Jane, meanwhile, showed no inclination at all toward communicativeness. Carrying a new tray—Blanche’s dinner tray this time—she crossed directly to the desk and put it down beside the one already there.
At the corner of Blanche’s eye there appeared two monstrous mounds of white horror in the shadows beyond the reach of the light. And then, taking up the dreadful lunch tray, Jane, still without a glance in Blanche’s direction, turned and made her way out of the room. Not until her footsteps had faded off down the stairs did Blanche let the book fall from her trembling hands back into her lap.
The white-shrouded tray loomed sharply out of the dimness, seeming to swell in size and grow enormous. She closed her eyes against the sight, but it was still there before her in the darkness of her mind. And then she paused, sniffing the air around her. Was there an odor? Of warm food? Of roasted meat? She opened her eyes and sniffed again. This time Jane had brought her a proper meal. She started hesitantly forward, but stopped again, abruptly, as the odor suddenly soured in her nostrils and became the stink of death and decaying flesh. She leaned forward and lowered her head into her hands, fearful that she was going to be sick.
And then, slowly, it came to her—the reason why Jane was doing this to her. She meant to kill her, to starve her to death! She intended to create in Blanche so strong a terror of what she would find on the trays at mealtime that she would not dare to go near them. Blanche was certain of it; it was exactly the sort of diabolical scheme that would appeal to Jane. In time she would be able to bring perfectly good meals into the room, just as before, and be assured that Blanche would refuse to eat them or even go near them. And in the end, when Blanche died of starvation in the midst of plenty, who would ever think to blame Jane?
Blanche returned her gaze to the covered tray on the desk. She was not mistaken in this conjecture; she was positive she wasn’t. She and Jane were embarked upon a weird and deadly kind of guessing game. Each tray brought in from now on would contain either some monstrous horror like the dead bird or a perfectly good meal. It was up to Blanche to try to guess which was which. Her eyes fixed upon the tray, Blanche reached out to the wheel of her chair and began again to move forward. At least she knew now the kind of madness she was up against. That helped.
Within three feet of the desk she stopped. Leaning forward, she studied the confirmation of the white cloth over the tray, trying to determine what lay beneath it. The highest protuberance was surely a glass, a tumbler, but there was no clue to anything else. The odor now was much stronger, but it still alternated in her mind and upon her senses, first as the smell of roasted meat and then as the stench of moldering decay.
Forcing herself closer, she leaned forward and reached out her hand. But then she pulled it back sharply, thinking she had seen a movement, a faint, flickering alteration in the white folds of the cloth. She told herself it was only a trick of the light, the shadow of her moving hand. But her imagination had already begun to conjure up new horrors, things much worse than the dead bird at lunchtime. It insisted that the tray contained something alive—a live rat, writhing and kicking in a trap! Returning her hand to the wheel of her chair, she began to back away again toward the shadows.
For a moment she sat, breathless, watching the tray for further signs of movement, but there were none.
Of course not, she scolded herself, angry with herself now for being a frightened, weak-willed fool, what nonsense! There’s nothing alive under that cloth. Fool! You’ve simply worked yourself into another state of blind panic.
Very deliberately she took a long, deep breath and let it out again. Yes, she had been giving away to panic, and quite long enough, too. One brooding eccentric in the house was enough. She made herself face around to the tray again, made herself look at it steadily.
There was the possibility that she was right about Jane’s plan to starve her through terror. But only the possibility. It could just as easily be that Jane was only behaving in accordance with some distorted, childish impulse that had no precise meaning at all. In either case the thing to do was simply to refuse to be terrified, to return to the tray and remove the cloth and determine once and for all whether it contained her dinner or another horror. Even if it should turn out to be the worst of the things she feared, the shock could not possibly be as great as it had been the first time. Now she was forewarned.
Steeling herself, she moved back again toward the desk. She had not covered more than half the distance, however, when she stopped. She sat for a moment staring straight ahead and then all at once she collapsed forward and buried her face in her hands. She couldn’t do it. Suddenly she knew it. She simply hadn’t the courage; Jane had won. Convulsively, helplessly she began to sob.
The first light of dawn, coming into the room by deflection, had been gray and oppressive, and Blanche, still huddled, as she had been through the night, in her wheel chair, had been fearful that the day would not be fine. Poor weather would spoil everything.
Since the dawn, however, she had dozed, and now, with the passing of more than three hours, there had been a sufficient gathering of warmth and brightness to reassure her. Turning, she looked back toward the door into the hallway. It was still closed. And the tray on the desk was still there. Jane, then, had not come into the room while she was asleep. She looked back toward the clock on the bedstand. It was nearing nine o’clock, now, the hour when Mrs. Bates usually made the first of her two daily visits to the garden.
Moving her chair as close as possible to the window, she set the brake. That done, she gripped the arms of the chair and started to pull herself up and forward. Bracing herself with her right leg, the one that still contained some slight glimmering of life, she managed slowly to raise herself just up a bit and out of the chair. Craning to see, she peered down into the garden below. It was deserted. The house, at the far end of the garden, was still closed; the blinds were still drawn on the French doors. With a faint sigh of impatience, Blanche let herself back into her chair.
The fear and panic which had kept her awake through most of the night had begun to be dimmed with the coming of the small, still hours of the morning. Exhaustion notwithstanding, as the grip of fear had begun to relax its hold upon her mind and body, she had begun to think and reason more clearly. She had seen that even without the telephone there was still a way to summon assistance.
No sooner had the idea come to her than she had gotten a pad of note paper and a pencil and gone to work.
Mrs. Bates (she had written in a wide, agitated scrawl) This is from your neighbor, Blanche Hudson. I am forced to ask your help in a very serious matter. For reasons I cannot explain in this note, I am not able to use my telephone. As I need desperately to reach my doctor, I am asking you to call him for me. His name is Dr. Warren Shelby, and his office number is OL 6–5541. Please ask him to come here to my home to see me as quickly as possible. Tell him not to call beforehand but just to come. Please do this for me. It is a matter of life and death.
She had signed the note with her initials and then added a postscript: Please do not, under any circumstances, disturb my sister about this matter.
When she had finished it, she had folded it over carefully and put it in the right-hand pocket of her robe, where it would be handy when she needed it. Almost immediately afterward, with the relief of having put into progress a plan that she was confident would work, she finally dozed off.
And then she dreamed.
In her dream she had been a little girl again, five or six years old, and she had been walking with her mother along a deserted stretch of beach in the late afternoon. As they walked, the waves reached toward them from across the sloping sand, rolling up and up, falling, crashing, growing darker as the minutes passed, with approaching dusk. A soft mist had risen from the water and was beginning to drift up toward the row of small wooden summer cottages on the rise. Little Blanche clung tightly to her mother’s hand, for the way ahead was blurred by her own tears.
Actually it had been
a fragment from the past, less dreamed than remembered, for once long ago it had been a part of something that had really happened.
It had all begun earlier that afternoon, out on the porch where Jane and her father were practicing.
The daily practice period was religiously maintained in order to keep Jane “in shape,” even during her month of holiday, and to prepare new material for the fall bookings. It took place between the hours of two and four and was held out on the porch, according to their father’s explanation, so that Jane might take full advantage of the healthful salt air. If, at the same time, a large number of onlookers was attracted from the ranks of the casual visitors on the beach, and from the tenants of the adjacent cottages, neither he nor Jane seemed especially to mind.
During these sessions, Blanche, chubby and tanned in her sagging blue-and-white-striped bathing suit, was permitted to attend, but only as one of the spectators. Her designated place was at the side of the porch, far to the right and close behind her father’s chair from which he provided Jane’s musical accompaniment on a magnificent five-string banjo. It was firmly understood that Jane’s work period was to be regarded always with respect and solemn sobriety; Blanche was suffered to remain and watch only on the strict admonition that she was to be absolutely silent. It was also understood that any interference would result in instantaneous banishment.
For some time little Blanche had begun to find it increasingly difficult to stand by the terms of this agreement. Watching Jane perform her songs and dances before the rapt stares of her porchside audience, she felt within herself a burgeoning desire to share at least a ray of Jane’s bright spotlight. It had come into her bright young head that, if she just wanted to, she could sing and dance every bit as good as dumb old Jane—and probably a whole lot better. All you had to do was jump around a lot and wave your hands and make faces. And anyone could do that. The hand of temptation, at first, merely beckoned and then, when Blanche still resisted, it took her by the scruff of the neck and thrust her helplessly forward.
The ring of the banjo loud in her ears, Blanche darted out suddenly from behind her father’s chair and joined Jane, forthwith, in the dance. Jumping violently up and down, she shook her head and waved her arms in an idiot frenzy of excitement. And then, breaking into a kind of mad jig, she suddenly embellished her performance with a series of cries that sounded, approximately, like Indian war whoops.
It was a performance that demanded—and got—the instantaneous and complete attention of all concerned, and though the banjo music came to an abrupt stop, Blanche’s dance did not. Spurred on to new heights by a roar of laughter from the onlookers, she lolled her tongue out of her mouth and shook her head so hard from side to side that for a moment it seemed in peril of flying loose from her neck. And then, in the next instant, retribution befell her; a hand struck her stingingly across the face, and another caught at her hair and pulled it so hard that she was thrown to the floor. Jane’s voice shrilled close to her ear.
“Go away! You go away, you—go away, go away!”
Then a larger, harder hand, her father’s, was around her arm, jerking her dizzily to her feet.
“What do you think you’re trying to do?” her father roared. “What’s got into you?”
Blanche looked up dazedly into his flushed and furious face, and for a moment she was assailed by a terrible feeling of sickness. At the same time she was aware of Jane standing close beside her, arms akimbo, breathing heavily with exertion and righteous indignation.
“You can’t dance, you dirty little fatty! Who ever said you could!”
And then her father led her swiftly across the porch and down the steps to the sand. “Now you just run along, Missy,” he said coldly, “and don’t come back until you’re ready to behave yourself and leave poor Janie alone.”
Blanche had stumbled away, around the corner of the house, out of sight of the tittering onlookers. At the rear of the house, she had taken shelter beneath the wooden steps leading down from the back porch, and there in their shade, hugging herself tight, she had wept.
Nearly two hours later her mother found her and taking her hand, led her out along the dusk-dimmed beach. Out of sight of the cottage they stopped. Her mother, sitting down on a rock that jutted up out of the sand, drew her close.
“You mustn’t mind, sweetheart,” her mother told her. “You must try to find some way not to. Your daddy didn’t really mean it, not the way it seemed, he didn’t. It’s just that he has to give Jane a lot of special attention that he doesn’t give to you—or even to me—because of her work. We owe such a lot to Jane, you know, all of us. If it weren’t for her we wouldn’t have all the nice things we have. You wouldn’t have all your nice, pretty clothes. We wouldn’t be able to come here and live by the ocean in the summer. We’d miss—oh, so many nice things. Janie works very hard for us—and for you, too, dear.” Her mother lifted her chin gently with the tip of her finger and gazed deeply for a moment into her eyes. “But you’re the lucky one, sweetheart, you really and truly are, if you only knew it. You’ll see one day. And when you do, you must remember to be kinder to Jane and your father than they are to you now. Do you understand at all?”
Not really understanding but anxious to please her mother, Blanche nodded. “Uh-huh,” she murmured. I—I guess so.…”
“I wish you did, my love; oh, I wish you really did.”
In all the long years since, Blanche had not thought about that moment on the beach until now, and she wondered why it should suddenly have come into her mind with such clarity. Thinking back, she could even remember that her mother had been wearing a dress of pale blue voile, decorated with delicate ivory-colored embroidery. Shaking her head with sad astonishment, Blanche freed herself of this reverie and looked around toward the door. She listened closely, but there was still no sound to indicate that Jane was up yet and about.
Turning back to the window, she strained up again out of her chair. This time, thrusting herself sharply forward, she reached out, grasped the grillwork and pulled herself up until she was almost in a standing position. Peering down into the garden, she frowned with disappointment; it was still deserted.
She felt a small flutter of anxiety; perhaps something had happened. Maybe Mrs. Bates had been taken ill during the night and was confined indoors. Or she might have been called away by some emergency. It was beginning to be so late now.…
Her gaze flew out suddenly to the house at the end of the garden as one of the French doors swung open, and Mrs. Bates, as if making her appearance at just that moment deliberately to point out to Blanche the foolishness of her overwrought conjecture, emerged placidly onto the lawn. Dressed as always in her smock and straw hat she paused, glanced down the length of the garden with evident satisfaction and then crossed to the faucet to turn it on. Blanche, pulling herself closer to the grillwork, reached eagerly into her pocket for the note.
But then, thinking that she had perhaps heard a sound from somewhere out in the hallway, she pulled her hand quickly away again. She looked around toward the door and finding it still closed turned back to the garden and Mrs. Bates. For a long moment she was perfectly still, her actions suspended in indecision. If she dropped the note out the window now, Mrs. Bates was still far enough away that she might not notice. But if she waited to drop it, and Jane came into the room before she’d had the chance.… Then the sound came again from the hallway, more certainly this time, and her decision was made for her; letting go of the grillwork, she shoved herself back and dropped down into her chair.
She had only just managed to get her chair away from the window and turned around when the door opened and Jane shuffled into view.
Jane was wearing her usual morning costume, an old wrapper of quilted and badly soiled white satin. Her dyed hair was in the same state of wild disarray as it had been when she had first awakened and gotten out of bed, and on her feet she wore the red patent-leather sandals. Evidently she had been up and moving quietly about the house for
some time, for as she entered, Blanche saw that she was carrying another covered tray. She paused for a moment just inside the door and glanced hastily about the room with eyes still so puffed with sleep they were barely more than slits. Blanche slipped her hand down to her pocket and held it protectively over the note to Mrs. Bates.
Jane put the breakfast tray down on the desk and with no sign of any special interest took up the one from the evening before and moved back toward the door. Just as she was starting from the room, however, she paused, looked back at the tray she had just left and then down at the one she was carrying.
Blanche could not tell whether Jane’s glance had moved in her direction or not; there had simply been a quick stirring of the slitted eyelids and no more. And then, as if in a mood of sudden decision, Jane crossed back to the tray on the desk, reached out to the cloth and pulled it aside. As she did so Blanche quickly averted her eyes.
She remained quite still, even after Jane’s footsteps had faded away through the hallway and down the stairs. But then, knowing that she would have to sooner or later, she made herself turn and look in the direction of the desk.
For a moment she could only stare. She had been so certain that she was to be confronted with a sight of sickening repugnance that it was several moments before her mind adjusted to the fact that what she was staring at was only her usual breakfast, a poached egg, orange juice, buttered toast and tea.
From below stairs came the familiar sounds of Jane going about the business of getting her own breakfast just as usual.
Just as usual. The phrase leapt out at her from the bulk of her thoughts, presenting itself before her in sharp definition. Just as usual, Jane had brought her breakfast which, just as usual, was the same breakfast she had every day. And now, just as usual, Jane was downstairs fixing her own breakfast. In the face of so much “usualness,” the terror of the afternoon and night before seemed suddenly to pale. With a lagging glance toward the door, she reached into her pocket and took from it the note she had written in the dark, haunted reaches of the night:
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Page 6
