The Other Typist (29 page)

The first two stands I tried were closed, so I tried a little corner-store I remembered on Lexington. I don’t recall what the clerk at the store looked like, but I do recall making some sort of conversation with him about the weather (we both agreed it was cooling off and turning very fine—what a relief after that relentless summer!). As drunken citizens everywhere so often try to do, I tried my best not to appear as though I was concentrating too hard as I counted out the change. I could feel the warm glow in my face affecting my eyesight, and I was aware I was probably squinting closely at the coins to see which was which. But the clerk either didn’t notice or else had long since ceased to notice the erratic behaviors of his late-night customers entirely. But it was clear I was not a prized customer, as he simply handed me the pack of cigarettes without putting them in a paper bag. On the way back to the hotel, I noticed a man out walking a rather sleek-looking greyhound. I made some pleasant remarks about the dog’s winning countenance and stopped to pet it, then continued on my way. I wouldn’t have been that familiar and easy with a stranger before my time with Odalie. I was really coming out of my shell, as they say. She had changed me, I reflected, and for the better. I would apologize to her for telling Teddy where to find her, and we would be sisters again. No more of these silly spiteful betrayals. Oh, the irony of my thoughts at that crucial moment in time . . .

It wasn’t until I was a mere half-block from the hotel that I heard the sirens. By then a small crowd had gathered around, and already the policemen were working to keep the onlookers at bay. There was something everyone was pointing to in the middle of the crowd, something below their knees, lying on the ground. As I drew closer, my stomach balled itself into a tight fist. I could feel the warmth leaving my cheeks already, my eyes widening with the jarring clarity of sudden sobriety, my mind bracing itself for the harsh spectacle that inevitably awaited. By the time I got close enough to catch a glimpse of Teddy’s body sprawled out in a broken posture upon the gray impassive concrete of the sidewalk, it was as if I had already seen it all before.

F
rom time to time, I still puzzle over whether Odalie put the young elevator-boy up to it, or if it was an honest mistake and he was simply an overeager Good Samaritan trying to do the right thing. It doesn’t matter, of course, but it would be nice to know. For some reason (now that I know Odalie for what she is) I’ve taken a measure of comfort imagining she went to great pains, resorting to all sorts of masterful plotting. But there are some things, I suppose, to which I’ll never be privy, and I must resign myself to this fact. Either way, whatever motivated the elevator-boy’s actions drew its power from a sure and steady source, for he did not falter as he stood across the circle of clustered onlookers and raised his arm to point a finger in my direction.

“There she is!
That’s
the lady who rode up with him!” he cried. It was a simple statement—and a true one at that—but it struck me as an accusation, and I recoiled with a faint shiver of knee-jerk indignity.

“Excuse me? I beg your pardon, Clyde—”

“Name’s not Clyde. It’s
Clive
.”

“Oh.”

“Ask her—just ask ’er if she ain’t the one that rode up with him!” Suddenly there was a police officer at my elbow.

“Do you know the name and identity of the deceased?” the officer asked. I admitted that I did. “And where are you coming from, miss?” he asked. I explained to him about the cigarettes, about going to the news-stands, the corner-store, and even about the sleek-looking greyhound. Already I could tell it was too much; he lifted an eyebrow. “And your friend, this
Teddy,
you say you left him alone up there?” He gestured toward the upper levels of the hotel.

I didn’t answer at first, still under the spell of the impulse to protect Odalie. I glanced in the direction of where Teddy lay, but could not bring myself to look directly at the body. Surely he had not survived the fall. “Is he . . . ?”

“’Fraid so.”

I let my eyes trail up the side of the hotel until I was looking in the direction of the terrace. From down here it seemed like a very alien, impersonal, faraway place. It slowly dawned on me the police were sure to go up there for further inspection. I swallowed. “I have a room-mate,” I said, carefully trying to figure out how to volunteer this information. “She may know what happened. She might have seen the . . . the . . . accident.” As soon as I said the word
accident
aloud it left a funny tang in my mouth. I was desperate to get upstairs, to see Odalie, to look into her wide-set eyes and read in them the truth of what had just occurred. The police officer (a patrolman; I was distraught, but still knew how to tell the difference between a beat cop and a real detective, of course) was silent as we rode up in an elevator cage helmed by the eagerly disapproving Clive.

After taking us to our floor, Clive proceeded to follow us as we left the elevator and walked down the hall. The officer did not say anything to stop him, and I could feel both men’s eyes on me as I fumbled with the key to the front door. There was something loose and echoing in the air as I turned the doorknob to our apartment and swung the door open. A bottomless sense of vacancy permeated the sitting room, and I was overcome with a sick, panicky feeling. Right away, it was clear Odalie was gone. My mind attempted to piece together an innocent explanation as to where she was and why she had left, but already the threads of this were slippery and would not hold. The cop, to his credit, did not treat me like a crazy person straightaway, but rather conducted a polite-yet-perfunctory tour of all the apartment’s rooms in an attempt to locate the room-mate I had promised was awaiting him. I trailed behind him as he moved through the apartment. We concluded our tour on the terrace. Less than an hour earlier the terrace had seemed balmy and pleasant; now it had taken on an atmosphere of oppressive foreboding. I watched the police officer take stock of things: the little mirrored cocktail tray left to idle on a low wicker table, the two empty martini glasses abandoned on the brick ledge (I never did find out what became of that third glass). He peered over the rail at the wreckage below, then glanced at the pair of martini glasses again.

“You say you were up here earlier this evening?”

“Yes,” I said. Then, after a pause, I added, “I’m sorry I can’t tell you more about how it happened.” It was the truth; I was sorry, and getting sorrier by the minute. Perhaps it is laughable now, but at the time I was worried about Odalie.
Perhaps the shock of it was too much for her,
I thought,
but she shouldn’t have left the hotel like she has.
If she’d ever been to Newport at any point in her past, if it looked like she and Teddy had been having a row before he fell, the whole ugly truth of it would come out and whatever had happened on the terrace tonight wouldn’t look right.

“S’all right,” the officer replied. “Somebody already ’phoned for a detective.” I nodded. By then the Cognac I had consumed earlier had worked its way further into my system and my head was beginning to pound with a tight pressure. The daze I’d felt upon coming back from the corner-store was wearing off, and I looked down to see the carton of cigarettes still clutched in my hand. In an automatic gesture, I opened it and offered a cigarette to the officer. He gave me one of the queerest looks I have ever received in my life and shook his head, so I decided to smoke the rejected gift myself, thinking it might calm me. Odalie always said cigarettes had a wonderful calming effect on her. Still eyeing me cautiously, the officer reached over to light my cigarette. I noticed his hand was trembling. Mine, by contrast, was very steady as I smoked the cigarette. My nerves never showed themselves like that. I exhaled, tilting my head upward and allowing the smoke to curl from my mouth, imitating something I’d seen Odalie do a hundred times.

“What a terrible accident. Terrible, isn’t it?” I said. It was an innocuous remark. Or so I thought, but the officer flinched. His head snapped in my direction, and his eyes widened with curiosity.

“Hmph . . . yes . . .
accident . . . ,”
he murmured.

I finished my cigarette and stubbed it out, then deposited it neatly in the green bottle-glass ashtray that sat on the wicker table. In addition to the table, there was a little rug on the terrace, two wicker chairs, and a settee. Since it had become apparent we were waiting for something, I sat down on the settee and crossed my legs. A tiny twinkle caught my eye, and I looked down to see Odalie’s bracelet lying by my foot. Had Teddy torn it from her wrist? She wouldn’t want it lying there, so I picked it up for safe-keeping. There was no better way to keep hold of it than to wear it, so I slipped it around my other wrist and did up the clasp.
Odalie was right,
I thought to myself.
They do look a bit like handcuffs.
I twisted my wrists slowly and admired the precious stones as they shimmered icy-cold in the moonlight.

Later more officers arrived, and they escorted me downstairs, where a car was waiting to take me to the local precinct. As I was helped into the car, I overheard the patrolman recounting our interlude to a group of fellow officers.

“. . . and as I live and breathe, you shoulda seen ’er. She was just as cold as
ice,
I tell you! Stood there, smoking a cigarette, admiring her diamonds, calm as could be . . .”

•   •   •

SEEING AS HOW
I was otherwise engaged, I can’t say for sure when Odalie returned to the apartment, but I assume it was some hours later. Over and over, I’ve pictured it all now as it must’ve been: Odalie walking down the street toward the hotel and “discovering” the crowd of onlookers, the police cars, the newspapermen, and the blinding-bright flashes of bulbs popping on their cameras. There she is in my mind, drawing near the curb with her brow furrowed. Clapping a hand over her mouth upon glimpsing the coroner setting about his macabre work. Demanding to know what is going on while being bumped and jostled about by the crowd.

Oh, but I have a room-mate. Where’s my room-mate? Where’s Rose?
I picture her saying to a nearby police officer. And then the officer—in my mind it is the same patrolman who stood with me on the terrace waiting for the detective to arrive—clamps a kindly hand on her shoulder to steady her and informs her of the bad news. Her eyes widen and the sunny tint of her skin pales, but she nods as she takes it all in, a small gesture to indicate horror, but not surprise.
Poor Teddy,
she says, her eyes glistening.
He didn’t deserve such a thing.

You ought to know, she implied you were up on that terrace tonight,
he tells Odalie, relaying what has clearly now become my impossible accusation. He does not have to say
be careful of that one,
he does not have to call me a murderess and a slanderer; his tone says it all for him.

•   •   •

THERE WAS AN INQUEST,
of course, and my trip to the local precinct turned out to be issued on a one-way ticket. That first night, I sat in an unfamiliar interview room being asked questions by an unfamiliar detective, while a typist sat quietly in the corner typing my answers with a dull receptivity. It was all I could do, when they first led me into the room, not to seat myself at her desk and poise my fingers over the keys of the stenotype merely out of habit.

The detective who interviewed me introduced himself as Detective Ferguson. He was quite a bit older than the Lieutenant Detective at our own precinct and was a full detective as opposed to a lieutenant. His dark hair was interrupted by two very white streaks at his temples that ran toward the back of his head with a comically sharp line of demarcation, giving him an abstractly skunklike air. Every time he asked me a question, he tapped out the beat of the words on the table between us with his forefinger, as if sending a wire over an invisible telegraph machine. Unlike the Lieutenant Detective, this Detective Ferguson took a straightforward line with his questions. It was a bit unsettling, as I could tell he was unsatisfied with my answers and that we were eventually headed for an all-out impasse.

Even more unsettling was the fact there was also a young patrolman in the room I believe was training to be a detective, and the kid bore a strong resemblance to Teddy. Perhaps I am imagining it, but in my memory, he had sandy hair and an earnest gaze and the same lanky, puppyish body, with narrow shoulders and long limbs he had not quite grown into. To think: Only hours ago I had been drinking cocktails and chatting with Teddy. It had not sunk in yet that Teddy was really dead, and having his twin sit across from me at the interview table did very little to help me come to grips with things. I think I would’ve been more at ease, too, if the kid had talked. If he had, he might’ve demonstrated a funny accent or odd mannerism—something, anything, to dispel the notion the two young men were in any way related—and then the distraction caused by his presence would’ve been alleviated. But as it was, he remained absolutely taciturn throughout the duration of my interview, content to sit in silence and scribble furiously into a notebook. He remained so, that is, until I had my little “episode.”

Of course, now that I’ve had some time to reflect upon the situation, I see the ways in which this interview marked yet one more irreversible turning point for me. In my defense, I was not exactly myself that night. Too much drink and the shock of seeing a body had very likely warped my perception of things. And so I can hardly be blamed for the scene that occurred during my interview. But I suppose it’s important that I tell this part, for I’m sure my outburst helped speed me on my way to the particular institution in which I now find myself. I will try to recount, to the best of my memory, the exchange as it took place.

The interview promised to be interminable, stretching on into the early hours of dawn. Several times the officers and the typist took little breaks, and I was left alone in the interview room, sitting very still as the air around me stagnated, listening to the ticking of the wall clock, my eyelids closing with weariness. I say all this because I believe I also was suffering from sleep deprivation, and this too may help explain my state of mind. In any case, each time the detective reentered the room, he did so with a renewed charge of energy and a fresh stack of file folders, not to mention a fresh cup of coffee. Knowing a little bit about how these things go, I understood they were taking statements from people. Most likely the entire hotel staff had been interviewed, and perhaps some onlookers on the street as well. The detective was biding his time with me while the eyewitness accusations accumulated and strengthened his case.

I believe my own interview went off the rails somewhere around the time the detective informed me that Odalie had already given a statement (
Odalie!
). I was very confused; this was both good and bad news to me. At first, I felt a flood of relief. I had been worried about her, but if she had indeed given a statement like the detective said she did, then at the very least it meant she was in a physically sound state. And yet when I thought about what had likely occurred on the terrace, my distress over her disappearance very quickly converted into distress over the contents of her statement. I wondered what the police might know about Odalie, feeling anxious over what I ought not reveal. Detective Ferguson pressed on, asking me questions aimed at diagnosing my relationship to Teddy and my living situation with Odalie. It began benignly enough, and I was not uncomfortable when he first took this tack, leaning back in his chair with an open posture and adopting a casual tone as he put some very direct questions to me.

“I take it, Miss Baker, you and Mr. Tricott were carrying on a relationship of a . . .
romantic variety
?” the detective asked me. My brow furrowed in confusion.

“Sorry—me and who?”

“Theodore Tricott.”

“Oh! You mean Teddy. Romantic! Oh, heavens no. I hardly knew him.”

“Witnesses saw him visiting you at the precinct earlier today. They said you seemed quite familiar, and that your conversation got quite
heated
.”