Rose's Last Summer

by Margaret Millar

  “Hurry up, Willett’s waiting for us at home.”

  “Is he—mad?”

  “What do you think?”

  “All right, let him be mad. I can be mad, too.” She man­aged to get the coat on by herself. Lora didn’t offer to help. “Murphy, listen. I’ve got an idea.”

  “Don’t even bother to tell me.”

  “Listen. Let’s not go back to that house at all. Let’s run away.”

  “Where?”

  “Oh, anywhere. Mexico City.”

  “How are we going to get there, hitchhike?”

  “I don’t want to go back to that house. It’s depressing. I can’t bear it, the two of them watching me all the time.” But even while she was protesting, she was buttoning her coat getting ready to leave. “How much longer will I have to stay there?”

  “Two months, maybe a week longer than that so no­body will get suspicious.”

  “And then?”

  “Then you see a lawyer. Willett will bring him out to the house, and you’ll make a will.”

  “I haven’t anything to leave.”

  “It isn’t the bequests that are important, it’s the fact that— Oh, for heaven’s sake, we’ve gone into this a dozen times before. We haven’t time right now. Where’s your purse?”

  “On the bed.”

  “Did you bring anything else? A hat?”

  “No.”

  “Come on, then.” Lora took her by the arm. “You feel all right?”

  “I wish I was dead.”

  “You can’t die for two months yet.”

  “I wish I was—”

  “Stop acting like a baby. Wait.” Lora paused in the middle of the room and listened. From the hall came the sound of heavy footsteps, men’s footsteps, punctuated by the sharp clicking of a woman’s high heels on the hall linoleum.

  Then Mrs. Cushman’s voice, swollen with tears: “That’s the room. They’re in there, both of them. How was I to know anything was wrong? Frank, you tell him, tell him I only did my duty, so help me.”

  “It’s the police,” Lora said rapidly. “Now listen. You don’t know why you ran away. You didn’t remember a thing until you suddenly recognized me. I persuaded you to go home. Got that?”

  “I didn’t remember a thing. Not a thing.”

  “That’s right.”

  Lora crossed the room and opened the door, adjusting her face to what she hoped was an expression of innocent surprise. “Why, it’s Captain Greer. Isn’t this a coinci­dence? I was just going to call you and tell you that I’d found her.”

  “Thoughtful of you,” Greer said. “Come in, Frank.”

  Frank came in, looking pale and embarrassed.

  “You’ve been in this room before, haven’t you, Frank?”

  “Yes.”

  “When was the last time?”

  “The last time was after Rose’s funeral.”

  “And the time before that?”

  “It was a week ago last Sunday.”

  “What was the occasion?”

  “Mrs. Cushman called me and asked me to come over and see Rose and try and straighten her out.”

  “Did you straighten her out?”

  “No,” Frank said gravely. “I guess not.”

  Greer didn’t look at the two women or give any indica­tion that he realized they were still there watching him. “Rose was more than a patient of yours, wasn’t she?”

  “I considered her a friend.”

  “You knew her well? Very well?”

  “I thought I did. As things turned out, I was wrong.”

  “How have things turned out, Frank?”

  “Say, what is this anyway?” Lora said. “If you two want to have a private conversation, have it some other place. I have to get Mrs. Goodfield home. She’s not well.” She took the older woman by the shoulder. “Are you?”

  “No. I’m not well. I can’t remember anything.”

  Greer didn’t even turn his head. With his eyes still fixed on Frank he repeated the question: “How have things turned out?”

  “You know how. Why do you ask me?”

  “It’s more fun to hear it from somebody else.”

  “All right. Things have turned out, well, very oddly.”

  “Let’s get back to Rose. After you left her that Sunday, you heard from her again?”

  “Yes. She phoned me the next afternoon around three o’clock.”

  “At the inquest there was considerable doubt about the time on the part of the Sheriff.”

  “Not on my part. It was the middle of the afternoon. I couldn’t swear to that at the inquest because the evi­dence was all against it, but I can now.”

  “You had still further news from Rose?”

  “Yes. A postcard came the following morning, Tuesday. No message on it, just a rough pencil sketch of a rose.”

  “What was the postmark time on the card?”

  “Six o’clock. You saw it yourself.”

  “According to the evidence, Rose was dead three hours before she telephoned you and several hours before she mailed that postcard. You heard Dr. Severn testify to that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you believe his testimony?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you believe it now?”

  “No.”

  “Severn also testified that Rose was suffering from an incurable enlargement of the heart, and that the only rea­son she had not died before was because she managed to lose a great deal of weight by rigorous dieting. Does this fit in with what you know of Rose?”

  “No. She never dieted. She boasted about being able to eat anything and not gain a pound. I didn’t recall this at the inquest but I checked my file on her this morning and then I went directly over to Dr. Severn’s office. He confirmed his own testimony. Within the past three years or so the dead woman had been extremely overweight.”

  “You don’t think Severn is a liar, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Think he made a mistake?”

  “No.”

  “Some mistake was made. Who made it?”

  “I’m afraid Rose did.” For the first time Frank looked directly across the room at the two women. “I don’t be­lieve she realized the gravity of the situation. Her emo­tional responses were frequently very childish. I think she considered the whole thing as a game or as a play with herself in the leading role.”

  “Who wrote the play?” Greer said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Miss Dalloway, perhaps you know?”

  “Of course I do.” Lora went over to the window and looked down at the street below, listlessly, as if what the people on this street were doing—or any other street—didn’t interest or concern her. “Mrs. Goodfield wrote it. Every line, every stage direction, she wrote.”

  “Why?”

  “Money. Some people will do anything for money, even after they’re dead.”

  “Mrs. Goodfield is dead?”

  “She’s dead, all right. I saw them carry her out the back door, the three of them, Willett and Ethel and Rose. They tried to put her in the Lincoln. They intended to drive her

  away and let her be found someplace else. But she was too stiff by that time; they couldn’t get her through the car door. God, it was funny. It wasn’t so funny at the time, but now when I think of it, it strikes me as hilarious. There were the three of them, Willett bawling and Ethel hysterical and Rose with a load on—there they were, try­ing to push that skinny little dead woman into the car. You don’t find it amusing, Captain?”

  Instead of answering, Greer glanced at the other woman. She was clutching the black wool coat around her as if it were a tent to hide inside. “Did you find it amus­ing?”

  “No.” She spoke in a whisper. “How can
she talk like that? It was terrible. She was so stiff. I didn’t know people got so stiff.”

  Lora started to laugh. She didn’t turn, she just stood looking down at the people on the streets, laughing softly to herself. Greer told her to stop and she stopped, imme­diately. It was as if her laughter meant nothing to her any­way, it was merely a way to pass the time, a sound to fill a vacuum.

  Greer said, “You couldn’t get the dead woman into the car?”

  “No,” Rose said. “Then Willett broke down completely and we had to send him back to the house. Ethel decided we couldn’t carry out the plan, that we’d have to leave her in the garden. So we put her in the chair by the lily pool. Or tried to. She wouldn’t stay in, she was so—so brittle. Like glass.”

  “She died at noon?”

  “Yes, at noon. In her bed. But we had to wait until dark to arrange—things.”

  “You spoke of a plan. Whose plan?”

  “Mrs. Goodfield’s. It was all her idea. Don’t blame the others.”

  “The ‘others’ include you, Rose?”

  “I didn’t mean any harm. I didn’t even want to do it; I wouldn’t listen to her at first. It was such a crazy scheme, and I couldn’t understand the reason for it. The next time I met Lora I told her about it. She was looking for a job anyway, so she decided to plant herself at the Goodfields’ and find out more about them and exactly what the set-up was.”

  “And she did?”

  “Yes, she kept me posted. The next time Willett phoned and asked me if I’d made up my mind, I told him yes, I’d do it. I couldn’t see anything really wrong about it, not at first.”

  “And later?”

  “Later, I began to get jittery, cooped up in that room all the time with Ethel and Willett watching every move I made, listening outside my door. They were jittery too, worse than me, I guess. With Mrs. Goodfield dead there was no one to, well, to pull us together. It was like carrying out a conspiracy with the chief conspirator missing and the reason behind it not very clear, not to me anyway. Then came the payoff, a double payoff. Dalloway started hang­ing around the house and Jack Goodfield was on his way. I realized I had to get out of there, fast. I was good enough to fool strangers like you, but I knew I couldn’t fool a man who was supposed to be my son. And Dalloway, I was afraid Dalloway would recognize me even after all these years. Ethel kept telling me that Jack could be taken in quite easily, because he hadn’t seen his mother for some time and her illness had previously caused great changes in her. But I didn’t believe her. I was scared. Lora hadn’t come back and I was all alone. I waited until Willett and Ethel went to bed and then I put on my coat and sneaked out. I left a note for Willett.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t want him searching for me right away. I had to have time to think, figure things out.”

  “And have you figured things out?”

  “I guess not. But I know I never meant to do anything wrong. It still doesn’t seem to me that what I did was ex­actly wrong. I didn’t harm anyone, cheat anyone. All I did was lie a little, pretend to be a woman I wasn’t because the woman died too soon.”

  “Too soon for what?”

  “For the deadline. She had a deadline. I’m not trying to be funny; that’s what it was. Mrs. Goodfield explained the details to me, but I didn’t pay much attention. I’m not,” she added, with a conciliatory little smile, “much of a busi­ness woman.”

  Greer was not conciliated. “You were paid for your part in the fraud?”

  “I hate that word fraud. It sounds—”

  “You were paid?”

  “No. No. I wasn’t.”

  “Expect me to believe that?”

  “Well, naturally. It’s true. They didn’t pay me. They were going to when it was all over. Not a lump sum, be­cause I didn’t want it that way and they couldn’t afford it anyway—but just a little each month.” Rose’s eyes were wide and wistful. “It would have been nice for my old age, wouldn’t it?”

  “Dandy.”

  “You don’t suppose there’s still a chance that I’ll get it?”

  “I don’t suppose.”

  “Oh well, something will turn up.” She looked across the room at Frank. “Frankie?”

  “What do you want?” Frank said.

  “You’re mad at me?”

  “No.”

  “You haven’t spoken a word to me. You must be mad.”

  “No.”

  “Disappointed, then?”

  “A little disappointed, maybe.”

  “Oh, what the hell, Frankie, I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. It could happen to anybody.”

  “But especially to you.”

  Rose was delighted by this observation. “That’s the honest-to-God truth, Frankie. I attract disaster.”

  Lora turned and addressed her mother coldly: “There wouldn’t be any disaster, there wouldn’t even be any trou­ble if you hadn’t phoned this guy long after you were sup­posed to be dead. What a brain wave that was. You—”

  “How was I to know she was dead? Ethel didn’t tell me. All she said was to come on over to the house. I didn’t realize there was any great rush about it. So I took my time, I phoned Frank, I bought the postcards and sent him one, little things like that.”

  “Little things like that. For Pete’s sake, you’re a bird­brain, a birdbrain.”

  “Look who’s calling who a—”

  “Ladies,” Greer said, pleasantly. “It’s time to be leav­ing.”

  Rose clutched the black coat around her again, her hands working nervously at the cloth. “Where are we going?”

  “To pay a visit to the Goodfields.”

  “I don’t want to. I’ve had enough of them.”

  “It’s possible,” Greer said, “that they’ve had enough of you, too. But you’re each going to have a little more.”

  26

  The drawing room was warm and humid and the heavy mahogany and gold satin furniture seemed to smother its occupants with excess. There was too much of everything in the room, too much sun and furniture, too much gilt and crystal, too many mirrors, too many people.

  At the huge picture window that framed the mountains, a bluebottle fly buzzed, flung himself against the glass, paused, and attacked again with renewed fury and des­peration.

  Ethel watched the fly, engrossed, feeling so much em­pathy with it that she would have liked to pick up the fire tongs and smash the window and let the fly go on its way. If it gets away, she thought, if it escapes, where will it go? What will it do? If I got away, where would I go? What would I do?

  Suddenly the bluebottle swooped across the room and out of the open door, directly, as if it had known all along which way to get out and the fussing at the window had been only play. With its departure Ethel felt a certain loss. She wanted to follow the bluebottle right out of the house, wing along beside it, gay, reckless, without a past, without a future, without Willett.

  She became aware gradually that the policeman, Greer, was talking, not talking actually, but reading aloud from the letter he held stiffly in both his hands. Everyone was watching him, listening attentively—even Willett, though by this time Willett knew the letter by heart. He’d read it over and over again as if he’d been trying to memorize it like a catechism.

  —the event that my son, Willett Peter Goodfield, is implicated in any way with my death, I wish to make the following statement to clarify the facts. With my limited knowledge of the law, I am not certain what credence is given to the written statement of a dying woman. I can only hope it will be full credence. I swear that these state­ments are true, and that my mind is functioning clearly, perhaps too clearly. If I did not have such real understand­ing of my children and such bitter awareness of their inability to look after themselves, I could die in peace like an ordinary woman. I cannot. The enclosed pages will e
xplain everything, I wrote them as they happened and I swear they are the full truth.

  Olive Regina Goodfield

  It is May the fourth. Today my search ended. Months of searching, all over the country, and today, just when I was about to abandon hope, I found her, on a street corner waiting for a traffic light to change. Her name is Rose French. The physical resemblance to me is not perfect by any means and she is younger than I, but her coloring is the same, and the bone structure of her face, and our sizes are identical. I have come to the end of a long journey.

  May 7. She is stubborn. That, too, we have in common. But her stubbornness is not as great as mine because there is not the same urgency behind it. I talked to her this evening again. She came out by bus; Willett did not bring her. I want no one to see her with Willett or on these premises, not even the new maid, Ada Murphy, whom Ethel hired yester­day. Hiring the maid was entirely Ethel’s idea. She meant it to be a surprise for me. It was. She couldn’t have done a more stupid thing, under the circumstances. The only course for me to follow is to refuse to have anything to do with Murphy. That way she won’t know the difference when the substitution is effected. As it will be. Rose French is getting very curious, and the smell of money is beginning to tickle her nostrils.

  May 8. The arrangements were completed last night, and this afternoon I gave Rose her first coaching. She is an ex­cellent mimic and I enjoyed the afternoon tremendously. I no longer have many pleasures and turning a stranger into oneself is amusing. I see now how I must appear to others, to Willett and Jack and to poor Ethel who hates me and is so ashamed of her hatred and jealousy because she thinks it is abnormal. It is not abnormal at all. If our positions were reversed, I would certainly hate her with equal vigor. As it is, I like Ethel and her essential honesty, and I appreciate her bungling little kindnesses. I have often regretted my decision that she should marry Willett. She deserves a better fate.

  Willett and Ethel looked at each other across the room and spoke in silence:

  “Do you, Ethel? Do you deserve a better fate?” “No. No, of course not.” “Yes, you do. Yes.”

  “Not really. Everything’s going to be all right, dear, all right.”