CHAPTER SEVEN

“They found her unconscious on the floor of the Hammetschwand lift at 6:38 the next morning. The helicopter spotted her on its first morning patrol because the elevator car had stalled somehow, halfway up the transparent, illuminated shaft, and the pilot had alerted the police command post to investigate. Four men went up the mountain trail in two motorcycle trucks, bringing a maintenance technician who activated the life machinery and brought the car to the base of the shaft. Mayra was sprawled across the floor of the car. The police sent for a stretcher and Dr. Garrison, and she was carried down the mountain, still unconscious.” Willie spoke slowly and with great seriousness. Mr. West listened intently. Walt simply wasn’t able to comprehend what Willie was saying.

“But why? What does it mean?” he asked.

Dr. Garrison spoke next. “I have taken the liberty of calling psychiatric colleagues at Johns Hopkins in your absence, Mr. West,” he said, speaking directly to Edward West, “and I hope, under the circumstances, that meets with your approval. They are flying from Baltimore now.”

“Indeed, it does meet with my approval, Dr. Garrison. And we thank you.”

“Dr. Garrison,” Walt began, “will you please—”

“I have asked these distinguished men to come to confirm my own diagnosis because this has evolved into a serious matter.”

“Evolved? Evolved from where? You had never set eyes on my wife when I left here three days ago.”

“I think Mr. Tobin might begin with the first symptoms of the evolution of the patient’s illness.” Dr. Garrison said stiffly.

Willie cleared his throat delicately. “Uh—you see, Walt—on Wednesday afternoon—the day you left with your father for Chicago—Mayra took her paint box and gear to the top of the Tritten Alp. I was engaged in meetings with Mr. Zachary, our chief mechanic. At about six o’clock, maybe a little before that, Mayra sent word through the desk that she wanted to see me. When I arrived at her apartment she seemed to be in tip-top form, entirely healthy in every way, then she told me that your father had assaulted her verbally on the mountain top and to escape him she had had to flee down the valley trail.”

“But how could she—”

“Yes. Precisely. I told her that what she had experienced was illusory, because Mr. West was, of course, in Chicago. She refused to discuss that condition of fact but instead said she would telephone you in Chicago, which, I assume, she did.”

“She did. Yes. But she was entirely normal. She said nothing to me about any delusion, I mean about Father being in Bürgenstock when he was in Chicago.”

“She didn’t mention it at all?” Dr. Garrison asked.

“No. She asked if Father was in Chicago. Yes. She did cross examine me in a fairly pointed way about when I had seen Father last and when I expected to see him again that day. But that was all.”

“Didn’t you think it was odd or strange that she asked so many detailed questions about your father?”

“I did for a moment, yes. I commented on it to her. But she said she was just making conversation to keep talking to me because she was lonesome. But the hell with this. I knew this. I want to know why you have sent for Johns Hopkins psychiatrists to see my wife.”

“Take it easy, boy,” Mr. West said.

“The next morning, that would be Thursday morning, Mayra was violently ill—sick to her stomach and so forth. And when she saw it wasn’t going to stop she called Gubitz and asked him to send a doctor,” Willie explained, “and Gubitz immediately told me. I arrived at the apartment with Dr. Garrison.”

“As you know,” Dr. Garrison continued, “it was my first examination of Mrs. West. I found her to be suffering a perfectly normal manifestation for an expectant mother—it’s called morning sickness—and I prescribed for it even though there was a possibility that it could have been food poisoning, although she had eaten nothing more than tea and cinnamon toast the day before. Mr. Tobin then asked me—or rather he told me about Mrs. West’s delusion of the previous day—then he asked me if I felt that the delusion could all be a part of a reaction from the pregnancy. I said that this was possible.”

“She was very ill the next day, Walt. Worse than the first day, the poor dear,” Willie said. “Then in the afternoon, after she had agreed to stay in bed and follow Dr. Garrison’s orders, she turned on the radio at just about the same moment that I hung up on your father, both of us hearing the news about the same time that your plane was missing.”

“I want to have an investigation and find out who the son of a bitch was who gave out that ridiculous goddam story,” Walt said.

“Then, after that news, at some time during the night, after she’d heard the news, she wandered out of this hotel and up the mountain trail to the Hammetschwand.”

“But why didn’t you tell her that the story was false? Surely someone told you the story was false.”

“Your father told me the moment he knew,” Willie said. “But Dr. Garrison had sedated Mayra rather heavily, and it would have been the wrong thing, I felt, to try to awaken her to tell her. I was eager to tell her that everything was all right the first thing this morning.”

“All right. All that happened. But why did that mean you had to fly in psychiatrists, for Christ’s sake? Gynecologists, yes. Obstetricians, certainly. Why psychiatrists?”

“Because of my fears, which in my opinion were confirmed last night and early this morning when your wife was found,” Dr. Garrison said.

“Fears of what?”

“Fears that in her present condition your wife might be intent upon harming herself—or even destroying herself.”

Walt shook his head slowly and compulsively in a caricature of patience. “That just isn’t possible, doctor,” he said. “You just don’t know Mayra. It’s simply impossible.”

“Well,” Dr. Garrison replied, “very shortly you will be able to have the prognosis of two of the best psychiatric men in this country.”

“When can I see my wife?”

“She’s in a sedated sleep right now. She should awaken in about two hours, when the doctors should be here. Their examination may take an hour or an hour and a half, but you will certainly be able to see her as soon as they have talked to her, and then you’ll be able to see her when you’ve been armed with their very special response to her condition.”