The Nanny (26 page)

“Oh, Victor!”

He ran for the guest closet where they kept the telephone directories.

“You haven't time to go through the Yellow Pages!”

“The doctor, Dr. Meducca was the one who got them!”

“The doc doesn't answer. I just tried before.”

“I'll go down.” Virgie was with him, just stayed long enough to order the detectives not to come with them. She told the detectives to stay where they were until Dr. Blair arrived. She was marvelous. When the elevator came up, the super was operating it.

“It's you, Mr. Fane, huh? When I saw it was eight buzzing I thought I'd better take her up myself.” Mr. Fane didn't answer him. Not a word was said. Mr. and Mrs. Fane ran to the doctor's office and Mr. Fane was going to ring the bell but Mrs. Fane stopped him. She said he should knock. She said if Joey was asleep, they didn't want to wake him. Mr. Fane knocked but no one came. Mr. Fane said he'd better ring then. He said, “You want me to call that undertaker, don't you? Well, if I don't get the name of the undertaker I can't call!”

So he reached into his pocket for it. “If it's the morticians which was here you want, they gave me their card.”
Sure on their toes
, he would have said.
Sure wanted to get the rest of the business, didn't they?
But Mr. and Mrs. were running back to the elevator before he could get the words out. He had said it to the mortician, who hadn't like it. He must remember to tell Molly tonight when he told her the rest.

Dr. Meducca was in the hall just inside the door on which Mr. Fane had just knocked. If Joey hadn't wandered off to the back of the office, he would have heard the knock, too. (Not that his hearing would have changed anything, of course.) But the knock did mean there was no more time to waste. Just before the knock Joey had become very restless and he had told the boy he wanted him to sleep. “Then when your parents come you'll be rested. Come on, I'll give you something to make you sleep.”

Of course Joey had refused. He would just do it. That the boy would yell was certain. That they couldn't break in until it was too late was just as certain. The door would take too long to break down, and he was going to do it in one of the inside treatment rooms which had no windows.

“Too late,” the mortician would say when they finally got him. Why didn't they answer? They didn't answer because they were cremating her now, this minute. “You told us that the deceased's daughter wished to go back to England at the earliest opportunity and take the deceased's ashes with her, so we have already …”

But they didn't say that, not that.

“Mister, this is a business, mister. Got to be run like a business. You already signed a release for that handkerchief.”

“Her daughter wants it. If I have her daughter telephone you will you get that handkerchief?”

Althea must be out. No answer.

When the boy came running back into the consultation room with the long blond strand of hair in his hand and the blood on the blond hair, Dr. Meducca's reaction was that he thought he had scalped someone. Scalped someone now.

Joey said, “It's my mommy's hair. I know it is. Her hair is all over the floor in there!”

And now he saw that the blood came from a cut on Joey's hand. “Where did you cut yourself?”

“When I picked up Mommy's hair. There was pieces of glass on the floor. Why did you cut my mommy's hair? I know doctors used to be barbers. My daddy told me that. I used to be scared of the barber and my daddy told me that doctors used to be barbers. Is that why you cut my mommy's hair?”

“No. My daughter did that.” Now he could see Roberta holding up the long glistening strand with the blood on it. Roberta scalping …

“Why? Why did she cut my mommy's hair?”

“Why? A long story, Joey!”
Why? Why Roberta? Why this kid? Why?

“Will you have to give me penicillin now? When I cut my toe on a can in school, the doctor had to give me penicillin.”

“Thank you, Joey,”
Dr. Meducca said inside.
“And for once, thank you, Roberta.”
Yes, Joey. I'll have to give you an injection of penicillin.” He got the syringe and held his hand out for Joey's arm. “We don't want any infection, now, do we?” Joey was moving away from his outstretched hand.

“You gotta wait. I gotta make up my mind. If I make up my mind, I can do anything.”

“I'll bet! Joey, I'll give you just three minutes to make up your mind.”

Virgie had to tell the detectives what her proof was so that the detective would get on the phone and the cremation business, like any other business, could be halted by the police.

“Hold it,” the detective said. “We're coming right over there. Hold it. Now they'll wait,” he said to Victor. “Before we go, though, I'd like you to give it to me again.”

Victor told him again that what the undertaker had called a handkerchief, what he had described in the air, with his finger, was a piece of the ruffled pillowcase which had been torn off in Mrs. Gore-Green's fight with the old woman.

“Maybe she knew it was proof, Victor! Maybe that was why she was holding it so tight that they would have had to—had to—” Virgie's wide eyes saw what they would have had to do. She closed her eyes, then opened them. “She died to save Joey, Victor!”

To Victor, the silence which followed showed that Mrs. Gore-Green had not saved him yet.

“I get it now,” the detective said. “I hope you're right. We'll have the lab check under the fingernails. Get the pillow, Sammy. Might as well take it now to match up with.”

“It happened the way Joey said. Please go now. Please go now.”

Victor went to the door to ask if they would telephone the minute they knew for sure. He noticed that they left one cop outside the door and one went down with the two detectives in the elevator. Now it was Virgie who wanted to go down. She wanted to tell Dr. Meducca. She couldn't wait to tell Dr. Meducca. He and his statement! “Honey, leave him alone,” Victor said. “You were absolutely right to keep Joey out of this, so don't ruin it now. If you'd followed my advice—but you didn't, so Joey's okay. Leave him there with the doctor, honey, just a little longer.”

“I want to see Joey. No.”

“He's probably asleep. You said so yourself. Aw, let him be, darling.”

“I'm going to make that doctor eat his statement!”

“He can eat it later, Virgie. There's plenty of time to make him eat it later. In the meantime, how about having that drink I fixed for you?” But she shuddered away from a highball, so he suggested coffee instead, but saw that now she could not go into the kitchen. But he wanted to talk to her. He had to talk to her. “Virgie, let's wait for Dr. Blair—and we want to get that phone call, don't we?”

“Let's go down and get Joey.”

“Then as a favor to me let Joey wait there. As a favor to me. Virgie, you were marvelous up to now. Virgie, let him stay with the doctor. For us. Before we get Joey, you and I have to get straight, darling. Aw, let me make my peace with you first, darling, please! It won't hurt Joey to wait! Help him—look. When we get him, it can really be the two of us. Because of your faith in him, Joey's okay. Because of you, nothing will spoil his assurance that he was justified in protecting himself.”

“He was!”

“He was. He was. Virgie, you don't have to justify Joey to me. I want to justify myself to you.”

“You don't need to, Victor.” She kissed him hard. “I'm the one—”

“No, I—” Victor said.

Just as they were about to drive to the undertaker's, Detective Sigerest remembered and he asked Patterson, the uniformed cop, to get this doctor's statement, which they still hadn't seen, from him and bring it to the undertaker's. He told Patterson to try the doctor's apartment. Since the phone in the office didn't answer, the doc must have taken the kid into his apartment and bedded him down there.

Roberta had gone back to sleep. The ability to will herself to sleep through anything was one of her talents. She was awakened by Patterson's ring and, sitting up in bed, heard, on the street outside, the scream of the siren on Detective Sigerest's car. Thinking it over, wide awake, Roberta took the gun and, in her nightgown, barefoot, tiptoed to the door and waited until the ringing stopped. Then she heard a cop voice out in the lobby asking something and then the mick saying, “Yes, sir. She's in there. I know she is.”

While she called the mick all the names she knew, Roberta unfastened the safety catch of the gun. She stood for a moment, as if to see whether that was enough, but it wasn't. Nothing was enough for him because after he had said he'd get the hell out, he had called the cops in.

She held the gun in her right hand, behind her, then opened the front door with her left, and it was because she used her left hand that she opened the door wider than she had intended to, and it was because the door was that wide open that Patterson, now across the lobby, trying the doctor's office bell, had time to draw his gun and shoot her.

Naturally, he didn't know that her shot had not been aimed at him but at Patrick, who had been standing in the lobby, watching him.

Roberta's gun missed Patrick, but the policeman didn't miss.

It was Patrick who got to Roberta first. (Patterson had never shot at anything but a target before and was momentarily stunned.) Patrick, on his knees, was blubbering because he guessed why she had tried to shoot him. “I couldn't leave without my wallet,” he said, blubbering. “Sure, all my cash was in the wallet! I couldn't leave.” Then he saw that she was still breathing and yelled for Patterson to get the doctor, that it was the doctor's girl.

“If it was backfire why are they wanting a doctor?” Joey asked. He had rolled up his pajama sleeve. His skinny arm was bare.

“I'll go see, Joey. You wait here.” He put the syringe for the boy on the top shelf of the instrument cabinet, and the one with the larger amount on the bottom shelf; then he locked the cabinet so the boy couldn't meddle with them while he was gone.

She was dead before he got to her. He closed her eyelids and covered her with his coat. He said to himself, “One down but one to go.” By the time he cleared the apartment out and got back to the lobby, the boy's mother and father were there, but that wasn't going to make any difference. He let them into the office and the mother ran to Joey and got down on her knees and hugged and kissed him while he told Mr. Fane about Roberta. He told Mr. Fane that they could take Joey upstairs with them in a few minutes, a few minutes. (How many did he need?) He put his hand on Mrs. Fane's shoulder, authoritatively. “Joey cut himself, Mrs. Fane. I was just about to give him an injection of penicillin. Wasn't I, Joey?”

“I don't want to, now.”

“Come on, Joey, just because your mommy and daddy are here? Your mommy and daddy can't stop germs, can they?”
They can't. Not germs like you. Not black plagues like you. One down but one to go
. He took the syringe out of the cabinet and pulled out a chair for Joey to use.

“Let me hold you, Joey. Sit on my lap, darling.” He wouldn't sit, but stood between her knees while the doctor went to get the alcohol to swab his arm with. She could feel how afraid of the needle he was by the way he trembled, and to take his mind off it, she began to talk. “We know now that Mrs. Gore-Green did fight Nanny to stop her, Joey.”

His eyes were on the wad of cotton in the doctor's hand. “Yeah. The lady told you.” His eyes were on the yellow rubber tubing the doctor was tying around his arm.

Dr. Meducca held the syringe up. “So the lady told you, Mrs. Fane?”

“Yes, doctor,” she said, hating his smile, hating him so that she spoke loud and fast. “Joey's lady
showed
us the piece of the pillow case which tore off in the fight she had with Nanny and which matches the piece from the pillow case on the floor!”

Dr. Meducca knew that he believed it when his finger pressed the syringe and death shot into the air.

About the Author

Merriam Modell, pen name Evelyn Piper, was born in Manhattan, New York, in 1908. She is known for writing mystery thrillers of intricate, suspenseful plotting that depict the domestic conflicts of American families. Her short stories have appeared in the
The New Yorker
and two of her novels,
Bunny Lake Is Missing
and
The Nanny
, were adapted into major Hollywood films.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1964 by Evelyn Piper

Cover design by Julianna Lee

ISBN: 978-1-5040-2356-6

This 2016 edition published by
MysteriousPress.com
/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

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