Read The Cradle Will Fall Online
Authors: Mary Higgins Clark
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Thrillers, #Suspense
AT FIVE o'clock Gertrude Fitzgerald turned the phone over to the
answering service and locked the reception desk. Nervously she
dialed Edna's number. Again there was no answer. There was no
doubt. Edna had been drinking more and more lately. She was
such a good person. They had both worked for Dr. Highley for
several years and often had lunch together. Sometimes Edna
would want to go to a pub for a manhattan. Gertrude understood
her need to drink, understood that hollow feeling when all you do
is go to work and then go home and stare at four walls.
Gertrude was a widow, but at least she had the children and
grandchildren to care about her. She had her own lonely times,
but it wasn't the same as it was for Edna. She'd lived. She had
something to look back on.
She could swear Dr. Highley had known she was lying when she
said Edna had called in sick. But suppose Edna hadn't been drinking?
Suppose she was sick or something? She'd have to find out.
She'd drive over to her house right now.
Her mind settled, Gertrude left the office briskly and drove the
six miles to Edna's apartment. She parked in the visitors' area and
walked around to the front. As she neared Edna's door, she heard
the faint sound of voices. The television set, of course.
Gertrude rang the bell and waited. There was no familiar voice
calling "Right with you." Gertrude firmly pushed the bell again.
Maybe Edna was sleeping it off.
By the time she'd rung the bell four times, Gertrude was thoroughly
alarmed. Something was wrong. The superintendent, Mr.
Krupshak, lived across the court. Hurrying over, Gertrude told
her story. The super was eating dinner and looked annoyed, but
his wife, Gana, reached for the keys. "I'll go with you," she said.
The two women hurried across the courtyard together. "Edna's
a real friend," Gana Krupshak volunteered. "Sometimes in the
evening I pop in on her. Just last night I stopped over at about
eight. I had a manhattan with her, and she told me that one of her
favorite patients had killed herself. Well, here we are."
They were on the small porch leading to Edna's apartment. The
superintendent's wife inserted the key into the lock, twisted it and
pushed open the door.
The two women saw Edna at the same moment: lying on the
floor, her legs crumpled under her, her graying hair plastered
around her face, her eyes staring, crusted blood making a crimson
crown on the top of her head.
"No. No." Gertrude's voice rose, high and shrill. She pressed
her knuckles to her mouth.
In a dazed voice Gana Krupshak said, "It's just last night I was
sitting here with her. And she was talking about a patient who
killed herself. And then she phoned the woman's husband." Gana
began to sob. "And now poor Edna is dead too!"
CHRIS Lewis stood next to Vangie's parents at the right of the
coffin, numbly acknowledging the sympathetic utterances of
friends. When he'd phoned her parents about her death, they had
agreed that they would view her body privately and have a memorial
service the next morning followed by a private interment.
Instead, when he'd arrived in Minneapolis, he found that they
had arranged for a public viewing that night.
"So many friends will want to say good-by to our little girl," her
mother sobbed.
Our little girl. If only you had let her grow up, Chris thought,
it might all have been so different.
Vangie's parents looked old and tired and shattered with grief.
They were plain, hardworking people who had brought up their
unexpectedly beautiful child to believe her wish was law.
Would it be easier for them when it was revealed that someone
had taken Vangie's life? Or did he owe it to them to say nothing,
to keep that final horror from them? He wanted badly to talk to
Joan. She'd been so upset when she heard about Vangie. "Did she
know about us?" He'd finally had to admit to her that Vangie
suspected he was interested in someone else.
Joan would be back from Florida on Friday, two days away.
He was going to return to New Jersey tomorrow right after the
funeral. He would say nothing to the police until he had warned
Joan that she might be dragged into this. The police would be
looking for a motive for him to kill Vangie. In their eyes, Joan
would be the motive.
Chris glanced over at the coffin, at Vangie's now peaceful face,
the quietly folded hands. He and Vangie had scarcely lived as
man and wife in the past few years. They'd lain side by side like
strangers, he emotionally drained from the endless quarreling, she
wanting to be cajoled, babied.
A suspicion that had been sitting somewhere in his subconscious
sprang to life. Was it possible that Vangie had become involved
with another man, a man who did not want to take responsibility
for her and a baby? Had she confronted that other man, hurled
hysterical threats at him?
He realized that he was shaking hands, murmuring thanks to
a man in his mid-sixties. He was slightly built but sturdily attractive,
with gray hair and bushy brows over keen, penetrating
eyes. "I'm Dr. Salem," he said. "Emmet Salem. I delivered Vangie
and was her first gynecologist. She was one of the prettiest things I
ever brought into this world, and she never changed. I only wish I
hadn't been away when she phoned my office Monday."
Chris stared at him. "Vangie phoned you Monday?"
"Yes. My nurse said she was quite upset. Wanted to see me
immediately. I was teaching a seminar in Detroit, but the nurse
made an appointment for her for today. She was planning to fly
out yesterday. Maybe I could have helped her."
Why had Vangie called this man? Chris tried to think. What
would make her go back to a doctor she hadn't seen in years? A
doctor thirteen hundred miles away?
"Had Vangie been ill?" Dr. Salem was looking at him curiously.
"No, not ill," Chris said. "As you probably know, she was expecting
a baby, and it was a difficult pregnancy."
"Vangie was pregnant?" The doctor stared in astonishment.
"I know. She had just about given up hope. But in New Jersey
she started the Westlake Maternity Concept. You may have heard
of it, or of Dr. Highley—Dr. Edgar Highley."
"Captain Lewis, may I speak with you privately?" The funeral
director had a hand under his arm.
“Excuse me,” Chris said to the doctor. He allowed the funeral
director to guide him into the office.
The director closed the door. “I’ve just received a call from the
prosecutor’s office in Valley County, New Jersey,” he said.
“Written confirmation is on the way. We are forbidden to inter
your wife’s body. It is to be flown back to the medical
examiner’s office in Valley County immediately after the
service tomorrow.”
They know it wasn’t suicide, Chris thought. Without
answering the funeral director, he turned and left. He wanted to
see Dr. Salem, find out what Vangie had said to the nurse on the
phone.
But Dr. Salem was already gone. Vangie’s mother rubbed
swollen eyes with a crumpled handkerchief. “What did you say
to Dr. Salem that made him leave like that?” she asked. “Why
did you upset him so terribly?”
WEDNESDAY evening Edgar Highley arrived home at six
o’clock. Hilda was just leaving. He knew she liked this job.
Why not? A house that stayed neat; no mistress to constantly
give orders; no children to clutter it.
No children. He went into the library, poured a Scotch and
watched from the window as Hilda disappeared down the street.
He had gone into medicine because his own mother had died
in childbirth. His birth. “Your mother wanted you so much,” his
father had told him again and again. “She knew she was risking
her life, but she didn’t care.”
Sitting in the chemist’s shop in Brighton, watching his father
prepare prescriptions, asking questions: “What is that? What
will that pill do? Why do you put caution labels on those
bottles?”
He’d gone to medical school, finished in the top ten percent of
his class. He’d interned at Christ Hospital in Devon, with its
magnificent research laboratory. He’d become a member of staff;
his reputation as an obstetrician had grown rapidly. But his project
had been held back by his inability to test it.
At twenty-seven he'd married Claire, a distant cousin of the
earl of Sussex. She was infinitely superior to him in social background,
but his growing reputation had been the leveler. And what
incredible ignominy. He who dealt in birth and fertility had
married a barren woman.
When had he started to hate Claire? It took a long time—seven
years. It was when he realized that her disappointment was faked;
that she'd known all along that she could not conceive.
Impatiently he turned from the window. It would be another
cold, wind-filled night. When all this was over, he'd take a vacation.
He was losing his grip on his nerves. He had nearly given
himself away this morning when Gertrude told him that Edna had
phoned in sick. He'd grasped the desk, watched his knuckles
whiten. Then he'd realized: Gertrude was covering for her friend.
The missing shoe. This morning he'd gone to the hospital soon
after dawn and once again searched the parking lot and the office.
Had Vangie been wearing it when she came into his office Monday
night? He couldn't be sure. The other shoe, the right one, was still
in his bag in the trunk of the car.
Even if the police started an investigation into Vangie's death,
there was no evidence against him. Her file in the office could
bear intensive scrutiny. All the true records of the special cases
were here in the wall safe, and he defied anyone to locate that safe.
It wasn't even in the original plans of the house.
Anyway, no one had any reason to suspect him—no one except
Katie DeMaio.
Fukhito had come in to see him just as he was locking up tonight.
He'd said, "Mrs. DeMaio was asking a lot of questions. Is
it possible that they don't believe Mrs. Lewis committed suicide?"
"I really don't know." He'd enjoyed Fukhito's nervousness.
"The interview you gave to that magazine comes out tomorrow?"
"Yes. But I gave them the impression I use a number of psychiatric
consultants. Your name will not appear in the article."
"Still, it's going to put the spotlight on us."
"On yourself. Isn't that what you're saving, Doctor?"
He'd almost laughed aloud at the troubled, guilty look on
Fukhito's face. Now, finishing his Scotch, he realized that he had
been overlooking another avenue of escape. If the police concluded
that Vangie had been murdered, if they did investigate
Wesdake, he could reluctantly suggest that they interrogate
Dr. Fukhito. Especially in view of his past. After all, Fukhito was
the last person known to have seen Vangie Lewis alive.