Julia Spencer-Fleming - Out Of The Deep I Cry

Dr. Stillman shook his head. “Bad business. You just don’t expect something like that to happen in this area. Especially to a man as well respected as Allan Rouse. Lord only knows how they’re going to staff the clinic with him gone.”

“Not to sound like a Monty Python sketch, but he’s not dead yet.”

Dr. Stillman looked at her. “When people go missing in the Adirondacks for two weeks in winter, they don’t walk out again.” He gestured toward the elevator in the middle of the hall. “You headed out? I’ll walk with you.” He came around the work counter and fell into step beside her. “I’ve heard that there was a woman with him who was involved in his disappearance.”

“There was a woman with him, but it’s not what it sounds like. She was a former patient of his. Or rather, her children were. She’d been picketing the clinic. She thinks the preservative in their vaccinations caused her son’s autism.”

George Stillman’s whole face opened up in understanding. “That woman. Oh, Lord, yes, she was over here at the hospital, too. Total nut job. What did she do, drag him out there to kill him?”

Clare looked at him, surprised. “I doubt it. He’s the one who asked her to meet him. He wanted her to see the graves of some children who died of diphtheria in 1924.”

Dr. Stillman stopped in front of the elevator and mashed the button. “Really? And the graves were around here? I wonder if they might have been my grandfather’s patients. He lost quite a few to diphtheria in the early twenties. Couldn’t persuade people to take the serum. They used to think gargling and nose sprays would get rid of it.” He rolled his eyes.

“How do you know about it?”

He looked at her as if she were soft in the head. “Diphtheria? I studied it in med school.”

“No, I mean about your grandfather. And his patients. Did he used to talk about them?”

Dr. Stillman shook his head. “He died in ’48, before I was born. But he was a lifelong diarist. My dad kept every volume and passed them on to me.” The elevator doors whooshed open and they stepped inside. “I’ve read them all at least twice. Incredible insight into life in the early years of the twentieth century and what it was like to be a country doctor. Someday I’m going to work them into a publishable form.” He grinned. “Like when I’m retired.”

Clare rested her balled-up alb and leather case against her hip. She tamped down the electrical surge that had flashed through her at the mention of the diaries. “Do you think I could take a look at them? The ones from 1924?”

The doors chimed and opened. Dr. Stillman gave her the soft-in-the-head look again. “Why?”

“It’s complicated. Have you got a half hour?” They stepped out of the elevator into the first-floor admissions area. Before he could answer, she went on, “Short version is, the surviving child of that family is one of my congregation. And a hefty sum of her mother’s money-the mother who lost the other four children to diphtheria-used to go to support the clinic and now is going to go to St. Alban’s. I’ve been digging out bits and pieces of the Ketchems’ family story ever since I learned we were going to be recipients of their money. If he was their physician, your grandfather’s journals might be the only contemporary eyewitness account of what happened.”

“That’s the short version?”

“I told you it was complicated.” She pressed her hand against her chest, not so subtly highlighting her clerical collar. “I promise I’ll be very careful with them. I know how to work with old and valuable books.” She had researched original sources occasionally in the seminary. Of course, that had been under the direct supervision of the rare-collections librarian, a man who had been known to turn the pages for seminarians whose skin-oil level he found fault with.

Dr. Stillman was waving his hand, demurring. “It’s not that they’re really old and valuable,” he said.

“They are to you.”

He looked at her. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay, you can borrow them. The volumes you need.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got another half hour before I’m done with rounds. How ’bout I meet you at my office after that? It’s right next door, in Medical Building A.”

“You keep them in your office?”

“I’ve got two teenagers and a back-to-the-nester in my house,” he said, looking pained. “I keep everything I don’t want torn apart in my office.”

Clare had time to swing over to St. Alban’s, collect her messages, and get back to a few people before heading out to Dr. Stillman’s office, Lois’s admonition to “return that man’s phone call!” ringing in her ears. Hugh Parteger had called again. Clare couldn’t help but think that if he phoned her in the evening, from his apartment, instead of using the company line at his office, he’d be more likely to reach her.

Medical Buildings A, B, and C were as unique and graceful as their names promised. Large concrete shoeboxes two stories high, they housed most of the specialists who practiced at the Washington County Hospital. Stillman shared a receptionist and waiting room with three other doctors, and when Clare gave her name to the woman behind the glass divider, she was told to go right on in.

“You found me,” Dr. Stillman said, rising from his desk.

“Well, you know. Medical Building A stands out. I hear it’s the status address in town.”

He laughed. “These places went up in the early sixties. I think it was one of those projects designed to wow the public with the creative uses of concrete.” He stepped over to one of the bookcases lining three walls and ran his hand along a shelf of identical leather-bound books, untitled. “According to my grandfather, the land we’re sitting on was the hospital farm in the thirties and forties. It supplied milk and fresh produce for the kitchens.” He grinned. “The cafeteria would probably be a long sight better if they had kept it going.”

“Are these the diaries?”

He pulled one off the shelf and handed it to her. AMSTERDAM STATIONERY SUPPLIES DIARY 1939 was stamped on the cover in gold. “They were freebies,” Stillman said. “Grandfather got all his writing paper and ledgers and whatnot from them, and they threw in the diary every year as a thank-you.”

“Like the old advertising calendars.”

“Yes.” He looked at the shelf again. “What years were you interested in?”

“Nineteen twenty-four. Probably ought to include 1923 as well.” He removed two volumes and she swapped them for the 1939 diary. “And could I also look at 1930, too?” Maybe old Dr. Stillman had had something to say about Jonathon Ketchem’s disappearance.

Stillman handed her a third book. “You know,” she said, tucking them into the crook of her arm, “you should make some provision to leave these to the historical society. In case you don’t get a chance to publish them.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I shudder to think what might happen to them if my kids get their hands on them. My oldest is a so-called artist. She’d probably tear the pages out to use in one of her collages.”

Clare thanked him and promised again to take good care of his grandfather’s work. On her way back to St. Alban’s for the five o’clock evening prayer, she dropped the three volumes at her house. She resisted the temptation to take a quick peek, knowing that if she did so, she’d wind up reading and probably be late for the service.

Evening prayer had a whopping seven attendees, but they were evidently as eager to get home as Clare, and after she concluded the service with a verse from Ephesians, they all scattered, and she was back in the rectory by dinnertime.

She figured that the rare-collections librarian would never have approved reading the diaries while scarfing down pasta, so she plunked her plate in front of the tube and ate with Jim Lehrer, who was never put off from discussing the day’s events by the sight of her chewing rigatoni.