The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 25 Classic Mysteries
- Автор: Пауэлл Тэлмидж
- Год: 2020
- Язык: английский
- Год: Wildside Press LLC
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 25 Classic Mysteries». Краткое содержание книги:
“But we’ve not yet surmounted the key obstacle,” Gramling said.
“The baby...” The eyes of Camilla’s mother filled. “When I see her feeling her stomach, talking about the non-existent child in her womb...”
“And yet,” Mr. Jordan choked, “so very normal at times... until she feels the stirring of the baby that isn’t there... if the baby were... exorcised... Camilla would return to us... maybe not entirely the Camilla we once knew, but we would have our daughter back.”
“But so many things have been tried,” Harriet said. “Drugs, shock, even hypnotism. Is anything left?”
“Perhaps,” Gramling said. “A long shot. The therapy lay full blown in my mind when I awoke this morning. It has been working through my mind for days.” He hesitated for a short beat. “We shall take the baby.”
He felt their reaction. The office was silent for a moment while they stared at him. Then Harriet’s lips moved. “A baby that isn’t real? You mean...”
“I think you know precisely what I mean,” Gramling said. “Nothing more can be done for Camilla until the pregnancy obsession is removed. Once she is convinced that she isn’t carrying a baby, we might break through. Destroy the obsession. Set her on the path to final recovery.”
“If it could only be,” Harriet wept.
“Destroy a delusion with a counter delusion, Doctor?” Horace said.
“It’s not uncommon in my field of medicine,” Gramling said.
“How will you go about it?”
“First, give Camilla something to make her tractable. Then go through all the motions, to the final detail, even leaving her with a mild uterine soreness. And, when the long obstetrical procedure is over, break the news to Camilla carefully that she has miscarried. Her pregnancy is over, done with, and she is free of it forever. She is as free, clear, unsullied as she was the night before the assault upon her. That is the thought which we shall implant, reinforce, develop — leaving no room for thought of pregnancy.”
Horace strained forward. “What are chances of it working?”
“What are chances of it not working?” Gramling countered. “But I shall of course need your permission.”
That evening, dining on surf and turf, Gramling reviewed the hours after he’d shown Horace and Harriet Jordan out of his office. He’d called in Conover and Hemmings, two of his most able nurses, and briefed them carefully. Then the ritual... the ceremonial staged to open a human mind, extract a thought and implant another...
He’d taken Camilla through the routine of examination. Returned her to her room. Appeared a little later at her bedside with the news that a follow-up was necessary. Soothed her with scopoline. Prepped her. Wheeled her into surgery. Gowns, masks, rubber gloves, all the trappings. Anesthetized her mildly. Removed her to the recovery room exactly as if she’d gone through an operation. From there, back to her room. And finally, while Camilla was in that nether state, that twilight zone known since the first use of scopolamine, Gramling had sat by her bed, taken her hand, and whispered that she’d developed complications. They’d had to take the baby. Her pregnancy was finished. The baby was gone, forever.
She’d lain passively, looking at him.
He’d moved his face a little closer. “Do you hear me, Camilla?”
“Yes,” she’d whispered.
“Do you understand? You are free. It is over. You are bound no longer. You can stretch, laugh, lift your face and throw your arms to the sun. Once more you are Camilla, and only Camilla.”
She’d closed her eyes slowly, and Gramling had risen, nodding at the nurse assigned to Camilla’s bedside. “We’ve turned a corner,” he’d said softly. “Now... during the days ahead... the careful, skillful follow-up...”
Now, as he poured a quick after-dinner Benedictine, he was already planning the follow-up, the guidance he would give to Camilla.
He glanced at his watch. He set down the small brandy snifter with quickening movement. He was picking up Marcy Lewis, his favorite among his women friends, in an hour. Marcy was a department store executive, and enjoyed an occasional evening of Wagner as much as he did.
At last, Camilla opened her eyes and said, “Please... may I have something cold? A Coke? And something to nibble on?”
Miss Archer, the young blonde nurse on duty until midnight, laid aside her Gothic novel. She smiled serenely. “Coke? Of course, Miss Jordan. But something to eat?” She glanced at the heavy numerals of the watch on her wrist. “It’s almost eleven o’clock. The kitchen’s long-since closed, the last of the help home and fast asleep. But perhaps...” She rose quietly. “...I could raid the ’fridge. Nothing substantial, mind you, not so soon after surgery. What would you like? Bit of fruit? Perhaps a little cup of custard?”
“No, please. Don’t make me feel like a bother. Just a Coke and package of those little crackers from the vending machine in the rec room.”
Miss Archer nodded, moved to the door, paused and looked at the bed. The patient’s eyes had already closed once more. Miss Archer shrugged. She could always go for a Coke herself, if Jordan didn’t re-awaken.
In her veil of darkness, Camilla heard the click of the door latch. Her eyelids snapped. Light scorched her. She eeled out of bed, steadied herself through a gasping moment, and reached toward the closet where her lavender silk robe hung.
A moment later she cracked the door and looked out into the corridor. It was a long, dimly-lighted cavern, empty, silent. Belted robe swishing, she was out quickly, a wraith slipping into a stairwell, disappearing.
Gramling’s phone was burring an insistent demand when he keyed open his apartment door. He rushed through the soft glow of the night light, past the shadowy impressions of Danish modern furnishings, and snatched up the phone in the middle of its next snarl.
“Doctor,” the stone-like voice was that of night nursing supervisor Stephens, “Camilla Jordan has disappeared.”
The pleasant afterglow of his evening with Marcy Lewis was consumed in a quick fire. His teeth clicked; his knuckles whitened. “How did it happen? Who was on duty in her room?”
“Archer, Doctor, the young RN who just came to us from Central Hospital.”
“Who can pack and return to Central’s payroll as of this moment,” Gramling rasped. “Was she catching a catnap?”
“Hardly, Doctor. She stepped into the rec room to get the patient a soft drink.”
Gramling’s thin nostrils flared out a breath. “And when she stepped back in, she found the covers thrown back, the bed empty. Well, so much for that. It’s done now, isn’t it? I’ll be there immediately. She must not leave the grounds — and not a hint of a patient-escape leaking out, especially to the local press.”
“Of course, Doctor. We started searching on the instant. She will never get over the walls.”
Shivering, Camilla stepped from the meat cooler into the dim vastness of the institutional kitchen. Before her in the faint light filtering from the night outside were obscure details, the long table where food was prepared, the butcher’s block with its rack of knives, the gas-fired ranges, the rows of pots and skillets dangling from the long rafter overhead.
Haven Hill had been home for two long years, and she knew every door and passageway. Once out of her room, she’d hurried down a service stairs. At a doorway in the ground-level corridor, she’d known a search had already started. She’d heard footsteps crackling quickly on tile, voices, subdued but strained, calling out her absence from her room. She’d crossed quickly into the kitchen. They would search every hallway, each linen and storage closet, she’d known. Even the kitchen. When she’d heard the quick approach of footsteps, she’d ducked into the cooler between hanging loins of beef, the side of a pig, the quarter of a veal. As from a muffled distance, she’d heard the brief murmur of voices when two of them had clicked a light on and off in the emptiness of the kitchen.