A Deadly Affection (6 page)

Whatever part I may or may not have played in the doctor's death, I wasn't going to improve things for myself by concealing information from the authorities. If I meant to align myself with the forces of law and order, now was the time to do it. And yet I hesitated. “Well, of course, I only met with her one time,” I hedged.

“And she didn't mention him?”

I swallowed. My throat suddenly felt as parched as salt cod. “No,” I said, “she never mentioned him.” My God, I'd done it; I'd actually lied to him. Did that make me an accomplice to the crime?

He cocked his head, studying me with those unnerving eyes. “So tell me, Doctor, why do you think she did it?”

“I don't even know exactly what she's accused of, Detective. Perhaps you could tell me what happened here.”

“Sure,” he said with a shrug, “I could do that. What happened is that the woman you've identified as Elizabeth Miner entered the doctor's private office sometime between eight thirty and nine a.m., approached the doctor from behind, and struck him fatally on the neck with a sword.”

“A
sword
?” I repeated in astonishment.

He flipped back a few pages in his book. “A scimitar,” he elaborated, exaggerating the pronunciation. “Like the Arabs use. In the desert.”

“I know what it is. I just can't quite picture Eliza walking into the doctor's office carrying a sword.”

“The weapon belonged to the doctor. According to his daughter, it was a present from Czar Nicholas, a leftover from”—he glanced back at the page—“the Caucasus War. It seems Hauptfuhrer and some other bigwigs were invited to Russia over the summer to see if they could help the czar's son. You know, the bleeder. The sword was kind of a thank-you. The doc must have been pretty proud of it, because he kept it on a stand on his desk. Which is where Mrs. Miner must have found it when she came in.”

I was still digesting this information when I heard the street door open and shut, followed by the stamp of heavy feet.

“Damn!” exclaimed a burly, bearded man as he came through the door into the waiting room. “It's colder than a witch's tit out there.” He caught sight of me, and his chapped cheeks turned even redder. “Beg pardon, miss; I didn't realize there was a lady present.”

“He's in there,” the detective said, tilting his head toward the inner office.

“You finished with him?”

“He's all yours.”

“Have you got an ID?” the bearded man asked.

“His daughter's upstairs.” The detective instructed the crooked-nosed officer, who had returned to his post at the door, to go back up and fetch her.

The bearded man, who I deduced must be the coroner, lumbered past us into the inner office, pulling a draft of cool air behind him.

“Detective,” I began tentatively when he was gone, “may I ask if anyone questioned Eliza about what happened before they took her away?”

“The arresting officer talked to her.”

“Could you tell me what she said?”

He looked me up and down, the pale eyes calculating. “Sure, why not?” he said finally, with a baring of teeth I supposed was meant as a smile. “We're both on the same side, right?”

I tried, not very successfully, to smile back.

“According to the suspect, she came to the doctor's office to ask for a prescription,” he began in a singsong voice that was clearly intended to suggest incredulity. “The doctor answered the front door, told her to wait in the examining room, and said he'd be right with her. He went into the adjoining office and closed the door. She doesn't know how long she waited but it seemed like a long time. After a while, she knocked on the connecting door and called out his name, but he didn't answer. She opened the door and saw the doctor lying in a pool of blood. She went over to see if she could help and realized he was dead.” He shrugged. “End of story.”

I sat up, feeling a flutter of hope. “Isn't it possible, then, that someone else came into the office while Mrs. Miner was waiting in the examining room? A common thief, perhaps? He could have—”

I stopped. Miss Hauptfuhrer had returned, accompanied by Officer McKee. Waiting until she had crossed into her father's office, I lowered my voice and continued, “He could have come right in through the unlocked front door and killed the doctor for his valuables.”

But the detective was shaking his head. “Miss Hauptfuhrer found the suspect standing over the victim's body, with the sword at her feet and blood all over her skirt. Besides, the doctor was wearing a fancy fob watch and a very nice gold ring, neither of which were taken.”

I sank back in my chair.

“There's no question she did it,” he said. “The only thing left to fill in is why.” He waited, watching me expectantly.

A muffled cry reached us from the inner office. The next minute, Miss Hauptfuhrer flew out with her hands over her face and ran sobbing into the hallway. She was followed more slowly by the ambulance crew, now bearing a loaded stretcher.

Maloney got up and approached the coroner, who was bringing up the rear. “So, is he dead?” he drawled.

“He's dead.” The coroner handed Maloney the certificate over the draped body. “I understand you've got a suspect in custody?”

“One of his patients,” Maloney confirmed. “It looks like an open-and-shut case.”

The coroner nodded. “I don't think there's much doubt about the cause of death, but I should have the autopsy results by tomorrow afternoon.”

“I'll keep the area sealed until then.”

The coroner signaled to the ambulance crew to move out.

“Wait!” I pushed myself to my feet. “Could I see the wound?”

The coroner frowned. “It's not a pretty sight, miss,” he warned.

“It's all right,” I told him. “I'm a doctor.”

He glanced toward Maloney.

The detective eyed me with pursed lips, his gaze inscrutable. “She can't disturb anything, can she?”

The coroner shrugged. “Not so long as she just looks.”

“Go on, then,” the detective said to me. “Look away.”

Crossing to the stretcher, I folded back the sheet and gazed down at the face of Dr. Herman Hauptfuhrer. It was a handsome face despite its bluish cast, past middle age but not yet jowly, with long, dark eyelashes and a silver-dusted mustache. It was his eyes, though, that seized my attention. Unlike the cloudy eyes of the nameless cadavers I was accustomed to, these stared up at me clearly—and, it seemed, accusingly—in their unblinking directness.

Drawing a deep breath, I pulled the cloth lower to reveal the wound. It was on the right side of his neck, as wide as my index finger and angled slightly downward. Once again, I tried to reconcile my impressions of Eliza with this proof of vicious assault—and once again, I failed. I positioned my hands over the corpse's temples, glancing at the coroner. “May I?”

He bowed. “By all means,” he replied with an exaggerated sweep of his arm.

I grasped the head and started to tilt it for a better look, then let go reflexively as my fingertips registered the still-warm skin. I stared down at the white marks my fingers had left on the temples, where the lividity wasn't yet fixed, struck afresh by the enormity of what had occurred. Just an hour ago, this man had been eating breakfast; now, perhaps because of my careless words to Eliza, he would eat and breathe no more.

Struggling to regain a semblance of detachment, I took hold of the head once more and tipped it to the side to open the gash. Rigor mortis had not yet set in, and it turned easily on its stem, revealing the full extent of the damage. The main blood vessels and trachea, I saw, had been completely severed, while the esophagus was sliced halfway through. It was a cruel wound, inflicted with clear and deadly intent. I released the head and stepped back.

“Seems it only took one stroke,” the detective mused, coming to stand beside me. “One clean stroke, coming down from above, while the doctor was squatting in front of the filing cabinets.”

“How do you know he was squatting?” I asked him.

“From the position of the body, and the fact that one of the bottom file drawers was open. We're guessing he was putting away the papers he'd come down to work on when the suspect struck him from behind.”

Yes, I could see it all more clearly now. Eliza demanding to know where her daughter was. The doctor turning her down, refusing to discuss the matter any further as he went back to filing his papers. Eliza, aflame with the injustice I'd convinced her had been perpetrated against her, grabbing the sword from the desk and inflicting the fatal blow. I shook my head, trying to dislodge the disturbing images from my mind. This must be why the detective had let me look: to shock me into accepting Eliza's guilt and ensure my full cooperation.

“Are we done here?” the coroner asked.

“We're done,” the detective said.

The coroner pulled the sheet back up over the corpse and signaled to the stretcher bearers to move out.

The detective turned back to me. “So what have we got?” Counting off on his fingers, he summarized, “We've got the suspect standing over the victim's body, covered with the victim's blood; we've got the murder weapon on the floor two feet from where she's standing; and we've got some very nice finger impressions on the sword handle that I'm confident will match her prints.” He shrugged, spreading his hands palms up. “In other words, it's a clear-cut case, which is what I'm going to tell the boys from headquarters when they arrive. Who knows? This might even be the first New York case to win a homicide conviction based on fingerprint evidence.” He leaned closer, peering at me intently. “Which means, Dr. Summerford, that the only way you can help your patient now, the
only
way, is by telling me why she did it. Maybe she had a good reason. If there are any mitigatin' circumstances that could make things easier on her, you oughta let me know.”

Maybe he was right, I thought frantically; maybe if her reasons were known, the charges against her would be reduced, or a jury might at least be more sympathetic. But if I told him about our conversation, I'd not only be handing the prosecution a motive, I'd be revealing my own role in the murder as well. So instead, I stalled for time.“You must understand, Detective Maloney, that anything my patient tells me, whether or not it has a bearing on this case, is strictly confidential. I would have to ask her permission before I could repeat anything she has said to me.”

His pale eyes narrowed, but he replied pleasantly enough, “Sure, you go ahead and get permission. Then we'll talk.” He jotted something on a page of his book and ripped it out. “Give this to Officer Callahan, the arresting officer. He'll make sure you get a chance to see her.”

I stared down at the paper. “But…where will I find her?”

“Harlem Police Court.” He took the paper back and wrote down the address. “Callahan will take her there for her arraignment as soon as he's finished booking her. They ought to be there for a couple of hours.”

I slid the paper numbly into my pocket and followed him out of the room. As we passed through the hallway, I glanced up the staircase toward Miss Hauptfuhrer's living quarters, feeling a disturbing kinship. The doctor's daughter wasn't so very different from me, after all: an older, unmarried woman, living a quietly productive life in the lee of her father's protection. Things like this weren't supposed to happen to people like her. To people like
us
. I couldn't help thinking how dreadfully quiet the house would seem to her in the days to come, with nothing to keep her company but the tick of the clock and the endlessly repeating memory of discovering her father's brutalized body…

“Detective,” I mused aloud as we approached the front door, “you said that Miss Hauptfuhrer found Mrs. Miner standing over her father's body. Did she tell you why she happened to come down to his office when she did?”

I thought he hesitated slightly before answering. “She heard screaming through the heating vent.”

“You mean she actually heard her father being attacked?” I asked in horror.

“Nah, someone screaming for help.”

I pulled up short. “Screaming for help? Who was it?”

“She says it was Mrs. Miner.”

“Mrs. Miner was screaming for help?”

“So she says.”

“But why would she scream for help if she'd just—”

“I've seen it before,” he broke in with a shrug. “Something sets 'em off, they pull the trigger, then they get hysterical when they realize what they've done. It's as if for just that split second when they commit the crime, the devil is talking in their ear.” He pulled the door open.

Yes, I supposed it could have happened just like that: a moment of unpremeditated violence, triggered by thoughts of blame and revenge. Only in this case, the voice in the killer's ear may very well have been my own. “Good-bye for now, Dr. Summerford,” the detective called after me, as I stumbled past him out the door. “I'll be talking to you again, real soon.”

I broke through the handful of lingering gawkers and lurched blindly down the sidewalk, having no idea where I was going but desperate to get away. Images of the slain doctor seemed to be burned into the backs of my eyelids, while bits of my conversation with the detective kept repeating over and over in my mind like an endless organ-grinder's tune. Worse than the gore, though, worse than the memory of Eliza's dazed face or the detective's stony conviction, was the fear that I, once again, was at least partly responsible.

I didn't know what I was going to say to Eliza when I saw her at the police court. If only there was someone I could confide in beforehand, someone who could assure me that things weren't as bad as they seemed and tell me what I ought to do now. But who? Not my mother, of course, And certainly not Papa.

At the end of the street, I turned left to avoid a baby carriage and, lacking any clear destination, continued walking south. A persistent wind lashed at my eyes, blurring the sidewalk under my feet as one block ran into another. It wasn't fair, I thought angrily, wiping the tears away. I wasn't the one who'd killed the doctor. I may have failed to recognize Eliza's state of mind—may even have provoked her, unintentionally—but I wasn't the one who'd raised the sword and struck a man dead. Why should my career, my professional reputation—and perhaps worst of all, my father's opinion of me—be wrecked because of someone I barely knew? Perhaps I ought to tell the detective about Eliza's lost baby after all, without mentioning my advice to her, and let Eliza deal with the consequences of her actions. I could go back there right now and be done with it.

But I knew that I wouldn't. I couldn't just abandon her. Because if I did and she was sentenced to life in prison or worse, a piece of me would have to go with her.

I'd come to the end of another block. Looking up at the street sign, I discovered that I'd reached the intersection of Madison and Seventy-Third Street. I squeezed my book bag against my chest in a spasm of relief; suddenly, I knew just where to go. I turned left and ran down the sidewalk, my legs still wobbly from shock. I was over an hour late, but with any luck, he'd still be at home. The railed stoop of his brownstone reached out in welcome up ahead. Bounding toward it, I hopped up the steps and rapped sharply on the door.

The maid who answered my knock assured me that Professor Bogard was still in. I waited in the parlor while she went to inform him of my arrival, warming my hands in front of the fire, feeling a little steadier with each passing minute. If anyone could give me a fair assessment of my handling of Eliza, it was the professor. I glanced at the mementos of an illustrious career that covered the parlor walls: posters from his well-attended lectures, tinted daguerreotypes of distinguished colleagues, smaller tintypes featuring the professor in exotic locales. I spotted a recent photograph in the circular, box camera format, and drew closer. It was of my graduating class, taken the spring before the professor left Johns Hopkins to devote himself to lecturing full-time. He was standing at the end of the front row, smiling confidently at the camera, while I held pride of place on his right, my blurry face turned in his direction.

I felt a small thrill, even now. I'd scarcely believed it when he'd asked me to continue as his research assistant after graduation. I'd known he'd been pleased with my prior work—the paper we co-wrote on Myer's theory of extra-marginal consciousness had been particularly well received—but I was sure there were many people more qualified than I who would have jumped at the opportunity to assist him. I thanked my lucky stars that we had remained in close contact so that I could call on him now for help.

The maid returned and led me down the hall to the professor's study, knocking twice on the door before she pushed it open.

“Genevieve!” cried the professor, rising behind his desk on sight of me. “I wondered what had become of you.”

His plump torso was clothed in a canary-yellow waistcoat so bright it made his white beard glow. Despite the brilliance of his attire, however, my eyes were drawn immediately to the drab little man sitting across from him. “I…I'm sorry I'm late,” I stammered, struggling to hide my dismay as the seated man rose more slowly to his feet.

“Never mind. There's still a little time,” the professor assured me. “Dr. Mayhew and I have a luncheon appointment at Sherry's, but we don't have to leave for another quarter of an hour.” He gestured toward the other man. “You know Dr. Mayhew, I believe?”

I nodded. I knew him all right; he was the professor who'd given me the drawing assignment on penile mechanics. “Professor.”

“Dr. Summerford,” he said, tipping his head.

“Mayhew's just arrived from Baltimore,” Professor Bogard explained as we all sat down. “He's going to be teaching at the College of Physicians and Surgeons for the remainder of the year. Perhaps it's fortunate that you were delayed; now you can have the benefit of two minds, as it were.”

I smiled with an effort. In contrast to Professor Bogard, Mayhew was a study in muted gray—gray suit, gray thinning hair, overwaxed gray mustache. His only compelling features were his bright little eyes, which were watching me now as a snake might watch a tethered mouse.

“Perhaps I should come back later,” I suggested, “when you have more time.”

“No time like the present,” the professor said breezily. “Besides, I'm leaving town tomorrow on a lecture tour, so I'll be spending the afternoon packing.” To Mayhew, he explained, “I've agreed to supervise Genevieve's clinical work here in the city in return for her help with my research. She's developing a new therapy technique based on work she did with Herbert Cassell, applying the rational psychotherapy approach within a class format.”

“Is that right?” Mayhew asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“Yes, I'm employing Cassell's reeducation techniques to relieve my patient's physical symptoms,” I explained, “by correcting the faulty thoughts and emotions that underlie them.”

His other eyebrow rose to join the first. “How very…novel.”

“It's fairly well established that emotional trauma can affect the nervous system on a physiological level,” I countered. “In the same way that unhappy thoughts can decrease gastric secretions, leading to digestive disease, unhappy emotions elicited by trauma can negatively affect the nervous system, leading to physical symptoms. It follows that if you change the emotions that are linked to the trauma, you should be able to make those symptoms go away.” I realized that, as so often happened in his presence, I was talking too fast and too much in an attempt to forestall his ridicule.

“And you expect to accomplish all that with several patients at once?” he drawled.

“It's been done before in other contexts. With depressive consumptives, for instance. Cassell's class model is tailor-made for people who've shared similar traumas.”

“Oh, I'm sure your precedents are sound. May I congratulate you, then, on a successful venture so far?”

I blinked at him, knowing he couldn't possibly have found out about Eliza but feeling somehow exposed nonetheless. “Well, it…it's really too early to say,” I finally answered. “Yesterday was my first class.”

“Yes, yes, your first class!” exclaimed Professor Bogard, glancing at the clock. “Tell us, Genevieve, how did it go?”

The ticking of the clock filled the silence as they waited for my response. I couldn't possibly tell the professor about Eliza's arrest in front of Mayhew. But I needed to hear his advice, and I didn't know when I'd have another opportunity. I decided I would have to try to present the core problem without giving too much away.

I began with a brief description of the class members and their symptoms, before casually mentioning that one patient in particular had caught my interest. Trying my best to ignore Mayhew, who was now sprawled sideways in his chair with his chin propped skeptically on his palm, I sketched Eliza's history and her private revelations to me after class. I didn't tell them the name of the doctor, or that I had encouraged Eliza to confront him. Nor did I mention that the doctor had been murdered just a few hours before.

“What did you make of her statements about the baby girl?” Professor Bogard asked when I was done.

“I suppose what concerned me most was her overwhelming guilt. I felt it was important to suggest that she wasn't the only one responsible for what happened.”

“For what she says happened, you mean,” Mayhew interjected. “You didn't accept it at face value, I hope.”

So he was no longer content to belittle just me, I thought; now he sought to discredit my patients as well. “Are you suggesting that there is no daughter?” I asked him. “That she's making it all up?”

“I'm suggesting that it may be a product of her unconscious, Dr. Summerford,” he corrected. “You do remember the unconscious?”

I stared at him in surprise. When the unconscious motive theories had started trickling in from abroad during my first years at medical school, Mayhew had been their loudest detractor, pronouncing them “factually unsupported” and “prone to luridly sexual interpretation.” Now that the great Stanley Hall had taken up the cause, however, calling for a grand symposium to formally introduce the theories to America, he seemed to have changed his tune. I turned to Professor Bogard, waiting for him to pooh-pooh Mayhew's farfetched assertion. But to my surprise, he was nodding in agreement.

“We'd certainly have to question the truth of her story,” the professor said. “You say the Reverend never mentioned a daughter?”

“Well, no,” I said, scrambling to follow this line of thinking, “but he only came to the parish a few years ago. I assume he arrived after the daughter was born.”

“Or the whole birth story is a hysterical fantasy,” Mayhew persisted. “You did consider the possibility?”

I felt a flush creeping up my temples. “I saw nothing in her file or in her interactions with me to suggest such a thing.”

“That might indicate more a failure of observation than a refutation of the fact, might it not?” he asked with a shrug.

“You say her son suffocated while she was taking a bath,” Professor Bogard broke in, seemingly oblivious to Mayhew's needling.

“Yes,” I told him. “That's in Reverend Palmer's records.”

He drummed his fingers over his waistcoat. “From what the Reverend told you about the hours she spends in church, I think we can safely say she holds herself responsible for the death.”

“I expect that's true,” I agreed.

“One can only imagine the pain such a belief would cause,” he went on. “It could, quite literally, become unbearable. In such a case, the fantasy of another, living child might provide some relief.”

I sat slowly back in my seat.

“The doctor's involvement is a nice touch,” Mayhew said. “She doesn't just give the baby up; it's taken from her forcibly, leaving her helpless and therefore, in this scenario, blameless.”

I didn't know whether to be intrigued or horrified by their suggestion. If there really was no baby girl, then there was no reason for Eliza to have killed the doctor. At least, no rational reason. But then again, if she believed there was a baby, I supposed the result might have been the same. It would all depend on the power and persistence of the fantasy. “Surely, Professor, it would be difficult for her to maintain such a fantasy if all those around her knew it to be untrue,” I ventured. “She'd have to doubt its reality on some level, wouldn't she?”

“To the contrary,” Mayhew answered, stroking his mustache. “To her, it would be very real indeed. The greater her guilt, the more energy she would have to invest in the defense against it. The mind, Dr. Summerford, is more complex than you give it credit for.”

Still addressing Professor Bogard, I persisted, “But what if a key player in the fantasy were to repudiate it? What if she confronted the doctor, for example, and he insisted that none of it had ever happened? Might that be sufficient to pierce the hysterical belief?”

“Not necessarily,” Bogard replied. “The fantasy would be protecting her from powerful feelings of guilt and incompetence—providing a relief valve, as it were. It wouldn't be easy to dispel. If one were to try without defusing those emotions first…” He shook his head.

“What? What would happen then?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? Let's just say it would be best not to find out.” He must have sensed my distress, for he added in a not unkindly tone, “You must be patient, my dear. I know the desire to see immediate results when you're just starting out can be very strong, but overnight cures are rare in our line of work. You have to uncover the underlying complex before the symptoms will disappear. Take your time, and get to know the patient in your weekly sessions. That's where the cure will take place.”

I don't think he could have made me feel worse if he had tried. It had never occurred to me that Eliza's story might all be a hysterical fantasy. If they were right, then Dr. Hauptfuhrer was completely blameless—and my own failure all the more glaring. “But what if she really did have another child?” I pleaded.

“Let's examine that possibility, shall we?” Bogard said brightly, as though we were in class and this was all just some academic exercise. “We have before us an unmarried girl, carrying a bastard in her womb. On the one hand, she is deeply ashamed of her illicit sexual activity and the pregnancy it has initiated. On the other, she can't help but feel some natural affection for the infant growing within her.”

“Producing,” Mayhew chimed in, “an irreconcilable conflict: one part of her wants to love and protect the child, while another wants to destroy the symbol of her shame.”

“And so,” Bogard continued, slapping his palm against his blotter, “she projects her destructive urges onto the doctor who delivers it, bringing us right back where we were before: with this fantasy wherein the doctor forces her to give the child up against her wishes, allowing her to deny her own hatred for the baby at the same time she rids herself of it!” They beamed at each other over the desktop.