Murder in the Rue Chartres (19 page)

“Actually, I work for his grandson, Joshua. He hired me to find his father.”

“Joshua was such a sweet little boy. We used to play cowboys and Indians in the back yard.” She looked at me, and suddenly her face changed. When she spoke again, her voice was not in the least bit childlike. “You don’t work for Percy? You aren’t on his payroll? You really work for Joshua, and are trying to find Michael?”

I nodded. “Iris hired me, but—” I didn’t think it was necessarily a good idea to be the one to tell her that Iris was dead. “Now I work for Joshua.”

“I won’t tell you about Michael.” She shook her head. “You’ll never find him, no matter how hard you look, so you might as well give up. No one will ever find Michael…”

“Why did he leave? Was he unhappy?”

“He was a bird in a golden cage.” She gestured around the room. “Like me. He sold his soul when he married Margot. He didn’t love her, you know. He wanted to paint and he married her for her money so he could paint. But he wanted to go, he wanted to escape that house of horror. Like me.”

She sighed. “But once you’ve sold your soul, it’s very hard to buy it back, you know. The devil doesn’t like to let you go.”

“Tell me about Margot.”

“Margot.” She grinned impishly. “Have you seen The Wizard of Oz? She was like the tin woodsman. She didn’t have a heart. She was born without one. No, that’s not true. She had a heart. After her brother Arthur died, her father stomped her heart right out of her. I grew up with them, you know. Arthur was everything, Margot was nothing. And then Matthew died, and Margot became everything. Sometimes I think Arthur was the lucky one. He escaped his father into the grave and left us behind to pick up the pieces and deal with Uncle Percy.” She grimaced.

“And what about you? What did you become?”

“Oh, that didn’t change. I was less than nothing when Arthur was alive. After he died, I didn’t even move up to nothing.” Her laugh this time was brittle. “I was a poor relation, a charity case who was supposed to be grateful for the crumbs from the table. Nobody paid the least bit of attention to me, other than what I cost them to keep me. And then of course, I was wild, you know. I ran after boys and I drank and got into trouble. And they yelled and screamed at me, and told me I was nothing but a whore, a disgrace to the family name…” her voice trailed off. She squared her shoulders and her chin jutted out. “I didn’t care. I still don’t care. And after Margot married Michael—you know he was just Lower Ninth Ward gutter trash, as Uncle Percy used to say all the time—Michael…he was kind to me.”

“Were you in love with him?”

“Michael was my friend.”

“Friends can be lovers.”

She drew herself up. “Michael and I were never lovers. Never. He protected me from them.”

“From who?”

“Uncle Percy. Margot. And then he was gone…” her eyes glistened with tears, “…and here I am.”

“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“I won’t talk to you about that.” She gave me a smile. “But I will tell you the day he left, the day he went away. I bet nobody’s been able to tell you that, have they? Uncle Percy certainly wouldn’t, and the only one else who knew is Margot, and she’s dead.” She sat back and smiled. “It was a beautiful day. June 23rd. A Sunday. That was the day Michael went away.”

And then her face changed, became completely blank. Her eyes looked at me without recognition. “I’m sorry, young man, what did you say your name was?”

I stared at her. Amanda said from behind me, “Mr. MacLeod? I’m afraid your time is up.”

I stood up, and knelt, kissing her on the cheek. “Thank you for seeing me, Cathy.”

She opened her eyes wide. “Will you come see me again?” she asked, in that childish voice she’d used when I first arrived.

“I’d like to.”

Amanda crossed over to her, and handed her a cup of water and a small cup with a pill in it. “Time to take your pill, Cathy.”

Cathy smiled at her. “Thank you.” She placed the pill in her mouth and washed it down with the water.

“That’s a good girl.” Amanda smiled, patting her on the shoulder. She turned to me. “If you’ll come this way, Mr. MacLeod…”

But as soon she turned her back, I glanced at Cathy. The wide-eyed look was gone. She was smiling, and her right eyelid came down in a slow, knowing wink.

I held onto the banister as we walked down the wide hanging stair. The place, I thought as I looked around at the gleaming floors and the seemingly antique furniture, does not look like a mental hospital. But then again, since I’d pulled into the parking lot, I hadn’t really seen any other patients, for that matter. I asked Amanda, “How long have you been working with Ms. Hollis?” I didn’t figure she’d answer, but it was worth a try.

She pushed a stray wisp of hair out of her face and exhaled, screwing up her face a bit as she remembered back. “Let me think…Miss Hollis arrived here about a year or two after I came to work here at St. Isabelle’s.” She shrugged. “She’s been here a long time.” She gave a bitter laugh. “So have I, for that matter. I’ve grown old in this place.” She scratched her forehead. “It was two years after I started here. My husband was wounded in Vietnam in 1971, and she was admitted almost two years to the day after I started work here.”

“And how does she seem to you?” We’d reached the bottom of the staircase.

She stopped and looked at me. Her eyes narrowed. “I can’t discuss—”

“You can’t discuss her medical history or her medications or her diagnosis, I know that,” I interrupted her. “But you can discuss your personal impressions of her, can’t you? Or is that a breach of ethics? Surely you have your own opinions.”

“Ethics,” she snorted. “That’s a good one around here.” She looked around. Dr. Bright’s office door was shut. She gave me a funny look and gestured toward the front door with her head. “I don’t want to talk about this inside the building. You never know who’s listening.”

That was the last thing I’d expected to hear. Curious, I followed her out the front door. Once we were down the front steps, she put a hand on my arm. “You repeat anything I say to you and I will deny every word of it, you understand me? Come on.” She walked quickly out into the parking lot, where she stopped and lit a cigarette.

I also lit one. “Well?”

“Look, I’ve worked at this place a long time. I’m taking early retirement—my husband is sick and I need to take care of him—complications from what happened to him over there and the goddamned government won’t do a thing about it, the fucks—and my last day is coming up in a week or so.” She flicked ash. “About twenty-five years ago, a nurse decided to talk to Dr. Bright about Miss Hollis, because she didn’t think what was going on around here was right—ethics, you understand—and the next day, they found some missing medications in her locker. She was accused of stealing drugs…like Rose Calloway would ever do such a thing. But she lost her job, and you know damned well she couldn’t find work, like they’d give her a reference—they even called the police in and threatened to file charges. I sometimes wonder what ever happened to her…but they have ways around here, Mr. MacLeod, so like I said, I’ll tell you a few things I know, but I will deny every word of it if you repeat it.” She blew out a plume of smoke. “They don’t like any of us to talk to anyone about Catherine Hollis.”

“Scout’s honor, I won’t say a word to anyone,” I said, feeling kind of stupid, but it seemed to reassure her. “But Dr. Bright has only been here for ten years—how could…?”

“His father, the elder Dr. Bright, ran the place then.” She gave me a lopsided smile. “When his father died ten years ago, the board hired his son to take his place…and if anything, the son is worse than the father.” She shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong; most of our patients here belong here, and they get the best treatment available, therapy, drugs, you name it. But they’re allowed visitors and the occasional phone call. Not Catherine. She isn’t allowed any freedoms, except once a day she’s allowed to walk around the grounds of the place—with two armed security guards, of course. The only time she’s ever allowed to be by herself is when she is in her room.”

“It sounds like she’s a prisoner instead of a patient.”

“You’re quick, aren’t you?” she said mockingly. “When they brought Miss Hollis here originally,” she dropped the cigarette and crushed it under her foot, “St. Isabelle’s was in financial trouble. Dr. Bright the elder was, well—let’s just say he was bad with managing money and leave it at that. Then, about mid-July of 1973, a big black limousine pulls into the drive with Louisiana plates. Percy Verlaine himself. He goes in and meets with Dr. Bright for about an hour…and our money troubles are over. Percy’s ‘generosity’ lands him a seat on the board, and at the next board election, he’s president of the board…We all got huge pay raises, too…but I’m getting ahead of myself. About a week or so after Percy Verlaine comes calling, his niece is admitted as a patient here—and only Dr. Bright’s patient, just like only the younger Dr. Bright sees her now. They passed her from father to son…no other doctor has seen her in all the time she’s been here.”

“That’s odd,” I replied.

She rolled her eyes. “Your damned straight it’s odd. Every other patient in St. Isabelle’s sees several doctors, you know. But not Catherine Hollis. She belongs to Dr. Bright, and Dr. Bright alone …and the other doctors know better than to even suggest they see her for any reason. He says she’s uncomfortable around strangers, that another doctor might cause a psychotic break. I think that’s bullshit, but I’m not a doctor. My opinion isn’t worth two cents around here. And I need my paycheck, so I just keep my mouth shut and do my job.”

“You think Percy had her committed here, and she doesn’t belong here?”

“She thinks she belongs here now, whether she really does or not.” She stared at me. “She didn’t when she was brought in.” She clicked her tongue. “Let me put it to you this way. Have you ever seen one of those movies where someone who’s not insane is put in a mental hospital? You know how they always manage to get out at the end, and expose the horrors they experienced inside? Well, St. Isabelle’s isn’t one of those places—we take very good care of our patients here—but if someone sane is kept in a place long enough, given enough drugs, and told on a daily basis they aren’t sane, you can drive them insane.”

“My God.”

“When she first came here, she was disturbed, all right,” Amanda went on. “She had terrible mood swings; she was real manic—hysteria one minute, deep morbid depression the next and you never had any idea when the change was coming. She fought the nurses, she fought Dr. Bright, she tried to escape—they had to put her in a straightjacket a few times, or strap her to her bed to sedate her. But you know something? If you were sane, wouldn’t you fight at first? Try to escape?”

“Yeah.” For a moment, I tried to think about what that would be like. It made the gooseflesh stand up on my arms.

“And when you slowly begin to realize you’re never going to escape? That there’s no way out? She isn’t allowed calls. She’s allowed to write letters, but Dr. Bright doesn’t mail them. She is completely isolated here.” She paused to give her words greater emphasis. “For thirty-two years.”

My God. I couldn’t even begin to imagine it.

“And of course, at first she used to want to call the police… Then she would get hysterical, and fight. She used to scream she would see them all in jail, every last one of them.” She shrugged. “Then of course they’d sedate her.”

“So, you think Dr. Bright—staying here—drove her insane?”

“I don’t know whether she’s in her right mind or not, but I can assure you, Dr. Bright doesn’t know either—and besides, I wouldn’t take his word for anything.” She spat contemptuously. She shrugged her shoulders. “You saw her. She has some lucid moments, when she’s flirtatious and acts like she’s the belle of the ball, and then she’ll lapse into childlike speech and behavior. Sometimes I wonder if it’s all an act—the way she copes with everything. I don’t know. I don’t think even she knows herself anymore.” She shrugged. “And I’ll deny every last bit of this if you repeat it to anyone. As far as I’m concerned, we’ve never met.” She turned on her heel and walked back into the house.

*

I watched her, and once the door shut behind her, got into my car, and drove off the grounds.

My mind was racing.

Percy Verlaine had locked his niece away in a mental hospital shortly after his son-in-law vanished without a trace.

It didn’t take quantum physics to connect those dots.

Percy Verlaine had killed Michael Mercereau, and Catherine Hollis knew it—might even have been a witness. And what better way to get rid of the only witness to your crime than to have her declared mentally incompetent and have her locked away for the rest of her life in a mental hospital?

It was so perfect it made my blood run cold. Who would listen to her, in a mental hospital? It would all be dismissed as part of her delusions. And Percy could walk away from a crime scot-free, without a care in the world.

It would take a lot of money and power, but Percy Verlaine had both. To spare, and then some.

But then Iris decides she wants to find her father—and Percy can’t have that either. She’d even made the trek up to Cortez to see Cathy. What had Cathy told her? Had Cathy told her the truth…and was that why she’d hired me? To find the proof that her grandfather had killed her father, and finally get some justice for the father she never knew?