The Other Typist (30 page)

“Sounds like Marie has been gossiping! Fine—yes, I talked to him, but he hadn’t even come to see me in the first place. He came to see someone else.”

“Who?”

The hard flint of loyalty kept me silent.

“All right, well. You say he’s a new acquaintance, then. Are you in the habit of inviting men you hardly know to join you for a cocktail in your place of residence?”

“Of course not; don’t be absurd.”

“Do you deny you invited Mr. Tricott over for a cocktail at your apartment?”

“Well, yes—and no, too.”

“Which is it?”

I hesitated, and finally decided to be truthful about my part of things. “Yes, I admit I mixed a drink for Teddy and kept him entertained on the terrace while we waited for my room-mate to return. But no, I didn’t exactly invite him, and it’s not exactly my apartment.”

“Do you mean to say you don’t live there?”

“I live there, but it’s Odalie’s apartment.”

“That’s not what she informed us.”

“Beg pardon?”

The first inklings of true betrayal began to enter my bloodstream, the alternating twinges of disbelief and dread tingling in my veins. Suddenly I was feeling a little light-headed. It was probably a case of dehydration, on account of all the alcohol, I thought.

“May I have a glass of water?” I asked. We took a brief break while Detective Ferguson sent the typist to go get one. I hadn’t paid the typist much mind before, but when she walked back into the interview carrying a tall glass of water I took a closer look at her.

She was somewhere in her mid-twenties and painfully plain. Her hair was the same lackluster shade of light brown as my own, and her features were small and regular, with the exception of her teeth. Her teeth were small but very pointy in the front, and she had an overbite that made her lower jaw stick out ever so slightly. The unfortunate combination of her teeth and jaw gave her an air that was at once both timid and carnivorous, reminding me of an illustration I had once seen in an encyclopedia of a hungry piranha. I did not like the look of her one bit.

“So? Miss Baker?” Detective Ferguson prompted me.

“Beg pardon?” I had difficulty remembering where we had left off and was feeling distracted. I watched the typist slide back into her desk. Immediately her fingers commenced their fluttering over the stenotype keys. I narrowed my eyes at those fingers. They suddenly seemed like spidery, sinister things.

“Miss Lazare informed us you pay the rent on that apartment, and that it’s rented in your name. What do you have to say about that?”

I blinked, but kept my eyes trained on the typist’s hands as they continued to flutter over the stenotype. It seemed to me she was typing even when I wasn’t saying anything. “I say it’s simply not true,” I replied with a frown, wondering where Detective Ferguson was getting his faulty information. Odalie could not have possibly said such a thing.

And then it happened. For the briefest of seconds, the typist allowed her eyes to flicker up at me, and the tiniest flash of a smug smile quivered on her lips.
The villainess!
I thought, my mind racing.
Of course she’s in on it!
I mean, after all, I of all people knew how easy it was to tamper with a report, to plant ideas in a detective’s head. Perhaps she had been angling for this, priming this detective for weeks! How could I have been so blind?

“The apartment is let in Odalie’s—I mean, Miss Lazare’s—name,” I informed them. “I don’t suppose it’s any of your business, but that apartment is a bit out of my reach, I’m afraid.” I paused and twisted in my seat to give the typist a meaningful look. “Being that we’re in a similar line of business, I’m sure you can imagine the limits of my salary.” I turned back to the detective. “Odalie has . . . well,
family money,
you see.” Upon hearing this latter statement, the typist stopped typing, and Detective Ferguson’s protégé suddenly looked up from his notebook.

“That’s a horrible joke, Miss Baker.”

“I’m not aware of making any joke.”

“I don’t see how you can make light of Miss Lazare’s situation, seeing as how she was raised in an orphanage. That seems quite cruel, even for you.”

“What?” I felt myself increasingly conscious of a great chasm opening up somewhere in the floor beneath me. “What? Who told you that?” There was a pause in which no one dared speak and I felt the constellation of conspiracy arranging itself around me from all sides. My heart began to beat faster. “Who told you that?” I demanded again. I sprang up from my chair and whirled about, and suddenly my gaze fell on the typist. “What have you been typing? I know what you’ve been about! You’ve been typing lies about me! Someone—quick! Check her reports! She’s typing lies!” I realized I was now screaming, but I didn’t care. The typist was staring at me, the whites of her eyes revealing her fear, which I took to be a sure sign of her guilt. Suddenly I understood it all. “You think you’ll get rid of me with these lies! You want her for yourself! I know what you’re about!” Before I knew what was happening, I had thrown myself at the typist and my hands were around her neck. Detective Ferguson and the young detective-in-training rushed to pull me off, but it wasn’t until several more officers had charged into the room that they were sufficiently able to sever my hold on her.

Perhaps it will come as no surprise to you that less than an hour later I was ensconced at the institution where I find myself currently. I have resided here now for two and a half weeks, and am officially being held for “further observation purposes,” under the supervision of Dr. Miles H. Benson, the doctor whose name I’ve already mentioned.

The appearance of one’s innocence is a funny house of cards; you start by shifting the smallest thing, and before you know it the whole structure has come crashing down. In my case, it all began with the elevator-boy. I still wonder, sometimes, if it hadn’t been for Clive pointing a finger at me, how the night might’ve played itself out differently. But there are other times when I understand: Elevator-boy or no elevator-boy, my fate was—and had always been—in Odalie’s hands.

T
he slope that leads toward insanity has the paradoxical distinction of being both steep and yet undetectable to the person sliding down it. That is to say, crazy people rarely know they’re crazy. So I can understand it when, while attempting to attest to my own sanity, it just so happens I am not readily believed. Despite all this, I must assure you I am not crazy. It’s true, they caught me at a particularly inconvenient moment, and I can see how it must’ve looked, attacking that fellow typist as I did. But I have had ample time to review the situation now, and I have disavowed all of the nonsense I was spewing at the time of my little “episode.” All of which is to say I see how unlikely it is that the poor woman was meddling with my statement. Even more unfounded is my fantasy that she hoped to unseat me in my role as Odalie’s bosom friend. But that’s the funny thing about treasure—we assume everyone wants what we hold most dear. And yet you really must take me at my word: It was a momentary lapse. In retrospect I understand how my convictions about the other typist merely constituted an extrapolation of my own fears.

My doctor (I believe I’ve already mentioned him—the renowned Dr. Miles H. Benson, M.D., Ph.D.) says I am given to what he calls
theories of conspiracy
. We humans are categorical thinkers, he says, and we all try to fit our experiences of this world into patterns.
Some of us
, he says (and by this he means me),
will completely overturn reality in an effort to uphold a particular pattern that we prefer.
Then he leans back in the metal chair regularly brought into my room for him to sit upon while we chat and later taken away so I won’t get any funny ideas about standing upon it and devising some way to hang myself. He leans back in the chair and lets his glasses slide down his nose, and once that happens I know we are about to segue from the general to the personal.
Can you think of how you might be fitting the facts to uphold any particular pet theory, my dear?
he asks in that didactic, singsong voice of his.

During our first few chats, I used to challenge him.
Can you think of how you might be fitting the facts to uphold any particular theory of your own, Dr. Benson?
I simply cannot give credence to his suggestion that the Saint Teresa of Avila Home for Girls has no record of my time there. I do not believe Dr. Benson, or anyone from this so-called hospital, has truly even checked. When I inquired after the name of the nun who was contacted, Dr. Benson mumbled something and promised to “consult his files”—which, of course, he never did.
You cannot rob a person of her whole childhood history merely to uphold your belief in my insanity,
I would say to him rather accusingly.

But that was during my first few days here, and my complaints fell on deaf ears. Now I sit and let him build a case for his precious “reality.” He is very dedicated to the cause and can often have a very convincing demeanor. Dr. Benson is the proprietor of a very full and spectacular mustache, and I suppose I have a habit of putting my faith in men with formidable mustaches. Dr. Benson’s is nothing quite so grand as the Sergeant’s flamboyantly twisted pair of handlebars, but it is nonetheless quite impressive and lends him an air of authority, and when he tells me his version of my own history, a version I can’t quite seem to recall living, I have become complacent to sit and listen with rapt attention, as though he were spinning out a very mysterious and enchanting fairy-tale. He is so vehement about certain facts—like the fact the orphanage has no record of my growing up there—sometimes I nearly believe him. In fact, I thought perhaps there was a chance I had remembered the name of the wrong saint and sent Dr. Benson chasing my ghost in the wrong direction, that perhaps the place where I’d known Sister Hortense and Sister Mildred (not to mention my poor sweet Adele) was maybe named after Saint Catherine or Saint Ursula. But no, it was most certainly Saint Teresa. Saint Teresa the mystic, who despite all her prim and proper faith was known for her sensuousness as well as for her bouts of madness. Saint Teresa, the patron saint for removing maladies of the head. I know what you are thinking, and I am not so insane that I fail to see the irony in all this.

Of course the dim outlines of Dr. Benson’s fairy-tale ring a bell. I have heard some of this before. According to him my name is Ginevra Morris. I was born in Boston, but shortly after my birth my family relocated to Newport, Rhode Island. If it were at all possible my parents might visit me here, Dr. Benson is sure it would prove helpful, as it would no doubt cause a rift in my fabricated history I would be at pains to reconcile.
In laymen
’
s terms, it would jog your memory, Ginevra,
he often says—and because the name is still so unfamiliar to me, I look over my shoulder at the nurse before realizing he means me. But alas, laments Dr. Benson, my parents are deceased; my father passed away two years ago from liver failure, and my mother died last spring in a rather unfortunate automobile accident. (Dr. Benson presented me with the newspaper clippings and took my intense interest in them as further proof of his theory.
Remember, Ginevra? How your mother always was a poor driver? The neighbors said it came as no surprise,
he urges.)

There is another story Dr. Benson also likes to tell, about an old fiancé of mine. Apparently we had a terrible row the night he died. The circumstances surrounding the young man’s death—his car stalled at an inopportune time while upon some railroad tracks—never did sit quite right with the townspeople.
You have to own up to your actions,
Dr. Benson advises me.
You might
’
ve been able to vamp the whole town into looking the other way for a time, but that time must end here
.

This makes me snort and show all my teeth as I most heartily laugh aloud, a behavior I can tell rattles Dr. Benson.
I am hardly a seductress, Dr. Benson,
I say with a chuckle.
You can see as much with your plain eyes
. At this, Dr. Benson remains quiet and stares me down with a skeptical look, and I have to wonder if all the time I spent with Odalie has changed me more than I realize.

Oh, but there’s more to this story! The first time Dr. Benson told it to me in its entirety I almost fainted with utter shock upon hearing the details. I say “almost fainted” because of course I have a very strong constitution and did not faint, though it might’ve been nice to slip into unconsciousness at that juncture in time, just to stop Dr. Benson’s mouth from spewing the hateful narrative as it continued to spring forth. That first time telling it, the good doctor prattled along rather innocuously at first, urging me as he always did to remember my life as Ginevra.
You vamped the whole town into looking the other way,
he said that day, stroking his mustache as though recalling the story from his own memory,
and you nearly had everyone pledging their undying faith in you, too, Ginevra
—
until you ran off with the train yard switchman
. I sat up straight upon hearing this, my brain suddenly racing to fit together what I should’ve suspected all along—Gib!
Tell us when he began blackmailing you, Ginevra,
Dr. Benson said.
Did it begin right away, that first night, out on the train tracks, with the wreck of Warren
’
s crumpled roadster still steaming and groaning in the background behind you?
I looked at Dr. Benson and realized I wished I knew the answer to his question. I felt a fleeting twinge of sympathy for Odalie. So Gib had had her under his thumb the whole time! That arrangement must’ve been excruciatingly painful for her, free-spirited creature that she was. But the fleeting twinge of sympathy I suffered was just that: fleeting, for Dr. Benson’s next line of questions was to have an even greater effect on me, and they have consumed me ever since.

How long did you plot to kill Gib, Ginevra?
Dr. Benson asked, leaning forward to better look me in the eye.
How long did it take you to formulate a plan?
Of course, the first time Dr. Benson asked me this I was quite befuddled, and it took me some minutes to piece together the fact that Gib was dead. Over the last two weeks of my confinement, I’ve managed to procure more of the specifics. Evidently Theodore Tricott hadn’t been the only one to suffer a tragic accident that night. Harry Gibson had been helping to host an illegal wet party (otherwise known as a “speakeasy”) when he drank a particularly lethal cocktail that was one part champagne, two parts non-potable methanol. The drink had a surprisingly quick effect. The nerve damage set in almost immediately, the coroner speculated, and soon after paralysis set in upon Gib’s lungs. By the time Teddy plunged off the terrace, Gib was already dead, and “Ginevra’s” misdeeds had brought the insular circle back around upon itself.

It was at that point I began to protest my innocence in earnest. Ever since they’d told me about the statement Odalie had given and I’d attacked the typist in the interview room, my faith in my dear bosom friend had been crumbling away like a sand dune in the wind. Now, Dr. Benson’s question tormented me:
How long did you plot to kill Gib?
How long, how long, how long?
plagued my brain every night as I lay on my cot in the institution, desperately seeking sleep. And it was with a stomach-churning sense of cold and absolute dread that I realized the answer was: at least about a year. I had not been watching Odalie; she had been watching me. She had thrown down her bait—that brooch—and from the very second I picked it up she knew she had her magpie: someone she could distract with her sparkle as she laid the foundation of her master plan.

Tragically, however, by the time I had a better vantage on the panorama of my situation it was too late. Everything I explained about Odalie, about her connections, about her manner of insinuating herself into people’s lives, went unheard. There was a time when I considered perhaps Dr. Benson knew the truth of it and had been somehow bribed by Odalie as well, but I don’t think so presently. The good yet pig-headed doctor seems so sincere when he speaks to me about
accepting the truth of reality
that I have come to believe he really does buy into all that. I’ve seen myself through his eyes, and I understand he thinks my reality, insofar as it diverges from his own, is a fiction.

Of course, there are places where my reality and Dr. Benson’s reality have some overlap. For instance, I have been presented with a few anecdotes from my history I know to be very real. At one point, they brought “Dr.” Spitzer in to identify me. I say “Dr.” with mocking only because it turned out Odalie was right when she said he probably wasn’t much of a chemist. Technically, he wasn’t one at all. He’d been arrested for his own crimes, and in return for a shorter sentence he was only too happy to point me out as “Miss Ginevra” and, of course, as the woman to whom he’d given the bottle of improperly re-natured alcohol that brought about Gib’s untimely death. According to him, he’d never heard of Odalie; I was the sole proprietor of my own enterprise, not to mention the chief purchaser of his services.

And, of course, I still remember the day Dr. Benson came in and asked me was I acquainted with a girl named Helen Bartleson. She’d claimed to know me from the time I’d tried to “lay low by living at a boarding-house,” and had given some statements that were of particular interest to the police, Dr. Benson informed me, although I can’t imagine what. I told him Helen was a nincompoop, and in any case knew nothing about my life before or after I left the boarding-house. But obviously I had to say yes, I did know her.
We were room-mates for a brief time,
I replied. Dr. Benson asked was this prior to my arrangements at the hotel apartment.
Yes,
I said. Did I recall slapping her across the face with a pair of leather gloves? Dr. Benson wanted to know.
Well, I didn
’
t relish it and it was not my place, but someone had to discipline her and it was clear Dotty wasn
’
t going to do it,
I answered. When I said this, Dr. Benson smiled.

We are finally making progress,
he diagnosed, but I didn’t see how.

The worst was when I thought it might help me to come clean about Edgar Vitalli. I was trying to make a point—that not everything recorded while in a precinct was always 100 percent accurate. Dr. Benson asked a lot of questions about this, and then a couple of chief inspectors from different districts asked many many more. And then they brought in the Police Commissioner himself. It’s funny; all that time working at the police precinct, preparing for the Commissioner’s visits, and this was how I finally made his acquaintance. The first thing I noticed about him was his temples bulged when he was telling a lie. Like how he claimed he’d never met Odalie and didn’t know what I was talking about when I brought up the business of how he’d given Odalie a white card. He was sure to ask all the questions during that interview, of course, or else I would’ve pressed him further about the card Gib accused Odalie of purchasing from his offices.

It was a longer interview than I would’ve liked. I really shouldn’t have told them anything, but the stress of constantly being convinced I did not know reality from fantasy made me want to tell the truth about absolutely everything, even about Edgar Vitalli, just to lay it out all straight in my head. But oh, what a fuss they made! It was in all the papers: how I’d doctored the confession, making it sound like Mr. Vitalli knew all sorts of incriminating details about the crime. How I’d charmed the Sergeant and seduced him into complying. I was a wicked, deceitful seductress, they claimed. One reporter even compared me to Salome, dancing for King Herod and asking for the head of John the Baptist! The result of all this was that the Sergeant withdrew into a swift and silent retirement. A retroactive mistrial was declared, and I am sorry to say Mr. Vitalli was thereby acquitted of all charges and released from prison. His ugly smirking face glared out at me from every front page. I felt very bad about this, and for a while I collected all the newspapers I could lay my hands on in the common room, clipped the photos, and pinned them to the wall in my room at the institution just to torture myself with that hideous taunting face. It was my way of doing penance (I suppose I had to be declared insane before finally getting some religion). Eventually Dr. Benson noticed the eyes were scratched out in most of the photos and forced me to take them down and hand them over to the nurses on the basis that my collection demonstrated what he called
an unhealthy preoccupation
.