The Lady and Her Doctor (14 page)

“My dear Dr. Krop, I don't need to talk to Sloane and I certainly heard nothing but your praises from your other sister-in-law.”

“Let's get one thing straight. We are talking about the same thing—the idea is you think that your mother—”

“I believe that mother was murdered, yes. Quite right; that is precisely what I think and I came to the conclusion all by my little self. If Sloane told you I was a moron she was mistaken.”

Milton took a step toward Lady Constant. “How I would like to knock the chip off your shoulder,” he said. “You get the chip off your shoulder, do you hear me? Who the hell do you think you are?” He retreated, felt for the chair with his hand, jerking his head from the young man to Lady Constant. “How long you known her?”

Lady Constant answered for the young man. “Day and I are old friends.”

“How long have you known her?” He saw how the young man had stepped between him and Lady Constant. “Relax!” Milton said, and sat on the chair he had cleared. “Relax, I'm talking as a physician, mister. Have you known my wife's sister long enough and well enough—if you know what I mean—to tell me if she has these delusions about any other subject under the sun?”

“Delusions! Oh, my dear man! Delusions, Day! Do you call it a delusion that my mother died so suddenly, unexpectedly? Do you call it a delusion that it was you who filled out her death certificate and then, a pitifully short time afterward—Oh, Sloane's the one for quoting about the funeral baked meats! It is certainly no delusion that you and Sloane were married. If Sloane had ever felt the slightest amorous interest in you, my dear Dr. Fell, I would have known of it from Mother. If Sloane thought you were—” she indicated how little, putting her red-polished thumbnail against the nail of her little finger—“
that
possible, Mother would have written and told me so. And you needn't tell me that my mother was a sick woman who missed a flaming love affair under her nose that everyone else knew about, because the one thing I did learn from your estimable praise-singing sister-in-law was that she had been as surprised by your marriage as I was!”

Milton tugged at his nose. “Mister—this whole cock-and-bull story she's worked out—take my word for it!”

“Take his word for it, Day, do!”

“Look. Look me up—call up the hospital where I work. Oh, hell, this has gone too far for that! Go on and have the Dramamine analyzed; that's what you took them for. And when you find out that they are Dramamine and not arsenic, you'll begin to see things a little—” He wagged his jaw from side to side and stood up. The young man jumped to attention. “I'm just going for my bag.” The young man got to it first. Milton said, “What the—” Then he laughed. “O.K. Carry it for me, will you? Be my caddy, see if I care! Take it all the way home for me; that bag is heavy—even if it isn't loaded.” He reached the door, hearing the young man right in back of him. “That's a good one, isn't it? It's heavy even if it isn't loaded. That's as good as your joke about servants, in my opinion.” He opened the door. “Go to a reputable lab for the analysis, O.K.?”

“The best,” Lady Constant said spitefully, “the police lab!”

“So you're going to the police? You're going to tell them I killed your mother with Dramamine which you were too smart to swallow!”

“Not necessarily the same pills.”

“No, could be the others, like the first ones where I was too smart to leave you the evidence and wouldn't leave them hanging around. Tell them about those, too. When they laugh in your face and you find out you're quite safe with me, give me a ring! I came here today—forced my attentions on you as you put it—for different reasons than you figured, but I did want to talk to you, that much is true. So give me a ring after the Dramamine is analyzed.” He walked into the corridor and held out his hand for the bag, but the young man came out with him. “I'm going, I'm going,” Milton said. “Don't worry, I'm not going to use a hypodermic through the keyhole so when the duchess locks her door, she drops dead!”

“Doctor, I came out to apologize.”

“Go on!”

“I don't know what makes Amory fancy herself as a detective.”

“Lady Constant, Private Eye! Maybe she could get herself on television. Look, your girl friend—oh, nuts,” he said and walked rapidly toward the elevator.

The young man placed himself between Milton and the elevator.

“Get out of my way,” Milton said. “I'm up to here!”

“Dr. Krop, please—I wanted to tell you that Amory has already seen her lawyer. She gave him her reasons for suspecting you and he called the District Attorney. I think you should know that the District Attorney has already been in touch with some judge or other and that Amory's been told that the orders for exhumation of her mother's body will be filled out tonight. By now, probably.”

The elevator came up and the young man stepped out of the way and Milton stepped into the car, then out.

“I thought I'd tell you,” the young man said.

“Thanks. You meant well. I have something to tell you.” The young man bowed in an English kind of way and ducked his head toward the duchess' room, but Milton shook his head. “No sense telling her, the way she feels. First, one thing, I don't give a damn about exhumation orders. What do you think I am? You think I like people accusing me of murdering a patient? I'd ask for exhumation myself—insist—except for one thing.” He pointed at the young man's face. “Boy, you sure trust me, nix!” His heart gave a lurch because his mother used to say that, “nix.” She used to toss her head. It made her look young when she tossed her head. Milton took a deep breath. “There's only one reason I don't want any exhumation and that's not for the reason you think. I give you my word. You can laugh yourself sick about my giving you my word; I should worry. But there's one thing I want to ask you. Will you go back to your lady friend—No, I better. Do you trust me enough to let me get close enough to her to ask her something? One thing. Leave my loaded bag outside. Who needs it? She didn't want a doctor, she wanted a murderer. Leave the bag and you can—what's that word?” He patted his pockets. “You know, you can see if I'm clean—frisk me, that's it. Frisk me first, if you want to.”

“She can't call off the exhumation, you know.”

“I don't give a damn about the exhumation!” Milton shouted this. The young man appeared to be listening to the echoes of his voice, as a piano tuner listens, then he nodded and started back to Lady Constant's room, but paused at the door, with his hand on the knob.

“Perhaps I'd better—” He went inside.

Milton leaned against the wall. He told himself that his mother saying “nix” had been saying “no.” He told himself he had had enough “nos” in his lifetime. In his lifetime, he told himself. The door opened.

“Of course he's bluffing, Day, but it won't hurt. All right, it won't hurt, it won't hurt, Day!”

The young man stuck his head out of the door and Milton went in.

Lady Constant was standing by the window, looking down at the street. “One thing about Day, Dr. Krop, he cannot bear having his curiosity denied. What is it you want, Dr. Krop?”

“Not for me. I'm thinking of my wife—”

“Poor Sloane, poor conniving, murdering little Sloane!”

Milton said, “That's enough out of you about her. What you don't know about your sister would fill a book.”

“I will find out soon, though.”

“Listen to me—don't say any more about her. You have enough words anyhow you're going to have to eat, take my word for that. You said enough already so it's hard for me to stand here and not belt you one!”

“Amory, give the man a chance!”

“I'm controlling myself because of my wife.”

“Oh, he's madly in love with her, Day! Day, you should have been in the room—the wall should have been made of glass then you could have observed the way he stared at me when he came in. How would it go in the appropriate literature—he
ate me up with his eyes!
”

Milton stammered, “I told you—you look so much alike!”

“And so different,” Lady Constant said. “And Day,
vive la différence
—that's what was written all over his face, Day—
vive la différence!
'”

Milton said, “I don't understand, is that Spanish,
vive?
”

“Pity. I assure you, Day—”

“You flatter yourself,” Milton said, “boy, you flatter yourself, kid!”

“No, but I don't flatter you, either. And it would be extreme flattery to believe you were capable of appreciating anything about Sloane but Mother's property. I'm
courci
, Dr. Krop, and I know it. That is a Spanish word for you, untranslatable, unfortunately, but it means—oh, dowdy-smart, a not-quite-quite! You couldn't possibly appreciate the
beauté du diable
which my sister has!”

“Just one look at me and you know what I like!”

“Just one look at me, Dr. Krop—just one look like the one you gave me when you came in and I certainly know what you like!”

Day said, “Amory, please—”

“Leave her alone. I don't care what she thinks. All I want is one thing. Will you do one thing for me?” He shrugged. “The condemned man's last request, only this isn't funny. I'm dead serious about this. Go ahead with the exhumation, exhume till you're blue in the face, but until you have the proof that what you think isn't a cock-and-bull story like I say it is, don't let my wife hear about it. Just don't tell her and don't let anyone else tell her what you suspect, O.K.?”

Amory drummed on the window sill, “Is that all?”

“Is that so much to ask?” Milton turned to the young man. “Have you any pull? Can you make her keep her trap shut to my wife until the medical examiner gets through—a couple of weeks, at least, if he's thorough.”

“He's going to be thorough. He's aware that you're a doctor, Dr. Krop. He told me three weeks.”

“Three weeks then.”

“Why is it so important, Dr. Krop?”

“I think it's important, that's why! Look, give me your word on it you won't mention anything about this for three weeks and I'll give you my word I won't tell Sloane about it afterward. Never.”

“Why should I? Why should I do anything you want? No, my dear Dr. Krop, I will not not tell Sloane. In fact I will tell Sloane now.” She reached for the telephone.

Milton lunged for it but was too late. “Can't you stop her?” he asked the young man, who had stepped in between himself and Lady Constant. “Don't let her do this now, when she's hysterical. Make her wait until she calms down, anyhow. Think it over. Wait—”

“Amory,” the young man said, “wait!” He put his hand over the dial.

“One minute is all I ask. Just don't let her cut off her nose to spite her face. You get me,” Milton said, nodding. “I can see you at least get me. Look, I'm going now. I'll go to my sister-in-law's. Will you call me and put me out of my misery? It's in the book under Dr. Milton Krop.”

The young man nodded and Milton went out of the room again, but the door was still open and he could hear, first the young man, then the duchess.

“Amory, can't you wait until—?”

“No. Take your hand off that dial, Day!”

As Milton bent to pick up his bag he heard the click of the dial. “So nix,” he thought, “so no, so nothing!”

“Hello?” she said, “Sloane?”

“Who else?” he thought, walking wearily to the elevator. Hello, Sloane. Good-by, Sloane. Hello and good-by, Sloane. Top of my hit parade, Lady Constant: Your hello Sloane is my good-by.

Schizoid personalities were very common, he thought, but not splits like his. Not usually split the way he was, he thought, noticing that he had walked from the hotel to the Fifty-ninth Street station of the Independent Subway, not usually through the middle. Not usually hello-good-by from the waist up, with the bottom part, the feet, walking to the subway station as if he could go back to the Haunted House now, as if there was any sense going back now. Milton held out for a moment against the stream of people flowing down the subway stairs, the hand without the black doctor-bag clutching the door, resisting the current, but it was too much effort to cling there for long so he let himself be shoved down the stairs with the rest of them, the way he had always been shoved, the way it had always been too much effort, the way it was going to be from now on out, he thought. A real man wouldn't take it lying down, a real man could have stopped that bitch some way, but he wasn't a real man, just Milt Krop, the nix-boy. He had known he was the nix-boy of the family from the time he could read, no, before that, from the time he could read the nix in his mother's eyes. He knew it, his mother knew it and Jenny knew it. Jenny knew it but good.

He was pressed against the doors of the subway car with the rest of them but he let them press even though the edges of his medical case were cutting into his thigh; no sense wasting energy using the old elbows. Save your strength. Conserve oxygen when you're trapped underground. Milton turned his face away from the glass door—it was all he could turn without shoving—and stared into the faces around him. There was death in each of them, not only in his, only not so soon and not so positively so soon.

And then he saw that he had not been schizoid, that the bottom part of him taking him to the subway had been connected with the top part of him that realized it was all over. Both parts had acted together getting him here because the only manly thing he could do was make it sooner and this was the best possible place for it, wasn't it? The Independent Subway in rush hour? Rushhour, rushhour, the wheels chorused obligingly. Accidents happened all the time in the subway. Nobody yelled: Stop the train, man overboard! He felt the wheels then rather than heard them, rushhour rushhour, the greasy, filthy, crushing wheels, and wished forlornly it could be man overboard from the
Queen Elizabeth
en route to Cherbourg, a luxury liner they called her, the luxury of clean green sea water, but no luxury liner for him. “What it was to wake up in the morning in the big bedroom,” the bitch had said. Hello Riviera, good-by Riviera, where the Browning girl had gone!