Peter Clement - Mortal Remains

“We only agreed to see you after checking your credentials, Dr. Garnet. I must admit, it appears you’ve had a very distinguished career,” Samantha McShane said. “Surprisingly so.”

For a guy working in Buffalo, Earl added, the unspoken qualification having practically leapt off her pinched lips. She sat on a round-backed, antique chair of a kind he’d seen in photos of Queen Victoria. Looking over the ornately furnished room, he figured Samantha must have gotten the rest of the old girl’s movables as well. Walter McShane stood behind her, scowling, as still as a stuffed ornament. Clearly it was Samantha’s idea that Earl be tolerated here at all.

“So what can we do to help you prove who murdered our Kelly?” she asked.

“Mark Roper has already let me look over copies of the police records, so I don’t need anything there. I’m interested instead in what you learned from the private detectives you hired. Is there any chance we could look through their reports, maybe even talk to one of them? Do you know if they’re still alive?”

Samantha looked up at Walter.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he muttered.

“Perhaps you could forward whatever you come up with to Dr. Roper. I don’t plan to be in New York much longer-”

“No!” Samantha said, sitting even more bolt upright than Earl would have thought possible. “That man has his own agenda in all this.”

Walter left his perch and wandered over to a large bay window overlooking Central Park West and gazed out at the green space beyond, his jaw a study in tension.

Earl focused on Samantha. “Why would you say that, Mrs. McShane? Dr. Mark Roper has demonstrated an ironclad objectivity in pursuing what happened to Kelly-”

“Tell him, Walter,” Samantha said, swinging around to confront her husband’s back.

“I don’t think it’s anybody’s business, Samantha.” He spoke without looking at her.

“I want him to know, Walter.”

He simply shrugged.

She returned her gaze to Earl. “A mother feels these things so much more acutely, Dr. Garnet. I’m sure you understand this, as a medical man. The loss of a child is the worst possible pain…” Her eyes watered over, and tears careened down wrinkled cheeks that seemed parched as washed-out gullies. Pulling out a hanky from the sleeve of her dress, she dabbed at her face, all the time slipping glances over at Walter as if checking whether he was watching.

He wasn’t.

The waterworks stopped. “Would you like to see Kelly’s room?”

Now the man pivoted to face her. “Really, Samantha-”

“If he wishes to see it, Walter, he can.”

“Yes, I would like to, Mrs. McShane.” Earl tried not to sound too eager, but the caustic exchange between the couple was not only unpleasant, it put a damper on what Samantha could say. If he maneuvered her out of Walter’s earshot, she might let something useful slip.

“Come, Dr. Garnet” She got to her feet, then led him along a dingy hallway to a closed door. Opening it, she stepped inside.

Earl followed, and had to stifle a gasp.

Brightly lit and painted yellow, it still resembled a little girl’s room. Stuffed animals lined the bookshelves. A frilly gold-colored duvet covered the bed. Porcelain figurines of soulful-eyed children, kittens, and puppies filled a corner display case. But what most took Earl’s breath away were the photographs of Kelly and her mother. None of the images were unusual in themselves, but hung all together they overwhelmed him.

To his right were pictures of a much younger Samantha holding her infant daughter, rows and rows of them. They progressed through the usual moments that parents capture – Kelly as a baby sucking a bottle, sitting with a hand of support at her back, eating with a spoon, toddling between Samantha’s legs. Then came Kelly the little girl – walking without support, running with a ball, posing in a party dress, diving off a dock, riding a tricycle. In these she wore the same goofy, self-conscious grin he’d sometimes seen in Brendan when he got in front of a camera. In others she seemed more sullen. The shots evolved into Kelly riding a two-wheeler, swinging a tennis racket, standing on skis, and participating in the innumerable other activities of an older girl. In these photos she wore a frown more frequently, as if she preferred not having her picture taken at all.

He stepped closer and noticed other details. In an inordinate number of them where Samantha appeared, the woman stood front and center, beaming a smile that commanded the viewer to pay attention in a way that thrust Kelly into the background.

And in shot after shot, Kelly seemed to be eyeing her mother, not showing fear necessarily, but a sadness in her gaze and with her mouth taut with strain. In some, she even appeared to be leaning away from her.

Prophetic, he thought.

“You can see we were very close,” Samantha said from behind.

He couldn’t believe she could be so oblivious to how Kelly’s expressions in the later pictures said the opposite.

“Inseparable, in fact,” she continued. “It’s hard to tell from these, but she was a very sick child.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I hadn’t any idea what to do with her. She was forever complaining of stomach-aches and bowel problems. I took her to no end of doctors, but no one ever figured out what was wrong. And Walter couldn’t be there to help, his being away on business all the time. Not that I blame him for leaving her illness all on my shoulders. He had to take care of his firm, so I soldiered on alone, a full-time mother, of course. There was no paying strangers to take care of Kelly in this home, the way women do all the time with their children today.”

He swallowed so as not to show how repugnant he found her performance. “What sort of illnesses did Kelly have?”

“As I said, no one ever diagnosed her. The best attempt came from an old general surgeon in Saratoga who agreed to operate on her, twice. But even he couldn’t diagnose what was wrong. Do you have any idea what kind of ordeal that can be for a parent?”

Oh, brother, he thought, scars the size of ropes flashing to mind. Making as if he were still studying the gallery, he asked. “What about Dr. Cam Roper? He saw Kelly once. Didn’t he say she was fine? At least that’s what his files indicate.”

“That quack? He was the worst of them all. Made the most terrible allegation that a mother should ever have to hear. He’s the reason I won’t deal with Mark Roper. Like father, like son, I always say.”

He continued to peer at the stills, not wanting to risk charging in too directly. “Oh? What did Cam Roper say?”

“Why, he practically accused me of being the cause of Kelly’s troubles. Claimed I was making her sick-”

“That’s enough, Samantha!” Walter said, standing at the doorway.

“Oh, Walter.” She spoke his name as if uttering a groan of long-endured pain. “I want Dr. Garnet to know how much that man hurt me, so he’ll understand what I’ve been through-”

“It’s none of Dr. Garnet’s business! Don’t you realize he’ll do the same with what you tell him.” He looked directly at Earl, his elderly face chiseled with anger. “It’s disgusting, what so-called physicians get away with saying, all in the cause of making a diagnosis. Well, I nearly sued then rather than let anyone besmirch us. Lucky for him I backed off, but I won’t let you or anyone else stain our reputation now-”

“And I won’t bottle up my agony, Walter, no matter what you say…”

Their accusations and innuendoes flew between them, filling the air with acid rancor.

As he watched and listened, Earl’s thoughts on the couple congealed into specific clinical labels: narcissism, ego, denial – traits common in everyone, but here they presented themselves in pathological proportions, while under them all loomed a terrible diagnosis, just as Walter said.