The Watcher

by Dolores Hitchens

  Archer followed him. They drove a short way. At the coffee shop they huddled at a rear table.

  Matthews said, “I’ve got to talk to Mr. Carrol. And somebody at San Quentin had better question old Doc Tatum.”

  “His office nurse is still around,” Archer said. “Miss Povell. She’s working for another doctor. On the Island. Suppose I check the autopsy on Barbara Martin, then talk to her, then talk to the Martin family.”

  Matthews looked almost sick. “It’s going to crucify them. After all this time.” He rubbed a hand over the lower part of his face. “Yes, that’s what we’ll do, what we have to do. You know”—he looked over at the window, where sunlight poured through, squinted at the light—“it could still be . . . a fake. A gimmick. Maybe that whistle Mrs. Carrol thinks she heard, maybe it was just a——” He didn’t finish, didn’t say what the whistle might have been.

  “Let’s have the coffee and get going.”

  After that silence lay heavy between them.

  Lottie Tomlinson left the loom and went into the bedroom. She lay down on the bed and shut her eyes. It was no good trying to work. There was nothing in her to give, no interest, no inspiration, no feeling for color or texture. She was squeezed dry.

  She thought about the detective who had been to see her. Some words dropped into her mind, heavy as stones. And then they let you alone? The memory of her own voice: Well, mostly. And who didn’t?

  An echo of the incredulous shock she’d felt returned to mind.

  In those days, when Edie had first been gone, surely she would have gone mad except for the kindness of the few she had permitted to sympathize. She hadn’t wanted people like . . . like Curt’s mother. Mrs. Appleby had wanted to talk about God’s judgment and hell-fire and the evil that walks on every hand by day and by night, and finally Lottie had vomited on the rug and then Mrs. Appleby had gone.

  Curt himself had been a help. A week after Edie’s death he had come to visit briefly, bringing a collection of little stuff, shells and dried pods of seaweed and some gull’s feathers. He had told Lottie that he and Edie had run into each other on the beach, the ocean side of the peninsula, and had gathered the stuff, and that he had put it away and forgotten it until now. Now he wondered if she might want it.

  She had made some cocoa and they’d eaten a cookie together and then without saying much more he had gone.

  That made a warm, bright memory . . . because she knew what those moments on the beach must have meant to Edie, being with this strange, quiet boy on whom she had such a crush.

  The detectives words: She had dates?

  Edie’s date had been with death.

  I gave you the little boat, I wanted you out on the water in the sunlight with the other children. I wouldn’t buy the crazy sandals, they were too adult. I didn’t allow you to wear lipstick. Your mouth was so young, so sweet; it didn’t need paint. And if Curt had asked you to go to the Christmas dance, I was all ready to say no.

  Edie’s image seemed to swim before her, the coppery eyes, fixed on distance, the face full of a listening stillness.

  Was I really thinking of your good, Edie, or was I being selfish? Was I so wrapped up in work, in what I considered my talent, my gift, that I couldn’t, take time to see you as you were? I couldn’t take time to find out that you were growing up?

  Lottie rolled over, burying her face in the pillow, trying to smother the sobs.

  The detective would be coming back to talk again. Someone has written an anonymous letter——

  I can’t stand any more, Lottie thought. I can’t endure questions, and remembering, and talking about Edie’s dying. Picking over the details. She fell into the bay; it was an accident. If I have to talk and remember, I’ll be better off dead.

  She lifted her face from the wet pillow. She spoke to the blank wall above the bed, as if beyond it lay some merciful surcease. “I’d be better off dead,” she said distinctly into the silence. “I would really be better off dead.”

  There was no reply. How could there be?

  In some other part of the building a board creaked, there was a sound almost like a footfall, but of course the building had been here for years and was built on the sandy bar, and there were always little settling noises like this.

  Lottie put her face down and felt the tears spill from her eyes.

  Curt put on swim trunks, took cigarettes and a towel off the rack, and went out. He walked casually past the building where Edie Tomlinson had lived. The courtyard under his examining gaze now seemed innocent and open and sunny. He paused to light a cigarette as a cover for further examination. Lottie’s big loom sat in the window unattended, bright yarn and tags of warp hanging from its frame. He took a good long stare at the other doors. Two of them. The upper floor was one huge double, occupied by the owner during the fall and winter and empty now—it was being prepared for summer rental. Curt studied the uncurtained windows, the glare of fresh paint off the walls inside, and understood in a moment. He turned his attention to the lower apartment. The blinds were drawn, a newspaper still lay on the step.

  His gray eyes took on an introspective shrewdness.

  On the narrow bayside beach he spread the towel and lay down in the sun. There weren’t many others around. It was early enough in the summer so that the breeze was cool, the sunlight deceptively mild. He could smell hot dogs and popcorn from the stands on the other side of the promenade, mingled with the watery odor of the bay. He put his face down into his folded arms and shut his eyes. He wanted to lie quiet and to think.

  His mother was out on a housecleaning call and though the apartment was peaceful and empty he had no wish to stay in it. He was restless, with an undercurrent of excitement in his thoughts.

  Surely by now the police must have the letter and an investigation have been started. Curt had a fair idea of police procedure from sessions with Arnold at Arnold’s TV set, and from reading crime comics. He knew that the police could not dismiss the letter at once as the work of a crank, even though they knew the deaths mentioned in it had not been murders.

  Curt had tried hard but could not recall the other names. But he was convinced that the two, like Edie, must have been victims of accidents. The letter was a gag, a trick. It was meant to torment the cops. The nut who had written the letter was lying low behind those closed blinds, waiting to see what would happen when the cops came to interview Edie’s sister.

  Curt rolled over, looked at the brilliant sky. What a bastard the creep was, when you thought about it, bringing the cops around again to hash over the kid’s death with Lottie Tomlinson. He remembered vividly the crushed, sick look Lottie had worn the day he’d taken her the bits of stuff he and Edie had scrounged on the beach.

  To even things up, somebody ought to write the cops an anonymous letter about him.

  Curt was grinning to himself over the idea when a head interposed itself against the light, and shading his eyes he saw that it was Arnold. Arnold flopped down beside him, sitting with his knees drawn up, his skinny arms wrapped around them.

  “Saturday,” he mused. “Two more weeks of lousy school, then every day will be like this. Cool, man.”

  “A blast,” Curt agreed.

  A couple of teen-aged girls came down the walk, dressed in swim suits. One was tall with red hair, not as yet filled out much; the other was short, stocky, with a protruding stomach.

  Arnold said, “Look at that.”

  “Skags,” Curt dismissed them.

  Arnold leaned over. “Do you think anybody saw us with that letter?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “I felt kind of . . . funny, afterwards.”

  “I told you not to take it out of the box.”

  Arnold shrugged, his face closing at the reminder. “Oh, hell, what’s the difference? I don’t even remember what was in it. Do you?”

  “You remember, all right,” Curt said.

  The girls ran into the water a short distance away, began to hop around and holler, gl
ancing now and then at the two boys. Arnold watched interestedly but Curt wouldn’t look; he thought the pair completely without attraction.

  “I’ve been thinking.” He waited until Arnold looked around. “I’ve figured something out. Hey, do you remember any of the names in that letter?”

  “Charlie Carrol,” Arnold said promptly. “I remembered because my folks know them, my dad had some business deal with Mr. Carrol. It was just about the time the kid got run over.”

  “You’re sure that was one of the names?”

  “It’s the only one I’m sure of, and that’s why,” Arnold insisted. “I remembered how the kid got killed, his dad ran over him with the car.”

  “It fits in, then,” Curt said. “I remembered another name. Edie Tomlinson. She died in an accident too. So you see the letter is just a gag.”

  “I don’t dig it.”

  “Some creep, having fun with the cops.” Curt hesitated, on the verge of telling Arnold that he knew where the writer of the letter lived.

  “Anybody do a thing like that, he’s nuts,” Arnold said emphatically.

  “It figures.”

  “I hope to hell he wasn’t around to see us monkey with that mailbox.”

  “Maybe he’s watching us right now,” Curt said, enjoying Arnold’s nervousness. “Maybe he’s waiting to see if we’re going to the cops.”

  “What could we tell them?” Arnold was still watching the girls, who were throwing water at each other and squealing. “They got the letter, they know everything we do. They’ll even trace back, what box it came from. They’ll ask everybody in the neighborhood if they saw anybody drop a letter, if they remember who it was.”

  “Suppose we went to the cops and said we saw who dropped it?”

  Arnold looked down at him in scared astonishment. “Why in the hell would we say that?”

  “He’s playing games. Why shouldn’t we?”

  Arnold got to his feet. He looked tall and skinny against the sky. “I had one hassle with the cops. You know. My old man said he’d beat hell out of me if there was a second one. I don’t mean to give him any reason. Whatever you think you want to do, leave me out of it. I never saw any letter, I never robbed any mailbox.”

  He went off down the beach to where the girls were jumping around in the water, and after a moment of waiting on the edge, making sure of the invitation in their manner, he jumped in to join them.

  Curt turned again on his face. What a rank Arnold was!

  The more he thought about the letter, and the motive that must lie behind it, the surer he was that it demanded some action, some answer on his part.

  He’d have to be careful, that was all.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE ENTRANCE to the doctor’s office was through a small court overgrown with bougainvillea and roses. Archer opened the door. Inside was antiseptic gray paint, rubber-tiled floor, and the nurse at the desk.

  Miss May Povell was a slim woman in her fifties. She had an alert, intelligent face. The gold graduate’s pin gleamed on her starched bosom, and the peaked white cap was set precisely centerline on her gray hair. She looked up as Archer entered, recognized him, smiled with the touch of ruefulness he remembered. She had been cleared of any complicity when Dr. Tatum had been convicted as an abortionist, but Archer’s arrival must have brought back unhappy memories. “Hello, Mr. Archer.”

  “Hello, Miss Povell. Are you free for a minute?”

  “Oh yes, certainly. Won’t you take a chair?”

  “Is the doctor in?” Archer asked it, wondering if their talk might be overheard.

  “He’s out on a call. He won’t be back until two.” She turned slightly from the desk, folding her hands, letting him see that she had put work aside and was giving him her attention.

  Archer sat down, dropped his hat on the floor beside the chair. “It’s about Barbara Martin.”

  The gray brows arched. “After so long a time? I should think it had been concluded long ago.” She shook her head. “Poor unhappy child. What more is there to say?”

  “We don’t know. We need an opinion. You were among the last to see her before her death. She came to you, in Dr. Tatum’s office.”

  Miss Povell moistened her lips. “She was dying.”

  “You knew what was wrong with her? Right away?”

  “A nurse does not diagnose, Mr. Archer. It was later that . . . well, let’s say that as soon as I saw her I knew that her condition was dangerous.”

  Archer nodded soberly. He had put his elbows on the chair arms, put his fingers up steeple-fashion, and regarded Miss Povell across them. “If I recall correctly, you spent a while alone with her before the ambulance arrived.”

  “A short time. I put her down on a couch with a blanket over her. It was obvious that she was in great pain and had an extremely high fever. She seemed incoherent.”

  “Did you try to talk to her?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “The only questions asked you at the inquest seemed to concern whether you had any knowledge of the abortion Dr. Tatum had performed on her three days before her visit to the office.”

  She bent her head in agreement. The starched white cap reflected the light from the courtyard window.

  “So . . . up until now . . . you haven’t discussed what you and Barbara Martin talked about during those moments you spent alone with her?”

  She met his eyes levelly. “Do you think I would have concealed some important fact, Mr. Archer? I had great respect and affection for Dr. Tatum. If I had found out anything from the girl, anything along the line you seem to be hinting about——”

  He broke in abruptly. “Could anyone else have had a hand in her death?”

  She sat absolutely still. An expression of distaste pinched in the corners of her mouth. “As I was about to conclude . . . if she had said anything at all to absolve Dr. Tatum——”

  “I’m not talking about the abortion. She’d had it. Dr. Tatum did it. She died of an untreated infection following surgery.” He waved away the objections she was beginning to gather. “I know why Doc did it, too. She was one of his babies, he’d brought her into the world, he’d treated her all her life from measles on up——”

  “Then I’m afraid I just don’t know what you’re talking about,” she put in, in a firm tone.

  “I’ve been looking over the autopsy report, the reports filed during the police investigation, and so on. I noted something I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to, before. The doctor performed the surgery at his office——”

  “During my absence, Mr. Archer.”

  “Yes, during your absence. At night, in fact. From the time he aborted her until she staggered in on you, nobody seems to have seen her. The family didn’t know where she was. They’d filed a missing-person report with the police, in fact.”

  Miss Povell adjusted some stacked forms on the desk, frowning. “Yes, I remember that.”

  “Everybody’s guess was, Barbara Martin spent those three days with some girl friend, a friend who was afraid to come forward and speak up after her death. But now——”

  She glanced up, still frowning. “What has happened now?”

  Archer leaned forward in his chair, the steeple-peak of fingers under his lean chin. “When you talked to her, did she mention anything to give a clue to where she’d spent that time?”

  “Oh, no, Mr. Archer. I’d have said so at the inquest.”

  “Did she . . . uh . . . speak of any medicines that might have been given her? By someone else, I mean—not the doctor.”

  “No. Nothing like that.” Miss Povell seemed to hesitate. “There was just one thing . . . I mean, it was pitiful.”

  “What?”

  “The aspirin.”

  The sudden wolfish attention in Archer’s manner must have surprised her. With the first sign of nervousness, Miss Povell reached for the perfectly centered cap, tugged at it, pulled the curls from around its starched rim. “The aspirin were in her purse in a prescription bottle, a
nd when I first saw them I thought perhaps it was something she’d been taking to reduce the infection. But then I rolled some out into my hand, and I saw what they were. One of the patented aspirin mixtures.”

  Archer seemed to be feeling his way. “How did you know?”

  “Oh, we had them on hand. I have some here, in fact. They’re perfectly safe. Innocuous.” She opened a drawer of the desk and Archer caught the array of samples, part of what must be the deluge sent to every doctor. She took out a small glass vial, unscrewed the cap, poured five or six tablets into her palm. “You see? The faint pink color, the pharmaceutical emblem on each tablet, the characteristic oval shape——”

  “Yes, I see.” Archer fell back in the chair, filled with a rage of disappointment. He had thought of poison, something clever and obscure, not noticed because of the girl’s highly infected condition. But he sensed that the alert, intelligent nurse wouldn’t have been deceived. “Wait a minute. You said these aspirin were in a prescription bottle?”

  “That’s right.”

  “A prescription issued to Barbara Martin?”

  Her gaze clouded. “I’m . . . afraid I didn’t notice.”

  “Where is that bottle now?”

  “I returned it and the tablets to her handbag. I had opened the bag in the first place to find—quickly—her home telephone number. After Barbara died at the hospital the purse must have gone, along with her clothes, to her family.”

  Next call, Archer thought, a bitter taste coming into his mouth.

  “Did you question her about these tablets?”

  “No. Once I saw what they were, there was no need.”

  “She had no other medicines with her?”

  Miss Povell shook her head. “None at all.”

  “And when you did talk to her, she was unable to answer?”

  “The only coherent thing I remember . . . she said, ‘It didn’t work.’ ”

  “It didn’t work.” Archer’s echo was almost a whisper.

  “Obviously, she meant the operation which Dr. Tatum had performed.”