The Doctor Makes a Dollhouse Call (17 page)

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Authors: Robin Hathaway

BOOK: The Doctor Makes a Dollhouse Call
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I'm disappointed.
My plan was upset.
I didn't expect my intended victim to go up to the big house and see my little exhibit. That had been prepared for the benefit of the others. I had expected Mildred to come home after her walk (or rather—sit) on the boardwalk, and, as is her custom before dinner, take a long, leisurely bath. (I had observed Mildred for days and was familiar with her habits.)
Everything had been prepared. The bathroom window was unlocked. There was a thick cover of bushes below it to hide me until the appropriate time. She usually returned from her walks (sits) at about four-thirty. I had climbed in the window at four-fifteen and settled into the closet, under shelves of towels. Beneath the shelves was a deep cavity that opened into a dark cupboard under the sink. Even if someone opened the door to get a towel, it was so dark that there was small chance of being seen. It was cramped, of course. But I didn't expect to be there for more than
half an hour. Forty-five minutes at the most. I had intended to wait until the victim was immersed in steamy suds with a good book. One of those astrology tomes she was so fond of. Then, I had planned to quietly emerge from the closet (located directly behind the tub), grab her around the neck, and apply enough pressure to cut off any attempt to scream. And continue the pressure until she went limp and slid under the bubbles—down, down, down—and disappeared.
Then, I would have slipped out the window and waited under cover of the bushes until dark, when I could have left unseen.
But that is not what happened. All because of nurse!
I waited and waited and waited—five o‘clock, five-thirty. At five-forty the phone rang. The sitter answered it. I couldn't make out the conversation, but I suspected it was Mildred and there was a change of plans. How much longer would I have to wait? I wasn't sure my neck, back, and legs could last much longer. It was also hard to breathe. The small space under the shelves was very close. (Had I known how long I was going to be trapped there, I would have probably given myself up.) Six o'clock came and went. Six-thirty passed. At exactly six thirty-seven, Mildred came home. Barged home, I should say. She was in such a state. She burst into the bathroom. The sitter followed, trying to calm her. Peering through a crack, I saw she had a tape measure. She was taking measurements of the bathtub! She scribbled them on the back of an envelope and rushed out again. Shortly after this, I heard sawing in the backyard. The sawing went on, interrupted by obscenities, for a long time. Finally, I heard her coming back. She was dragging something heavy down the hall. When she came in the bathroom, she dropped whatever it was on top of the tub.
I peeked through the crack. A large piece of plywood covered the tub completely.
When the hammering began, I sincerely thought I would go mad. The bangs echoed—magnified a thousand times—in that small, tile-covered space. Suddenly, the banging stopped. With a flurry of curses, Mildred left the bathroom. During the next hour, I heard sounds indicating that the sitter was feeding the children and putting them to bed. At one point, the boy came into the bathroom to run water for his bath. The sitter pulled him out, murmuring, “We'll skip a bath tonight.” When they were in their nightclothes, she told both children to use the toilet quickly, wash their hands, and come to bed. I wished she would do the same with their mother. Shortly afterward, the doorbell rang. I heard the sitter inform Mildred that Mrs. Doyle was here and that she planned to spend the night. It was my turn for obscenities.
There followed a long period of quiet. I had only to bear the pain of my cramped muscles and the lack of oxygen in the closet. So great was my misery, I was tempted to risk all and try to get out the window without being seen. Just then, Mrs. Doyle came in to use the facilities. After washing her hands, she opened the closet and reached for a towel. Her index finger brushed the tip of my nose. This effectively quenched any desire I had to escape. I resigned myself to unknown hours of muscular agony, not to mention possible asphyxiation.
At nine fifty-five, Mildred came back in and began hammering again. This was followed by the most ridiculous farce! Mildred and the nurse and the children all screaming at once in that small tile-covered space. (The baby was yelling in his room, too.) I thought I would have to blow my cover and come out and stop
them. Suddenly there was silence. The old bag of a nurse had actually succeeded in administering a sedative to Mildred. The children started up again, of course. And the baby never stopped. But the nurse ushered the children out of the bathroom. Eventually she managed to quiet them. Even the baby. Bliss. And she dragged Mildred to her bedroom. I didn't envy her that. She was no featherweight. Now, I had nothing to worry about except my own aching bones and the lack of fresh air.
By eleven, the house was quiet. I was reasonably certain that everyone was asleep. The TV was still on. But people often fall asleep in front of the TV. I had to get out of there. At some point, during that long, tedious, tortuous evening, Mrs. Doyle had come in again to use the facilities. And on her way out, she had turned off the light. That was good. No neighbor would see me emerging from a lighted bathroom window. The stiffness and soreness of my muscles prevented me from descending with agility. I dropped clumsily into the bushes and disturbed a neighbor's dog. But his barks subsided quickly. At eleven-thirty, to the best of my knowledge, I left the premises under cover of darkness—without being seen.
As I made my way home, I had time to reflect. More than a dog had been disturbed that night. For the first time, one of my carefully laid plans had been upset. Totally disrupted, I should say. But I would make another. And I would make the disrupter pay.
Mrs. Doyle heads my list.
F
enimore had not slept well. His dreams had alternated between Carrie and Horatio. In one, Carrie had been dragged off by Viet Cong soldiers. In another, Horatio had been mowed down by a gang of teenagers riding mammoth bicycles.
He got up, dressed, and went downstairs. Sal followed him. But she was not happy. Six A.M. was not her normal time for rising. He made a cup of tea and carried it into his office. Sal did not even bug him for her breakfast. She settled into his battered armchair and went back to sleep.
Around eight o'clock Fenimore stretched, yawned, and closed the thick, red tome,
Harrison's Textbook of Medicine,
and ambled out to the kitchen. Sal stretched, yawned, and followed him. With a paper cup he scooped some Kitty Chow out of a bag and poured it into her metal dish. The hard pellets hitting the sides sounded like machine gun fire. When he poured his own Grape—Nuts into a china bowl, they sounded much the same. He turned on the radio. Jointly munching, they listened
to the news. Or rather, the lack of news. It was a quiet month globally. This month, all the action was on the home front.
And he was doing
nothing
about it!
He hurled the china bowl at the sink. It glanced off and crashed to the floor. Sal jumped. Cautiously, she went to examine the scattered bits and shards. Fenimore snatched her up and carried her out of the room before she could cut her feet.
J
ennifer made her way down the slice of beach she had discovered, far from the throngs of tourists. She had chosen this secluded spot to read her latest letter from Andrew undisturbed. When she began his letter she was quite relaxed, enjoying a peaceful moment between twilight and sunset. A well-deserved respite, after a day spent haggling with booksellers in French, a language in which she was far from fluent. But as she read on she began to grow uneasy. The Pancoast case was not going well. There had been another murder. Five in all. Bad enough. But it was the tone of the letter that alarmed her. She had never heard her friend sound so discouraged. He seemed to take the blame for the failure to discover the murderer entirely upon himself. There wasn't a speck of banter in the whole letter.
When she finished reading the letter, Jennifer folded the pages hastily and stuffed them into her beach bag. She gathered up her towel and her sunglasses and shoved her feet into her
sandals. Then, like a harried sandpiper, she scurried up the beach.
A seagull squawked. If an expert in French seagullese had been on hand, he would have interpreted the sound to mean
“Ensuite?”
(What next?).
W
hen Fenimore walked into Rafferty's office, the detective glanced up. “You look like the wrath of God. What's wrong? A misdiagnosis?”
“No.” He grabbed a chair. “No diagnosis.”
“That's worse. Tell the poor bastard to get a second opinion.”
“Can't.”
“Why not? I thought you docs did that all the time. Shared the responsibility. Team work. Isn't that what group practice is all about?”
“I practice solo, remember. And I don't know the patient.”
Rafferty put aside the report he had been working on and looked at his friend.
“Remember the two aunts and the dollhouse murders?”
He nodded. “The one in which you were coddling some of the prime suspects?”
Fenimore winced.
“Did you get to the bottom of that?”
Fenimore shook his head. “The state police are on it now. They're into fingerprints and DNA. I can't help feeling the answer doesn't lie in the lab, but in here.” He tapped his forehead.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning—the psychology of the murderer.” Fenimore looked his friend in the eye. “Is there such a thing as a motiveless murder?”
Rafferty considered. “Occasionally—you run into a psychopath. Someone who murders for the fun of it. The thrill of it. Or … the art of it. Murder for murder's sake, you might say. But even that is a motive of sorts.”
Fenimore nodded. “De Quincy wrote a whole essay on the art of murder.”
Rafferty rolled his pen between his palms. “No, Fenimore, when you get down to it, there is no such thing as a motiveless murder. Even a psychopath has his reasons—warped though they may be. No one murders for nothing.”
Fenimore sighed.
“Your murderer has a motive, all right. You just haven't uncovered it.”
“I suppose you're right.” Fenimore sounded exhausted. “But can't a motive be unconscious? I mean, there must be murderers who are in the dark about their own motives. Take Gregory Peck in
Spellbound
, for instance. It took horrendous efforts on Bergman's part to uncover his motive.”
“But he wasn't the murderer, remember? He just thought he
was. That old chestnut was the theme of that film—you can't commit a crime while drugged or under the influence that you wouldn't commit when you're sober.”
“You disagree?” asked Fenimore.
“Emphatically. In real life your hard drinker commits plenty of crimes he wouldn't dream of when he's sober. So does the druggie. It's bullshit.” He jabbed his memo pad with his pen. “Now, you're getting into the realm of criminal psychology. Would you like to talk to one of our experts?”
“Can't hurt.”
Rafferty pressed a buzzer on his desk and spoke into his intercom. “Is Dr. Landers in?”
“I think so,” came the rasping reply.
“Ask the doctor to step into my office.”
“Yes, sir.”
While waiting for Dr. Landers, they discussed the ball scores. The Phillies were enjoying an early spring spurt. Rafferty was elated. Fenimore predicted doom later in the season.
“You asked to see me?” A tall, blond woman in a trim navy suit stood in the doorway.
“Dr. Landers, come in. This is my friend, Dr. Fenimore.”
“The famous investigator?”
Fenimore coughed. “Unofficially.”
“You've solved a number of very difficult crimes—unofficially.” She smiled, shaking his hand warmly.
“Right now he's involved in a case he can't solve,” Rafferty said maliciously. (He was a trifle put out by Dr. Landers's open admiration for his friend.) “He has a question for you. Is there such a thing as a murderer with no motive? Or, at least, no conscious motive?”
She frowned. “Oh yes. The motive can be totally unconscious. For example, if they suffer from multiple personalities, it's possible for them to commit a crime in the guise of one personality and have no memory of it or motive for it when under the guise of another personality.” She sat down in the chair Fenimore hurriedly drew out for her. Rafferty noticed (and not for the first time) that even the most liberated females never objected to Fenimore's old-fashioned courtesies. Even though he wasn't much to look at, he had a certain charm with women.
“I ran into such a case just recently,” the psychiatrist continued. “A respectable businessman murdered his wife. He had a second personality—that of a hardened criminal. One day he mistook his wife for an informer and shot her. When he woke up, or rather, returned to his businessman personality, he was horrified to find his wife dead. He had no memory of having killed her. And, of course, the businessman had no motive for killing her.”
“Fascinating,” murmured Fenimore. “Does premeditation play any part in such murders?”
“Oh no,” Dr. Landers said. “Their murders are almost always unplanned and impulsive. And—there's usually no attempt at concealment afterward. The murderer is in a state of shock or trauma over what he or she has done.”
“I see.” Unfortunately, this description did not fit a murderer who preceded each murder with a meticulously arranged scene in a dollhouse.
“I have a book in my office describing such cases. I'd be glad to lend it to you,” Dr. Landers offered.
“I'd appreciate that.”
“Perhaps we could discuss this over lunch,” she added, preceding him through the door.
He was half out the door when Rafferty stopped him.
“Some free medical advice, Doc. No late lunches. What you need is a long nap.” He winked. “Alone,” he added.
Rafferty, a happily married man, was under the misapprehension that Fenimore, a bachelor, led a full and varied sex life. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. But he was not about to enlighten his friend. “Thanks,” he said. “Send me a bill.”
Rafferty waved him away.
 
Fenimore took the first part of Rafferty's advice. No lunch. Not in deference to Rafferty, but because he wanted to get on with his case and he thought the type of criminal Dr. Landers had described was a dead end. He was convinced now that the Pancoast murderer had only one personality—a single, diabolical one—and a definite motive. It was up to him to find it. Only then would he be able to identify the murderer.
Out of courtesy, he read a few of the case histories in Dr. Landers's book. But he soon laid it aside and began to doodle on his scratch pad. He scribbled the names:
Emily
Judith
Mildred
Susanne
After leaving a space, he added halfheartedly:
Frank
Carrie
Beside each name, he wrote “motive” and drew a large question mark in the style of each person. Emily's was slender and willowy, Judith's—rounded and sturdy, Susanne's—tailored and conventional, Frank's—robust and strong, Mildred's—flashy and flamboyant, Carrie's—perky and sharp.
Then, following the second part of Rafferty's advice, he fell sound asleep in his chair.
He woke abruptly, heart pounding. He had dreamed he was surrounded by giant question marks resembling sickles—blood dripping from their blades. Slowly, they were closing in on him.
He did not need Dr. Landers to interpret his dream.

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