The Lady and Her Doctor (40 page)

Amory put her hamburger to her lips: Sloane didn't know what she had been giving Mother, of course, but on Monday she would have been told about placebo. On Monday, poor Jenny would have told her about mislabeled sugar pills given to chronic sufferers like Mother by a doctor who had a closet full of them. By Monday I would have told Sloane that the autopsy showed that Mother had died a natural death and then Sloane would have known the trick as I know it now. So Sloane had to die before Monday. But that's not enough to know, Amory thought, looking at the hamburger with great distaste and surprise, wondering how it had gotten to her lips. I know placebo now. I know the trick but placebo is not the magic word. She heard the first gong swooping through the corridor which meant there wasn't much more time left to find out.

Mrs. Austen pulled herself out of the chair. “The gong just went, madam.”

Amory did not want Mrs. Austen to leave. She moved to her. “Oh, no, Mrs. Austen, you haven't had the party yet!” She held out the hamburger toward the old woman. “Do have some party!”

Mrs. Austen shook her head. “No, thank you, my lady.”

By Monday Sloane had to be dead and was. But how? “When in Rome you mustn't scorn hamburger, Mrs. Austen! You must be democratic, my dear!” How?

“She said she doesn't want any, isn't that enough?” Milton set the beer bottle on the table with a bang, and got the old woman by her old quivering arm.

Amory saw Mrs. Austen gasp. “But it
is
un-American to scorn hamburger!”

“My lady, it's not that! I cannot eat—”

“Un-American yet! She said no and that's enough!” Milton began hauling Mrs. Austen to the door of the suite. “Now, I'm not being undemocratic, believe me, Mrs. Austen. You know me, don't you? You came here and you said your piece and I'm grateful, believe me. I'm happy to know there's no hard feelings any more, but you heard that gong—”

“Of course, sir—I just—”

It was like the funeral again, Amory thought. He's got hold of her again and he's determined not to let me get at her. She moved swiftly.

As Milton shoved Mrs. Austen toward the door Jenny saw the starting sweat on his face, the beads of it on his temples, the way the sweat stood out against the color of his skin. The death sweat, she thought, oh, my God, the death sweat! Only to help Milt, for no other reason, Jenny dodged in front of the Duchess and got to the old lady's other arm and helped Milt haul her off. “O.K., Mrs. Austen, you go on up. Wait in the Studie, Mrs. Austen. Remember where we left it? You can't miss it, pastel green with an M.D. license.” Milt dropped back and Jenny got the old lady out into the corridor and gave her a shove.

“Jenny! The
Elizabeth
is a perfect maze. I'll see Mrs. Austen off and you stay and say your good-by to Dr. Krop.”

Good-by to Milt. She wanted to, she wanted to, but looking at him, she saw that wasn't what Milt wanted. “No, I'd better go with her; after all, this is your party. I'll run along now, Milt.”

Mrs. Austen, puffing, detached Jenny's hand from her coat sleeve. “If her ladyship will be so kind—I would like a word with her ladyship.”

There was Milt in the doorway with that face of death. “Look—Amory, you haven't had a bite of your hamburger even. Lady Constant should stay, Mrs. Austen. It's her party, you know.
Come on
, Mrs. Austen!”

Amory, smiling, gave the hamburger to Jenny. “Keep it for me. Mrs. Austen would like a word with her ladyship!”

So they were alone at last. Alone at last. Like love stories alone at last. Jenny came back into the cabin holding onto Lady Constant's hamburger. She didn't know what to say. She wished Milt would say something. Not look like that. Jenny put Lady Constant's hamburger down on the lid of the Hamburger Heaven box and unwrapped a fresh one. If Mrs. Austen was entitled to one, she, Jenny, was entitled to one. She took a bite.

If she gave a party for Milt, it would be a better party than this. Some party, she thought, staring at Milt's face, what a party! She took another bite. My hamburgers are as good, if I say so myself. Oh, she thought,
salt
. She held the hamburger toward Milt, seeing the shaker still in his hand. “Salt, Milt!” For her ladyship he was all service, for Jenny he wouldn't even give her the salt. He shook his head.

“Jenny—what did she want to talk to her about?”

“Mrs. Austen? Nothing.” He looked so terrible, so lousy with that face with the death sweat on it, that she could not look at his face another minute and lowered her eyes to his big chest. Swallowing the bite of hamburger which was like dust and ashes in her mouth, she saw, instead of Milt's big chest, a fluoroscope of a heart. She saw the black ribs like a cage and the terrible heart sucking and swelling and hitting against the black bars. “Milt—”

Jenny put the remains of her hamburger on the table and, opening her purse, pulled out her handkerchief. Holding it out to show Milt what it was, she moved toward him to wipe that sweat off his face. “Oh, Milt,” she whispered, “Milt, what is it?”

He couldn't take his eyes away from the doorway through which the Duchess had gone with the old woman.

“What did she have to talk to her about? What hasn't she told her yet? Jenny? Jenny?”

He let her wipe off the beads of sweat. He let her!
“Jenny? Jenny?”
It was her heart under the fluoroscope. At his voice saying her name like that it began to bang so hard against the black ribs it would break. “What do you care? Oh, Milt, you don't use your head! If that old lady knew anything against you—That much, Milt!” Jenny flicked the tip end of her little finger with the thumb nail to show him. “If she knew that much, feeling the way she did, wild horses couldn't have kept her from spilling it to the cops! Let her talk to the Duchess, Milt! Every word out of her mouth is one more proof there was nothing. Relax, Milt!”

“What is she talking to her about, Jenny?”

“You won't take my word for it, nothing? She wants to tell the Duchess that she insulted her good name thinking for a minute she could be bought off with any hush money. She wants to say feeling the way about you she did—even knowing nothing against you she wouldn't have taken a red cent except she can't get another job.” Milt and the kids used to split their sides at some of her imitations in the old days. The H.N. from St. Agatha, old Mrs. Levinson, Bud's school principal—now Jenny began to take-off Mrs. Austen: Good class. Bad class. Madam. Poor madam. How madam appreciated a real servant. How madam picked her up out of the ash can. How madam worked out this wonderful system with the salt. “Milt!” She screamed, running after him into the bedroom. “Where you going, Milt?” He slammed the bathroom door in her face and she heard the lock turn. “I'll be in the other room, Milt. I'll go in the other room,” she repeated to herself, for company against the silence.

The Duchess came back right after that and asked where Milt was. Jenny, jerking her head toward the john, said he was washing his hands. “He'll be out in a minute. You want your hamburger meanwhile? I laid it on the table there, for you. What are you looking at now?”

Amory was goggling at the table that had the box and the hamburgers and stuff on it. Jenny came up beside her and stared also.

“Something is missing,” the Duchess said.

“I don't see nothing missing. What's eating you?” The Duchess tapped her red lips with her finger. “Listen, the old lady wanted to tell you her hard-luck story, didn't she?”

“I beg your pardon?”

She wasn't paying attention. She made Jenny beside herself goggling at that table as if she was expecting God-knows-what. Out of nervousness, Jenny began talking, off the top of her head, while she, too, studied what was on the table to see what this was all about. Never say die, that was the Duchess, wasn't it? Went with the old lady still expecting to hear God-knows-what. Got an earful of good names and bad names and good classes and low classes and heart disease and salt-free diets, right?

Amory swung round, her eyes widening. Her finger moved from her lips to her cheek, the fingers spread over her cheek. “Salt! That's it, salt!” Her hand pointed at the table. “The salt! The salt is missing, that's what's missing!

“Where is he?” she asked. “Where did you say he went?”

Jenny wouldn't say. Jenny wouldn't say another word. Jenny wouldn't open her mouth.

“‘Washing his hands,' you said! You said ‘washing his hands' and that's just what he said the first time!” She ran to the blue upholstered chair and unerringly drew her pocketbook out from between the cushion and the seat and opened it.

Amory took out her handkerchief and, my God, she picked up her cold hamburger and wrapped her handkerchief carefully round it.

“What are you doing there? Are you nuts?” Jenny asked.

No, she was quite sane, she said.

She wasn't going to eat the hamburger, she said, only going to preserve it. She opened her purse wide, put the hamburger wrapped in the handkerchief into the purse and closed the purse.

She said it was her evidence. She moved to the cabin door.

She said she was going to get off the boat this minute and she was going straight to the police.

She said she was going to ask them to have the hamburger analyzed and if they refused to do it, she said, and they might, she would have it analyzed somewhere else.

The police would almost certainly think she was insane, she said. And she was insane, she said. She was just exactly as insane as her sister had been.

Crazy like a fox, she meant.

Eventually—unless she was very much mistaken, she was going to have Milt arrested.

And she was not mistaken, she said. She had not been mistaken at all, she said, standing by the door, ready to run.

Wait until Day heard this, she said. Her light blue eyes had turned a dark and thundery blue.

She said that Jenny had said the magic word. (Poor Jenny, she said.)

Didn't Jenny know about the magic wordie? Didn't Jenny have television? Didn't the children listen to Groucho? To Day's precious Groucho? “Say the magic wordie and get a hundred dollars?”

Placebo was a magic wordie, she said, salt was a magic wordie. Salt. Salt. Salt.

She said certainly “washing his hands” was a euphemism, but not the conventional middle-class one. She said Milt was in there flushing down the poison out of the saltcellar and refilling the saltcellar with genuine salt. No, she said, not this time! The first time, last time, that was what he had done, but now he was in there tossing the saltcellar with the poison out of the porthole. But that wouldn't save him, she said, patting her purse, smiling at her purse.

The other time, she said, Sunday, she said, oh, yes, Jenny, the Sunday he murdered Sloane, he had flushed the poison down the drain, all right. She opened the door.

She said that this was what she had seen when she had been upper class about the euphemism, only she hadn't known it then.

But now she knew, she said, and now she wouldn't for the world barge in on him while he was “washing his hands.” She would run along now, she said. She patted her pocketbook gently. She and the hamburger would run along. The party was over, she said.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “Did you eat one, Jenny? No,” she said, “he couldn't have poisoned yours!”

He was in love with you, she said, didn't you know that?

“Well,” she said, “he probably didn't know it, either,” she said, and left the cabin.

Milton. Milt.

About the Author

Merriam Modell, pen name Evelyn Piper, was born in Manhattan, New York, in 1908. She is known for writing mystery thrillers of intricate, suspenseful plotting that depict the domestic conflicts of American families. Her short stories have appeared in the
The New Yorker
and two of her novels,
Bunny Lake Is Missing
and
The Nanny
, were adapted into major Hollywood films.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1956 by Harper & Brothers

Cover design by Julianna Lee

ISBN: 978-1-5040-2828-8

This 2016 edition published by
MysteriousPress.com
/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

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EBOOKS BY EVELYN PIPER

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MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
AND OPEN ROAD MEDIA