The Nanny (24 page)

So he reported finding the nursemaid dead and the circumstances. “No,” he said. “I've seen to it that nobody's touched a thing in the room. No one's going in there,” he promised. And they wouldn't. Since she had no idea he wouldn't be around to tell the police if she tried tampering with anything, she wouldn't try again. And the husband certainly wouldn't.

By that time, the boy was chattering away to his parents, cheerful as a bug in a rug. She believed the boy was cheerful because this Dr. Bee had made him easy in his mind about self-defense. What she didn't know about psychopaths would fill a book. He hoped that when this was over she would read a book. He asked her if he could speak to her, and went with her to the window, where the boy couldn't hear. “I had to call the cops, but there is something I can do, Mrs. Fane. There's going to be hell to pay here any moment now, slews of cops, morticians, the D.A.'s people, what-not, photographers—I can take the kid out of it. No, I won't let you take him, but I will. I'll keep him down in my office out of the way until it calms down here, how's that? You and Mr. Fane can answer questions and, if you take my advice, you'll get a psychiatrist here.” For her, he meant, but she didn't know that.

She took his hand in both of hers to thank him for this kindness and he felt the roughness of the bandage over the wound Roberta had made and the smoothness of her skin. To allay any possible suspicions, he said, “It's the least I can do after what Roberta did to you.” He would have liked to tell her what he really was going to do for her, would even have preferred to say something which she could remember later, a curtain speech, in other words, but he was afraid to. Let her be grateful to him later, much later, maybe years, when she found out what a psychopath was.

“Joey, Dr. Meducca is going to take you down to his office for a while.”

“No.”

“Darling, why not?”

“He still thinks I'm a liar.”

God, they were clever! “I don't, Joey. I know better now. She did try to drown you … she did try to smother you.” He felt, smiling, that he had false teeth. He was afraid his false-tooth grin wouldn't fool the kid, not that kid, and it didn't. He ran to his mother and held on to her.

“Joey, Mommy wants you to go, please.”

He buried his head in the white coat, shaking it, no.

“Virgie, let him stay! What difference …”

But she pulled herself loose. It might take years for her to forgive herself for forcing the kid to go down with him. But she would when she knew. She would forgive him too, when she knew.

He let the boy into the office and then locked the inside lock, the anti-Roberta lock. It would take anyone at least ten minutes to break that door down, and morphine given intravenously worked in five to ten minutes. If that didn't give him time to give himself the morphine, that would be a shame, but not important. It was only important that the boy went. It wouldn't be the way he preferred, a trial and a mess and himself around to see all the filthy linen being washed in public, but what had to be, had to be.

If he had pulled up the blinds, he needn't have put the electric lights on because it was day now. But he didn't pull up the blinds.

Virgie had stood at the open door to the apartment wordlessly forcing Joey to go with the doctor. Victor stood behind her until the elevator took them out of sight; then he was ready to catch her, to carry her, but she merely turned and walked briskly into the apartment, and when he closed the door there she was with that towel on her head and that white coat and her feet in scuffed white snub-nosed oxfords which certainly weren't hers. As he came closer to her, Virgie threw her head up.

“It happened the way Joey said,” she told him carefully. “I believe Joey.”

“I believe Joey believes it. Believes it was self-defense. Virgie, I'm going to take the doctor's advice and call Dr. Blair. And I'll get that psychiatrist from the School, too.”

“We don't need them.”

“Joey does.”

“No. He doesn't.”

“Read this statement, Virgie.”

“No. It happened the way Joey said and now we must prove it. Don't look like that, Victor!”

He said miserably, “The doctor …”

“The doctor is thinking of his daughter.” She yanked the wrapped towel off her head and Victor gaped at her shaved head. “She did that. His daughter. And she was going to cut my finger off to get my ring. That's his daughter and he knows her, but we know Joey!”

Now she was like—she was like—like that Spanish girl in the Ernest Hemingway picture,
For Whom the Bell Tolls
. Maria, wasn't it? The Fascisti had shaved that girl's head (and raped her) but she was healed, and up on that mountain top she became a heroine. “Virgie?” he asked himself incredulously, unable to take his eyes from the cropped head which was more beautiful than it had been with her long golden hair because it was poised so high now and not hangdog-hanging.

Then the doorbell rang and she jumped in between him and the door and whispered, “We're going to tell the police that it happened the way Joey said!”

He threw up his hands. What point? What sense?

“That's what we're going to tell them.” She would not let him go to the door.

“But in any case, Dr. Meducca will tell them later! All right,” he whispered, “okay. What Joey said.” And then she stepped aside and he opened the door.

“Are you the police?” Virgie asked before he could speak, not trusting him yet.

But it wasn't the police. It was two men to take Mrs. Gore-Green's body. At the word “police,” they set down the long wicker basket they were carrying and one of them zipped open a black plastic envelope he had been carrying under his arm and drew out a form.

“The doc downstairs, he had this here death certificate ready for us. It
looks
okay.”

“It is. The police aren't here about her.” He was about to show them where the body was when the doorbell rang again, immediately followed by a palm hitting flat on the door.

And then the place was full of people, first two men in plain clothes and two cops, then two more cops, then two more. The undertaker showed one of the uniformed cops the death certificate and the cop read it and went in with the undertakers to see Mrs. Gore-Green's body, then came back and consulted the two men in plain clothes who had gone into the maid's room with Virgie, and when he came back again, he told the undertakers they could do their job. Go ahead. Then Victor was asked to sit down and answer some questions. Name, address, occupation, that kind of thing. He should have felt that this was unreal, that he was inside the TV screen because it was all such a cliché, the apartment swarming with police, the two cops he could hear outside the door fencing curious people from the house off in the “Move along, move along” cliché. “There's been an accident here, folks, but it's all under control now, folks. Why don't you go home now?” How many times had he seen all this on a TV screen, but how real reality was, Victor thought. Then they finished with him and he went to the kitchen and listened to Virgie telling Joey's story to the two men in plain clothes. She was telling it seriously, as if it made sense, to the men who were now staring at the old woman's body, standing just outside Joey's rope. Virgie finished and there was a silence, Victor could feel her waiting to be assured that they accepted what she said, but the shorter man, who seemed to be in charge, only said, “Where the hell is Mike?”

This wouldn't do, so Virgie began the story again, and, hearing her tell it from the beginning, Victor knew he couldn't blame the men for simply treating it as the raving of a hysterical mother. When they read the doctor's letter, they would react differently.

“Where's the doc from the M.E.?” the same man said. The other raised and lowered his shoulders, indicating that there was nothing they could do to hurry him; then the other snapped his fingers, interrupting Virgie, who, poor kid, had begun the story for the third time. (As if she could make it if she drilled it into them.)

“That reminds me,” the shorter plain-clothes man said, “the doc reminds me, lady. The super downstairs said the doctor on the case has a statement written out for us. I don't know why he should think a written statement is enough, but we might as well see it.”

Because he could make no sense of Virgie's story.

“Better get the doc up here, Dan.”

“You leave him alone!” Virgie said. “He's with my little boy. He doesn't want my little boy in on all this and that's why he wrote a statement, so you wouldn't need to talk to him now.”

“I get it.”

Virgie began again. “His nurse was going to smother him with a pillow, so he had to protect himself. He stayed in his room and put up that rope because he was suspicious. Joey knew … that will be proved. Dr. Berkover at High House School will prove it, too. We were told not to keep her and she was supposed to leave.… We …”

“Now why would the nurse want to smother him?” the detective asked.

But this was Virgie's weak point. She didn't know why. My God, why?
Why?
Virgie skipped the weak point and went on as before.

“There was a witness who could have proved all this except that she died of a heart attack caused by trying to prevent—to fight her off.…”

Then the detective saw Victor in the doorway and asked whether he knew anything about this statement the house doctor had written for them.

Virgie said, “Dr. Meducca wasn't here when it happened. He just came in and found her, that's all. He's not even our doctor!” she added childishly.

The detective ignored her. “Dr. Meducca discovered the bodies, right?”

Virgie didn't even want him to agree, to give the doctor that much.

“My little boy is the only witness to what happened. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

If he gave the detectives that statement, Virgie would never forgive him, but what good would it do not to? It would only put it off until the police questioned Dr. Meducca. The statement burned in his pocket, but not as fiery as Virgie's glance. Victor said, “As my wife's been telling you, Dr. Meducca came in after this was all over.” Following Virgie's example, he ignored the question of the statement. “What my wife tells you is what our little boy told us. Look, if we can get out of this
closet
and sit down where there's more air. A drink, maybe. I could use one. This has been rugged.” The detective waved him out and followed. As they came out on the dining balcony the doorbell rang. Virgie was hoping, Victor saw, that whoever it was would make the detective forget about the statement, but after he had talked to the new arrivals, a photographer and two men from the crime lab, he asked the other detective again to call the doctor.

“How do you spell it? M-E-D-U-C-C-A?” He asked them to wait in the living room and followed the photographer and the crime lab men back into the kitchen.

Virgie was rooted to the spot, her eyes on the detective at the telephone on the balcony.

“Busy,” he said.

Then Virgie did allow him to move her, to support her with his arm and lead her to the chair by the window, as far as possible, that was, from the kitchen.

“Thank you,” Virgie whispered, allowing Victor to lower her into the chair, “for not giving him the statement.”

He planted his palms on the armrests, leaning close, speaking in a low but furious voice. “I'll break your neck,” he said, because she had disowned him, made him a stranger, to be thanked, and why? Because he had to bow his head to fact while she kept that cropped-Maria-Hemingway head stiff with this lunatic faith. But Virgie, who usually cowered at the shadow of firmness in his voice, did not even notice that he had threatened to break her neck.

“If they read the letter first, nothing would stop them from accusing Joey.”

“Nothing's going to stop them except proving that Joey's disturbed again. That's the only way to make them lay off. Don't you see that's the only way to stop them?”

“We will stop them,” she said superbly, flinging the cropped head higher. “All we have to do is prove that it happened the way Joey said.”

“That's all we have to do!” He groaned.

“That
doctor
thought she was just bringing him a pillow. What made Mrs. Gore-Green know she was going to smother Joey with it? How did she know? What made her so sure that it wasn't …” she swallowed hard … “what the doctor thought?”

Yes, break her neck! Yes, choke this out of her! “Who do you think you are? Sherlock Holmes? What do you think you're playing at?”

But she wasn't playing.

“Think. Victor, think, think!”

He lifted his hands off the arms of the chair and went to the window. She came after him, standing off at a respectful distance, imagining that he was thinking.

Dr. Meducca made Joey lie down on the couch in the consultation room, hoping he would fall asleep again, because he had to write the psychopath part of the statement. It had to read right, to be logical and sensible. A, followed by B, followed by C. (Leading to D for death.) There must be no possibility that they would think him insane and ignore him. They must know that this was a sane, trained observer speaking, and not Roberta's father. Since it was to keep the world safe from other psychopaths, it better be good. And he had the time to make it good. Any knock on the door would give him time. The syringes were filled and ready to go. Joey was standing behind him.

“What are you writing?”

“A letter.” He covered the page with his arm. “Go lie down, Joey.”

“To who?”

“To whom it may concern.”

“Who?
Kin I write a letter, too? I want to tell Sarah. She's my friend.”

Friend. Ha ha
. He gave the boy some paper and a pencil, but in a few minutes Joey gave them back.