Murder in Little Egypt (9 page)

Dale was beside himself for losing her. He begged the parents to permit an autopsy to see what, if anything, had gone wrong with the operation. They were furious with him, and they refused to allow him to open up their daughter again. The irony, as Dale said, was that only an autopsy could have proved malpractice. He had been willing to take that risk.

This misfortune did nothing to reduce people’s trust in their new doctor. In the press of performing other, successful operations, delivering babies and making his rounds, Dale forgot about his failure to save the girl, or at least stopped berating himself over it. Such things happened to every doctor, he knew, and would probably happen to him again.

Although McLeansboro was a dry and by any standards a socially limited town, Marian discovered people who were congenial to her, as she would have anywhere with her natural desire to make the best of things. Drinks were available only at the Elks Club, and the doctor and his wife could not, they thought, permit themselves more than a mild degree of exuberance, for fear of raising eyebrows. They were in great demand as dinner guests, Dale from his position and his personable manner, Marian as his wife and because of her beauty and warmth: She could counter the ill effects of her good looks on other women by her friendliness and ready laugh.

They attended church most Sundays because Dale thought it was expected of him; the religion of his youth was something he would have preferred to forget. Peck and Noma came up for dinner regularly, and Peck and Dale went hunting. Dale taught Marian how to use a shotgun; and she went along occasionally, enjoying the woods and being with Dale, sharing in his pleasure at his shooting skills.

On their first wedding anniversary Marian bought big steaks for Dale to cook out on the grill—a treat then, for they still had little money. She baked a cake and put flowers and candles on the table. Dale opened a bottle of champagne.

They sat alone together, toasting each other, talking of how they had met and fallen in love. He told her she looked ravishing in candlelight.

“We should go dancing, Maria,” he said with a Latin accent. “Maria and Lucky Pierre should samba at the Copa tonight.”

“Remember Candlewood Lake? Remember how you got sunburned and we had so much fun and the little cabin? You fooled that man. I know you did.”

“Sure.”

“That was the most beautiful place of all.”

“It was nice all right. We’re doing okay, though. We’re making good progress.”

“I didn’t mean that. You know how proud of you I am. But that was the most beautiful weekend, don’t you think? I don’t think two people have ever been happier. Oh, Dale, I hope neither of us dies first. Wouldn’t it be too awful to be without each other?”

“I know what you mean,” Dale said, taking her hand across the table.

“I wish when we get old we could die together. And have our ashes scattered together over Candlewood Lake.”

“I wish so, too,” Dale said. “Let’s have some more champagne.”

Dale opened another bottle and pretended to be a waiter, draping a dishcloth over his arm and bowing deeply to her and clicking his heels. They went into the living room to talk some more. Marian sat in the easy chair and Dale sprawled on the couch humming tunelessly.

“I’m getting to like it here,” Marian said. “There are some very dear people. And I love living in the country and this little house and being with you. Will it be cold in the winter?”

“Not too bad. The winters aren’t too cold here.”

Marian was surprised when the second bottle was finished. They didn’t usually drink that much.

“I didn’t know you had another one,” Marian said as Dale began to uncork a third bottle. “Hey, don’t point that thing at me! Devil. What the heck, it’s our anniversary. Let’s hope you don’t get a call.”

“I can handle it.” He poured her glass half full and filled his too rapidly, so that the foam slopped over the sides.

“This is so beautiful,” Marian said. She began to feel giddy and bold. “I think we’re going to have the best life ever, don’t you? You can never tell what we might do. I mean, we might do anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know. We might end up anywhere.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well . . .” She giggled. “Somehow I can’t see us staying here forever, can you?” Dale did not respond. “I mean, it is sort of the ends of the earth, after all.”

Marian contemplated the bubbles in her glass and remembered New York. She sighed and tried to imagine Paris. She sensed Dale getting up from the couch and coming over to her, but she did not look up at him. For a second she thought he was going to kiss her and how nice that would be.

Then he was beside her and the last thing she saw out of the corner of her eye was his balled-up fist coming at her. She felt it crack into the side of her jaw. She went over the side of the chair and down. She lay on the floor until the pain came. Groaning, she crumpled up and cried out. She made it to her feet, stumbled into the bathroom and closed the door behind her, locking it.

Marian stayed in the bathroom a long time, hanging on to the sink with both hands. She could not comprehend what had happened. Wasn’t he going to come in and say something? She held a washcloth under the tap and put the cool cloth to her face. She was afraid to look in the mirror.

When she stopped crying, the only sound she heard from the living room was the clink of a glass against a bottle. After what seemed like an hour, she heard Dale get up and go into their bedroom.

Marian slept in the spare bedroom that night. At dawn she woke up with a terrific pain in her jaw, wondered what had happened, why it had happened, what it meant. What had she said? Done? No man had ever hit her before. It had never occurred to her that a man would hit her, not just a slap but a sock with his fist. What was he thinking? She tried to remember everything and dozed off again hoping that the pain and everything would be gone when she awakened again.

Dale stood over her, touching her shoulder.

“It’s almost nine o’clock,” she heard him saying. “What are you doing in here? Why did you sleep in here last night?”

“You hit me.” She started to cry again.

“I what?”

He was profuse in his apologies. He said he remembered nothing. By that evening the bruise was a dark purple.

6

MARIAN STAYED CLOSE TO HOME UNTIL HER BRUISE HEALED. SHE did not belabor the incident, letting it rest as an aberration, blaming it on the champagne. When Dale forgot her twenty-sixth birthday in November, she was not sure what to think. She did not want to be childish and pout. She kidded him about being absentminded and concealed her sadness, feeling a little foolish when, alone, she shed a few tears. Dale was trying so hard to get established, it was no wonder that he was distracted. He gives so much of himself emotionally to his patients, she thought, that he must be drained. At Christmas when she set the table with the mother-of-pearl dishes she had inherited from her maternal grandmother and the Westmorland silver she had been collecting piece by piece since her days as a student nurse, Dale said nothing.

Marian’s misgivings dimmed when they made love. Sexually she felt she had nothing to complain of—not that sex was something they discussed at all, even in bed. It simply happened, and she felt no desire for more than Dale gave her. She took it for granted: That they did not have to discuss it was to her a good sign. She assumed that as long as she kept herself attractive and they cared for one another, sex would be there.

By February 1954 she was pregnant, and Dale seemed, if not overjoyed, then pleased. The pregnancy was no surprise; they had stopped using contraceptives shortly after settling in McLeansboro. Dale instructed her not to gain more than twenty pounds, and she never came close. She quit drinking and smoking, took prenatal vitamins, drank lots of milk. She began a three-mile walk every morning along the highway that passed by their house; truck drivers making deliveries into town came to recognize her, honking and waving. Dale said that she was overdoing the preparations, that nature would take care of the process, but she enjoyed her regime.

Dale himself delivered the boy without complications on August 13. They named him Mark, Peck’s middle name, and gave him Dale for his middle name, which pleased Noma.

Marian was so entranced by the baby that it was months before she noticed that Dale took little interest in Mark, except to tell her not to keep picking him up every time he cried. She could not bear to let the infant cry himself to exhaustion, as Dale said she would have to do unless she wanted a spoiled brat around. He rarely picked Mark up himself unless it was to pose for snapshots, which Dale disliked anyway, always handing the baby over as soon as the picture-taking was done. Marian knew that indifference was not unusual in a new father and that many did not pay much attention to their children for the first few years. That did not make him a bad father, and she did not mind having the baby to herself.

Often Dale did not get home from the hospital until after eight. Patients were now coming to him from surrounding towns and counties; in McLeansboro he was the chief celebrity, lionized beyond the sheriff or the mayor or any minister. Aside from the attractions of his personality and general skills, he was the only doctor in the region who knew how to administer spinal, saddle-block and other procedures to women giving birth, acting as his own anesthetist. No other obstetrician could compete with him, and he could treat the whole family. If you had Dr. Cavaness, you had all you needed, the word got around.

Marian had stopped thinking about how long they would stay in McLeansboro. She figured it would be at least two or three more years before Dale wanted something more challenging and more remunerative: He would never get rich practicing in McLeansboro. But one day out of the blue, just before Mark’s first birthday, Dale announced that they would soon be moving to Eldorado. Dr. John Elder Choisser of Eldorado had decided to move to St. Louis and was selling both his practice and his house to Dale.

“You’ll like the house,” Dale said. “It’s a big place on Fourth Street.”

Fourth Street meant nothing to Marian. She knew Eldorado little better than when she had first gone there—Peck and Noma usually visited them, rather than the other way around—and she had no reason to think that any Eldorado house could be much more than adequate. The only homes she had seen in Little Egypt that she coveted were in Harrisburg, old ones with a touch of antebellum grandeur to them. She reserved judgment. Dale might have the right to say where he would work, but at least she could choose the house this time.

The Choisser place did please her. It was a big, two-story brick house with two bedrooms upstairs, another downstairs, a living room and a large, knotty-pine family room which the Choissers had built on to the back, with plate-glass windows all the way across, looking out on to a good-sized yard. Its only drawback was that it was next door to Smith-Reynolds Chevrolet, but in Eldorado a car dealership did not mean a high-volume operation with lots of traffic. Marian envisioned the move as progress.

She no longer minded the idea of having her in-laws close at hand. She had learned to handle Noma, and Peck had begun to take a welcome interest in Mark: He was already talking about hunting and fishing with him as soon as he could walk. Marian realized that Eldorado, poor as it was, would mean a jump in income for Dale. Dr. Choisser, who was a descendant of Eldorado’s founders, already had a large practice that included several well-to-do Harrisburg families; Dale anticipated expanding it, and he expected to keep most of his McLeansboro patients as well.

He prospered from the start, opening an office on Locust Street next door to Lou Beck’s pharmacy and joining the staff at Pearce Hospital. Lee and Irma Pearce had never blamed Dale for the divorce, and Dr. Pearce welcomed him, calling him “son” and indicating that Dale would soon become head of surgery. Everyone talked about how Dr. Pearce still loved and admired Dale.

With fifty-six beds, Pearce Hospital was busier and more up-to-date than Hamilton Memorial. It was not an attractive place, just a squat, functional building, less agreeable in appearance than the rival Ferrell Hospital; but Dale looked forward to upgrading the surgical facilities and making Pearce more profitable.

He settled in with the confidence of a man come home. It was as if he had cheated fate, carrying out his original plans for himself in spite of Helen Jean. He could now create his self-contained world of maximum efficiency, over which he had absolute control. From the house on Fourth Street, the hospital was a five-minute walk in one direction, his office the same distance in another. Around him were the streets and fields and hills he knew so well.

As his roster of patients lengthened, he gave the job of office receptionist and bookkeeper to Marilyn Leonard, whose husband, Chuck, taught mathematics at Eldorado High. Marilyn became Dale’s confidante, observing every day the several facets of his success as a physician. She could see that the most important factor of all was probably his earthy charm. He had the knack of seeming to be one of the people and yet above them, a political sort of charisma akin to Huey Long’s. He inspired simultaneous feelings of friendliness and admiration which, among the humble and the ignorant, approached worship. Marian had fallen in love with him when he was down and struggling; she knew his self-doubts, however vigorously he concealed them. To others he became a folksy sort of god.

He would listen to any complaint and shoot the breeze with patients about anything from personal problems to prospects for the deer-hunting season or soybean production. Eventually he had over fifteen hundred families on his rolls, more than any other local doctor, but his long hours owed as much to his garrulity as to his numbers of patients.

“How you been? What in hell’s wrong with you? By God, you look okay to me. How about those Eagles? Think we got a chance against Harrisburg? I’ll tell you one thing, it’s not so bad it might not get worse. Open your shirt.”

He would explain in detail each ailment and the reasons behind his choice of treatment, whether the patient had any idea what he was talking about or not. If an educated, brilliant man like Doc Cavaness would take the trouble to talk to them, a miner or a farmer’s wife got a lift with every appointment. His style, positive and loud, had much in common with the kind of preaching people liked to hear from revivalists at camp meetings, long a fixture in Egypt: