Puzzle for Pilgrims (23 page)

I patted her arm. “No, baby. This is on me.”

She smiled fleetingly. “All right.”

I went down the stairs into the bare, hushed lobby. The music from the Zocalo was stronger down here. There was a distant explosion followed by faint, high laughter. They were still setting off firecrackers.

There was a mailbox at the foot of the stairs. I stuck the envelope and mailed Jake’s letter. The night clerk was dozing behind the desk. I woke him. He spoke English. I told him that my friend had had a heart attack and that I must have an English-speaking doctor at once. An exile from the carnival, he embraced this substitute excitement. He called two numbers and got no reply. He shrugged with dramatic concern.

“In the carnival ees difficult. Even the doctors, they dance.”

“I know.”

His mouth drooped meaningly at the corners. “I could perhaps obtain Dr. Heller?”

“Dr. Heller? Anything wrong with him?”

He shrugged again. “No ees Mexican. Is from Europe someplace. Since many years, he is here and there and…”

“Get Dr. Heller,” I said.

He called another number. Dr. Heller was available. I waited for him in the lobby. I strolled up and down, smoking. I knew nothing about poisons. For all I knew, the causes of Jake’s death might show, screamingly obvious, on the body. Failure to convince this unknown Dr. Heller would mean unqualified disaster. I tried not to think about it. I was afraid thinking would get me rattled.

Within twenty minutes, Dr. Heller came. I joined him at the door. He was old and small in a shabby gray suit. There was about him the generic fugitive quality of a European who has spent many years in foreign countries. He might have been German, Hungarian, almost anything. And I understood immediately the desk clerk’s implied contempt. His insecure, almost apologetic manner told of a lifetime spent on the verge of failure, inaugurated perhaps by some scandal in his native land. He was one of those broken, drifting doctors who think of a patient no longer as a patient but as a potential fee.

The sight of him was reassuring.

I said, “It’s good of you to come, Doctor.”

As we went up the deserted stairs, I broke the news that my friend was dead. I said we had come together to Veracruz for the carnival. My friend had had heart trouble. His doctors had advised him not to drink. He had been drinking heavily. To me the story sounded surprisingly plausible and I glanced at Dr. Heller. His dark, faded eyes flicked guiltily away from their study of my ten-dollar Sulka tie. I was almost sure he was calculating in his mind as to whether he dared charge double his normal Mexican fee.

I led him into Jake’s room and shut the door. In spite of my growing confidence, it was a moment of excruciating suspense. He dropped his bag and knelt down beside Jake. I watched his old, knob-knuckled hands moving over the body. I started a running patter, the semi-foolish, anxious, plaguing sort of conversation which fitted reasonably with my role of agitated friend and which might also somewhat distract him by taking part of his concentration. I improvised a history of heart trouble and a story of excesses at the carnival. Dr. Heller did not say anything. But, as he went on with his examination and I studied his face, I began to realize that the poison, whatever it was, was not obvious. The death did look enough like a heart attack. Dr. Heller wasn’t suspicious. He wasn’t even much interested, although he was pretending to be. He was just an old, tired man going through the motions.

At length he unbent creakily.

“Very unfortunate,” he said. “Those big men, overweight, it often goes this way with them.”

I could feel relief in me like sweat about to break out on my forehead.

I said, “It’s tough, Doctor. You see, he wasn’t a close friend. Just an acquaintance who suggested this trip. I don’t know what to do, poor guy. I don’t know about the law, the…”

“He drank a great deal, did he not?”

“A lot, I’m afraid. I tried to stop him.”

“And much food, no doubt? And much women?”

“I guess so.”

“And he did not take the advice of his doctors?”

“No.”

Dr. Heller shrugged. The dark eyes shifted sidelong from my face. “He has been dead for some time. You didn’t find him immediately?”

“No. I came in ahead of him. I went to sleep. I woke up and started wondering whether he’d got in safely. You see, I was always kind of worried. I got out of bed and came here. And I found him.”

Dr. Heller nodded. I felt excited, but also slightly guilty that luck should have sent me so minor an antagonist.

I said casually, “It was the heart, of course?”

He straightened his stooped shoulders. He tried to muster some shreds of professional dignity—to give me my money’s worth.

“Yes,” he proclaimed. “It was the heart.”

I wondered how many other wrong diagnoses he had made in the past. I felt less guilty about him then. Perhaps I was the only person whom Dr. Heller had ever genuinely assisted.

I asked, “What do we do, Doctor? I hate to make a fuss for the hotel. Anything like this is bad for them, obviously. I wonder… I mean, what is the procedure? There is a death certificate?”

“Yes,” said Dr. Heller.

“Which you sign?”

“Yes,” said Dr. Heller. He paused. “Of course, it is usually advisable to receive from his doctors in Mexico City the entire history of the case before the certificate is signed.”

Panic sidled out of some corner of my brain. “But his doctors weren’t in Mexico City. He comes from California. I don’t even know where. He’s only been in Mexico a week or so.”

His eyes had moved back to my necktie.

He repeated, “It is usually the case, Mr. Duluth, to obtain the history first.”

The slightly emphasized “usually’ made me realize he was hinting that this case need not necessarily be usual. I saw then into the pitiful, enforced little shabbiness of his mind. He didn’t suspect murder. He wasn’t smart enough for that. But he did suspect a rich American tourist who might be willing to pay extra to have a tiresome situation expedited.

He stood fidgeting with the soiled cuffs of his shirt.

I took out my wallet. “You’ve been awfully kind coming out at this hour. While we’re about it, why don’t we settle your account. How much do I owe you?”

The faded eyes glinted. “One hundred pesos,” he said so quickly that I knew he had taken the daring decision of the doubled fee.

“That seems very little,” I said, “I guess I’m used to United States prices. How about this?”

I handed him two hundred-peso bills. His hand clutched for them, but a flicker of exhausted sadness showed in his eyes, as if there was something in him, frail but still alive, which recoiled from venality. The ghost, perhaps, of an earnest, hopeful medical student in a foreign capital many years ago.

He put the money in his pocket. He moved shufflingly to a table and brought out a paper and pen.

“Perhaps, in this case, it is more simple for the certificate to be signed now. You are no intimate friend. It is a burden for you to wait, to try to find the doctors, to ruin your holiday, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Of course, Mr. Duluth, you try to locate his family, his friends through the
turismo.
Then later you obtain the records and send them to me for my files.”

“Of course,” I said.

He filled in the death certificate while I stood at his side, giving him the necessary information.

He murmured, “It is necessary to send a formal report to the police, to the American Consulate. And perhaps, too, a letter to the parents if they are alive. Perhaps I can take care of these things for you. But perhaps also it is good for you to stay here a couple more days.”

“That’s okay with me.”

He held the death certificate in his hand. Once again that tired look came in his eyes.

“Perhaps you do not know of an undertaker here in Veracruz?”

“No.”

“It so happens that I am familiar with a very reliable concern. I think you will find their work satisfactory—their charges reasonable.”

“Anything you say, Doctor.” I knew he would obtain his rake-off from the undertaker too. There had been an interested undertaker in Taxco. There was an interested undertaker here. We had been lucky with undertakers.

Dr. Heller’s soft, deflated monologue continued.

“As you say, Mr. Duluth, hotels are most averse to death in their establishment. I am sure they would wish us to—er—remove the corpse as quickly as possible. Unfortunately the undertakers do not have their own ambulances. But I happen to know the ambulance firm. I think you will find their fees…”

“Reasonable,” I said.

“Yes,” said Dr. Heller. “Reasonable.”

I thought of Jake being “reasonably” eased into a respectable coffin with this little commission for this little man and that little commission for that little man. It was somehow satisfying that someone who had made such a big noise in life should go out of it like this—to the rattle of small change.

Dr. Heller had stooped to pick up his bag. “We shall perhaps call the ambulance now?”

“Now,” I said.

Dawn was graying the streets as I walked home from the undertaker. The last of the merrymakers had dispersed. These were the few hours of quiet in carnival. The blustering north wind made the streamers coil and recoil on the sidewalks and sent clouds of confetti dancing like colored flies through the cold air. Except for minor formalities, the episode of Jake was closed. I could still hardly believe that our huge deception had been so successful.

I was exhausted too. And now that the danger was past, my exhaustion turned into delayed resentment against Martin. I had perjured my soul away to protect him from a murder charge in which he would almost certainly have been found guilty. Now he was safe, relieved from all responsibility. In a few days he would be back in his old life, shaping his childhood memories into yet another novel of wistful, fragile charm, while Iris and Marietta hovered in attendance.

That prospect became suddenly unbearable to me. The danger from Jake had fused us into a dubious alliance, but the danger was gone now. The hopeless tangle of our lives showed itself in all its nakedness. Perhaps I could save Marietta by marrying her. But what of Iris…? I had visions of Iris drifting deeper and deeper into an infatuation which already she knew would bring her nothing. For weeks there had been no talk of that marriage which once had been Martin’s passionate goal. I had visions too of Marietta returning to woo her brother like a light-drunk moth beating its wings in a candle flame, Marietta succumbing, Marietta rebelling once again and flying back to me. Life would be unendurable for me with Martin around. Life was impossible for Iris and Marietta too. Martin would never resolve a relationship, begin it or end it. He gave nothing. He waited passively for worship, a worship that destroyed the worshiper. That was his danger.

Sally had ignored the warning signals. Stronger willed than the others, she had known what she wanted, raped it with the promise of security and fortune, and dragged it to the altar. Jake, in his way, had raped Martin too.

And Jake and Sally were dead.

An old woman with a window frame strapped to her back tottered toward me out of a side street. Life was starting again in Veracruz.

Preposterous as it sounds, the fact that Martin had almost certainly murdered two people meant almost nothing to me. He had eaten his way too far into my life for the fate of Sally and Jake to have more than minor significance. It was the thought of what would lie ahead for us that decided me Martin must go.

There were plausible reasons for his own good why he should leave Mexico immediately. It was possible that the lawyer in Taxco might ignore Jake’s written request to destroy the report. It was possible too that the death certificate of a doctor like Heller might be discredited. There were a dozen different, if unlikely, accidents which might send the whole edifice of deception toppling. If anything happened, Martin would be trapped. Even he would realize that. And there was no financial difficulty connected with his departure. That very morning, the first payment from Mr. Johnson would be waiting at the bank.

I thought of the Argentine freighter, tied up in the harbor, ready to leave that evening. That was it, of course. Martin, a British subject in Mexico, certainly had a passport. Back at the hotel, I would insist that he leave for Buenos Aires at once.

I was too tired to consider how this might affect Iris and Marietta. The simplicity of the decision brought relief. Let him be gone. Let him wreak all the havoc he wanted to wreak in Argentina.

I reached the hotel. As I passed through the dawn-bleak lobby where the desk clerk was frankly asleep, I thought instinctively of telling my decision first to Iris. I felt a need for contact with a mind like my mind and the comfort of old acquaintance before I embarked into the foreign land of Haven.

I climbed the stairs to our floor, hoping that Iris would be alone in her room. She was. She had been lying on the bed, but she was still dressed. She looked as exhausted as I felt. There was no strain between us. Because we had suffered the same thing, it was easy being with her.

I said, “It’s all right.”

She had keyed herself up to face disaster. She couldn’t quite take this in.

I saw that.

“He signed the death certificate?”

“It’s all finished. A dingy little doctor with dirty cuffs. All he wanted was a jacked-up fee, a commission from the undertaker, a commission from the ambulance concern.”

“He didn’t suspect murder?”

“He didn’t suspect anything. Don’t worry. It’s fixed, settled. It’s all over.”

She dropped down on the bed. The gray early half-light played on her profile.

“It’s all over,” she repeated.

I sat down next to her. Her weariness and mine seemed the same, like a blanket spread over us both.

She said softly, “I talked to Martin. For a long time.”

“You did?”

In a curious voice, she asked, “Peter, do you think he killed them?”

“Yes.”

“He swears he didn’t. He swears he knew nothing about any poison. It’s the same bottle of pills he’s had since Taxco. He swears Sally was alive when he left her.”