Touch and Go

CHAPTER 4

The first contributions to what Kemp liked to call his Letters from America arrived at the same time as an area of high pressure also from across the Atlantic which brought hot weather to Newtown in mid-July. The compliments slip from Eikenberg & Lazard seemed to distance itself from the other contents despite being marked by the initials ‘DVG’, the envelope itself was designated Private and Confidential and sent to Kemp’s home address. He felt like the recipient of subversive mail.

There were photostat copies of five reports, two by Alfred Orme and three by Bernard Shulman. Fortunately the package had arrived on a Saturday morning so Kemp was able to spread them out between the butter dish and the marmalade jar and give them his whole attention.

Glancing over the typescript, Kemp guessed that Alfred Orme must be as old as his machine—surely no one had called a child Alfred for some fifty years. Reading confirmed this, the style was pedestrian and the material set out without frills in a manner with which Kemp was familiar as he had perused plenty of police statements which had the same lack of literary merit. Orme was probably a retired officer augmenting his pension by doing routine investigative work for legal firms. He would be thorough and discreet but possibly unimaginative. He was no great typist judging by the pepper-and-salt effect on the paper which hadn’t been improved by photocopying.

The first report was dated 7.2.89. which Kemp took a moment to work out; he could never see why Americans, who were supposed to be logical people, should put the month first, then the day, then the year.

Tuesday, July 2—Report by Alfred Orme

Called at Argus Automobiles, a firm known to me as a reputable rental car agency. Spoke with Frank Miner, aged forty-two, clean licence, no police record, employed by Argus five years. No complaints by employers. Wears chauffeur’s uniform, peaked cap, a clean, tidy, well-set-up man of honest appearance.

Showed no reluctance to answering questions about Mrs Muriel Probert when I disclosed my interest as an old friend of the deceased who had lost touch and been shocked to hear of her death. As instructed, I produced photograph. Though taken over two years ago Miner recognized it immediately, commenting the subject was thinner and the features more lined when he knew her. During the last six months he had driven Mrs Probert to the Mount Sinai Medical Centre at least once a week.

Engaging him in conversation Miner said she was a nice lady, and talked to him when she was well enough. Because he had been sympathetic to her condition it got that he was the driver she always asked for. (Confirmed by Mr Sherrett, Manager for Argus, who said Miner was in fact the only driver Mrs Probert would have.)

‘Did Mrs Probert make calls anywhere else on these trips?’ I asked Miner.

‘Not often. Lately hardly at all except mebbe she’d ask me to stop at her bank—that’s Chase up by the hospital. Early on she used to do some shopping and get me to wait at the department stores for her. But not for the last month or so. She got pretty low what with the treatment and all …’

‘I just wondered why she didn’t stop off and visit with some of her old friends.’

‘I suppose the treatments just tired her out … I’d help her into the cab when the nurse at the hospital brought her down, and all she’d do was wrap that Scotch rug of hers round her knees and say: “Get me home quick, Frank.” She’d probably just about had enough. She weren’t in no fit state to go visiting.’

‘I brought the conversation round to the weeks immediately prior to Mrs Probert’s death. Miner remembered she’d visited her bank. It had been cold and she’d put the rug round her shoulders when she went in because she said she might have to wait, and she had it over her arm when she came out. (I didn’t press the questions here as I understand the visit to the bank has been confirmed.) My instructions were not to arouse any suspicion in Mr Miner that this was anything more than the concern of an old friend. He volunteered the information about the rug because he’d told Mrs Probert that his aunt had brought one like it from Scotland, but it did give me the opportunity to ask if Mrs Probert was ever forgetful and left it in his cab. He was indignant at that and said she was never forgetful—and not like some of his passengers.

I then asked him about her last visit to the hospital. Without any prompting from me Miner told me what happened.

‘Surprised me no end when she wanted me to make a stop on the way home. I’d taken her to the hospital, usual time of two o’clock. I was to be back same time as always, three-thirty. Nasty day, it was, there’d been snow and the streets were slushy, so I was a bit late getting back but it didn’t matter, she wasn’t ready anyhow. When she did come out the nurse had to help her. She looked really done up. Anyways, once in the car she said to take her to these lawyers, Eikenberg and something, and gave me the address. Like I said, it were slow driving so it must have been well after five when we got there. I got her out of the cab and in at the door but she wouldn’t let me take her no further. Said I’d just to wait. She weren’t in there more’n half an hour. When she came out I helped her into the car and drove her back to her apartment.’

As this was the last time Miner had driven Mrs Probert I was able to press his memory of the occasion.

‘I guess she knew it were the last time,’ he said, and he shakes his head.

I asked him why he thought that, and at this point he made a series of rambling remarks which I summarize.

Miner had become quite attached to Mrs Probert, said she was a pleasant lady, not like some he had to drive. When the car was not re-ordered he telephoned the apartment to be told by the Concierge that his services would no longer be required as Mrs Probert was now too ill to go out. Miner said he was not surprised. When she left the hospital that afternoon the nurse had said goodbye to her, usually she said see you next time. He thought that meant they had told Mrs Probert they could do no more for her, and that was why she made the visit to the lawyers. Stands to reason, he said, she wanted to make her will. I was able to ask him at that point if she was perhaps carrying anything like that when she came out of the door at Eikenbergs. He said she was carrying nothing except her crocodile-skin handbag, and that was closed. He had jumped out of the car as soon as she appeared in the lobby and taken her arm to help her across the slippery sidewalk.

‘Just the weather for that tartan rug,’ I said to him, which made him stop and think.

‘Funny you should say that … She never had it with her that day … I don’t remember seeing it since her visit to the bank … Anyways, once in the car after visiting these lawyers she just lay back on the cushions as if she were exhausted and she never moved at all on the drive home. I made sure all the car windows were up. It was freezing outside and I didn’t want her to get a chill on top of her other troubles.’

As my instructions were to ascertain, if possible, the state of Mrs Probert’s mind at the time, I endeavoured to draw him out. This was not difficult, for Miner was only too ready to talk about her and the sadness of her situation.

He said her condition was much worse that day than it had been even the previous week. Miner put this down to the harshness of the treatment—he thinks chemotherapy does nothing except make people’s hair fall out—but he did say that on the drive to the hospital she seemed to be angry. He’d never known her like that before. She’d never been bitter about the disease which had come upon her but she’d said to him that day that ingratitude was the hardest thing to bear, and that to find your trust in someone has been betrayed was worse than any illness. Miner had not taken much notice at the time, he was concentrating on the road conditions and anyway he was used to his passengers talking to themselves in his hearing but as I talked to him these words of Mrs Probert’s came back. He is a slow-thinking man but in my opinion, honest. I do not think he could have made them up.

When he drove her from the hospital to the lawyers and on the way home Miner says Mrs Probert spoke little, but he scoffed at any idea that she might have been seriously disturbed in her mind. In the way she gave him his instructions to stop at Eikenbergs she was matter of fact and precise.

I terminated the interview at this point as I was afraid he would become suspicious of further questions. I believe he has told us all he can.

Wednesday, July 3—Report by Alfred Orme

Mr Orme’s second report was short and businesslike. He had interviewed the superintendent, the doormen, porters and concierge staff at the building where Mrs Probert had her apartment. This time he had no need to pose as other than Eikenberg & Lazard’s representative checking up on the safety arrangements for the premises in the absence of an actual owner. The lease still had three months to run, the rent was paid up, and the servants were occupying as caretakers until such time as the furniture could be cleared.

The doormen knew the late Mrs Probert by sight, and confirmed seeing her coming and going to the hospital. They were also well-acquainted with Frank Miner and often passed the time of day with him when he waited for her. The concierge staff produced notes of the times the car was ordered by telephone, and the messages relayed to Argus Automobiles. Sometimes the instructions had come direct from Mrs Probert herself, latterly from Dr Seifel and occasionally from the housekeeper, Mrs Hermanos.

Mr Orme reported that he could detect no slackness either in the record-keeping or the security. The rents of these apartments were high and the occupants expected value for money, twenty-four-hour vigilance and the door never left unattended. Therefore, Mr Orme concluded, if the staff in the downstairs lobby said that the late Mrs Probert had had no visitors during her last two weeks except for her doctor and the night nurse he had recommended, then there could be no doubt.

Mr Orme’s interview with Dr Seifel could not have been easy, and Kemp grinned as he relished the sparsity of the report. Doctors are notoriously suspicious of any inquiries pertaining to their patients—particularly dead ones—and Dr Seifel was no exception. He pointed out to Mr Orme that the late Mrs Probert’s lawyers had had full access to all her medical records since he had taken her on as his patient when she came first to New York—indeed it had been Julius Eikenberg himself who had sought out Dr Seifel as a specialist in those cases where malignancy had been diagnosed and might already have advanced. Nothing had been concealed either from her lawyers as trustees or Mrs Probert herself, that was how she had wanted it. Details of the unsuccesful operations and treatment could be obtained from the hospital. Yes, there had been short periods of remission under the chemotherapy but in a case like hers the prognosis had never been other than negative, and she had known it to be so.

Things must have eased off a little—at least for the doctor—when Mr Orme raised the question of Mrs Probert’s state of mind immediately prior to her death. This would be a perfectly normal inquiry from a representative of her trustees—though it might have come better from one of them personally. Kemp saw both Eikenberg and Van Gryson keeping it at arm’s length.

Dr Seifel had given a robust denial to any suggestion that his patient’s mental faculties were impaired. Despite her physical weakness there was nothing wrong with her mind; it had operated normally right to the end. In his interviews with her, on a daily basis during her last two weeks, she was coherent, knowledgeable about her condition and no longer distressed by it. The doctor seemed to have indulged in a small homily, saying that if all his dying patients displayed the same attitude as the late Mrs Probert his own task would be a lot easier.

No, to his knowledge, she had had no visitors. He would not have prevented visits had she asked but she had told him there was no one she wished to see. The doctor understood—at least in part. Any woman who had been beautiful might want to hide herself even from old friends now that the ravages of the disease itself and the treatments to contain it had become so apparent.

Reading this part of the report Kemp was brought up sharply by the intrusion of feelings of his own. Van Gryson had said that Muriel’s close friends would have been in Las Vegas, and her circumstances since coming to New York hardly conducive to the making of new ones. When Kemp had inquired if either Van Gryson or Julius had called at the apartment he was told they had not. All instructions to them regarding financial matters, payment of servants’ wages, rent and outgoings of her home, medical attendance there or at the hospital were received by letter or telephone at their offices and made directly by Mrs Probert herself. There had been no such communication from her during the last month of her illness, and they had seen no reason why there should have been; the bills from the doctor and the hospital were paid on a regular basis and there had been no other expenditure.

Eikenberg & Lazard had been content to keep scrupulous accounts thereby releasing their client from day-to-day worries, but it did seem there had been a closer relationship between themselves and her bankers than with herself.

In the light of the circumstances, Kemp had noted an element of shamefacedness in Van Gryson when this point had been talked over. Yet Kemp could well understand the situation. The trustees of Mrs Probert were only part of a firm of some magnitude. She had put her affairs in their hands but they must have many such clients as rich as she—and some of them with a great deal more potential. She was not the wife of an influential senator, nor the mother of an up-and-coming politician, she was merely the widow of a man who might well have been a gangster, at any rate one who had made his fortune out of the gambling proclivities of others. Muriel had had neither connections nor status in New York, whatever her position might have been back in Las Vegas.

Lonely, Kemp thought … She must have been so lonely … Was that why she had turned back the years, and remembered him?

He continued reading.

No, Dr Seifel had never discussed personal affairs with Mrs Probert, although he commented—and it sounded testily—that the body is as personal a matter as you can get and it was only her body and its freedom from pain that concerned him.

Asked if she had ever mentioned her will, Dr Seifel said he made it his business never to talk about wills with his patients—that was strictly the province of another profession and he understood Mrs Probert was well supplied with lawyers.

Kemp felt himself warming to Dr Seifel.

Yes, the patient had been upset that evening when she returned from her last visit to the hospital but more at his suggestion of hospitalization than anything else. She had been firm that she would not go into a hospital, on that point she had been resolute. Dr Seifel felt there had been a new force in her which he put down to the fact that she had been told the worst. He had hurried round to the apartment that afternoon to await her return because the hospital had already notified him of the results of their last tests. He had been rather worried because she was late but she explained that the car had been delayed by the snow.

He put it to her that if she was to remain at home then she must have nurses, day and night. He was surprised that she immediately agreed, hitherto she had been against it, saying that Florence Hermanos could take care of her.

Once his patient was in her bedroom the doctor had had a word with Mrs Hermanos, and found her surly; she had looked after her mistress throughout her illness and would do so till the end.

‘I wasn’t going to have any nonsense from a servant,’ Dr Seifel had said at that point, ‘but I had to recognize her devotion. I agreed to her continuing her daytime duties so long as it was under my supervision but I must engage a properly trained night nurse. I told her to get a room ready—there were plenty of empty ones in the apartment.’

Dr Seifel had telephoned the Nursing Agency he always used in these cases, requesting the services of a suitable nurse as soon as one was available. As Mrs Probert began to go downhill more rapidly than he had anticipated he had had to get in touch with the woman in charge again, stressing the urgency, and telling her that in his opinion the nurse would be required for no longer than a week. He did not add, as he might well have done, that subsequent events bore out that opinion.

He was well pleased with the person sent from the Agency. Dr Seifel had found Miss Smith to be a quiet, dependable and competent trained nurse.

‘She was not a chatterer,’ he said, ‘and they’re the worst kind in a sickroom. Nor of any great personal appearance but that’s of no matter. Miss Smith was experienced in the care of the dying, in fact her presence seemed to soothe my patient. Miss Smith went about her duties without fuss, and she carried out my instructions to the letter. When she knew Mrs Probert was sinking she called me, and we were both present when she died in her sleep with peace and dignity.’

The records of attendances and the medication given during those last days had already been handed over to Eikenberg & Lazard, and Dr Seifel was satisfied that, so far as he and Nurse Smith were concerned, they had each carried out their respective duties with the proper professional skill. He hoped he would hear no more of the matter.

On that brusque note—introduced, Kemp decided, by the doctor—the interview had ended.

From the attendance notes, complete with dates and times, it was clear that the registered nurse from the agency had been in constant attendance, and had not herself left the apartment, her daytime needs being met by the other staff while at night she had remained by the patient’s bedside.

The reports of Bernard Shulman were much racier documents than Orme’s. Told in the first person and the present tense like an ongoing tale of city folk, the individual voices split through the narrative. The typescript showed that Shulman was no mean typist and used more than two fingers. Kemp figured he would call himself Bernie.

Report by Bernard Shulman. July 7–15

Got me a stand-in doorman’s job at the --------- Hotel on the same block as the apartment building and keep a watch on the entrance. Leonie Rojas comes in mornings at seven-thirty and shows again about eleven when she buys groceries round the corner. Give her the eye a few times as she passes and get a smile from her. So I wait a coupla days, then I’m in the shop when she comes in and I help her load her basket. Buy her some bagels and we go into the Park to eat them.

She’s no great talker, kinda slow in the head, I guess, nor’s she much of a looker as she’s got a yellow skin and bad teeth—not much of a start, that, for a girl still under twenty. She says to me she has the job almost a year and wishes it’d go on for ever as the place is clean enough to eat off the floor and all she’s got to do is keep it that way. She tells me the layout and when she’s not vacuuming the carpets and dusting the furniture she helps the housekeeper in the kitchen.

‘Ain’t there no one else there?’ I asks.

‘Not since the lady went and died. I liked her. She gave me things, clothes and stuff … Not that I could wear them.’

She hardly could, with her figure. She’s sort of squat with thick legs but mebbe its only puppy-fat and she’ll grow outa it. No, she never got no jewellery, Mrs Hermanos saw to that. Leonie had to show anything she got to Mrs Hermanos before going home.

‘Those Hermanos,’ I says, ‘they’re OK to work for now the lady’s gone?’

‘She’s all right, I guess. Never did see much of him. Calls himself a butler …’ She giggles at that. ‘I ain’t never seen a butler ’cept in the movies and he sure don’t act like them.’ She’s quiet for a bit, then she says: ‘They fight, the Hermanos … and when they don’t fight they hardly speak.’

I pretend surprise. ‘Hey, I heard they were a nice middle-aged couple that cared for the lady ’fore she died.’

‘She cared all right, Mrs Hermanos. I’ll give her that … Why, only the other day I see her crying her eyes out in the lady’s bedroom while she was sortin’ out the clothes that’s to go to some big cancer charity. Crying her eyes out, she was, all over that nice rug Mrs Probert used to take in the cab when she went to the hospital. I guess the death just got to her …’

I said Leonie’s a slow talker and it’s heavy going getting anything from her but I’d made sure we’d walked a fair ways so’s we’d have to take a bit of time getting back. So, the girl likes the attention. Probably not much had happened to her before she got the job at Mrs Probert’s apartment and, though she’s no fast thinker, she’s kept her ears and eyes open.