“We’d love some tea, Hattie,” Tom said.
She poured the boiling water into a teapot and covered it. She brought three unmatched mugs from a little yellow cupboard to the table, a pint of milk, and sugar in a silver bowl. Then she sat beside them and began talking to Sarah about the original owners of some of her things while they waited for the tea to steep.
The big birdcage had been Arthur Thielman’s—or rather, Mrs. Arthur Thielman’s, the first Mrs. Arthur Thielman, and so had her brass lamps; some shoes and hats and other clothes had also been Mrs. Thielman’s, for after her death her husband had thrown out everything that had been hers. Her little old-fashioned desk where she kept her papers and the old leather couch had come from a famous gentleman named Lamont von Heilitz, who had got rid of nearly half his furniture when he had done something—Hattie didn’t know what—to his house. And the big gilded frame around that picture of Mr. Rembrandt—
“Mr. von Heilitz? Famous?” Sarah said, as if the name had just caught up with her. “He must be the most useless man ever born! He never even comes out of his house, he never sees anyone—how could he be famous?”
“You’re too young to know about him,” Hattie said. “I think our tea’s ready by now.” She began to pour for them. “And he comes out of his house now and again, I know—because he comes to see me.”
“He comes to see you?” Tom asked, now as surprised as Sarah.
“Some old patients come around now and again,” she said, smiling at him. “Mr. von Heilitz, he brought me some of his parents’ things himself, instead of tossing them on the dump and making me drag them home. He might look like an old fool to you, but to me he looks like that picture of Mr. Rembrandt up on my wall.” She sipped her tea. “Came to visit you too, didn’t he? Back when you got hurt.”
“But why was he famous?” Sarah asked.
“Everybody knew about the Shadow once,” Hattie said. “Used to be the most famous man on Mill Walk. I think he was the greatest detective in the world—like someone you could read about in a book. He made a lot of people uncomfortable, he did—they had too many secrets, and they were afraid he’d know all about them. He still makes ’em uncomfortable. I think a lot of folks on this island would be happier if he passed real soon.”
Sarah turned a reflective glance on Tom, and he said, “Hattie, did Dr. Milton come here to warn you off talking to me?”
“Let me ask you something. Are you making ready to sue Shady Mount? And do you want Nancy Vetiver to help you do it?”
“Is that what he said?”
“Because you had to have that second operation—they made a mess of the first one, you know. Tom ain’t that stupid, I said. If you could be sued on this island, it would have happened a long time ago. But if you want to, Tom, you go ahead—you might not be able to win, but you could smear him a little.”
“Dr. Milton?” asked Sarah.
“Hattie once told me I ought to take my fork and stab him in his fat fish-colored hand.”
“Should have too. Anyhow, you want Nancy’s address, I got it. I see Nancy once a week or so—she drops in to talk to me. Boney can try to get me thrown out of my house here, it might be harder than he thinks.”
“He said he’d get you evicted? Don’t you own this place?”
“Tossed out on my old black ass, was the way he said it. Every month but June, July, and August, I pay rent to a man who comes collecting for the Redwing Holding Company. Jerry Hasek is his name, and he’s just the man you’d send if you wanted to scare the rent out of seventy-seven-year-old ladies. He wouldn’t be good for much else. In September, he takes four months’ money all at once. Summers, he goes up north with all the Redwings, and a couple other no-goods Ralph Redwing keeps on the payroll.”
“I know him,” Sarah said. “Well, I know who he is. Acne scars, always looks worried about something?”
“That’s him, that’s my rent collector.”
“You know him?” Tom asked.
“Sure—he drives Ralph, when Ralph uses a car. And he’s a kind of bodyguard.”
“So,” Hattie said. “You gonna take on Boney? It don’t look that way to me.”
“No,” Tom said. “I just saw him at the hospital this morning—I asked him about Nancy, and he told me she was suspended, but he wouldn’t say why. I don’t think he wants you to tell me why, either.”
Hattie scowled down into her mug of tea, and all the lines in her face deepened alarmingly. An almost ferocious sadness had claimed her, and Tom saw that it had always been there, underlying everything she had said. “This tea’s gone cold,” she said. Hattie pushed herself up and went to the sink, where she rinsed out the mug. “I guess that man died. That policeman who got shot. Reminds me of the old days, with Barbara Deane.”
“Mendenhall,” Tom said. “Yes, he died this morning. I saw them taking his body out of the hospital.”
Hattie leaned back against her sink. “You think Nancy Vetiver was a bad nurse?”
“I think she was the only one as good as you,” Tom said.
“That girl was a nurse, same as me,” Hattie said. “She could have been a doctor but nobody would let her, so she did the next best thing. Didn’t have the money to be a doctor, anyhow, so she went to the nursing school at St. Mary Nieves, same as me, and when they saw how good she was, they hired her for Shady Mount.” She looked at each of them with the fierce sadness Tom had seen earlier. “You can’t tell someone like that not to do her job—you can’t say, do bad now, we don’t want you to be good today.” Hattie lowered her head and wrapped her arms around her chest. “This island, this is some place. This can be some damn place, Mill Walk.” She turned from them, and seemed to look at her wall of framed photographs.
“Nancy came here a couple times, the last few weeks. Seemed like it was getting worse. See, if she got suspended, that meant she couldn’t keep her place anymore, because the hospital owned her apartment. They told her. Told her.”
Hattie turned around again. “You know what? Boney’s scared of something. Tells you Nancy got suspended, and doesn’t have sense enough to make up a good lie about why.” She crossed her arms over her chest again, and looked amazingly like the stuffed hawk in the birdcage. “Makes me mad—damn mad. Because I halfway believed the man.”
She looked up at Tom. “Everything about this thing makes me mad. Two kinds of law—two kinds of medicine. Boney coming out here, all sweet and nice, then telling me that if I talk to you he might have to—to ‘respond to my disloyalty,’ that’s how he said it—hard as that would be for him, he says, when he already got Nancy out of the hospital. See, he went too far then too!” She seemed to blaze as she came across the floor to Tom: it was as if the hawk had come to life and swooped toward him. She put her thin old hand on his shoulder, and he felt her talons clamp down. “He doesn’t know who you are, Tom. He thinks he knows, he thinks he knows all about you. Thinks you’ll be just like all the rest—except one. You know who I mean, don’t you?”
“The Shadow.” He looked at Sarah, who sipped her tea and looked calmly back across the top of the cup. “You said something about a woman named Barbara Deane? She was a nurse?”
“For a time. Barbara Deane was your midwife.” She dug her fingers into his skin. “You want to see Nancy Vetiver? If you do, I’ll take you to her.”