She managed to dispose of two hours in that manner, but then she ran out of time-killing chores. She was contemplating dusting the already immaculate front room when the phone finally rang at eleven-thirty p.m.
Her nervousness had long since discouraged Ho Chi Minh from all idea of a nap on her lap, and he had retreated to a spot in the center of the living room rug. This put him between Martha’s chair and the bedroom door, so that she ran straight toward him when she raced to answer the phone. Ho Chi Minh fled to the kitchen.
Grabbing up the phone, Martha said breathlessly, “Yes?”
“Miss Pruett?” a strange male voice asked.
“Yes.”
“This is Lieutenant Herman Abell of the police, Miss Pruett. Dr. Waters asked me to phone you, because he’s not quite up to talking. I understand you’re a Suicide Prevention worker and it was you who phoned him that his wife had taken pills.”
“Yes, that’s right. How is she?”
“It was too late to do anything for her. She was dead on arrival at the hospital.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Lieutenant.”
“Just one of those things, Miss Pruett. We won’t know until the autopsy just how many sleeping pills she swallowed, but a bottle that Dr. Waters says held three dozen is empty.”
“How horrible! And she was only thirty-two.”
“Were you personally acquainted with her?” the police officer asked in surprise. “I thought you people kept yourselves anonymous insofar as callers are concerned.”
“We do, but I managed to pick up a good deal of information about her. We had two previous phone conversations before tonight, Lieutenant.”
“Oh? This wasn’t her first attempt then?”
“Well, I don’t know that she made any previous attempts, but she had contemplated suicide. I would have contacted her husband before, but I was never able to worm out of her who she was, except for her first name. She never told me, even tonight. I tracked down her identity from certain clues she had dropped. I feel terrible about not worming her identity from her sooner. I might have saved her.”
“Well, it wasn’t your fault,” the lieutenant said. “We’ll need your statement, of course, though. When could you stop by headquarters?”
“At your convenience,” Martha said. “I’m retired, so my time is pretty much my own.”
“Fine. I’m on the night trick and don’t go on duty until four p.m. Would four be convenient?”
“All right, Lieutenant.”
“Then I’ll expect you at the Homicide squad room at four p.m. Just ask for Lieutenant Abell.”
“Homicide?” Martha said inquiringly.
“Don’t let it throw you,” the police officer said with a slight chuckle. “The Homicide Squad doesn’t confine itself just to murder investigation. We have a half dozen separate responsibilities, and one of them is suicide.”
“Oh,” Martha said. “All right, Lieutenant. I’ll see you at four tomorrow.”
Martha had hoped there would be a photograph of Janet Waters in the morning paper, but there wasn’t. There was merely a brief item on an inner page reporting her death from an overdose of sleeping pills and announcing that, pending further investigation, the police had tentatively listed the death as a suicide.
Martha arrived at the Homicide squad room promptly at four. Lieutenant Herman Abell turned out to be a thick-bodied, unsmiling man in his forties. Dr. Fred Waters was also there, and he made an instant impression on Martha. The dentist was a tall, lean, handsome man with thick wavy black hair and very white teeth. Martha guessed him to be in his mid-thirties.
He was not only handsome, but exceedingly charming, she decided within minutes of being introduced to him. Part of his appeal was to her latent maternal instinct, she suspected, because he was so obviously bereaved. He seemed to be literally stunned by the news that his wife had repeatedly considered killing him. Under questioning by Lieutenant Abell, he admitted that she had recently had some rather severe bouts of depression, but he hadn’t even suspected psychosis.
“She always acted as though she loved me,” he kept saying with rather pitiable insistence.
“She did,” Martha assured him. “You’ll have to face it, doctor, that your wife was simply mentally deranged.”
“That seems plain enough,” Lieutenant Abell confirmed. “Are you ready to make your formal statement, Miss Pruett?”
When Martha said she was, he had her dictate it into a tape recorder, had it typed up and she signed it. She included everything she could remember about all three phone conversations with the dead woman, and also her conversation with the Elks’ Exalted Ruler.
The whole thing took less than an hour. The case was so obviously a suicide that the lieutenant gave the impression his investigation was routine, but Martha noted that nevertheless it was thorough. For instance, he checked by phone with the office girl of psychiatrist Albert Manners to verify that Janet Waters had actually made the appointment she told Martha she had when she made her last, incoherent phone call.
She had made the appointment. Since the doctor’s receptionist said the only contact had been when she phoned in for an appointment, and that Dr. Manners had not even talked to her on the phone, Lieutenant Abell didn’t bother to talk to the psychiatrist himself.
When first introduced to Dr. Fred Waters, Martha had murmured a word of sympathy and had gotten a courteous thank you in reply. In parting, she again told the dentist she was sorry for his bereavement and, this time, got such an appreciative smile in return that it dazzled her. Since her own dentist had recently retired and moved to Florida, she made a mental note to try Dr. Fred Waters the next time she had her teeth cleaned.
It was another three months before Martha was due for her semiannual dental checkup and cleaning. In May she called Dr. Waters’ office. The girl who answered the phone gave her an appointment for a Friday afternoon at 4:30.
Dr. Waters’ office was a good seven miles from Martha’s apartment. She mis-guessed the traffic situation and arrived five minutes late. She would have been even later if she had not found a parking place for her little sports car right in front of the office building. The dental office being on the first floor saved the time of waiting for an elevator, too. She entered his office out of breath at exactly 4:35.
The young red-haired receptionist smiled away her apology and offered one of her own. Dr. Waters was running late with his appointments and probably couldn’t take her until five.
“I may have to leave before he gets to you,” the girl said in further apology. “I’m going away for the weekend and have to catch a six o’clock bus. If I do have to leave, I’ll give you your chart, and you can just hand it to the doctor when he takes you.”
“All right,” Martha agreed.
The receptionist invited her to have a seat.
It was a typical dentist’s waiting room, moderately well furnished with leather-covered easy chairs and a sofa, and with a table containing an assortment of out-of-date magazines. Martha found a women’s magazine she hadn’t read and settled back to wait. The receptionist, behind the counter running the length of one wall, was doing some kind of desk work.
Ten minutes after Martha’s arrival the silence was suddenly broken by a single, “Cuckoo!” followed by three sharp chimes, then succeeded by another, “Cuckoo!” Martha glanced up at the wooden clock on the wall in time to see the bird pop out for the second, “Cuckoo!” then disappear again. Could this be the same clock she had heard in the background each time Janet Waters had phoned her, she wondered? That had cuckooed twice before and after chiming the hour, but perhaps this one did too, and cuckooed once only on the quarter hours.