A Deadly Affection (5 page)

“If I can show that psychotherapy works for symptoms caused by unresolved grief,” I said evenly, “I'll be making a significant contribution to an emerging field. Isn't that just as important as what you're proposing?”

He didn't answer immediately. His gaze roamed over my face, searching for something. I didn't know what. “Is it, Genna? Is it just as important?”

“I think so,” I said, uncertain what to make of his change in tone.

His thumb tapped absently on his fork stem. “You're sure about this, then.”

I nodded.

He sighed and put down the fork. “Very well. We'll give it three months. I believe I can hold the hospital position open until then.”

“Three months? For what?”

“To see if this project of yours is a viable one.”

Three months—that was no time at all! It had taken Cassell that long just to wean his patients from their medications. “That's—” I stopped. He was trying so hard to be reasonable; I ought to at least meet him halfway. “Fine. Three months. Thank you, Father.”

He grunted and swigged the last of his coffee. “I'd better be off,” he said a moment later, pushing himself up from the table. “Andre is meeting me at the lab; he's got a new valve he wants to show me, for the artificial lung.” He strode to the other end of the table and pecked my mother on the cheek before starting for the door.

I swiveled in my seat to call after him. “Father?”

He turned.

“You won't be sorry. I promise.”

Giving me the merest flicker of a smile, he tipped his head and continued out the door.

• • •

A few minutes later, I was skimming over the icy Madison Avenue sidewalk, buffeted by yet another bitter wind that snaked under my muffler and pushed against the wide brim of my hat. Holding the hat down with one hand and clutching my book bag with the other, I tripped along through the maze of work-bound men clogging the sidewalk with their walking sticks at this hour, buoyed by my father's concession. I may not have entirely convinced him, but at least I'd opened his mind a crack to the validity of what I was attempting, which was more than I'd dared hope for.

I was halfway to Professor Bogard's house when the clang of an ambulance broke into my thoughts, growing louder as the vehicle raced up behind me and sped past. I watched the white-coated surgeon sway on the rear platform as the ambulance careened through the traffic and turned left at the end of the block, leaving a tangle of shying horses and honking motorcars in its wake. When I drew up to the intersection, I saw that it had pulled over to the curb some twenty feet up the block, in front of a brick town house. I hesitated, wondering if my services might be required. A momentary lull in traffic decided me, and I ran across the avenue.

Picking my way through the bystanders already congregating on the sidewalk, I followed the ambulance surgeon and his two stretcher-bearing attendants toward the town house entrance. A police officer stood watch at the door. As the ambulance crew hurried toward him, he spat out a stream of tobacco juice and advised, “Take your time, fellas. This one ain't goin' anywhere.”

I stopped. Apparently, whatever had happened here was over. If I wasn't needed, I really ought to be going, or I would be late for the professor. I turned and had just begun to retrace my steps through the growing crowd when an explosive backfire brought me around again. A dusty police car had pulled up to the curb behind the ambulance and was sputtering to a stop. I watched as the door opened and a man in an ill-fitting sack coat stepped out. He had wispy red hair under a crumpled brown derby and a long, bony face that put me in mind of an underfed mule. He paused by the car for a moment, taking in the scene on the street, before starting toward the entrance. He came to a stop in front of the policeman.

“Officer Mundy,” he greeted him flatly, scanning the ground at his feet.

“Detective,” the officer replied, inclining his head a fraction of an inch.

The detective gestured toward the ground. “What'd I tell you about spitting at a crime scene?”

I was rather surprised to hear him say it. The men of New York generally chewed, and spat, wherever they liked: in the streetcars, in the theaters, and in the finest restaurants. I knew there was some sort of law against it, but I would have expected a detective to have more important things on his mind.

“Jeez, I don't know,” the officer replied with a surly smile. “What did you tell me?”

The detective's expression didn't change. “You're supposed to be protecting the crime scene, not contaminating it.”

The officer shrugged. “None of the other detectives care if I chew.”

The detective shook his head as if dealing with a dim-witted child. “What if the perpetrator liked to chew? Did you ever think of that? What if he was standing out here, thinking about whether to do the crime, and left a plug behind? We see that, we've learned something about our man. Maybe we even get lucky and find out what brand he uses. But what do we know now, eh, Mundy? Only that you're a sloppy cop with a bad habit.”

The officer's smile vanished. “Say, you're a regular Sherlock Holmes, ain't you?”

“Yeah, that's me,” the detective said sourly. “Sherlock Holmes.” His hand shot out and grabbed the officer's wrist, twisting it palm up. “Now spit it out.”

The cop's cheeks flamed red. His head swung toward the spectators and back to the detective. For a moment, I thought he was going to punch the detective with his free hand. But at last his gaze fell away, and he spat the tobacco noisily into his palm.

“Put it in your pocket,” the detective demanded.

The officer shot him a look of pure malice, but closed his fist over the wet clump and thrust it into his pocket.

The detective nodded brusquely. “Now, get these people to stand back. I want this area cleared, just in case there's anything left to find.” Brushing past the officer, he pulled open the entrance door and disappeared inside.

“Yes, sir,” muttered the officer, throwing a mock salute after him. He turned and raised his club in the air. “All right, everyone,” he shouted, “stand back. Give us some room here.”

Reluctantly, the bystanders parted, creating a path between the door and a black patrol wagon that had just joined the other vehicles at the curb. As the driver of the wagon strode up the path, I was jostled farther and farther back on the sidewalk, until all I could see was a row of hats in front of me. When nothing happened for several more minutes, I turned once more to leave.

This time, it was a murmur from the crowd that brought me back around. As the line shifted in front of me, I saw that two more policemen were emerging from the building, escorting a bareheaded woman whose face was turned toward the ground. The woman's coat was slung unevenly over her shoulders, and there were dark blotches on her pale-green skirt. As the trio continued down the path toward the van, the woman lifted a bewildered gaze toward the staring bystanders.

My feet took root in the sidewalk. I recognized those slumped shoulders and that thin, ashen face. Forcing my legs to move, I pushed to the front of the crowd. “Eliza!” I called. “Eliza, over here!”

She turned, and recognition swept across her face. “Dr. Summerford!” She lurched toward me, reaching out with both hands.

I made it only a step closer before one of the policemen blocked my path.

“Stand back, there,” he warned, nodding to the other officer as he muscled Eliza back on course.

I watched, dumbstruck, as he led her to the back of the wagon and lifted her in.

“You know the suspect?” asked a voice at my ear.

I turned to find the second policeman, a ruddy-faced man with a crooked nose, standing beside me. “What?”

He pulled his domed hat lower as a gust of wind blew past us, slapping grit up against the wagon. “Do you know the suspect?” he repeated.

“You mean Mrs. Miner? Yes. Can you tell me what's happened? Why are you taking her? She isn't hurt, is she?”

“What's your name?” he asked, opening the little black book in his hand.

“Genevieve Summerford.”

He licked the tip of his pencil and entered this laboriously into the book. “Are you related to the suspect?”

“No.”

“How do you know her?”

“She's a patient of mine.”

He slowly wrote this down as well as the electric wagon pulled away soundlessly from the curb.

“Officer,” I begged, “could you
please
tell me what's happening?”

He closed his book and looked up. “You need to come with me,” he said, taking hold of my elbow. “Detective Maloney's going to want to talk to you.”

The officer led me past the gawking bystanders to the building entrance. A brass wall plaque beside the door read
Herman Hauptfuhrer, MD. Hours 9–12.
Hauptfuhrer: the doctor who'd delivered Eliza's baby. The one she'd told me she was going to visit this morning, to try to determine her daughter's whereabouts…

The officer opened the door and gestured me through.

I took a hesitant step over the threshold, afraid of what I might find on the other side. But I saw nothing out of the ordinary in the entry vestibule. An empty hallway ran beyond it down the length of the house, with a staircase along its right side. Two doors opened off the left side of the hallway. The officer led me through the first of these into a small waiting room containing a row of black leather chairs. Embroidered pillows on the chairs proclaimed
Health Is the First Wealth
and
Patience Is the Best Medicine
, while a grandfather clock ticked placidly in one corner. A wall separated the waiting room from the back of the house. Two doors were set into it, both partially open. Through the one on the left, I could see the end of a metal examining table and a large standing scale; through the one on the right, I glimpsed a patch of golden Persian rug.

It looked like any other doctor's office, waiting for the daily parade of patients to begin. A moment later, however, this illusion was shattered by a flash of light that spilled out of the room with the rug, followed by a sharp burning smell. A photographer's flash, I realized, as a ribbon of magnesium smoke curled out the door.

“This way,” said the officer, leading me toward the door. On the threshold, he paused. Peering over his shoulder, I glimpsed what appeared to be the doctor's consultation room, with a heavy oak desk along the back wall, a bank of oak filing cabinets on the left, and a fireplace on the right. The detective and the photographer were standing in front of the desk. A few feet away, a uniformed man was brushing powder on the knob of a side door that led out to the hall.

The detective was looking down at something on the floor I couldn't see. “I want pictures from all four sides,” he told the photographer.

“But I've only got one more box of plates,” the photographer protested. “There won't be enough for the finger impressions.”

“Then get more,” the detective shot back, in the same disdainful tone he'd used with the officer on the street.

My police escort told me to wait and started toward the detective. As he moved away, the lower half of the room came into view. I shrank back against the doorframe, repelled by the sudden onslaught of color. The vivid red of fresh blood was everywhere—staining the gold fibers of the rug, pooled on the parquet floor, splattered against an open filing drawer. It came from a man lying facedown on the floor and was most concentrated near his head, soaking his shirt and collar and matting his thin, gray hair.

“Hold it, McKee,” the detective barked at the approaching policeman.

The officer froze in his tracks.

“Who said you could come in here?”

“I found someone who knows the suspect,” the officer explained, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.

The detective's pale eyes turned to me. He only held my gaze for a few moments, but in that time, I had the sickening sensation that he was looking right through me, and could see every little guilty thing I'd ever done or thought of doing.

“Put her in the waiting room, and stay with her. Nobody comes in here unless I say so.”

The officer led me back into the waiting room, muttering to himself as he deposited me in one of the chairs and took up position by the hallway door.

I slumped back in the chair. The man in there was dead, and much as my mind tried to refuse the implication, it appeared that Eliza was being charged with his murder. There had to be some mistake. She couldn't have killed someone…could she?

I felt a sudden constriction in my chest as I recalled our conversation at the mission, seeing my words to her in a whole new light. With growing dread, I remembered how I'd encouraged her to confront the doctor, how I'd as good as said that he was the guilty one, not she. Dear God, I thought, my stomach dropping like a stone. I might as well have put a weapon in her hand.

Here I'd thought that all she'd needed was a little shoring up, when all the time, she'd been a powder keg waiting to explode. A wave of shame swept over me. I'd been so sure I understood her, so sure that I'd established a promising rapport. How could I have been so blind? I'd completely missed the signs: the deranged thinking, the destructive impulse that must have been there all along…

I felt a powerful urge to get up and run, and might well have done so if another policeman hadn't come in from the hallway just then with a dazed-looking woman in tow. The woman had disheveled brown hair and eyes that were swollen from crying. The officer guided her into a chair at the other end of the row before continuing to the door of the inner office to announce, “I've got Miss Hauptfuhrer.”

A minute later, the detective appeared in the doorway. He crossed the waiting room and sat beside the young woman, opening his memorandum book on his lap. “I'm sorry for your loss,” he muttered. Though he kept his voice low, his coarse Bowery accent ricocheted audibly off the paneled walls. “I know you already talked to the responding officer, but I've got a few more questions I need to ask.”

She nodded, barely looking at him, clearly in a state of shock. I watched her in morbid fascination. She was dressed in a tasteful wool suit, and her bearing, even under the weight of her grief, suggested the refinement that comes with travel and education. Although she was a few years older than I, I noticed that she wore no wedding band.

“Can you tell me what time your father came downstairs this morning?” the detective asked her.

“It was about half past eight,” she told him in a trembling voice. “Right after breakfast. He always comes…came down early, to get his paperwork out of the way.”

“Did he see patients here every day?”

She pressed a sodden handkerchief to her eyes. “He had hours every morning except Sunday. In the afternoons, he made house calls, except on Tuesdays, when he volunteered at the German Hospital.”

“Did he usually unlock the front door when he came downstairs?”

“Yes, he always opened it first thing, in case there were early arrivals.”

“What about the service entrance?” the detective asked, scribbling in the book. “Did he unlock that too?”

She shook her head. “The maid opens the basement door when she goes down to the kitchen, around six thirty, so the furnace man can get in to tend to the fire.”

“And at night?”

“She locks it up again at eleven, after the fire's been banked for the evening.”

“Where are the servants now?”

She drew a steadying breath. “Alice is our only boarder; she's a maid of all work. I take care of the upstairs rooms and the cooking, and a laundress comes in on Mondays to help with the wash.”

“Did the laundress come this morning?”

“She hasn't come in yet. She isn't due until eleven.”

“So Alice was the only servant on the premises at the time of the incident?”

“Yes.”

“Did she see or hear anything?”

“Well, I don't know. I haven't had a chance to speak with her. But she would have been in the basement, cleaning the breakfast dishes. I doubt she could have heard anything from there.”

The detective nodded to the nearest officer. “Go find the maid and tell her to stay put.” He turned back to Miss Hauptfuhrer. “What about the side door in your father's office, the one that leads out to the hall? Did he keep that locked as a rule?”

“Oh, no, there was no need. His patients always came in through the waiting room or the examining room. The hall door was just for Father's use.”

I glanced toward the inner office. Which room had Eliza come in from, I wondered, and how had she managed to overcome a man nearly twice her size? Had she snuck up on him, or hurled herself at him in a blind rage? I tried to picture both scenarios but found I couldn't. I remembered too clearly her soft voice and her gentle sorrow, and the glow on her face when she'd talked about Joy. All she'd wanted was to find out where her daughter was, and only Dr. Hauptfuhrer could tell her. What, then, could have prompted her to kill him?

Maybe she'd asked him where Joy was, and he had refused to tell her. In a person harboring sufficient rage, that might trigger a violent assault. But looking back over our conversation, I could find no evidence of such deep-seated anger in Eliza. She had no history of assault, nor had anything she'd said or done in our meeting suggested the presence of homicidal urges. As far as I could remember, I was the only one who'd been angry when she'd told me her sad tale.

Perhaps that was it, I thought, my stomach lurching again toward the floor. Perhaps my own reaction had stirred up long-buried emotions within her. But if that's what had happened, I'd certainly had no inkling of it at the time. Indeed, if anyone had asked me how she'd appeared when she left the church, I would have said she was the picture of optimism. Which only went to show how wrong I could be.

“You told the arresting officer that you recognized the suspect,” the detective was saying.

“Yes,” Miss Hauptfuhrer replied, “she's been a patient of my father for many years.”

“Do you have any idea why she'd want to kill him?”

“I keep asking myself that,” she said, her voice breaking, “but I can't come up with any answer.”

“Maybe she had a beef about a medical treatment.”

“No! My father was a wonderful doctor. He never received any complaints. Besides, I don't think her problems were very serious.”

“What were they?”

“Well, I couldn't tell you exactly. I'd have to go back through the records. But I'm familiar with my father's complicated cases, and I know that she wasn't one of them.”

“Where would those records be?” the detective asked, jotting in his notebook. “We located her file in the office cabinet, but it doesn't go back very far.”

“The rest are in the attic. We move the old ones up there every few years.”

“I'd like to see them, if I could.”

“I doubt you could make much sense of them. Father used a personal shorthand to record patient visits—just a few words describing the complaint, and the treatment if there was any.”

“Could you make sense of them?”

“Oh, yes. I had to learn to, early on, so I could help him with the billing.”

“Do you think you could go through Mrs. Miner's old records and let me know what you find?” the detective asked. “When you're feeling better, that is,” he added reluctantly.

“If you think it might help,” she answered, wiping her eyes.

The detective flipped to another page in his book. “You told the officer that your father had just been attacked when you came downstairs and found him. Did he say anything to you at that time?”

She shook her head. “No. He was already… He was already…” Whatever had been holding her together now apparently ran out, and she dissolved into helpless tears.

The detective grimaced. “All right, that's enough for now. Why don't you go back upstairs, and we'll call you when the coroner gets here.” He signaled to the crooked-nosed policeman to go with her.

Miss Hauptfuhrer rose unsteadily from her chair. As she did so, her head turned, and our eyes met. Her brow furrowed, as if she was trying to place me. I could only hold her gaze for a moment before looking away.

The detective started toward me as she was led out of the room. “Miss…Summerford?” he said, glancing down at his book.

I sat up straighter. “Yes.”

He tapped an index finger against his hat brim. “I'm Detective Sergeant Maloney.”

“How do you do,” I said hoarsely, wondering what, if anything, Eliza had told the police about my provocative advice.

“I understand you know the suspect,” he said, gazing down at me. His pale eyes were set deep in their sockets, underscored by purplish shadows.

“Yes, she's a patient.”

“A patient? You mean you worked for Dr. Hauptfuhrer?”

I felt a surge of relief. He didn't know, then. Not yet, anyway. “No, I've never met the doctor. She's my patient. I'm a doctor too.”

He scratched the bony skull under his hat brim. “You're a doctor?”

“That's right.”

“What, you deliver babies, that kind of thing?”

“I'm a psychotherapist.”

He began jotting this in his book. “And that is what, exactly?”

“I treat mental and nervous disorders.”

His hand paused over the book. “You were treating the suspect for a mental disorder?”

I shifted in my chair. Miss Hauptfuhrer apparently didn't know about her father's role in delivering Eliza's illegitimate child, or she would have told the detective. I was loath to be the one to reveal it. “Mrs. Miner lost a child a few years ago,” I answered vaguely. “She's had some difficulty recovering.”

“Was Dr. Hauptfuhrer aware that you were treating her?”

“I wouldn't know. I told you, I never met him.”

“So you didn't tell him she had mental problems.”

I frowned at him. Despite appearances, I didn't really know what had happened here. For Eliza's sake, I didn't want to jump to damning conclusions. The best I could do, I decided, was to tell him the truth about her mental state as I had believed it to be, until this morning.

“I'm not sure what you mean by mental problems, Detective,” I replied. “Mrs. Miner suffers from an emotional disorder, which in her case takes the form of a relatively mild, recurring despondency.”

He pursed his lips, not bothering to write this in his book. “Did you and she ever talk about the doctor?”