl. She wants the job, and I’m sure she’d be just fine.”
“Fine for what?” Claggett said. “No, don’t tell me. You just take care of golden-haired Miss Aloe and forget about your pretty little redhead.”
I said I didn’t have anything like that in mind at all — whatever it was he thought I had in mind. My God, with Connie and Manny to contend with, I’d be crazy to start anything up with another girl.
“So?” said Claggett, then cut me off with a knifing gesture of his hand as I began another protest. “I don’t care if you did promise her the job. You had no right to make such a promise, and she knows it as well as you do.”
He turned and stalked out of the room.
I expected him to be back almost immediately, bringing the ex-police matron with him. But he was gone for almost a half an hour, and he came back looking wearily resigned.
“You win,” he said, dropping heavily into a chair. “You get your red-haired nurse.”
“I do?” I said. “I mean, why?”
“Because she spread it all around that she had the job. She was so positive about it that even the nurse I had in mind was convinced, and she got sore and quit.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really didn’t mean to upset your plans, Jeff.”
“I know,” he said with a shrug. “I just wish I could feel better about the redhead.”
“I’m sure she’ll work out fine,” I said. “She got off to a bad start today by letting Manny lock the door and pull the bed trick. But—”
“What?” said Claggett. “Oh, well, that didn’t bother me. That could have happened regardless of who was on duty. The thing that bothers me about Miss Redhead Scrubbed-Clean is that I can’t check her out.”
I said, “Oh,” not knowing quite why I said it. Or why the hair on the back of my neck had gone through the motions of attempting to rise.
“...raised on a farm,” Jeff Claggett was saying. “No neighbors for miles around. No friends. Her parents were ex-teachers, and they gave her schooling. They did a first-class job of it, too, judging by her entrance exams at nursing school. She scored an academic rating of high-school graduate plus two years of college. She was an honors graduate in nursing, and I can’t turn up anything but good about her since she made RN. Still—” He shook his head troubledly. “I don’t actually know anything about her for the first eighteen years of her life. There’s nothing I can check on, not even a birth certificate, from the time she was born until she entered nurses’ training.”
A linen cart creaked noisily down the hallway. From somewhere came the crash of a dinner tray. (Probably the redhead pounding on a patient.)
“Look, Jeff,” I said, “in view of what you’ve told me, and after much deliberation, I think I’d better have a different nurse.”
“Not possible.” Jeff shook his head firmly. “You promised her the job. I went along with your decision when I found that my matron friend wasn’t and wouldn’t be available. Try to back down on the deal now and we’d have the union on us.”