Murder at the Spa (6 page)

Reaching into her leather tote bag, she pulled out a compartmentalized plastic box of the type used for storing thumb tacks and safety pins. “My security box,” she said. Each compartment was filled with pills of different shapes and colors. “These are for me,” she said, picking out three or four red capsules. She reached into her bag again. “And this is for us,” she said, the corners of her mouth lifting into a smile. “Contraband.” She pulled out a bar of Swiss chocolate—the dark, bittersweet kind that was Charlotte’s favorite—and broke off two squares for Charlotte and two for herself.

“Does Anne-Marie know about this?” teased Charlotte.

“No, and she doesn’t know about these either,” she said, swallowing the pills with a swig of mineral water. She continued: “I’ve been cutting back. But I’m not ready to go cold turkey yet.”

She had, she said, in “moments of sanity” flushed her pills down the toilet, but she’d always ended up going back to a Dr. Feelgood or buying more pills on the street. But this time she was determined to lick her “pilling.” She’d resolved that when she got home, she would flush her pills down the toilet for good. “I’m poor, I’m sick, but I’ve never felt better in my life,” she said. She was counting on her spa visit—the generous gift of an old friend—to give her the strength of mind to carry through. Her voice carried a note of determination, as if by announcing her intention, she was making a pledge to herself to carry it out.

Charlotte wished her strength, and luck.

Charlotte sat in Dr. Sperry’s waiting room, reading a magazine. After lunch, she had walked over to the Health Pavilion with Adele, who was now in Dr. Sperry’s office. Unlike the A’s and B’s, who required no checkups after the initial one, Adele and the other C’s were required to see the spa physician daily for a checkup and blood-pressure reading.

The door to Dr. Sperry’s office opened and Adele emerged, rather unsteadily. For a moment, it looked as if she would bark a shin on the corner of the glass and chrome coffee table, but she managed to successfully maneuver herself around it. Noticing Charlotte, she paused, waved a glassy-eyed goodbye, and floated out into the hall.

Standing in the doorway, Dr. Sperry looked out after her, his forehead creased in a worried frown. Once she had gone, his attention shifted to Charlotte. “You can come in now, Miss Graham,” he said.

In contrast to Anne-Marie’s spartan quarters, Dr. Sperry’s office was Park Avenue plush. A stereo played a Mozart sonata and signed lithographs by well-known artists hung on the walls. The windows overlooked the reflecting pool. Charlotte wondered how he had ended up with a woman whose idea of ideal accommodations was a pup tent at a Himalayan base camp.

Dr. Sperry closed the door behind her. For a moment he stood and stared, his knuckle raised to his mouth in contemplation.

She could see how the ladies would find him attractive. He was tall, with silver-gray hair and sideburns, heavy black eyebrows, and a long, thin face tanned to a medium bronze, probably by the tanning bed downstairs. It was heavily lined—craggy, some would have called it. He wore a knee-length white lab coat over a navy blue turtleneck. A stethoscope hung from his neck.

“It’s remarkable,” he said.

“What’s remarkable?”

“How beautiful you are.” He smiled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“You haven’t,” replied Charlotte matter-of-factly.

“That’s right. I suppose you’re accustomed to compliments,” he said. He pulled out a swivel chair upholstered in dove-gray leather. Gray was the color theme, with a charcoal-gray carpet and vertical blinds: stylish, soothing, masculine. “Won’t you take a seat?”

At one side of the room was an examination couch. From what Adele had said, it got quite a workout. Next to it stood a blood-pressure unit.

“Thank you,” said Charlotte. To her surprise, he offered her a cigarette. A sign in a chrome frame on the desk said, “No smoking, people breathing.”

“I see that you smoke,” he said, nodding at the folder that lay on the teak surface of his desk.

“Yes,” she replied. “About six a day.”

“Good. The important thing is moderation.” He removed a gold lighter from his pocket and lit her cigarette. She noticed that his fingers were stained yellow-brown from nicotine. “I smoke too,” he said, removing a cigarette from the pack and lighting it. “Are you shocked?”

“No.”

He smiled. “I drink too. I know I shouldn’t. But I can moderate myself. Moderation—that’s the important thing. I don’t believe in this simon pure business.” Like Anne-Marie? thought Charlotte. “I also don’t smoke in front of the guests, usually. I like to set a good example.”

Charlotte nodded.

He had a British accent and a voice that oozed solicitude. He also had a way of wrinkling his nose when he smiled that she supposed many women found boyishly appealing. But she was immune to the blandishments of boyish charm, having once been married to one of Hollywood’s most charming leading men.

For a few minutes, he reviewed her chart.

“I don’t see any special health problems. Except for a little arthritis in your knee. How are you feeling?”

“Okay.”

“Are you on a salt-restricted diet?”

Charlotte shook her head.

“Any kidney stones, ulcers?”

She shook her head again.

“Then I’m going to prescribe the usual: two eight-ounce glasses of High Rock water one hour before breakfast. Down the hatch; no sipping. It’s not wine, it’s mineral water. Also, one eight-ounce glass before lunch, one before dinner, and one before bed. Do you have your prescription booklet?”

Charlotte withdrew it from her pocket and handed it to him. “What will the water do for me?” she asked.

“It’s a mild laxative; it contains sodium sulfate and magnesium bicarbonate. Not that you have any problems of that nature. If you did, I’d prescribe Union water.” He smiled. “It produces what the local people call action-within-fifteen-minutes.”

So that’s what Adele had been talking about. “I hope the Union Spring isn’t far from the hotel,” said Charlotte.

He laughed. “No. It’s not. Actually, fifteen minutes is overstating it a bit; it usually takes about an hour.”

Charlotte was reminded of the old saying about knowing a man by his drink; it took on a special significance at a mineral spa.

Dr. Sperry went on to explain that the waters of the spa fell into three categories: the saline waters, such as Union water, were highly cathartic. They were generally taken before meals and warmed. The saline-alkaline waters, such as High Rock, were mildly cathartic, and were prescribed as a tonic for the kidneys, bowels, and digestion. They were also taken before meals, but at room temperature. The third type, the alkaline-saline, of which Sans Souci was the best example, were digestive aids. They were generally taken after meals by people with digestive disturbances or liver disease.

“Then I presume I’m taking High Rock water as a tonic,” said Charlotte as Dr. Sperry recorded the prescription in her booklet.

“Exactly,” he replied. “But many guests also find that it helps their arthritis. To say nothing of diabetes, gout, rheumatism, neuritis.”

“Oh? Why is that?”

“Frankly, we don’t know. Mineral water is like acupuncture: we know it works, but we don’t know how. A lot of studies have demonstrated that the waters help certain conditions, but identifying the chemical that’s responsible is like finding a needle in a haystack. High Rock water, for instance, contains more than nineteen thousand different chemicals.”

“I see,” said Charlotte.

“The baths are different. There we know that most of the benefit comes from simple relaxation. As far as the baths go, we’ll start you out with a daily bath and massage, what we call our ‘ninety-minute unwinder,’” he said, making another notation in the booklet. He studied her chart again. “Frannie indicates here that your shoulders are tense. Is that true?”

“Yes.” She accumulated tension in her shoulders the way others did in their faces or their guts, but she wouldn’t have thought it obvious. She gave Frannie credit for her perspicacity and wondered if she was walking around with hunched shoulders. “I’m surprised Frannie noticed it.”

“Are you?” He smiled, wrinkling his nose. “I’m also going to prescribe a hot pack for your knee and fango for your shoulders.” He made another notation in the booklet. “Fango is mud therapy: mud has excellent heat-retention properties.” He leaned back. “You shouldn’t be. We can tell a lot about a client’s physical and mental condition from her appearance.”

“So I see,” replied Charlotte.

“For instance,” he continued, “I can tell that you’re a happy, well-adjusted person.” He wrinkled his nose again.

Charlotte raised a dark, winged eyebrow in the skeptical expression that was one of her screen trademarks, along with her clipped Yankee accent and her starkly tailored suits.

“You are open, vibrant, alive,” he continued, staring at her appreciatively. “I can tell just by looking at you that you are beautiful in your soul as well as in your person.”

She returned his stare. She wanted to tell him to cut the crap.

“Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for a lot of our guests,” he went on. “Many of them are very unhappy. They’re often going through widowhood, or divorce. Their faces are masks of anxiety and depression; their skin has sagged; their lips are compressed. We can’t do anything about their personal situations of course, but we can help them feel better about themselves.”

If outward appearance were the key to character, Charlotte thought, Dr. Sperry’s narrow, thin-lipped mouth and long, pointed teeth put him in the wolf family. The kind that prey on lonely, middle-aged women.

He paused to offer her another cigarette, which she turned down, and then lit one himself from the tip of the one he was smoking.

“Some of our guests are in very bad shape indeed. Like that woman who was just in here. Her biological age is about the same as yours, but she’s actually twenty-four years younger. She doesn’t need a spa, she needs a detox program. We get a lot of guests like her. We ask our guests to refrain from using drugs or alcohol, but we can hardly search their luggage, can we?”

His voice had taken on an intimate tone, as if they belonged to an elite of which Adele was not a member. Charlotte’s mild dislike was progressing to outright hostility. What he said about Adele was no doubt true, but it was unprofessional to be talking with her about it.

“Dr. Sperry, I’m not interested in discussing the medical histories of the other guests,” she said firmly.

She could imagine him telling the next patient: “Oh, yes, Charlotte Graham. Well preserved, I’d say, for a woman of sixty-two. Wouldn’t expect it with the life she’s led. Four husbands would take its toll on anyone. To say nothing of those notorious love affairs.”

“Oh, quite right,” he said, startled at her rebuke. “Well, do you have any questions?”

“What is the pack for my arthritis?” she asked, studying the booklet he had returned to her.

He described the hot pack, and then, their interview at an end, she rose to leave. He walked her to the door, his arm draped familiarly around her shoulders. She wanted to shake it off, like a surly adolescent.

As they reached the door, she felt him gently squeeze the muscle at the back of her neck. “We’ll take care of those shoulders for you,” he said.

After leaving Dr. Sperry’s office, Charlotte crossed the quadrangle to the Bath Pavilion, which was a mirror-image of the Health Pavilion except for the relief on the pediment, which here depicted Asclepius, the Greek god of healing. An inscription read: “A gentle craftsman who drove pain away/Soother of cruel pangs, a joy to men,/Bringing them golden health.”

At the reception desk, she was directed to the women’s wing, where she was greeted by the director of the women’s baths, a middle-aged woman named Mrs. Murray who wore a white nurse’s uniform and the firm expression of someone who was used to dealing with difficult guests. A starched white nurse’s cap floated on the stiff waves of her charcoal-gray hair like a paper boat on a stormy sea. Mrs. Murray introduced her to Hilda, who would be her bath attendant. Hilda was a stocky woman with a round face encircled by the platinum curls of an ill-fitting wig. Her face had a hint of the Tartar about it, with prominent cheekbones and fierce yellow eyes above which eyebrows had been penciled on in a perennial expression of surprise. She bobbed her head and smiled broadly, revealing a wide gap between her protuberant front teeth. Then she shuffled off down the corridor in her corduroy slippers, leaving Charlotte to follow behind.

Charlotte found the bath cubicle to which she had been assigned to be surprisingly utilitarian by comparison with the rest of the spa. It was large, with a high ceiling, glossy white-tiled walls, and a black-and-white-tiled floor. It was simply furnished with a white wicker table and chair and a white-painted metal cot covered by a starched white sheet. The walls above the tile, which looked as if they once had been painted a depressing hospital green, were now papered with a gay floral print. On the table stood a pot of red geraniums. One corner was occupied by the treatment tub, which was both wider and deeper than an ordinary tub. Charlotte noted with pleasure a heated towel rack of the type that was the one redeeming feature of British bathrooms.

She felt right at home. Except for the matter of bath etiquette. Was she supposed to disrobe in front of Hilda? She was about to ask when Hilda led her into an adjoining bathroom and handed her a white terry-cloth robe and what appeared to be a towel, but was actually a turban. Emerging a few minutes later, she took a seat while Hilda drew the bath, using fishtail faucets for the mineral water that bubbled up from a well at the bottom of the tub and ordinary faucets for the tap water that was used to adjust the temperature.

“It smells rusty,” observed Charlotte.

“Ja,”
replied Hilda. “The iron in the water. It’s what clogs the pipes.” She spoke with an accent that Charlotte could identify only as eastern European.

“How long does the bath last?” Charlotte asked.

“Fifteen minutes. Then I check you. If you want, you stay in another ten minutes. If the water is too cold, I add more hot. Then I wrap you in warm sheets and you rest—thirty minutes. I turn the lights out. After the rest, you have a massage.” She looked back at Charlotte and smiled. “Okay?”