The Lady and Her Doctor (31 page)

“Anyone would have agreed,” Day said. “That's my point, Lady Constant, love, you were rational last night, you must be rational now, that's all. Your mother died a natural death. We know that, your sister believed she killed your mother. We know this. Now this is insanity, darling. We aren't taking his word for this, Lady Constant, are we? Your sister left a note in her own handwriting addressed to you saying that she was taking her life because she had killed your mother; therefore, I really can't see any reason to disbelieve, when we find your sister dead, that, as she herself wrote—she did commit suicide.”

“No, he killed her,” Amory said wearily. “I know he did.”

THURSDAY NIGHT

“Seth” Thomas was really beginning to believe that the reason Amory Constant had reneged on Fanny's party last Sunday was because she wanted to avoid him. (Because she was attracted to him she wanted to avoid him. Because she was scared of Fanny. Everyone knew what a terror Fanny was.) Otherwise why had it been so easy to see her tonight? Otherwise why was he in Amory's bedroom at 7:30
P
.
M
.? He nursed the martini room service had sent up because when the martini was finished he would have to make a move—or else why was he up in Amory Constant's room? Since it had been so absurdly easy to see her, it must mean the rest would be easy. He held the remainder of the martini up to the light. He said to Amory that they could never make them dry enough for him.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Dry enough. For me.” Why else was she just standing there with her martini untouched, just staring at him? “Bottoms up,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

Under her steady stare, “bottoms up” became an impossibility to repeat. It was just one of those things you said, but once you really started thinking about the words—

Lady Constant, holding her untouched martini, was thinking that, in a nutshell—and nutshell was the
mot juste
because insanity was the whole thing in a nutshell. Nutshell. Pun, she was thinking. Sloane was not insane. I know he killed Sloane and I am not insane and Sloane was not insane either. Just eccentric, eccentric, eccentric. Trick, trick, trick, that was it, wasn't it? There was a trick. There had been some trick. Sloane certainly believed she killed Mother when Mother died a natural death but that doesn't mean Sloane was insane. She could have been tricked, somehow, into believing she killed Mother, couldn't she? And then she could have written a note saying so. How, Amory thought, how tricked? Aloud she said, “I don't know!”

“It's just an expression,” Seth Thomas said. The more he thought about it, the worse it became:
Bottoms up!

Amory set her martini down on a table and walked to the window. Seth Thomas' face called for attention by its extreme ruddiness and because his eyes were protruding, so Amory turned away and looked out of the window. She wondered how Sloane could have been tricked into believing she had killed Mother, but did not know, only that Sloane had been tricked, was not insane. On the street, below, a woman suddenly pulled away from her escort's guiding hand. The woman down there was angry. She would not—something or other. Go with the man. The man spoke to her, spoke to her, gentled her, then slipped his hand under her arm, bent her arm upward so he could take her elbow and tricked her, tricked her into going along with him again.

Seth Thomas said, “Where? What? You're sore at me!” She was moving swiftly from bed to chair to dressing table. It was really remarkable how she knew that under that pile she would find an alligator purse, under another mess of stuff, her gloves, how she knew her coat had slipped, or been flung, beyond the bed there, or her hat—it must be a hat, although she did not put it on—was folded between the pages of
Vogue
. It was even more remarkable how from such a mess, with no apparent effort, she could come out the knock-out she was. “If I've stepped out of line, I apologize,” he said.

She walked right by him and would not listen to him in the elevator, or in the lobby, and on the street he began to be afraid he would make himself conspicuous, so he just stood by while she got into a cab as if he were seeing her off rather than being left flat.

The friend who shared the
pied-à-terre
with Day would not have been pleased to see where Day settled himself after letting Lady Constant in. Day had pulled the huge circular green marble coffee table directly in front of the television set and was sitting on it, rather like a frog on a lily pad, with his knees pulled up to his chin and his bare feet planted on the green marble. He had discovered, he told Amory, that with his feet resting on cool marble, he did not mind steam heating so much; it was his great discovery, he said, and then fixed his eyes on the television program.

“Day,” she said, “Day, will you turn that damned thing off and listen to me? I came here to tell you something.”

“To tell me something. You don't ever ask me, do you? You tell me. Over and over. Leave that set alone! Lady Constant, I live these days for Thursdays and Groucho; I'm a simple-minded fellow and I adore Groucho. I am not a master-mind like you, Lady Constant darling, smarter than the whole police department of the Great City of New York. Leave it alone!”

She turned the volume control down and came to the coffee table, kneeling on the floor, resting her elbows on the marble. “As you said, Thursday—and you haven't called me since Monday morning. Four days.”

“I'm sure you've been very busy, Amory. You can't have had a free moment, playing Sherlock Holmes all over the place. Haven't you been snooping all over the old place in Queens with a magnifying glass looking for clues?”

Amory shoved her sleeve up so that her arm was bared against the marble. “No. I haven't tried to go there. There wouldn't be any clues. Why would he leave any clues?”

“Clever Lady Constant! But haven't you interviewed the servants?”

“There's just the old cook. Why should I bother with her when obviously he has her in his pocket, Day; what would be the point trying to get around her? They let me see her statement and that proved whose side she is on! According to her, she was present when Sloane wrote a previous suicide note and besides that she once heard Sloane threaten to take her life and heard him trying to keep her from it. Stuff like that. Oh, she knows on which side her bread is buttered, that's obvious! And there was another cook too, testified; he's a grand man with cooks whereas if you knew Sloane—She was like Mother, modern servants don't take that kind of treatment kindly. Compared to Sloane, he'd be the servant's delight, cook's delight. Of course he would be, Day! No, I haven't seen him and I haven't heard from him.”

“You do surprise me, dear! You've done
nothing?
”

“I've thought,” she said. “I can't stop thinking.”

“Using the little gray cells, Lady Poirot, eh?”

“Stop it. I have thought, Day.” She told him about eccentric-trick and watched his response eagerly, but he only got off the lily pad and went to find a bottle and two glasses and then offered her a drink. “No, thank you, Day. Well, that's what I came to tell you.” Eccentric-trick. She remembered Seth Thomas and wondered what had happened to him, was he still in the hotel? “I must go now.” She looked helplessly around the room. “Will you do me up the back now, Day?”

That meant collect whatever she came in with. Today, Day thought, there wasn't as much to collect as usual. She had stayed in one place, kneeling there, kneeling but stubborn, a stubborn piece. He put down the bottle and the glasses and found her gloves, her pocketbook and, shoved under the marble table, the little hat, one of the little hats she always carried with her but never wore. It was the little hat undid him. “Don't go, Amory!”

She walked to the television set and turned up the volume again.

“Amory, you're wrong to think it is because he holds any purse strings there might possibly be going, honestly you are. My dear ducks, the man is in the clear with the police! They haven't even held him! You must let him go, Amory; let it go. Do, ducks!” He bent forward to kiss her but she turned away. “Amory, you haven't got anything. You've decided he tricked her into thinking she killed your mother. You decided. You have no idea how anyone could be so tricked. You're exactly nowhere, darling; let it go!”

She shook her head. “That's all I have. I've gone over it and over it and over it.”

He took back the gloves, the purse, the little squashed hat. “Go over it again, then. Sit down, love, and we'll go all through it again, once and for all. Start from the beginning, when you reached the house, about ten-thirty, wasn't it? No, set the mood first, then it will come out more—emotionally correct. You left your place trusting him. More or less,” he added quickly, because she flicked her head restively. “He asked if you'd go home with him and confess to your sister about the exhumation and what it had shown and you said you would. I was here, Amory love, I know that at the time you were—reasonably sure—he had your sister's best interests at heart.”

“Do you think I've forgotten that?” she said, sitting down, jumping up. “Do you think I've forgotten for one instant that I trotted along with him—trotted obediently along like his puppy dog! Like a sheep being led to the slaughter, which is literally correct as it turned out. Trotting along so I could be the witness for the defense!” She stamped her foot.

Day pointed to the narrow foot she had just stamped. “Don't you see, Amory? Don't you see?”

“That I resent it? I do resent it! It is the last straw that he should choose me to be there and be his witness! It is ignominious—that besides killing my sister that man should do that to me!”

“‘That man!'” Day pointed to the foot again as if had spoken. “That ‘that man' should plan to deceive the entire police force is one thing, but that he should also pull the wool over Lady Constant's eyes!” Day grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled. “You're going to see that he rues the day he thought he could pull the wool over Lady Constant's eyes—as well as murder her sister, aren't you, Lady Constant, darling?”

“All right,” she said, “that's enough, Day.”

“Enough? It's everything! It's all there is! It's your whole case against the poor fellow! No, that and your own guilt which you are projecting—”

“Projecting!” Amory ran to the bookshelves on the fireplace wall and grabbed the first thick book and flung it at Day, who stepped aside in time but did not dare turn to see what she had hit. He let her fling the next book and then caught her hands and took the third volume from her, glancing at it.

“William Blake, Amory, not Sigmund Freud, and never mind.” The book throwing had taken the fight out of her and he could lead her to the round marble table and help her step on it, and wave her grandly to sit down. “Tell me from when you got to the house, Amory, go on.” Now he knelt before the table, and gently pulling her left foot so that her leg stretched toward him, removed first the narrow shoe and then the filmy stocking.

Amory steepled her fingers and stared down at them, as if she were praying. “It is not my private mania, Day, and he did kill her and I was there and I must have seen something which would prove it—could prove it—only I don't know what.” He was nodding for her to start and give him her other foot. “It was too dark when we got there for me to see, but I could see the grounds had been mucked about somewhat—that was therapy for Sloane, he said. He'd tried to keep her occupied gardening. Nothing was changed about the house, though. It was the same outside. It was the same inside. Gog and Magog—the two suits of armor—were still one on either side of the door—No therapy for Sloane inside, just death.” She waited a moment to quiet down. “He called Sloane the moment we entered the house, but she didn't answer. Of course she didn't answer! He stood at the foot of the stairs and called her again, but she didn't answer. He thought that she must be upstairs. There was no question about his wanting me to come right up with him and find her, Day—he did! We had discussed whether he should prepare her for me or whether I should burst in on her. We had decided I'd better burst in on her and not give her the chance to lock herself in somewhere—She'd refused to see me until then, all right. I was the one who wouldn't go straight up with him. I balked at the last moment, Day—I'm being completely accurate, you see that? He asked me to come upstairs with him so that he didn't plan any time by himself to fix anything. I was afraid—I don't know why.”

Day put his hand around her ankle. “You do know why, darling. You were afraid to face your sister.”

“Very well. I was afraid to face my sister. I stood there and said he should go up first, after all, and tell Sloane. He started to protest, then he shrugged and went upstairs.”

“What did you do when he was gone?”

“It wasn't more than a couple of minutes, Day. What did I do? I'd come home. I looked at home—into the ghastly taipan room, the dining room—The table was all set, same awful table, same awful dining room, same china, silver, everything the same; so help me God, Day, the same cold Sunday evening meal we used to have. Cold roast. Salad. Time standing still that way, nothing different but little me. You know. Then I heard him coming downstairs. I could tell immediately—from his steps—the way he was walking—that something was wrong up there. One can, you know.” She closed her eyes and shivered. “I came out into the hall and he walked right by me to the telephone. It's on a beastly black carved monstrosity two-thirds down the hall. No extension upstairs, of course. He went straight to the telephone and called the police. I crept after him down the hall—petrified. When he finishing dialing, while he was waiting for the phone to be picked up in the police station, he handed me Sloane's note.”