Seventeen Widows of Sans Souci

by Charlotte Armstrong

  She did want to go out to dinner with Mrs. Buff. Oh yes, she wanted that!

  Her mind went around and around the cage of her desires.

  Sunday rolled quietly on.

  The Unholy Three were nibbling at scraps in Agnes Vaughn’s apartment—fashionably, this time, since on Sunday nights nobody cooked. They had long since extracted the last bit of juice from the experience of the motion picture. Agnes Vaughn hadn’t been crazy about it. She could make up better plots herself. And had.

  “Daisy Robinson’s away. You notice?” she said, restlessly. “Hasn’t come back yet.”

  Felice Paull said, “I told you she went away. I saw her car go out.”

  “It’s funny, you know, that nobody saw Nona Henry leaving.”

  “Mr. Lake knows all about it,” said Felice, mashing a sardine between two crackers.

  “She must have gone away awful early in the morning,” said Agnes. “Awful early. Friday morning.” Agnes uncrossed and re-crossed her little feet. “I don’t like it.”

  “Don’t like what?”

  “If she went early in the morning on Friday, then she made up her bed. On Friday morning, when Elise was coming in to change the linen? Now, that’s funny!”

  “She forgot,” said Felice, unimpressed.

  “I have a hunch …” began Agnes. “Somebody ought to look into it.” Felice looked up. “Some one of these days,” said Agnes accusingly, “somebody is going to faint or fall or get sick in this building and be left lying there.”

  “Nona Henry isn’t in her apartment,” said Felice. “Elise would know.”

  “I wonder,” said Agnes Vaughn.

  “Don’t look at me,” said Felice Paull, “I’m not going to do anything. I made a fool of myself, once, over Marie Gardner.” The two of them stared at each other. Felice belched. “Oh, they’ll be back, maybe tomorrow. Once the weekend’s over.” She put food into her mouth.

  Ida Milbank said wistfully, “The stores will be open.”

  Felice Paull said, “You are going with me, tomorrow.”

  “Where?”

  “Wherever I go,” boomed Felice. “For your own sake, Ida.”

  Agnes Vaughn wiped her mouth on a piece of Kleenex. (Nobody could find the paper napkins.) Her small eyes were narrowed. “This has been a funny weekend,” she said. “I don’t feel right.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Your digestion is off,” diagnosed Felice.

  “My digestion is never off. Why should it be off?”

  “You don’t eat properly,” said Felice. This was true. Agnes Vaughn had no proper meals but, like a cow in a meadow, grazed all day. “You don’t take care of yourself.” Felice had argued with Agnes on this score before. “Now, I have some pills that are really very mild …”

  “You take too many pills,” jeered Agnes.

  “There are occasions …”

  “Oh, go on! Hoo! Hoo! If the good Lord runs my heart and my lungs, and a good deal else, with me bothering … Hoo! Hoo! Let Him run my intestines.”

  Felice Paull’s big eyes began to water with earnestness. Felice had had her food-fad period. She began to expound as much as she could remember. When Ida Milbank’s claw nipped over and stole the sardine-cum-cracker off her plate, she didn’t notice.

  Agnes did.

  It was late. Or perhaps it was early. They had been asleep. The pattern of the clock was losing shape. It didn’t matter much whether day or night, early or late. There was nothing to do. Nothing to eat. Nona felt depressed. Perhaps it was six in the morning. It could equally possibly be six in the afternoon. Perhaps it was Monday. Nona suspected that, once, she had not wound her watch soon enough. She didn’t much care.

  Tess Rogan was propped against the hamper. She looked better. Fine-drawn, but sound enough. “Does your hand hurt?” she asked.

  “No, no.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Oh, I’m furious that I was stupid and cut it. I’m sick that I can’t get us out of here. I’m sorry that I shut the door and got us in.” Nona had fallen into the mood of whipping herself.

  “My, my,” said Tess. “You don’t think you got us in, do you?”

  “Well, of course, I did.”

  “Nona, why won’t you look at the evidence?”

  “That’s exactly what I am doing. I know it can’t be helped. Don’t cheer me. I’ll cheer up in a minute. Just leave me alone, Tess.”

  Tess Rogan said in a moment, “When we get out of here we may rush apart in opposite directions, so sick we’ll be of the sight and the sound of each other. Then, we’ll let each other alone. But not now.”

  Nona rolled her head. The back of her neck ached terribly. “I know what you’ll say. You’ve said it. This ‘happened.’ It’s ‘happening.’ So it did, and so it is, and I don’t deny it. But why did it happen? Because I was stupid. I can see that, you know.”

  “Cause and effect,” said Tess. “I thought so. Will you open your eyes and look a little farther?”

  Nona closed her eyes. “I can’t.”

  “Do you want me to be quiet, then?”

  Nona’s lids stirred. “No,” she said. “I like the sound of your voice, Tess.” She said it easily and rather flatly. But it was as if she had vowed a great love, in music. The little white prison was filled with emotion, enough to swell the heart and stop the breath.

  Tess Rogan did not speak for a moment. Then she began, quietly, “I’d like to show you a—point of view. I’d like to give it to you. I wish I could. You are following one thread, your own life-in-time, aren’t you? So, you say to yourself that because you made this or that choice, here comes this knot or that twist in your thread. And so you blame yourself. Well, that doesn’t seem to me to be the way things really are.”

  “How else?” said Nona, drearily.

  “Look,” said Tess. “Here, and now, there really is a great complex, multiple threads, all crisscrossing in many dimensions. Some are human. Some animal. Some, like thunder and lightning. How can there be any ‘if only’? What can happen, at any moment, without several millions of ifs? Call it chance. Call it contingency. That’s a good word. I read it somewhere. I like it.” Tess had raised her torso.

  Nona felt words rattling upon her ears, not sinking in.

  “People look down their noses at coincidence in fiction,” said Tess, “but look! In fact, there is nothing but coincidence. It’s the meaning of time and we are in time. See how people happen to meet, and change each other’s lives?”

  “I see that,” said Nona. (It was perfectly obvious. A postal card. So Sans Souci. A fire in the wall. So Tess Rogan. A look out a window. So Winnie Lake. One minute—sooner or later—she wouldn’t have met Robert Fitzgibbon at the elevator. Coincidence? Contingency? Lives changed. Once, by the mercy of God, she had met Val Henry.)

  “Don’t you see that you, yourself, are a wild coincidence?” Tess pressed on, uncannily along the same line. “Nearly impossible! Think of the matings, male to female, the paths that had to cross for centuries behind you. And one germ out of millions that met one fertilizable egg. Why, the percentage against you having happened, at all …”

  Nona had her head up. “But here I am,” she said defiantly. “Of course! That’s it! Here you are!” Tess glowed. “So, see what you are doing when you put the blinkers on and follow one thread and take so much on yourself. Certainly, you are responsible … but not for everything. Get the proportion. See the real picture … so wild, so wonderful. That’s the fun of it. Things happen.” Nona’s lips writhed. “I agree,” she said dryly. “Can you presume to say how many ifs got us here? And keep us here?” Tess demanded. “Or how many will get us out again?” “Elise will come on Wednesday.”

  “If …” said Tess.

  Nona was startled.

  “Oh, come now, Nona,” Tess went on in a moment, “you can’t know what might be around the corner of the next second. Men break their nerves assuming that they ough
t to be able to know.”

  “I can pretty well guess,” said Nona. “I mean, there are probabilities, Tess.”

  “True. Probabilities are very useful.” Tess fell silent and waited. “There’s such a thing as luck,” said Nona, in a moment. “I’ll admit that much.”

  “Do you know what good luck is?” inquired Tess. “No,” said Nona, “I don’t know whether I know. I haven’t thought …”

  “I’ll tell you what I think it is. It’s knowing that you can’t know, and so being ready to accommodate to the surprises. It’s the rigid who come unlucky to the wall. You cannot march. You have to dance. Don’t you see it, Nona? Balance is the beautiful and useful thing. Like a foot on a high wire. That’s why you should observe and be sensitive. Not so as to be finer than a clod, or cherished in a shell, too easily hurt to bear the brunt of ugliness. No, no … but just so that you can be swift and easy in the next figure of the dance.”

  “I try,” said Nona, “to do the best I can.” “Oh, stop that,” cried Tess. “You don’t even know what that is. Only God knows what your best might be. Stop inventing yourself. Your little design is bound to be too stiff and too small. You can’t make a pattern as rhythmic and beautiful and joyous as you can fall in with … if you just have the faith to fall.”

  “I don’t dare fall,” said Nona, stung by a remembered fear. “I have to hold on. I have a devil!” She came forward onto all fours. Confession gushed out. “I was afraid I’d hurt the baby. Something crazy—I never told—but I have a devil. I have to keep it down.”

  “The care and feeding of devils,” said Tess Rogan quietly. “Try to keep them down. Hm … I wonder what kind of play-acting you were trying to do at that time.”

  Nona began to speak forth true, and bitter, words. “I was only trying to act the part of the noble, righteous, courageous”—her voice had started high in self-contempt—”uncomplaining, thoroughly respectable”—her voice was quieting—”most admirable.” She stopped and stared. She said in a voice of wonder, “Why did I think I wanted to be admired? I’ve had all that. Whom would I be fooling?”

  Tess smiled at her.

  Nona pulled her legs around and sat coiled upon the cold tile floor. She felt a strange settling, as if the whole world were settling snugly down around her. She felt it like a cloak or a warm arm enfolding her, taking her in, just as she was. “Here we are,” she said, with a feeling of contentment. She smiled at Tess.

  She looked up. This was a small white room. Its furnishings looked very strange from this low eye level. It was all glare, hard, cold. “This room could be improved,” said Nona, “by some flowers. You know that? I think I would like to see something tall and graceful. A blue vase, I think, then some stalks of tall pink, lifting up, some gray leaves at the bottom. A spot or two of deeper blue. Set the whole thing right there, on the back of the W.C. Am I losing my mind?”

  “I don’t think so,” Tess Rogan said. “As a matter of fact, it would be very pretty. Right there.”

  “Yes, it would,” said Nona Henry. She was quite sure of it.

  Chapter 33

  Everything that happened that Monday, at Sans Souci, happened within twenty minutes of time.

  Up until the beginning of the series of events that tumbled one upon the other, that fateful day, the Monday had been very quiet. Not one of the widows had returned, not even Daisy Robinson, who had been expected.

  At a quarter of five, Morgan Lake was anticipating the end of his stint at the desk. He was feeling a trifle uneasy on account of a bit of a mystery that had been puzzling him all afternoon. In Tess Rogan’s mailbox there lay an airmail letter from San Francisco. It had been sent on Saturday. But if Tess Rogan had left for San Francisco on the Thursday night, it was strange that someone named Rogan in that city would have written to her at Sans Souci, on Saturday. There must be some explanation.…

  At a quarter of five, Kelly Shane called him from the basement. (And it began.)

  “Mr. Lake, I think you better come down here. I don’t hardly know what to do.”

  “What is it?”

  “Mrs. Goodenough. She’s sitting in her car down here and she’s crying, bad.”

  “But where …?”

  Kelly read his mind. “Mrs. Cunneen, she went with Mrs. Buff.”

  Morgan Lake realized that something extraordinary must have happened. “I’ll be right down,” he said. He rang the phone in his own apartment. “Rose, could you please?”

  “I’m busy,” she said brusquely.

  “I’m afraid I must ask. Please?” His politeness was, nevertheless, firm and he hung up on her.

  It took about one minute of time for Rose Lake to burst out of 103 and move rapidly (because she was annoyed) toward her husband. “I’m trying to fix dinner,” she said. “Why can’t whatever it is wait for Etting?”

  Morgan Lake did not say why. He opened the flap, came out and gallantly held it for her to enter.

  “I’ve told you,” said Rose, “I don’t like to have to do this!” Her face was ugly with resentment. “I’ve told you!” Her brown eyes had the reddish light of selfish passion in them. They met Morgan Lake’s gray eyes.

  “Thank you, my dear,” said he, and his eyes were calm and cold and relentless.

  This was the last look that ever passed between them—husband and wife, so deeply divorced from the beginning.

  Morgan Lake went to the elevator and down in it. He came out into the basement, a place of echoes and concrete and the subtle uncleanliness of such places. Bettina Goodenough was not sitting in her car, any more. She had emerged and was standing. Her eyes, he could tell, were red.

  Bettina Goodenough was ruined! She had not been able to think of anything, compatible with her desires, that she could do. So she had come down with Caroline Buff and Sarah Lee Cunneen, all dressed to the brows for dinner out, on La Cienega Boulevard. She had turned the key to start her car and had deliberately, or in simple panic, done it wrong. The car would not, it seemed, start at all. Bettina had flubbed about, laughing almost hysterically, for a minute or two. “It won’t start,” she had cried. “Ha. Ha. Ha.”

  “Then perhaps we’ll take a taxi, after all?” Mrs. Buff had said, unperturbed.

  Out of Bettina’s mouth had come a sentence that she had never meant to say aloud. “That’s all right for you, Mrs. Rich Bitch,” she had said, laughing and laughing.

  Once said, those words could not be unsaid.

  Sarah Lee, the vulgarian, had stiffened with shock. But then, recovering, Sarah Lee had said to Caroline Buff, “Let’s you and me find a cab and go on to dinner. No use to spoil all the fun.” She had opened the door of the car and slid out and Mrs. Buff had scrambled to follow her.

  “All right!” Bettina had cried after them. “All right!” So childish! Disgraceful! Oh, she was ruined!

  Very quietly Sarah Lee Cunneen, her friend, her pal, had abandoned Bettina Goodenough. She had slipped her hand under Mrs. Buff’s arm. The two of them had begun to walk up the ramp to the street. They had gone away. To dinner. To some delightful, expensive place.

  Bettina, bowed over the steering wheel, had cried bitterly because she was ruined and there was nothing she could do to retrieve any part of her former position and prestige.

  But, by now, she had pulled herself together sufficiently to get out of the car, and she stared at Morgan Lake.

  “I haven’t any money,” she said to him, starkly. Ruined! So what matter?

  Morgan Lake did not know what could have happened but he said gently, “I haven’t pressed you, Mrs. Goodenough. Can I help you?”

  Her face jerked. The contortion was misery. Misery. “Let me alone. Let the car alone.” She stalked past him and into the elevator. All she wanted was to be alone. Morgan Lake let her go. He blinked and looked about.

  Kelly Shane stood there. Tense. Truly concerned and at a loss. Beside him stood the two maids, who were just going off duty. Lily’s mouth was agape and her brown eyes lit with curiosity. Elise look
ed frightened. Elise was wearing a long reddish coat.

  Morgan Lake said, “Go along. Just go along.”

  So the two colored women went along, to the incline, and began to trudge upward.

  “Wait a minute. Elise …”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Lake?”

  “When did Mrs. Rogan give you that coat?”

  “You was there, sir,” said Elise. “It was Thursday.” Her voice trembled.

  “Yes. Yes, I remember.” Morgan Lake made himself smile. “It’s all right, Elise. Good night. Good night.”

  The two women climbed away and he turned to Kelly Shane. He felt bewildered.

  Kelly Shane said, in apology, “I didn’t know what to do, Mr. Lake. Looked like she couldn’t get her car started. Shall I try it and see?”

  “Not now.”

  “Well, then, I got to straighten up, and get going,” Kelly said. He was young, strong, intelligent. He turned, on the beautiful muscles of his strong young legs, and went toward the corner which was his workshop.

  Morgan Lake, who was neither young nor strong, and less intelligent than intuitive, drifted after him. “What’s that?” he asked. (But he knew! The knowledge hit his heart.)

  “Mr. Lake, you told me, this noon, we were going ahead with some of the repairs,” said Kelly Shane reasonably. “The oven man was in III. You said to get going.”

  This was so. Morgan Lake had taken a half hour, in what was dawn to Avery Patrick, to argue with that elusive character the absolute insanity of holding up any more of the repairs that were overdue at Sans Souci.

  “Yes, I did,” said Morgan Lake, with his heart and intuition still ahead of his consciousness.

  “Well, that’s just the new door for Mrs. Rogan’s bathroom. I went and got it myself. We got to get a man in to fit it and hang it. But first, it’s got to be here.” Kelly Shane smiled, all sanity and reason.

  “Right,” said Morgan Lake. (And he knew, in his heart!)

  Three minutes had gone by since Kelly’s phone call. So soon, to Morgan Lake, had come what might be (but was not) only a terrible suspicion. “Get your tools,” he said to Kelly Shane, “and come with me.”