Murder in Mount Holly

by Paul Theroux

  But her operation had cost her a pretty penny and now, with her childhood thoughts of crabgrass and her recent discovery that lungs ballooned and adenoids reappeared, and—most discouraging of all—that Juan had been extremely, shall we say, virile, and now was dead, Miss Ball could not remember if the doctor had given her a warranty.

  She had gotten one with her Snooz-Alarm—it was a big green-edged one-year warranty that looked like a savings bond. And she had gotten one with her hair dryer, her mixer, her vibrator and her juicer. If anything went wrong she didn’t have to raise a fuss. She just told the clerk that it was not in working order and she would get a new one, a new dryer or juicer. But she hadn’t got a warranty from the doctor.

  She had asked herself many times if she needed one and had always decided no. But she had not yet realized her power over men. She had thought she was too old for that sort of thing. She could always reassure herself that Juan was doing it for the money. Was she too old? Harold Potts didn’t think so. And that’s finally what scared her.

  “You look marvellous!” the doctor said with professional enthusiasm as Miss Ball seated herself on the other side of the desk.

  “That’s the outside you’re looking at. It’s the inside I’m worried about.”

  “There’s not much left to worry about,” the doctor said. He was going to say ha-ha, but he changed his mind when he saw the expression on Miss Ball’s face. He decided to reassure her. “What I mean is, you’re empty. So why worry?”

  “Empty? That doesn’t sound too medical to me.”

  “I try to simplify things for my patients.”

  “I’m not stupid, doctor. You can talk plain to me.”

  “I’m talking plain, Miss Ball. Now what’s wrong?”

  “I want a warranty and I want it now.”

  “A what?”

  “A warranty. I haven’t had a wink of sleep for the past two days. All I could think of was my things, the things you say you removed, only God knows whether you did or not.”

  “Miss Ball, I’m a medical doctor. I have taken the Hippocratic Oath. Every doctor takes it—it’s part of being a doctor.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Miss Ball snapped.

  “About the guarantee . . .”

  “Warranty.”

  “As far as the warranty goes. Why, I can’t imagine why you’d want something like that.”

  “I have one for my radio, my juicer and everything else.” Miss Ball laughed helplessly, hollowly, for no reason at all. “I was foolish to have the operation without getting it warranteed.”

  “You want it warranteed, is that it? That’s why you came here today—so I could swear out a warranty?”

  “You could have been taking me for a ride.”

  “A ride?” The doctor aimed the top of his head at Miss Ball. “Do you know what you’re saying, Miss Ball? Now you’re talking about ethics. Yes you are. You’re talking about my ethics!”

  “How’s a body supposed to know what’s going on? You come into the room and stab me with a needle. I fall flat and then you fiddle around for three hours . . .”

  “Fiddle around? I take you for a ride to fiddle around, and for this you want a warranty?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I’m a very busy man.”

  “I lived on a farm, don’t worry.”

  “Why should I worry about you living on a farm?”

  “Sure,” was all Miss Ball said.

  “I want to assure you that I operated on you. I did my level best, as I do with each and every patient. I have not hounded you for the money.”

  “You can whistle and wait, for all I care.”

  “I have nothing but your health in mind.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve seen things grow back—grass, eyebrows, adenoids. I’ve seen things go wrong—my toaster, my dryer, my mixer . . .”

  “That’s a doctor’s business—health. We don’t try to frighten patients. We are very busy men.”

  “Busy my foot. You think you’re special, you doctors. That’s the trouble with you—you think you’re better than other people that have to work for a living. You wouldn’t know about that, would you? Hard work! Hah! Ever get your hands dirty, real dirty and filthy with hard work?”

  “Not that I remember, Miss Ball. I couldn’t call myself a doctor if I went around getting . . .”

  “And you call yourself a man! Ever wheel a whole barrow of cow manure up a plank? Bet you think it’s easy!”

  “I never said that wheeling cow manure was easy. It’s probably very hard work.”

  “Probably,” said Miss Ball in the same tone of voice.

  The doctor asked Miss Ball if she thought he was a quack. “You think I’m a quack, don’t you?” he asked.

  “Who cares what I think. No one cares.”

  “I care, Miss Ball. I care a great deal what you think,” the doctor said softly.

  “All right, I think you’re a quack,” said Miss Ball.

  The doctor bit his lip. He said he had been a doctor a long time. He had healed a lot of wounds, not all of them physical. He had seen a lot of people come and go.

  Things grow, Miss Ball thought. Things kept growing and there was little or nothing you could do to stop them. It was Mother Nature’s way of getting even with the human race. Everyone suffered. Nature liked ugliness and suffering. Nature wanted fat people and failed crops. Nature wouldn’t make you lovely and light. She would keep you fat and fertile. Fertile.

  Miss Ball leaned toward the doctor. She almost did not have to act scared. She was scared. But she acted scared just the same, and she shook her head from side to side and up and down, and she said very plainly, “Doctor, I want you to know I’m a very frightened person. I never get a wink of sleep any more.”

  The doctor reflected and was about to speak. But it was Miss Ball that spoke.

  “I think they’re growing back, and I want a warranty so they don’t.”

  When all the words reached the doctor he still did not seem to understand what Miss Ball was saying.

  “You think what are growing back?”

  “My things.”

  “You mean your fallopian tubes?”

  “Yes,” Miss Ball bit her lip, “those. And the other things you said you took out.”

  The doctor started to giggle.

  “You think it’s funny!”

  The doctor could not answer.

  “You think human suffering and worry is a big laugh!” Miss Ball began to cry, loudly at first, then worked it down to a whimper. Miss Ball sniffed and dabbed at her cheek with a lace hanky. “Cruel. You’re a cruel, cruel man.”

  The doctor apologized. He asked Miss Ball to explain what she meant by the warranty.

  After a little hesitation Miss Ball told the whole story. She talked about Mother Nature, about weeds that grew all night and were tall in the morning, about lungs and tonsils, about how she had seen Mother Nature kill her father, about her things—how they would be back as sure as shooting. The least the doctor could do was give her a warranty so they wouldn’t grow back. She finished with, “. . . I haven’t had a good night’s sleep for ages.”

  The doctor said nothing. He played with his lips for a few moments and stared at the far wall. When Miss Ball thought he was going to laugh once again she started to unfold her hanky. The doctor swiveled his chair back at her and said in a low voice, “I think I understand.”

  “What about it?”

  “I’ll do anything you say.”

  “I want you to warranty the operation.”

  “I’ll do it,” said the doctor. He took out a piece of paper and wrote on it.

  “Make it a five-year warranty, like my juicer. Five years is good enough. I’ll be satisfied.
”

  “No, I won’t hear of it, Miss Ball. I’ll give you a lifetime warranty for that operation of yours.”

  “A lifetime warranty! Good God,” said Miss Ball. Her mouth hung open. She could not find the words to express her thanks. Just when he seemed about the biggest quack she had ever seen he reached into his skinny heart and came up with a lifetime warranty. It was almost too much to ask. “Golly,” she finally said, “that’s the nicest thing anyone ever did for me.”

  The doctor handed Miss Ball the piece of paper. He said he had done nothing. Miss Ball protested, and felt like throwing herself at his feet.

  On the way out of the office Miss Ball’s heart was full of love and life. It pulsed. She felt it thumping there under her brooch and lace like a giant Snooz-Alarm. She was a new woman. Mother Nature could do her worst, could twist nice little tissues into ugly old organs. What did it matter? The wonderful warranty was right there in her handbag.

  “When God closes a door he opens a window,” Miss Ball murmured over and over again as she walked home to find out what success Mr. Gibbon and Mrs. Gneiss had had with their looking around the Mount Holly Trust Company. Personally, Miss Ball felt she could rob a thousand banks single-handed.

  13

  “It’s all set,” Mr. Gibbon said. He and Mrs. Gneiss had found out many valuable things. They knew exactly where the vault was (it was, as a matter of fact, in full view of all the bank customers, as most vaults are) and they had plotted what movements they would make. It would be an elaborate “quarterback sneak:” the women would be standing by, Mr. Gibbon would sneak in with his gun drawn, wearing a disguise. The women would be dressed in very ordinary clothes (“Oh, gee!” Miss Ball said, and slapped the table), and would arrive early at the bank. Everyone agreed that it was a nifty little plan.

  The suitcases were next on the agenda. The bodies—or the parts of the bodies—had started making a terrific reek. It was an ungodly odor, Mr. Gibbon said, and then he began telling the two ladies about how trenches smelled exactly like that—and you had to sleep, eat, load your gun and shine your brass right in the thick of it. You could cut it with a knife, in case anyone was interested.

  Miss Ball said that, for goodness sake, it must have been just like what Herbie was putting up with at that very moment! The thought of the decaying limbs and trunks of the two communists in the suitcases upstairs made them all feel quite close to Herbie.

  “It kind of makes you stop and think, doesn’t it?” said Mrs. Gneiss.

  They all stopped, sniffed at the smell that had now penetrated right down into the dining room, and agreed. It was as if Herbie was in the next room.

  But what to do with those suitcases? Miss Ball suggested burying them. Mr. Gibbon suggested that they should put them, for practical reasons, into lockers at the bus terminal. Why? Because after the robbery, as they were carried on the shoulders of a screaming mob of grateful patriots, they would ask to be taken to the bus terminal. In full view of the mob and nationwide television they would produce the key and throw the locker open, expose its un-American contents to the mayor; they would exchange the locker key for the key to the city of Mount Holly.

  Miss Ball called a taxi. The taxi driver was a bit under the weather.

  “Nice to see some people get a chance to go away,” he muttered.

  “Oh, we’re not going anywhere!” Miss Ball chirped.

  Mrs. Gneiss was given the task of depositing the suitcases into the lockers. Mr. Gibbon had carefully estimated how much it would cost. He gave Mrs. Gneiss two warm dimes when they arrived at the bus terminal, and called a porter to help. “Give the little woman a hand,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” He winked at Miss Ball.

  They should not be seen together in public, it was decided. There was no telling who might be spying on them. Mr. Gibbon said that it was a favorite trick of spies to let you go on with your activities and then nab you at the least likely moment, red-handed, with the goods.

  “Well, you just leave the goods to me,” Mrs. Gneiss said. Mr. Gibbon and Miss Ball went their separate ways after whispering that they would meet back at the “hideout,” as Miss Ball’s white-frame house, ringed by nasturtiums, came to be called.

  Mrs. Gneiss carried one suitcase, the porter carried the other, heavier one. The porter remarked that it felt as if it were filled with burglar tools.

  The moment Mrs. Gneiss lifted the suitcase she knew she had Juan. She felt her nice porous skin turn to gooseflesh as she hurried toward the steel lockers.

  “They’ll fit right fine in this one,” the porter said as he groaned and heaved his big suitcase before a row of big lockers.

  Mrs. Gneiss looked at the sign and sighed. deposit one quarter only, read a sign over a chromium tongue with a quarter-sized circle punched into it. The tongue seemed to be sticking right at Mrs. Gneiss. She examined the two dimes in her palm and said to the porter, “You got anything more reasonable?”

  The porter said that at the other end of the terminal there were some cheaper ones, a little cheesier than these.

  “Let’s have a look,” Mrs. Gneiss said.

  They hefted the suitcases once again. Halfway across the floor, near the benches for the waiting passengers, Mrs. Gneiss heard someone say, “What’s a lady like you lugging a big suitcase like that all by your lonesome?”

  The porter ignored the voice and went on ahead.

  Mrs. Gneiss turned. A sailor stood before her. He was wearing a seaman’s uniform: the white inverted sand-pail hat, wide trousers, and a tight shirt. He had tattoos on his hairy forearms. He should have been young. It was the sort of uniform young sailors wear. But he wasn’t young. He was about fifty, and his potbelly pressed against his sailor shirt. He looked jolly. He lifted Mrs. Gneiss’s meaty hand off the handle and hoisted the suitcase. He asked Mrs. Gneiss if she had burglar tools in it.

  He alone laughed at his joke. He asked Mrs. Gneiss where she was going. He said that he was going to Minneapolis. Mrs. Gneiss said that she was going to the lockers at the other end of the terminal. This sent the old salt into gales of laughter.

  “I hope you don’t mind doing this,” Mrs. Gneiss said, trying to get an impish smile on her fat face. “My Herbie’s in the army.”

  “Don’t say?” the sailor said, interested. “Is he stateside?”

  “I don’t think so. He’s in the front lines as far as I know.”

  The sailor whistled. “What’s he wanna do a thing like that fer? Get hissel’ hurt that way if he doesn’ watch it.”

  “Not my Herbie,” said Mrs. Gneiss. It hadn’t dawned on her that Herbie would get hurt. Now, as she said Not my Herbie, it occurred to her that Herbie might get his little brain blown off. She blotted out the thought and grinned at the sailor.

  The porter had walked all the way to the end of the terminal and now was walking back to where Mrs. Gneiss stood with the sailor. He looked peeved. “I been waiting for you for about an hour,” he said.

  “Don’t get yer dander up for nothing,” the sailor said.

  “Where’s my suitcase?” Mrs. Gneiss asked.

  “Back there. You think I’m gonna cart that around all day you’re nuts,” he said.

  Mrs. Gneiss told the sailor she was in a big rush. She had to get the suitcases into the locker and go right back home (she almost said “to the hideout”).

  When they reached the lockers at the other end the porter held his mouth open in astonishment. “’At’s funny,” he finally said. “I coulda sworn I left the thing right here . . .”

  Mrs. Gneiss wrinkled up her nose. She did not think it was a great loss. The body that was in the suitcase was not only dismembered—it was dead as well. She was, after all, trying to get rid of it. “Someone must have filched it,” she said simply.

  The sailor suddenly let loose a wild hoot. He seized the shrugging porter by the
shirt and began beating him with his free hand. “Now look what you’ve gone and done!” he puffed. He shoved the porter up against the lockers with a clang and screamed, “Look what you’re making me do!”

  Mrs. Gneiss stood quietly and watched. She knew that the sailor would soon get it out of his system. A policeman came by and asked what was going on.

  The sailor stopped beating the porter. He was out of breath and could not speak. He shook the porter in the policeman’s face.

  Mrs. Gneiss explained what had happened. She finished by saying, “I don’t see what all the fuss is about. There was nothing very valuable in it.”

  “Valuable or not,” the policeman said, “we don’t like this sort of thing happening in Mount Holly. Now you just sit tight and I’ll round up that suitcase of yours in a jiffy. The culprit couldn’t be far away.” He asked for a description of the suitcase and its contents.

  Mrs. Gneiss said that it was old, brownish-greenish, and had some personal effects locked in it.

  The policeman deputized the sailor and the porter. The three ran out the back door of the bus terminal in search of the suitcase.

  Mrs. Gneiss quietly placed the small suitcase (Juan) in a dime-locker and went into the bus terminal Koffee Shoppe and swilled down a huge hot-fudge sundae.

  Less than ten minutes later the policeman was back with a rat-faced little bum in one hand and the suitcase (Harold Potts, Jr) in the other. The policeman handcuffed the bum to a post and joined Mrs. Gneiss in another sundae. Afterward, he insisted on having his picture taken with Mrs. Gneiss: he presenting the lost suitcase to her, she thanking him. It took an hour for the press photographer to arrive, but finally Mrs. Gneiss got the second suitcase into the locker. The policeman did the heaving and pushing. He remarked as he was doing it that the suitcase felt as if it were filled with burglar tools.

  The sailor and the porter were nowhere to be seen. They were, presumably, still looking for the thief.

  “I think I’ll just toddle off,” Mrs. Gneiss said.