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