“We are talking about them, Mrs. McTigue. They are still with us.”
“I ‘spect that’s so,” she said, her eyes bright with tears. “We need their help and they need ours.”
She nodded. “Tell me about that night,” I said again. “About Beryl.”
“She was very quiet. I remember her watching the fire.”
“What else?”
“Something happened.”
“What? What happened, Mrs. McTigue?”
“She and Mr. Harper seemed to be unhappy with each other,” she said.
“Why? Did they have an argument?”
“It was after the boy delivered the luggage. Mr. Harper opened one of the bags and pulled out an envelope that had papers in it. I don’t really know. But he was drinking too much.”
“Then what happened?”
“He exchanged some rather harsh words with his sister and Beryl. Then he took the papers and just flung them into the fire. He said, That’s what I think of that! Trash, trash!’ Or words to that effect.”
“Do you know what it was he burned? A contract, perhaps?”
“I don’t think so,” she replied, staring off. “I remember getting the impression it was something Beryl had written. They looked like typed pages, and his anger seemed directed at her.”
The autobiography she was writing, I thought. Or perhaps it was an outline that Miss Harper, Beryl, and Sparacino had discussed in New York with an increasingly enraged and out-of-control Gary Harper.
“Joe intervened,” she said, lacing her misshapen fingers together, holding in her pain.
“What did he do?”
“He drove her home,” she said. “He drove Beryl Madison home.”
She stopped, staring at me in abject fear. “It’s why it happened. I know it.”
“It’s why what happened?” I asked.
“It’s why they’re dead,” she said. “I know it. I had this feeling at the time. It was such a frightful feeling.”
“Describe it to me. Can you describe it?”
“It’s why they’re dead,” she repeated. ‘”There was so much hate in the room that night.”
13
Valhalla Hospital was situated on a rise in the genteel world of Albemarle County, where my faculty ties with the University of Virginia brought me periodically throughout the year. Though I had often noticed the formidable brick edifice rising from a distant foothill visible from the Interstate, I had never visited the hospital for either personal or professional reasons.
Once a grand hotel frequented by the wealthy and well-known, it went bankrupt during the depression and was bought by three brothers who were psychiatrists. They systematically set about to turn Valhalla into a Freudian factory, a rich man’s psychiatric resort where families with means could tuck away their genetic inconveniences and embarrassments, their senile elders and poorly programmed kids.
It didn’t really surprise me that Al Hunt had been farmed out here as a teenager. What did surprise me was that his psychiatrist seemed so reluctant to discuss him. Beneath Dr. Warner Masterson’s professional cordiality was a bedrock of secrecy hard enough to break the drill bits of the most tenacious inquisitors. I knew he did not want to talk to me. He knew he had no choice.
Parking in the gravel lot designated for visitors, I went into a lobby of Victorian furnishings, Oriental rugs, and heavy draperies with ornate cornices well along their way to being threadbare. I was about to announce myself to the receptionist when I heard someone behind me speak.
“Dr. Scarpetta?”
I turned to face a tall, slender black man dressed in a European-cut navy suit. His hair was a sandy sprinkle, his cheekbones and forehead aristocratically high.
“I’m Warner Masterson,” he said, and smiling broadly, he offered his hand.
I was about to wonder if I had forgotten him from some former encounter when he explained that he recognized me from pictures he had seen in the papers and on the television news, reminders I could do without.
“We’ll go back to my office,” he added pleasantly. “I trust your drive up wasn’t too tiring? May I offer you something? Coffee? A soda?”
All this as he continued to walk, and I did my best to keep up with his long strides. A significant portion of the human race has no idea what it is like to be attached to short legs, and I am forever finding myself indignantly pumping along like a handcar in a world of express trains. Dr.