by Matthew Head
“That’s exactly the way he wanted it to strike us,” Miss Finney said a little acidly. “Anything strike you when he said he hoped Liliane hadn’t cost herself her own life when she insisted on having him?”
“I thought he seemed moved—really, deeply, sincerely moved.”
“He was. No doubt about that. And I’m afraid now that he had every reason to be. Don’t you remember all the excuses I made when I told him how I had written the letter?”
“Sure, you were pretty insistent about all the reservations you put in—that your statement depended entirely on the accuracy and completeness of the records.”
“Well for goodness’ sake then!” Miss Finney cried. “Can’t you put one and one and one together?”
“Three,” I said, but I said it very meekly and in apology, not for the weakness of the gag, but because that was all I could make of it. Miss Finney was kind enough to ignore it.
“Excuse me for being cross, Hoop,” she said. “I’ve asked you for a lot of your time and now I’m beginning to be afraid I’ve just wasted it. Here’s what I’m worried about. Look back and see how all this business started. Someone comes to me and says this strictly old she-bitch is whispering Gollmer to death and he wants my help. Gollmer shows me a bunch of records, graphs of temperature readings and so on, taken by the old she-thing herself, by Morelli, and by Gollmer. There were enough of his own readings there to eliminate the possibility of the others being falsified, since his were consistent with the rest.
“Well, I’ve always had a soft spot for old Gollmer in spite of everything. He’s always looked down his nose at a lot of the fla-fla I’ve always looked down my own nose at, and that’s a bond. He’s an old goat but he’s an engaging old goat, and he’s always been an acceptable routine practitioner as routine practitioners go out here. So I begin to think maybe I can give him a break on this letter thing. But I never go into anything cold, so I come to you and ask about Madame Morelli in general. I admit I came with a bias in the direction of suspicion, because Gollmer had told me about the rumors Madame de St. Nicaise spread about Liliane. And the more you talked, the more I began to be convinced there was something wrong. It developed far beyond the idea of just establishing enough facts so I could give Gollmer the letter, and before I knew it I’d got all steamed up and here I was carrying on what amounted to a murder investigation and nobody had asked me to or anything. But that would still be fine, if I still felt I could trust Gollmer.”
“You don’t?”
“No. I do not. I’m sorry to say it, and I’m sorry to discover it, but I don’t. Those three things you were just now able to add up, Hoop—look at them hard. That letter was professional life or death for Gollmer. He’s not going to give it back as a gracious gesture. He gave it back to me for two reasons. One, that he had misrepresented something or other in those records, and two, that if he managed to fool me—quite aside from his conscience hurting him—somebody else knew the records were wrong in some way or other, and could have exposed him. The only person interested in exposing him would be Madame de St. Nicaise, or conceivably Morelli.
“So the only way I can add it up—well, wait a minute. Gollmer admitted he was ‘maybe too casual’ even on this case; he ‘hoped Liliane didn’t cause her own death when she insisted on having him’; he’s deeply moved, personally moved, by her death, it’s on his conscience; and at the last moment he was unwilling to take a chance on having to stick up for the accuracy and completeness of those records. It just means that somewhere they’re all wrong. Somewhere they’re badly wrong, and he knows it.”
“But if you think there was foul play,” I said, “couldn’t that mean there was even fouler play?” I said it as respectfully and as carefully as I could, but she seemed to have gotten over her pique, and now she was really talking it over with me, not just explaining things impatiently.
“That’s the hell of it,” she said. “But on the other hand it leaves me without a point of departure. If the records are all wrong, it could just as easily mean that Liliane was a lot sicker than they showed. In other words, Madame de St. Nicaise’s contention that Liliane died because of inadequate medical attention could be perfectly true, just as much justified by the records—more justified maybe—as our suspicion that Liliane died, somehow, because Madame de St. Nicaise wanted her to. It leaves me in an awful hole. The trouble is, I let myself in for this thing under a misconception, and now I’m in it deep and discover I didn’t have any legitimate reason for beginning it at all. If those damn records don’t mean anything, I haven’t got a leg to stand on if anybody should ask me why I’m all of a sudden carrying on a murder investigation.”
“Nobody knows you are.”
“I sure hope nobody ever will.”
“Anyway, you do have a leg to stand on. The way Madame de St. Nicaise hated Liliane, and the way she kept the quinine records and nursed her and everything else—”
“Listen, Hoop,” said Miss Finney patiently, “every day somebody dies that somebody else is glad to see dead. But you can’t accuse them of murder just for that. The happiest moment in Madame de St. Nicaise’s life to date may have been the moment Liliane died, but if Gollmer’s records don’t mean anything, I’m out on one hell of a shaky limb.”
I said with lame enough humor, “Maybe the old girl will up and confess.”
Miss Finney looked at me and said firmly, “Now you listen to me, Hoop. No matter how sure we are that Madame de St. Nicaise wanted Liliane dead, and no matter how obvious it is that she had every opportunity to kill her, we haven’t one single jot, tittle, or iota of proof of any kind. We never did have, if that’s what you’re going to tell me, but we at least had a bunch of records that said there was no reason Liliane should have died, that she wasn’t sick enough to have died, that the treatment was the right treatment, and so on. Hence that she did die was some kind of indication—not a proof but an indication—of the strong possibility of foul play. But since I can’t trust those records, I haven’t got one single goddam thing I can point to, except what I know of human beings, to show why I think Liliane was murdered. And even if what I know about human beings is some kind of basis for me to work on, it’s no kind of basis to make a charge on, and without one single lick of tangible evidence I’d probably be open to criminal investigation myself if this thing went beyond you and Emmy and me.”
I said, “All right, you seem to be in an indefensible position. Just as a happy daydream, tell me what the ideal solution to your problem would be.”
“That’s easy,” Miss Finney said. “Ideally, I’d like to produce the murderer’s voluntary confession without anybody knowing I’d ever even suspected murder, much less done anything about exposing it.”
“Fine,” I said. “Got any idea how to go about it?”
“Well,” she said, a little grudgingly, “I guess you might as well know I do have some idea how to go about it.” She paused a moment as if wondering whether to tell me, and then decided she would, and said, “In fact, we’ve already done quite a bit of work on it, quite a bit of work.” I opened my mouth, but she said quickly, “I’m a vain woman, Hoopie, and at the moment I’m a slightly discouraged woman. If it works, I’ll tell you about it. If it doesn’t, I’d rather not. I’m at the point where I’m going to find I’m all wrong or all right, very soon now, and if you haven’t seen what’s been going on, then you can stay in the dark a little longer without its hurting you. But if I’m all wrong, I hope I learn it right away, because if I am, I’ve got to back out, and back out good and quick without stumbling.”
“You’re not going to be able to give up this case,” I said. “If you do, you’re Halfway Finney in my book from now on, and I never expect to see that day.”
Miss Finney snorted at me in a way which I had learned to recognize as a demonstration of embarrassed affection, and said, “I didn’t say I was giving it up. I said I was considering giving it up. I’m going to sleep on it. I’ll sleep on it and see what happens. Wha
t I need is a break.”
“What Madame de St. Nicaise needs is decapitation. Look at it that way. I’ve got one more thing to say.”
“If it’s anything but good night, I’m not listening,” Miss Finney said. “For today I’ve had plenty and so have you.”
“I just wanted to ask—”
“Good night, Hoop,” she said, and rose and walked away. It was the first time she had ever really wanted to get rid of me and had resorted to anything worse than a little friendly kidding to do it, and I was so taken aback that I just sat there and watched her walk across the terrace. But at the door to the hotel she turned briefly and waved, and although I couldn’t see the expression on her face in the shadow, I knew she was smiling, so it was all right.
It wasn’t much past nine, but now that there wasn’t anything to keep me up, I could hardly keep my eyes open long enough to get to my room. While I was undressing I wondered what kind of subterfuge I could use to maneuver an accidental meeting with Morelli and maybe get something from him that would cheer Miss Finney up, but I didn’t get very far. The disturbing thought occurred to me for the first time that even Miss Finney had eventually to succumb to the hesitancies and debilities of old age, and I wondered if I had just seen the first crack in an edifice I had always thought of as impregnable. It worried me, but even so I must have gone to sleep the minute I lay down, because I certainly didn’t hear the taxi drive up and then drive away, although even if I had, how would I have known that it was Miss Finney, still uncracked and impregnable, going out to do a little night work?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I WOKE UP THE NEXT morning and knew right away that something was wrong. It took a couple of seconds to adjust to the strange bed and the strange room, but then I began to realize that what was really wrong was that the sun was high and nobody had waked me up. I looked at my watch and it was after nine. I had the awful feeling of lost time and of falling behind that you get when you oversleep, and by the time I had had a bath and a shave and got dressed, I began to have the feeling that I was never going to catch up.
But I could have saved myself the worry, because when I came charging down onto the terrace, Miss Finney and Emily Collins were sitting there as if they hadn’t a care or a thought in the world. Miss Finney sat with her knees crossed, swinging one foot and watching it with a pleased air as if she found something particularly agreeable about the toe of her shoe, and Miss Collins was engaged in a pleasant reverie, chin in hand, looking out over the landscape that dropped off beyond the edge of the terrace.
We all said good morning, and Miss Finney added, “Better catch a little breakfast—we’ve had ours. Coffee’s good this morning.”
From the way she looked, everything in the world was good that morning, in a quiet way. I asked, “Any hurry?”
“Take your time,” Miss Finney said. “Take all day.”
“What—”
“Go eat your breakfast, boy. And I think I’d like another cup of coffee. Emily?”
“Me too,” said Emily.
Miss Finney said, “Let’s all have our second cups together. Have the waiter bring ’em over here, hmm?”
So I went and ate alone, then had the waiter bring a big pot of coffee and three cups over to where Miss Finney and Emily were sitting, and the three of us sat there like people who’ve gone somewhere for a vacation and haven’t a thing to do with themselves except sit around and get fat.
I stood it as long as I could, then said, “What’s new?”
“Nothing much.”
“Oh.” Long pause. “Well, what do we do this morning?”
“Sightsee, I guess. Might be pleasant. Think so?”
“Thysville can be exhaustively sightseen in thirty minutes.”
“All right then, we’ll sightsee for thirty minutes.”
“What then?”
“Go home.”
“Go home! Back to Léopoldville? But we haven’t done anything here.”
“Nothing to do for the moment. Things going all right, though.”
“That’s very odd,” I said. “You must have slept on them awfully hard!”
“I went out last night for a little while,” Miss Finney said. “Paid a late call. On Dr. Chaubel, at the rest home.” She just plain stopped.
“That’s treachery!” I said.
“Oh, no,” said Miss Finney. “I hadn’t planned to go out. I sent you and Emily to bed in good faith. But then when I got my shoes off I knew I was just going to lie awake all night if I didn’t do something, so I put my shoes on again and left Emily there sleeping like a lamb and went to see Dr. Chaubel. Morelli was there.”
When my exclamations had died away she said, “In a word, he came up here to Thysville to arrange with Dr. Chaubel to take Madame de St. Nicaise into the rest home for observation—to put it politely. Chaubel gave me this big build-up to Morelli and when I let it escape accidentally-on-purpose that I knew Madame de St. Nicaise a little bit, they told me about this. That’s all. Looks like I’m called in on the case. I’ve got my official standing.”
“They asked you about Madame de St. Nicaise? What you thought?”
“Sure. And I told them. Told them I’d only talked to her once but noticed symptoms of emotional hypertension, instability, and some evidence of delusions of grandeur and persecution—all true. I didn’t say anything about the sex angle. Morelli didn’t mention it in so many words either, but you could see he was plenty aware of it. Puh-lenty. I wouldn’t be surprised if the old girl had already propositioned him on the score of holy matrimony and that’s what sent him here. If she hasn’t actually propositioned him she sure has made it plain where her expectations lie. And that’s enough to scare any man to death.”
“Not grounds to commit a woman as a mental case, though. I could name a dozen—”
“No doubt. I didn’t mean to imply he was putting it on those grounds.”
“What about Morelli? What’d you think of him?”
“I didn’t mind him at all. Sort of liked him. Felt sorry for him. Big puffy flabby pasty fellow—what did you call him? Rubens Hercules gone soft? He’s a lot like that—must have been awfully good-looking in a red-faced way, once. Through with your coffee? Let’s sightsee and get it over with.”
We went to the car, where it had been standing at the curb all night, and started out at random. Sightseeing in Thysville simply means driving over all the available roads and looking at different perspectives of houses, hills, and clumps of bamboo—all very pleasant but not much to buy postcards of.
I said, “Now that you’ve seen him, you understand why I was so surprised when I heard Morelli had a girl here. Gollmer was too.”
“He and Gollmer are about the same age, if that’s your reference,” Miss Finney said.
Emily muttered, “That nasty old Gollmer. And he has two.” She muttered something else that sounded like “All that whisky” but I let it pass. Miss Finney didn’t say anything to Emily or to me. We rode along in silence, and neither Miss Finney nor Emily gave any sign of expecting to break it.
I pointed out one of the frothy green geysers.
“Bamboo,” I said.
“Thanks,” said Miss Finney. In her part of the Kivu there are bamboo forests. With gorillas.
“Somebody had to say something,” I said. “Know any word games? Want to sing songs? Recite?”
“I thought we were sightseeing,” Miss Finney said. “Do we have to go yap yap yap all the time?”
“I do,” I said, “or I never learn anything. Getting you to talk today is like building a fire under a mule.”
“Go ahead, ask me something.”
“That’s easy. What about Morelli’s girl? Any leads last night?”
“I mentioned her, that’s all,” Miss Finney said. “I sort of warned Morelli. I said if I didn’t mention it, my conscience would hurt, and it would have, too. I said there was a rumor going around Léopoldville that he was keeping a girl in Thysville and planning to marry her. I
said I wouldn’t mention it to him if I thought it was important one way or another whether he had a girl or not, but I did think it was important for him to know people were talking about it, in case he didn’t already know, because of the way Madame de St. Nicaise was likely to take it. I told him she hadn’t heard yesterday morning but if she did hear it was going to constitute a significant factor in her attitude. Something like that. And if that doesn’t tell him to watch his step, I’m sure I don’t know what would.”
“How did he act? Embarrassed?”
Miss Finney grinned. “He didn’t even deny it,” she said. “He was pleased as Punch to have it mentioned. He got a look on his face like a college sophomore who’s just been told he ought to be in the movies. At his age and in his condition, it’s a tribute. He was really eager to have me on this case,” she added. “I let him beg me a little.”
“That’s all fine, except you’re not going to need me any more. Now that you’re officially on the case, medically, you can do your own unofficial ferreting. What do we do next?”
“They’re planning to go to Léopoldville tomorrow morning,” Miss Finney said. “I’ll have to be there with them. We can go now, or poke around here for a while. What would you like, Hoopie?”
“Let’s poke around here,” I said, “until it’s too late for me to get back to my desk today.”
So we did.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
POKING AROUND ONE way and another, we managed to kill time until about noon. Then we admitted that the sooner we started back to Léopoldville, the happier we’d be. But we had to eat, since there wasn’t any way to eat on the road back, and for variety we went to the other hotel, there being two in Thysville, and that was why we didn’t get Dr. Chaubel’s message earlier.
We weren’t very hungry, but we ate too much anyhow, the way you always do when you’re just marking time. When we started back to our hotel, Miss Finney asked me to go past Dr. Chaubel’s so that she could say so long, and ask if there was anything she could do for him in Léopoldville.
