The Albatross

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “I just remembered,” gasped Esther snatching at the excuse for her breathless state, “that I forgot.”

  “Ah well, it doesn’t matter,” said Audrey soothingly. “It isn’t so very important. Anyone can forget, Joan. I’m sure Esther didn’t mean to slight you.” She was busy forgiving Esther, as usual. Joan sat like a lump.

  Esther felt the excitement draining down her body and another thing building up along nerve and fibres. She was home alone with the two of them once more. Once more.

  “Are you going out again, dear?” asked Audrey.

  “I hadn’t …”

  “Well, you’re just standing there,” Joan said, blinking.

  Esther pulled herself together. “I can’t go back to the library now,” she said flatly. “I’m sorry. We own some books,” she added, rather saucily. She saw Joan’s face turn ugly and Esther regretted having reacted to rudeness with rudeness. This was no time for a clash with them. “I’m sorry,” she added, lamely.

  Audrey leaned forward and began to speak in a strange rambling way, as if she talked to change the subject, to direct the attention, to keep the peace. “I’ve been thinking all day,” she said, “Esther, dear, I’m beginning to feel we ought to make an appointment with your doctor. You say he’s so good? And I’m sure if you say so …”

  Esther had started to cross the room. She hesitated, “Well, any time …” She tried not to sound impatient. Weren’t they moving to Arcadia? Joan’s mouth was slack, half open.

  “You know, insulin is tricky,” Audrey said. “Too little, and there’s diabetic coma. And yet, too much!” Audrey made a gesture of helplessness and wonder. “That’s very dangerous. Even more dangerous.”

  Joan closed her mouth and sat back with her eyes fixed upon her sister’s face.

  “Hypogly-something,” said Audrey. “Oh dear, I am bad at those frightening medical terms. Do you know what I mean, Esther? What we must watch for is nervousness.” Audrey flashed a nervous glance at Joan and her teeth caught her lower lip briefly. “Headache,” she continued, “dizziness, and, of course, what’s so very dangerous, convulsions and then coma.”

  “Insulin shock, you mean?” said Esther. Was Audrey trying to work up an excuse for Joan, for yesterday? What was Audrey trying to do? “It’s unlikely Joan could be getting too much insulin,” said Esther carelessly.

  “Is it?” Audrey frowned.

  “You don’t recover from diabetes,” said Esther, “do you? So, I mean, if she is getting the prescribed dose it won’t suddenly be too much.”

  “I see … I think I see.” Audrey looked puzzled.

  “You ought to find out, of course,” said Esther. She felt a wave of nervous alarm.

  “Joan’s insulin is the old-fashioned kind,” said Audrey confidentially as if Joan weren’t quite there. “Our doctor didn’t want to subject her to the changeover.”

  “Old-fashioned?” Esther had drifted toward her own end of the house.

  “Oh, they have a kind of insulin now that releases the drug just gradually. Joan’s, you see, is sudden. The reaction could be very sudden,” said Audrey with a certain soft panic. Then she changed. She looked tenderly at her sister. “That’s really why I haven’t cared to leave her.”

  Esther saw Joan lick her full lips.

  “Please,” said Audrey, “Esther, help me persuade her? Joan hates tests. And there would be testing. To change over. But Joan, dear, I’d feel so much safer.”

  Joan wasn’t even listening. She looked far away, in thought.

  Esther said, “My doctor’s number is under doctor in our little book. Why don’t you call him, Audrey? Or shall I?”

  “I’ll call,” said Audrey. “If Joan will agree.”

  Joan grunted.

  “Perhaps some day next week?” coaxed Audrey.

  Esther felt furious. Did Audrey assume they could be here next week? “Just don’t,” she spoke uncontrollably, “tie up the phone too long, I’m expecting a call.”

  “Oh?” Audrey had eyes wide, lips curved. Joan’s head went slowly higher, her nostrils pinched in. “An important call?” asked Audrey.

  “Yes, Audrey,” said Esther.

  “But then, of course,” Audrey looked around at her sister, “Joan and I can wait.”

  “Excuse me,” said Esther. She walked through the short hall and into her bedroom. She closed the door. For some reason she was trembling.

  She took the newspaper from under her arm. Without thought, she opened a lower dresser drawer and buried it under her sweaters, deep down, under the paper lining of the drawer.

  She kneed the drawer shut and stood straight and looked into the glass. Why did I do that? she asked herself, bewildered.

  Joan’s hands drove the wheels hard. “Going in our room for a minute.”

  Audrey smiled sweet permission.

  The wheels stopped in the foyer. The wheels changed course. They bumped off the carpet on to linoleum. In the kitchen, Joan took the phone gently off the hook. She laid it on the counter. Audrey was listening. Audrey could hear. Audrey did nothing.

  Joan backed out of the kitchen and whirled into their bedroom.

  It was after this that Saunders called. Then Tom called. Then Mueller called.

  They got the busy signal.

  At one fifty-six, Mueller tried again. He had news.

  But the line was busy.

  Esther chose to wait alone in her room. She had shut the door. Her house seemed quiet. What they were doing, somewhere in her house, she did not even try to imagine. A watched telephone doesn’t boil, she told herself whimsically, so she tried not to look at the instrument that sat on the table between the beds, dour, stubborn and dumb.

  She let herself rest in the long chair. Above the tension of waiting, her thoughts gloated. She had been right not to call Tom because she had really built up a lot of hope out of nothing much. It was quite possible, for instance, that this Dr. Thayer had never completed any examination of Caldwell. Suppose the doctor had dropped dead and Caldwell, alone with him at that time, had just run out on trouble and driven home, cracked skull and all? Yet, would there have, then, been a bill sent—for services not completely rendered? Esther didn’t know, wasn’t sure. It was certainly possible that no conclusive record existed.

  Or something could be wrong with the identification. Maybe she herself had so strongly suggested this doctor’s name and address to Mr. Saunders that she had extracted from him a wrong recollection. In which case Caldwell had seen still some other person die? How many people drop dead on one weekend? Hundreds, she supposed soberly. In fact, hundreds.

  Well, soon be sure …

  Esther got up and walked about her room a bit.

  Time was going by. There was no noise in her house.

  Yes, there was. A soft tap and a scratching at her door. “Esther?”

  “Audrey?”

  “Are you all right, dear?”

  “Of course.”

  “Won’t you come out and talk to us?”

  “I’d rather not, at the moment.”

  “Are you angry with Joan?”

  “No,” said Esther.

  “Or me?”

  “No, no.”

  “Are you resting?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, excuse me.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “Does your head ache? I have some very good pills.”

  “No, thank you, Audrey.”

  “Isn’t there anything I can do?”

  Esther heard Joan say, distinctly and impatiently, “Won’t she come out?”

  “No, Audrey,” said Esther loudly.

  A felt presence the other side of her door receded.

  She looked at herself in the glass. She was rather pale. Her own question came back to her. Why had she hidden that newspaper in the bottom of the drawer? Why was she scared?

  The whole chain, that her subconscious seemed to have reasoned put already, stretched in her mind clearly.

 
I hid it because I don’t want them to know I am on to the doctor in Coneyville. Why didn’t I want them to know? Because they are already perfectly aware of the fact that Courtney went to the doctor. They must be! Of course they are! Why? Because the bill came. They opened it. They didn’t innocently wonder: How come Courtney saw a doctor so far from home? They didn’t remark on the date, the time, the coincidence. They didn’t say, to me or Tom, “Hey, what does this mean?” They didn’t wonder at all! They kept it secret! Audrey even lied about it. Joan warned her not to pay by cheque.

  What would it matter if Audrey paid a dress bill by cheque.

  It wouldn’t! But this doctor’s bill … they don’t want anyone to be aware of it. Or to be able to check up on the whole incident. Or to be able to prove that Audrey ever heard about it!

  But she had heard about it. She knew! And Audrey knows, right now, whatever it is that the doctor told Courtney!

  She has known this all along, thought Esther. And whatever the doctor told Courtney, it’s something she and Joan don’t want me to find out.

  What can that be? Why, that Tom never hurt the man at all! That Tom is free! That Audrey hasn’t got anything on us!

  And Audrey knew this. From the beginning! And we have been taken and we are the miracle that came in and saved her from being Joan’s accessory, and saved Joan and made things work out so very nicely.

  Esther was too angry to think at all, for a few moments. Then her brain began to go around again.

  Esther knew how Courtney really had come to have his head broken.

  She could see Joan and the chair, Joan’s powerful hands. Joan, who could brake that chair but had not; Joan who had, instead, made it go faster; Joan, who had steered it toward Esther with that lick of her hand. Esther was able to see Joan in her chair, making some kind of violent run upon a man, a hung-over man, a man not up to reacting quickly, a man she disliked, a man she hated for Audrey’s sake … just as she now hated Esther. Just as Audrey had taught her to hate.

  The conclusion came down solidly. Esther believed it.

  Joan had killed Courtney. Her sister, Audrey, must know this. But they had said nothing; they had sat tight, and played ignorant, until the Gardners had walked in, begging for the blame.

  Audrey had taken them for a gift from heaven.

  Yes, of course. When there is coincidence, such as one man knocked down twice, this can be used for an advantage. Nobody is going to believe in the coincidence. Courtney Caldwell, knocked down by Tom and knocked down again the next day or so by his crippled sister-in-law—who could believe that? Preposterous. Esther believed it.

  Esther knew. She didn’t care whether it was logic or intuition or whatever. She knew.

  And she was furious and she rejoiced.

  Now she could call Tom. Right away. Now she already knew that any report from upstate would be proof on Tom’s side. And if no record at all existed, she could still make him believe.

  So she picked up the phone.

  There was no dial tone. It was dead. Was the phone cut off? How? Had somebody cut a wire? Or simply left the phone off the hook, somewhere in her house?

  But she had told them she was expecting an important call!

  Flaming with rage, Esther yanked open her bedroom door. She went blazing and striding through her house. No one in the living-room. The dinette was neat and empty.

  She heard a scuttling sound.

  When she got as far as the kitchen, Audrey was there, with the kitchen phone to her ear.

  “Did you leave that off the hook?” said Esther, without preliminary.

  “Dear?” Audrey turned. “I’m just calling Mr. Saunders.” Her voice was sweet. Her eyes flickered and the focus danced all around Esther’s eyes.

  “No, you are not,” said Esther furiously. “You are trying to pretend you haven’t had that thing off for some time.”

  “I’m call—”

  “You called Mr. Saunders once today,” stormed Esther.

  “Did I?” said Audrey slowly and she lowered her arm. “Was it Mr. Saunders you expected to hear from?”

  “I don’t have to tell you …!”

  “Oh, Esther, don’t scold me.” Audrey changed, suddenly. She seemed to break. “Don’t be angry. Help me,” she said, loudly, like a cry of despair. “Oh, Esther! I’m so confused. Please, help me.”

  Esther was rocked. She stood still, waiting for more.

  Somewhere in the house Joan listened—and waited, too.

  Joan said, in her throat, “She’s come out. She’s out of her room.

  When Tom’s phone rang at five past two, he thought it was going to be routine but it was Sergeant Mueller.

  “Promised to call your wife but I can’t get your house.”

  “My wife isn’t home.”

  “Said she would be. Line keeps busy.”

  “Yes, well, Mrs. Cald—”

  “Thought I’d better call your office,” Mueller’s voice rode over Tom’s, at last, “because I guess you’d want to know right away what I found out upstate.”

  “I don’t …”

  “I spoke to the doctor’s wife.”

  “What doctor is this?”

  “The doctor Caldwell went to see that Saturday.”

  “What Saturday?” Tom’s spine snapped straight. “Where?”

  “Upstate. Right after you knocked him down. Listen—”

  “I’m listening! Go on!”

  “Okay. As I say, I talked to this Mrs. Thayer. Got the whole story. Seems the doctor’s office wasn’t open on Saturdays but the doctor happened to be in there working on some tax data and Caldwell shows up about five-thirty.”

  “That Saturday?”

  “That’s right. Well, he looked pretty shot. Been drinking. Said he had a terrible head and he’d just had a fall and he wondered … The doctor’s a little disgusted but he decided to call it an emergency and give Caldwell the full business. Hippocratic oath and all that—plus a stiff fee, I’ll bet. So the doctor calls his wife. She’s his technician.”

  “Technician!”

  “Yen, she took the X-rays.”

  “X-rays!” A tremor shook Tom’s bones. He stood up from his desk.

  “Of his head,” said Mueller.

  “Of his head! Listen, I didn’t know any of this. Go on, man.”

  “Well, now, I got a doctor up there on his way over to read those pictures.”

  “You mean they exist!”

  “Sure they do. Also this Mrs. Thayer, she says she remembers the pictures looked okay to her. Of course, she’s not supposed to be qualified. So we got to check, but—”

  “I hope!” Tom said fiercely. “I should hope …! How did this come out? Why didn’t all this come out before?”

  “Just keep listening,” said Mueller, kindly. “Dr. Thayer didn’t read any newspapers or hear about Caldwell’s death because he died that afternoon. Cerebral haemorrhage. Sudden. Around six P.M.”

  Tom was too stunned to comment.

  “The wife found the body. Nobody around. So she thought it must have happened after this stray patient had left. She couldn’t imagine he’d run out on the situation. But Caldwell did run out.”

  “He did?”

  “Must have. Caldwell saw the doctor die all right. He mentioned the incident to Saunders.”

  “The time is fixed, then?” gasped Tom. “It was definitely after I hit him? Listen, when will you get an official report on those X-rays?”

  “Any minute.”

  Tom fell back into his chair. “What this is going to mean to me!”

  “Yeah, I thought so. Now then, there’s this business about the bill. Seems Caldwell gave the doctor his hospital-surgical insurance card. But the insurance, although it did cover the X-rays, did not cover the office call. So the doctor’s wife—she’s been getting around to cleaning up his affairs in the last week or two—she mails out a bill to the address she’s got, which was Caldwell and Saunders’ office in Arcadia. Saunders forwarded it to
your house.”

  “Yes, yes, Esther said so. How did she know?”

  “Your wife must have known what she was talking about or she wouldn’t have been able to set me on this thing. But Mrs. Caldwell claims she never got that bill.”

  “Maybe she didn’t,” Tom said. “I think Esther got all this from Saunders. Or so I gather.”

  “Somebody paid the bill,” said Mueller.

  “What!”

  “Yeh. In cash. Mailed from North Hollywood last Tuesday.”

  “I don’t follow you. Who paid the bill?”

  “That is what I want to know. Can’t get your house on the phone. So I’m taking a run over.”

  “Well … sure …”

  “Gimme directions—quickest way I’ll get there.”

  Tom gave him the directions. Mueller gave thanks.

  “Take me fifty minutes,” he added. “How far are you from your home?”

  “Twenty minutes.”

  “See you.”

  Tom put down the phone. He sat there in a trance for a minute or two. He picked it up again and dialled his own number.

  “That phone is out of order,” came the operator’s sing-song.

  What was the matter with his phone? Esther was there, Mueller had said.

  Tom blew by the receptionist … “Something’s come up. Going home.”

  He was out of his parking lot and halfway down the block before he clenched his jaw down tight over the knowledge that somebody was a liar. At least a liar. And into his mind came the statement he’d heard from Esther’s mouth and so easily dismissed. Joan was insane.

  In the Gardner’s kitchen the phone dangled. It was making clicking noises. Some operator was trying to call attention to the trouble there. Audrey had covered her face with her hands, but her eyes were open, as Esther could see through the fingers.

  “I know,” Audrey cried in tragic tones, “that I can’t go into that apartment. I can’t keep Joan with me. No more. Oh, you are right, Esther. Joan must go to an institution. I can’t take care of her. You are right.”

  This made Esther blink, but she moved close. If Audrey was broken up and in a mood to confide, Esther would make the most of it. “You know Tom didn’t kill your husband?” she demanded. “You know Joan did. She did, didn’t she?”