Double Indemnity

"But wait a minute. What did your mother say to the doctor when he-"

"Nothing. She was in high delirium, and besides he had her in oxygen five minutes after he got there."

"But wait a minute, Lola. After all, a doctor is a doctor, and if she had pneumonia-"

"A doctor is a doctor, but you don't know Phyllis. There's some things I could tell. In the first place, she's a nurse. She's one of the best nurses in the city of Los Angeles-that's how she met my mother, when my mother was having such a terrible fight to live. She's a nurse, and she specialized in pulmonary diseases. She would know the time of crisis, almost to a minute, as well as any doctor would. And she would know how to bring on pneumonia, too."

"What do you mean by that?"

"You think Phyllis wouldn't be capable of putting my mother out in the night, in that cold, and keeping her locked out until she was half frozen to death-you think Phyllis wouldn't do that? You think she's just the dear, sweet, gentle thing that she looks like? That's what my father thought. He thought it was wonderful, the way she trudged all that distance to save a life, and less than a year after that he married her. But I don't think so. You see-I know her. That's what I thought, the minute I heard it. And now-this."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Nothing-yet. Except listen to me."

"It's pretty serious, what you're saying. Or at any rate intimating. I suppose I know what you mean."

"That's what I mean. That's exactly what I mean."

"However, as I understand it, your mother wasn't with your father at the time-"

"She wasn't with my mother either. At the time. But she had been."

"Will you let me think this over?"

"Please do."

"You're a little wrought up today."

"And I haven't told you all."

"What else?"

"…I can't tell you. That, I can't make myself believe. And yet-never mind. Forgive me, Walter, for coming in here like this. But I'm so unhappy."

"Have you said anything to anybody about this?"

"No, nothing."

"I mean-about your mother? Before this last?"

"Not a word, ever, to anybody."

"I wouldn't if I were you. And especially not to-your stepmother."

"I'm not even living home now."

"No?"

"I've taken a little apartment. Down in Hollywood. I have a little income. From my mother's estate. Just a little. I moved out. I couldn't live with Phyllis any more."

"Oh."

"Can I come in again?"

"I'll let you know when to come. Give me your number."

I spent half the afternoon trying to make up my mind whether to tell Keyes. I knew I ought to tell him, for my own protection. It was nothing that would be worth a nickel as evidence in court, and for that matter it was nothing that any court would admit as evidence, because that's one break they give people, that they have to be tried for one thing at a time, and not for something somebody thinks they did two or three years before this happened. But it was something that would look mighty bad, if Keyes found out I knew it, and hadn't told him. I couldn't make myself do it. And I didn't have any better reason than that this girl had asked me not to tell anybody, and I had promised.

About four o'clock Keyes came in my office and shut the door.

"Well, Huff, he's showed."

"Who?"

"The guy in the Nirdlinger case."

"What?"

"He's a steady caller now. Five nights in one week."

"…Who is he?"

"Never mind. But he's the one. Now watch me."

That night I came back in the office to work. As soon as Joe Pete made his eight o'clock round on my floor I went to Keyes's office. I tried his desk. It was locked. I tried his steel filing cabinets. They were locked. I tried all my keys. They didn't work. I was about to give it up when I noticed the dictation machine. He uses one of them. I took the cover off it. A record was still on. It was about three quarters filled. I made sure Joe Pete was downstairs, then came back, slipped the ear pieces on and started the record. First a lot of dumb stuff came out, letters to claimants, instructions to investigators on an arson case, notification of a clerk that he was fired. Then, all of a sudden, came this:

Memo, to Mr. Norton

Re. Agent Walter Huff

Confidential-file Nirdlinger

With regard to your proposal to put Agent Huff under surveillance for his co

Respectfully

I lifted the needle and ran it over again. It did things to me. I don't only mean it was a relief. It made my heart feel fu

Confidential-file Nirdlinger

SUMMARY-investigators' verbal reports for week ending June 17th:

Daughter Lola Nirdlinger moved out of home June 8, took up residence in two-room apartment, the Lycee Arms, Yucca Street. No surveillance deemed necessary.

Widow remained at home until June 8, when she took automobile ride, stopped at drug store, made phone call, took ride two succeeding days, stopped markets and store selling women's gowns.

Night of June 11, man caller arrived at house 8:35, left 11:48. Description:-Tall, dark-age twenty-six or seven. Calls repeated June 12, 13, 14, 16. Man followed night of first visit, identity ascertained as Beniamino Sachetti, Lilac Court Apartments, North La Brea Avenue.

I was afraid to have Lola come down to the office any more. But finding out they had no men assigned to her meant that I could take her out somewhere. I called her up and asked her if she would go with me to di

We talked along during di

"I thought over what you told me."

"Can I say something?"

"Go ahead."

"I've had it out with myself about that. I've thought it all over, and come to the conclusion I was wrong. It's very easy when you love somebody terribly, and then suddenly they're gone from you, to think it's somebody's fault. Especially when it's somebody you don't like. I don't like Phyllis. I guess it's partly jealousy. I was devouted to my mother. I was almost as devoted to my father. And then when he married Phyllis-I don't know, it seemed as though something had happened that couldn't happen. And then-these thoughts. What I felt instinctively when my mother died became a dead certainty when my father married Phyllis. I thought that showed why she did it. And it became a double certainty when this happened. But I haven't a thing to go on, have I? It's been terribly hard to make myself realize that, but I have. I've given up the whole idea, and I wish you'd forget that I ever told you."