Double Indemnity - James M. Cain [41]
"I still don't get it."
"You will...Sachetti wasn't in love with her."
"No?"
"He's known her. Five or six years. His father was a doctor. He had a sanatorium up in the Verdugo Hills about a quarter mile from this place where she was head nurse."
"Oh yeah. I remember about that."
"Sachetti met her up there. Then one time the old man had some tough luck. Three children died on him."
The old creepy feeling began to go up my back. He went on. "They died of—"
"—Pneumonia."
"You heard about it?"
"No. Go on."
"Oh. You heard about the Arrowhead business."
"Yes."
"They died on him, and there was an awful time and the old man took the rap for it. Not with the police. They didn't find anything to concern them. But with the Department of Health and his clientele. It ruined him. He had to sell his place. Not long after that he died."
"Pneumonia?"
"No. He was quite old. But Sachetti thought there was something funny about it, and he couldn't shake it out of his mind about this woman. She was over there too much, and she seemed to take too much interest in the children up there. He had nothing to go on, except some kind of a hunch. You follow me?"
"Go on."
"He never did anything about it till the first Mrs. Nirdlinger died. It happened that one of those children was related to that Mrs. Nirdlinger, in such fashion that when that child died, Mrs. Nirdlinger became executrix for quite a lot of property the child was due to inherit. In fact, as soon as the legal end was cleared up, Mrs. Nirdlinger came into the property herself. Get that, Huff. That's the awful part. Just one of those children was mixed up with property."
"How about the other two?"
"Nothing. Those two children died just to cover the trail up a little. Think of that, Huff. This woman would even kill two extra children, just to get the one child that she wanted, and mix things up so it would look like one of those cases of negligence they sometimes have in those hospitals. I tell you, she's a pathological case."
"Go on."
"When the first Mrs. Nirdlinger died, Sachetti elected himself a one-man detective agency to find out what it was all about. He wanted to clear his father for one thing, and the woman had become an obsession with him for another thing. I don't mean he fell for her. I mean he just had to know the truth about her."
"Yeah, I can see that."
"He kept up his work at the university, as well as he could, and then he made a chance to get in there, and talk with her. He already knew her, so when he went up there with some kind of a proposition to join a physicians'-and-nurses' association that was being formed, he figured she wouldn't think anything of it. But then something happened. He met this girl, and it was a case of love at first sight, and then his fine scheme to get at the truth about the wife went on the rocks. He didn't want to make the girl unhappy, and he really had nothing to go on, so he called it off. He didn't want to go to the house after what he suspected about the wife, so he began meeting the girl outside. Just one little thing happened, though, to make him think that maybe he had been right. The wife, as soon as she found out what was going on, began telling Lola cock-eyed stories about him, and got the father to forbid Lola to see him. There was no reason for that, except that maybe this woman didn't want anything named Sachetti within a mile of her, after what happened. Do you follow this?"
"I follow it."
"Then Nirdlinger got it. And suddenly Sachetti knew he had to go after this woman to mean it. He quit seeing Lola. He didn't even tell her why. He went up to this woman and began making love to her, as hard as he knew. That is, almost as hard as he knew. He figured, if it was her he was coming to see, she'd not forbid him to come, not at all. You see, she was Lola's guardian. But if Lola got married, the husband would be the guardian, and that would mix it all up on the property. You see—"
"Lola was next."
"That's it. After she got you out of the way for what you knew about her, Lola was next.