“You were talking about Peggy Smith,” I reminded her gently.
She seemed to shake herself mentally and come back to the present, but she didn’t pick up her doubts about Peggy’s suicide that she’d thrown at me so tantalizingly.
“I have a few other small things Peggy did. Look over there.”
I went to the bookcase shelf Monica indicated and examined a small ceramic group. The pieces were cunningly wrought and formed a famous scene from Mirage. The same one in the restaurant where Monica and Saxon were seated at a round table, the little Swiss clock between them, ready to pop out its cuckoo. What laughter and tears they’d managed in that scene—before the whole thing had turned into anger and bitterness between them. A bitterness they’d never have dared to portray in their earlier, more lighthearted pictures.
Now I recalled that in the Mirage Room, where Keith and I had dined, there’d been a small cuckoo clock on the wall. Saxon had remembered every detail. So here was the clock again in these ceramics created in delicate color and miniature detail.
“Peggy Smith seems to have done such a variety of things. So why didn’t she develop her talents?” I asked. “Why didn’t she become famous in her own right?”
“Perhaps she might have—if she’d lived. You recognize the scene, don’t you?”
“Of course. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen Mirage.”
Monica didn’t seem particularly pleased, and I was beginning to glimpse the ambivalence in her. The past was lost and over, and she must sometimes resent the fact that it was regarded as far more important in her life than the present could ever be.
“Do you ever watch your old movies?” I asked.
She flapped the iris at me angrily. “I don’t watch them at all! I can’t bear to. But I do want to talk about Peggy. Not about her death, but about her life as it affected me. I owe her that.”
I was willing to listen, wherever she led. I’d long ago learned not to be so intent on my questions that I missed new openings.
After a slight hesitation, as though she sought for words, she went on. “Peggy grew up with too many dreams she couldn’t fulfill. I’m afraid she didn’t work very hard at being successful. She just wanted results. She found she could attach herself to a star and live vicariously.” Monica’s tone had turned faintly scornful in speaking of her old friend.
“What about her creative gifts?”
“She was young and I don’t think she realized what she had. In some ways she was foolish. I suppose creating in clay and stone, painting a little, making jewelry, were just things she’d always done rather easily. Hobbies. She never worked at these things very much unless they were connected with me. I’ve never known anyone since whom I could trust as I did Peggy. Not even Linda. Linda has outside distractions. Her brother, for instance, who doesn’t approve of Monica Arlen. Oh, I know! And that ridiculous friend of hers—Wally Davis. I don’t trust him at all. For one thing, he works for Saxon Scott.”
I needed to know more about anything that rankled in Monica. “Why don’t you trust Wally? He seems a pleasant man.”
“He’s not good enough for Linda. What he wants is to make a lot of money as quickly as possible. He wants to climb—in any way he can. And Palm Springs is a good place for that. We have the rich, the very rich, and the super rich. He’ll succeed all right, since he knows how to make himself useful. Though who knows at what?”
I wondered where the poor and middle people came in. Probably they served the others. There was a certain shrewdness in this old woman whom Monica had become. She might be a recluse, but she knew what was going on.
Moving along at the bookcase, I read random titles. They were mostly novels—a mixture of old and new … books that had been best sellers. Next on the shelf set into a space was the framed photograph of a house. I recognized it at once—Cadenza, Monica’s former home in Beverly Hills. I picked it up and studied the rather grand architecture. Pseudo-Italian, and thoroughly pretentious.
“You didn’t build Cadenza, did you?”
“Thank goodness, I didn’t have to. All those dream palaces built by early stars like Valentino and Swanson, Mary and Doug, Harold Lloyd, and the rest, were already going out in the thirties. After the depression, movie stars began to live more like other people. Even here in Palm Springs there aren’t many estates—unless you’re an Annenberg. It was Peggy who found Cadenza and talked me into buying it. It had belonged to a woman whose career had collapsed in tragedy. A rather nasty shooting. You wouldn’t know her name, probably. She’s hardly remembered any more, but she spent millions during her brief fling. Peggy thought it was the right setting for me. That black marble staircase—ridiculous!”
“Didn’t you like Cadenza?”
“I loved every inch of it. But it was like living in a permanent stage set. Not exactly cozy. Saxon never liked it at all. He built himself a beach house in Santa Monica, and that’s where we went to be cozy.”
“But you still own the house?”
“Not because I’ve wanted to keep it. I don’t have any illusions about it anymore. Those places are anachronisms today—dinosaurs from the past. The upkeep is terrific and the taxes high. Sometimes Linda has been able to rent it, but it’s closed up now, with just a caretaker. You can hardly give those houses away today. Some of them have been turned into schools or hotels, or given to institutions. The bulldozers have taken others to make way for building lots. Now I need to sell it, for whatever I can get, and Linda has put it on the market again. But who is there to buy?”
I set the picture back on the shelf, feeling a little sad. “I’d like to have seen the house.”
“That’s easily arranged. Tell Linda.”
She seemed in a gentler, more reminiscent mood, so perhaps this was my opportunity to do what Linda wished. I must move quietly, persuasively. If I shocked her, she would withdraw at once.
“Linda’s brother took me into the Annenberg Theater at the museum, and Wally was there. You’ve never seen the theater, have you?”
She shook her head emphatically. “Never! Oh, it’s not for want of being asked. They’d give their eyeteeth to get me down there—exploit my name for some of their fund raising. Even though all those committees know that I never make appearances, or attend public events, they never stop trying.”
She was making everything clear, but I still sought for a chink in her armor, a tiny crack I might get through.
“Saxon Scott was there with Wally. I met him this morning.”
There was a definite freezing quality in her stillness, but she asked a surprising question, opening the crack unexpectedly.
“How does he look—Saxon?”
I had to be careful. I mustn’t wound her vanity. “All right, I suppose. He’s heavier and older than he used to be, of course.”
She sighed. “Don’t try to spare my feelings. Men wear better than women do. Their faces don’t fall apart. When we’re old, we get too fat and lose our figures. Or we get thin and angular, which is just as bad. And our faces—disaster!”
“You still look wonderful,” I said softly, and I wasn’t lying. What she achieved was an illusion of beauty, perhaps only the echo, the ghost of beauty long past that she could still evoke when I looked at her. It was the actor’s genius to present what wasn’t there.
She must have sensed something in my voice—the sort of admiration she’d responded to in Peggy Smith, and again in Linda. It was our willingness to believe in the dream, to lose ourselves in rapt adulation, that offered food and drink to Monica Arlen. Much more so than with Saxon, I thought. I suspected that he didn’t really care for any of that. Nowadays Monica must receive very little of the nourishment that had fed her so richly in the past.
“What was Saxon doing there with Wally?” she asked, and I felt that her guard against me had lowered a little.
“They’re going to show Mirage for a very special gala evening,” I said. “Wally’s doing the publicity and has a hand in some of the plan
s. He wants Saxon to appear onstage after the showing of the picture.”
This time she flung the iris on the floor and poked it irritably with her toe. No wonder it looked bedraggled. The poor thing must have led a hard existence.
“How dare he?” she cried. “How dare he!”
Did she mean Wally or Saxon? I suspected the latter.
Annabella stood up on the green cushion and growled at me deep in her throat. Monica put out a soothing hand, but she was still angry.
“I really don’t think Mr. Scott will do it,” I said. “Not unless you’re there with him to share the stage.”
“That’s impossible! Ridiculous! As he very well knows. Does he understand that you’re going to write about me?”
“Wally told him. Mr. Scott has agreed to let me interview him.”
Monica’s face had grown quite pink, but except for putting one foot on the iris, she restrained herself. “What else did he say to you?”
I tried to sound casual. “He suggested some people I might talk to, who knew you in the old days. Your former cameraman and makeup woman.”
“Alva? Nicos?” She spat out the names. “If you go near them I won’t talk to you at all! That Alva—she even turned around and married Saxon! Though I knew it would never last.”
I decided to play a risky card. “I want very much to write about you, Aunt Monica. But I can’t do it unless I have a free hand.”
She flung up her arms in an explosive gesture, making wings of the white caftan, and sprang to her feet. Annabella stood up again and spat her own indignation.
“Go away!” Monica cried. “I don’t want to talk to you anymore! You’re already on his side. Every woman always fell for him, and you’re doing the same thing, even though he’s a fake. He always was a fake! Now you’ll run and tell him everything I say, and I don’t want to talk to you at all!”
I picked up my pad with its very few notes and went quietly to the door. “I’m sorry I’ve upset you, Aunt Monica. But I can’t help the way I feel. It would be so wonderful to see you and Saxon Scott together again, even for one evening. You’d be honoring that classic film—honoring yourselves.”
She burst into sudden tears just as Linda came into the room and ran to comfort her. I was in wrong with everyone, including Annabella. Only the white cats regarded me with kind interest.
“You’ve upset her, Carol,” Linda accused. She put her arms around the suddenly frail and trembling old woman. “There now, dear, you needn’t talk anymore if it disturbs you. I’m sorry I went out and left you alone.” Again there was reproach for me—an edge of resentment that was growing stronger.
Monica refused to be comforted. “I can’t trust anyone! Annie is right about Carol! So just leave—both of you. I’m going up the mountain and sit in the sun.”
She picked up a big straw hat from a chair and tied its ribbons under her chin—a slim, dramatic figure in her gold and white. Without another glance in our direction, she strode toward the back stairs that led to the hillside above, her gown sweeping about her. I was left wondering why she’d wanted to talk about Peggy Smith at all. Was there some feeling of guilt in her that she wanted me to expiate in my writing? This would bear exploring—if she ever talked to me again.
EIGHT
When she’d gone I turned to Linda. “I told her about the benefit, as you wanted me to. I guess there was no way to let her know without upsetting her. I’m sorry.”
Linda managed to suppress her indignation. “Oh, it can’t be helped. I wouldn’t have dared to tell her myself. She always reacts emotionally and calms down later to see things more rationally. Not that she’ll go up on that stage. I never really thought she would. But she does want this book written.”
“She was also upset because I wanted to talk to Nicos and Alva Leonidas. I can’t write about her without outside sources. I must talk to other people who knew her.”
“Never mind. It will work out. Anyway, I have something to show you. I’ve kept an Arlen room in this house and it will be useful to you now. Let’s go have a look.”
She led me downstairs to a room tucked away behind her office. A single window at the back was shaded by the steep rise of the mountain, and Linda turned on a lamp.
The room was crowded, filled to the brim with Monica Arlen. A small red chair—adopted from a picture—offered a place to sit and read from this treasure store, and there was a desk for Linda’s work. Shelves along one wall held scrapbooks, and magazines bound into files, as well as volumes that contained pieces about, or references to Monica Arlen. There was, of course, an endless collection of photographs. I realized that some of them must never have been published and would be wonderful to use in a book.
One wall was solid with such pictures, and I studied them eagerly. Many of the shots were of Monica and Saxon together—looking stunningly young and appealing, before life itself had lifted that early air of valor from their faces. There were photographs of other stars as well, all signed lovingly to Monica. Pictures of Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, and other women stars of Monica’s time. What anecdotes she could tell of those Hollywood years! Nor were the men omitted in her personal collection. There were poses with Cooper, Stewart, Fonda, Gable, and with David Niven and Charles Boyer and others. Some were merely informal snapshots and all the more interesting because these people had been her friends.
Linda stood at my shoulder. “Most of them used to come to Palm Springs in the old days to play and escape. I’ve heard her talk. They stayed at the Desert Inn or La Quinta Hotel, or El Mirador. The Desert Inn is gone, of course. It stood right down there near the museum, where the Desert Inn Fashion Plaza is now. La Quinta is still as beautiful as ever, and the main part of the El Mirador Hotel is still standing. I believe it’s to be preserved. It was used for a scene in Mirage, if you remember. That’s a picture of it over there.”
I looked at a shot of the familiar tower and low white building that I’d seen in the film. “I’d like to visit El Mirador,” I said, and moved on to another picture of Cadenza. “Monica told me a little about her Beverly Hills house. She thought you could arrange for me to visit it.”
“Of course I can take you there. Perhaps after Christmas. I’m afraid decay is setting in, as it does with these neglected places. It’s a shame because they’ll never come again, and they belong to movie history and should be preserved.”
“Cadenza is an important part of my book, since Monica lived there during the great years.”
Linda was thinking of something else. “Carol, when I was out of the room, did she say anything about the telephone call from Saxon?”
“No, she never mentioned it.”
“Please ask her about it. She won’t tell me, and I need to know why it upset her so badly.”
“If I get a chance, I’ll ask,” I said doubtfully. “I’ve upset her enough for now, so I don’t think she’ll talk to me for a while.”
“Yes—I was afraid of that.”
Linda sounded critical, and once more I was aware of her ambivalence toward me—something I’d sensed from the beginning. It might take very little to turn Linda against me altogether.
Again I moved about the room, stopping beside a glass-covered table, where various memorabilia from Arlen-Scott pictures were on display. There I found the original cuckoo clock, cracked and broken, just as it had been when Monica threw it on the floor in the restaurant scene.
“She kept that,” I said wonderingly.
“Her secretary kept it. In fact, Peggy brought together most of these early things, and she made the first scrapbooks. I’ve pasted up the later ones, using whatever I could find here and there. Most of this was actually collected at Cadenza. I just brought it here, catalogued everything, and put the collection in order. It should give you valuable source material now.”
“Do you know anyone in the Desert Hot Springs area whom I could talk to?” I asked. “Everything Monica became later began there. Even the fact that she doesn’t w
ant to talk about those days makes me feel there’s something about them I should know.”
“I suppose I could ask Saxon.” Linda sounded doubtful.
“You know him quite well, don’t you?”
For once she didn’t flush or evade my question, though there was a hint of defiance in her response.
“You might as well know that I worked for Saxon Scott in his L.A. office when I first came to Hollywood. He was the one who told me he’d heard from Palm Springs friends that Monica was looking for a secretary. He asked me to apply for the job.”
This was surprising, and I wondered if Monica knew.
“Why would he do that?”
She looked away, not meeting my eyes. “I’m not especially proud of this, but at the time I wanted to please him. I suppose he was hoping for a—a sort of spy in Monica’s house. He wanted me to keep him posted on everything she did.” Linda broke off and went to sit behind the desk, drumming on its surface with nervous fingers. The earlier tension I’d seen in her was back more strongly than ever.
I couldn’t help feeling shocked, and I suppose this showed in my face, because Linda snapped at me.
“Don’t stare at me like that! It wasn’t as bad as you think. Monica needed me, and I got a lot of satisfaction from being useful to her. In the beginning I was just sorry for her—because of the way she used to be. Because of all she’d lost. Saxon never needed sympathy or pity. He’s fine as he is. I suppose I’ve always been a sucker for being needed. Carol, anything I’ve told Saxon is harmless. I haven’t betrayed any of her secrets. And now I’m entirely on her side. She doesn’t know how I came to her, and I don’t want her to know.”
“I won’t tell her. But why did Saxon ask you to do such a thing?”
“Perhaps”—she sounded almost wistful—“perhaps he never really got over losing her. I’ve always felt there’s a young part of him that still remembers.”
I could better understand Linda’s ambivalence now. Her loyalty to Monica would have been tempered by a need to talk to Saxon now and then. She’d always admired them both—as they used to be. Nevertheless, what Saxon Scott had asked of her seemed strange and a little ominous. It was hard to believe it had been done out of old love for Monica Arlen.
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