The Doctor Makes a Dollhouse Call (7 page)

Read The Doctor Makes a Dollhouse Call Online

Authors: Robin Hathaway

12/5 Mildred Pancoast's Diary:
Dear Diary,
 
 
Today we buried Tom. I am a widow and my poor children are fatherless. They say it was suicide. But I don't believe it. He didn't leave a note. And I'm sure he wasn't that unhappy. We still had good times. And there were the children. I blame it on those dolls. Somebody was out to get Tom. And I think it was somebody in the family. They worked their voodoo on him—through his doll. I'm so glad I didn't let the aunts make one of me. At least I'm safe. My children won
'
t be orphans. I wish they'd get rid of all those damned dolls. Drown them, burn them, bury them. Something! I remember that story by Agatha Christie
—And Then There Were None.
Those ten little Indian dolls on the dining room table. Whenever one broke, someone died. I always wondered why someone didn't hide them or smash them, destroy them somehow. They might have prevented all those murders. If we get rid of the dolls, maybe we can prevent more deaths. First Pamela. Now Tom. Who's next?
T
he day of the yard sale dawned brisk and bright. It was really a sidewalk sale because Philadelphia town houses are rarely blessed with front yards. Fenimore was in the midst of a lovely dream—walking hand in hand with Jennifer along a beach searching for seashells—when the harsh buzz of the doorbell jarred him awake.
“You're an early bird.” Fenimore squinted at Horatio on his front stoop, a dark figure against the bright sunshine.
“Big day, man.” He pushed past the pajama-clad doctor and headed for the cellar.
Wearily, Fenimore made his way upstairs to dress for this event that he had been dreading. He had tried to postpone it, advising them that it was the wrong time of year. But Mrs. Doyle had overridden him. “It's just the right time of year,” she insisted. “In December, people are always looking for something to put in a stocking or to give to that odd person.” Fenimore
disliked the term “odd person.” Was she implying that only
odd
people would want his things?
He had been ordered to dress appropriately. Not in his accustomed navy suit, white shirt, regimental-striped tie, and black oxfords. He rummaged through his closet, looking for the pair of old trousers he kept on hand for household emergencies, such as tightening a washer, tacking down a linoleum square, or replacing a smoke alarm battery—the full extent of his home maintenance skills.
“Meowrr.” His cat Sal had followed him into the closet and Fenimore had inadvertently closed the door on her. He hastily opened the door. The cat rushed out and disappeared under the bed. The first mishap in a day filled with mishaps, he predicted morosely. Sometime later, he reappeared downstairs clad in his old pants, a T-shirt that had been a nice shade of forest green before an overdose of bleach had rendered it a sickly gray, and his “kamikaze” sneakers. (Jennifer had christened them that, because, “Only someone bent on suicide would wear such dreadful things,” she said.)
Horatio was attempting to wiggle a battered bureau through the front door.
“Hey,” Fenimore stopped him. “Are we sure we want to get rid of that?” Except for a few scratches and a missing drawer it seemed in perfect condition.
“We're sure.” Mrs. Doyle came up behind him.
“When did you get here?” Fenimore felt ambushed, surrounded on all sides by the enemy. Even Sal had taken up a post on the stairs, blocking retreat in that direction.
“I've been here since seven—making these.” His nurse held out a handful of red stickers, each neatly decorated with a black price mark.
“How did you know what to charge?” Fenimore was mystified.
“Horse sense,” she snorted, going to Horatio's aid. Together they shoved the bureau through the doorway and carried it out to the sidewalk.
When Fenimore caught sight of his sidewalk, he was aghast. There was barely room for the skinniest pedestrian to slip between the accumulation of furniture, kitchenware, books, clothing, and knickknacks. Anxiously, he went out to examine his lost wares.
“Don't go takin' anything in again,” Horatio warned dangerously.
Plunging his hands conscientiously in his pockets, Fenimore surveyed the motley collection—the doorstop in the shape of an owl, the
Life
magazine displaying Elizabeth Taylor as a teenage bride, the pewter soap dish with the hinged top. He was reaching for the soap dish when Mrs. Doyle slapped a red sticker on it—75
, it read.
“Seventy-five cents? That belonged to my grandmother!”
“That's all it'll bring,” said his nurse, matter-of-factly.
“But the memories … ?”
“Of your grandmother washing her hands?”
“Well … er … yes.”
“Oh, very well,” she relented, peeling off the sticker. “Now mind, you put that on your bathroom sink and use it every day. If I find it back in the cellar, out it goes.”
“Yes, ma'am,” he said meekly, snatching up the soap dish and stuffing it into his pocket.
While he perused the rest of the cluttered sidewalk, a woman passerby joined him. They browsed in tandem. “Did you ever see such a collection of junk?” she said, irritably. “People have some nerve trying to palm off stuff that belongs in one place, and one place only—”
Fenimore looked at her.
“The city dump!” she said, and hurried down the street.
Turning toward the house, he caught sight of Mrs. Doyle and Horatio conferring on the front steps. He had never seen such camaraderie between his two employees. Usually at odds, today they seemed in perfect accord. For some reason this unnerved him. After casting a surreptitious glance his way, Mrs. Doyle disappeared inside. Horatio, whistling a tuneless air, rearranged some broken-down chairs that didn't require rearranging. A few minutes later Mrs. Doyle reemerged with a telephone message for Fenimore. Rafferty, his policeman friend, wanted a call. Happy to leave the litter of his past behind, Fenimore went to the phone.
“I've got two tickets to the Eagles game this afternoon. How 'bout it?”
What luck. He could escape this whole depressing business. “Great!”
“See you at Gate D, at one o'clock.”
 
It wasn't until the second half that it occurred to Fenimore to ask Rafferty, “Where did you get these tickets?”
“Your nurse called. Told me to pick them up at the box office. Damned nice of her to include me.”
Fenimore fidgeted and squirmed through the rest of the game.
When he turned into Spruce Street, he began to trot. When he saw the empty sidewalk in front of his house, his panic grew. The interior of the house was ominously silent. Even Sal wasn't there to greet him. With foreboding, he glanced in the waiting room. All the furniture seemed to be intact. After a quick survey of the inner office, he sighed with relief. Nothing missing there. His heart palpitated as he opened the cellar door and flicked on the light. Seven hundred square feet of immaculate concrete stretched before him. He could walk from one end of the cellar to the other unimpeded. But it wasn't until he ran his hand over the top of the hot water heater that he was really impressed. No dust.
As he made his way up the cellar stairs, Sal was waiting for him at the top. At least they hadn't sold her! He scooped her up and carried her over to his favorite armchair. Taped to its leather back was an envelope with his name on it. Letting Sal slide to the cushioned seat, he tore open the envelope. Two crisp, new, twenty-dollar bills fell into his hand, followed by a quarter, a nickel, and two pennies. Tucked inside was a note in Mrs. Doyle's precise penmanship: “Your cut (minus the cost of two Eagles tickets.)”
S
ince the loss of two children, in less than a month, Marie Pancoast's personality had undergone a dramatic change. Once cheerful and outgoing, she was now quick-tempered and withdrawn. Before, her family had been the focus of her universe, and sculpting a mere hobby or pastime. Now, she was hardly aware of her family (what remained of it) and sculpting occupied all her waking hours. She spent more and more time in her studio. The only way she could cope with her loss was to immerse herself in her work. When she was shaping a block of wood or stone into some intelligible form, she could bury her pain. But as soon as she stopped, it rushed back all the stronger for having been forgotten for a time.
As a result, she worked until she was exhausted, sometimes forgetting to eat or sleep. Often she slept on a cot that she kept in the studio for that purpose. Edgar was also distraught: torn between grieving over the loss of his children and watching the transformation of his wife. He neglected his work and began
to lose clients. Other architectural firms outbid him and succeeded in meeting the deadlines that he no longer cared about. He spent his days in the aunts' parlor staring at the newspaper, rarely turning a page. Every now and then, he would go up to the studio and beg his wife to come down and eat something or come home with him and sleep.
The aunts clucked over their brother continually, bringing him tea and coffee and treats to tempt him back into life. Susanne, the only remaining child, dropped by every day to see her parents and try to comfort them. Sometimes she brought the children, hoping to distract them. But they barely acknowledged Amanda and Tad, and it was usually left to the aunts to entertain them.
One day, a particularly pathetic ceremony took place in the garden. Mildred Pancoast had convinced the aunts that the dolls were in some way responsible for the tragedies. She insisted—in quite a hysterical scene—that they destroy them.
“If only you'd get rid of those damned dolls, there wouldn't be any more deaths,” she screamed at the shaken aunts. (No one in the family could bring themselves to refer to the deaths as “murders” yet.)
Although failing to see the logic of her request, out of deference to the poor widow's wishes, the aunts agreed to dispose of the dolls—and their clothes. Each doll had an intricately made wardrobe for every season of the year. It was especially painful to Emily to part with her doll's tiny fringed shawl, which bore a delicate butterfly embroidered on the back. And it nearly broke Judith's heart to give up her doll's miniature pair of black patent leather boots.
They chose a particularly blustery December day for this doleful task. Both wore overcoats. Judith wore a felt hat pulled down over her fuzzy curls and Emily tied a wool scarf under her chin. Judith carried the spade. Emily carried two shoe boxes—one filled with the dolls, the other with their clothes.
Judith tried to press the spade into the ground, but the earth was like stone. She could hardly make a dent in it. Emily offered to try, but Judith forbade it, remembering her sister's heart. Judith prowled around the garden, searching for a hole or crevice among the bare hydrangea bushes or in the dried-up vegetable patch. She paused at the bottom of the garden and beckoned to Emily. She had found a cavity—a sort of depression in the earth—possibly made by some animal. Judith directed Emily to lay the shoe boxes in it. Emily obeyed. Judith prowled the garden again until she found some loose soil and small stones she could pick up easily with her shovel. She had to make several trips back and forth, dropping the material on the shoe boxes, to cover them completely. When they were no longer visible, Emily pulled some weeds and dead grass over them for good measure. They lingered before starting back to the house, both feeling that something was missing. But what? A prayer? That hardly seemed suitable. Slowly, their heads bent against the wind, they made their way back to the house.
As they approached the back steps, Emily was in the lead. There was a hole in the bottom step where the wood had rotted away. Under normal circumstances, Edgar would have repaired it by now. But he had repaired nothing recently. And they had forgotten to tell Adam about it. Suddenly Emily's leg gave way under her and she let out a sharp cry. She had caught her foot
in the hole and fallen. Judith dropped the spade and ran for help.
 
By teatime Emily was in the Emergency Room of the Seacrest Hospital awaiting surgery. X rays had revealed a broken hip. Most of the Pancoast family was gathered in the lobby, their heavier sorrows overshadowed for the moment by this new emergency. Judith was allowed to stay with Emily until she was taken to the operating room, but she stepped into the lobby briefly to telephone Fenimore about the accident.
When the phone rang, Mrs. Doyle answered it. When she told Fenimore it was Judith Pancoast, his stomach contracted. Upon learning the reason for her call, he was almost relieved that it was nothing worse.
“Who is the cardiologist in charge?” he asked sharply.
“Dr. Lukens.”
“Ask him to call me right away. I want to fill him in on Emily's cardiologic history.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
Later, when Emily was safely in the recovery room, Judith called the doctor again to tell him the operation was a success.
“Well, that
is
good news!” He nodded vigorously in answer to Mrs. Doyle's gesticulated question. “Tell Emily I'll come down next week to cheer her up.”
“Oh, would you, Doctor? We do need cheering up. We just buried the dolls and all their clothes.”
“You what?”
“Well, Mildred felt the dolls were somehow to blame for our recent troubles, so we thought the best thing to do was bury
them in the garden. That's how Emily had her accident.”
“My word.” Fenimore paused, overcome by the enormity of his friends' sacrifice. “Well, leave it to me. I'll think of something. Have there been any other odd occurrences—connected with the dollhouse, I mean?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“Have the police been bothering you?”
“Not recently. But I suppose they'll be back.” Judith sighed.
“You can count on it. Well, give my best to Emily when she wakes up.”
Fenimore replaced the receiver and glanced over at Mrs. Doyle. Once she had heard the good news about Emily, she had gone back to work feverishly at her desk. Tonight was the third meeting of RUB—the karate class she had been conducting in his cellar. She was outlining the lesson for that night. When he asked Mrs. Doyle how her students were progressing, she had laughed menacingly. “I pity the first mugger who tackles one of my graduates,” she said grimly. “He'll rue the day!”
“And who is your best pupil?” asked Fenimore curiously.
“Oh, Amelia Dunwoody, without a doubt. She nearly knocked Mabel Parsons out with her karate chop.”
Fenimore shook his head. He felt almost sorry for those poor unsuspecting muggers lying innocently in wait for this band of little old ladies. Obviously, they would be no match for a member of the Red Umbrella Brigade.
The doctor went back to pondering how he might cheer up the Pancoast sisters.
In a flash, it came to him.

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