“How lovely that they’ve put you in this room!” she cried. “That makes it stop being out of bounds. Imagine living in a house where there’s a Bluebeard’s room that’s forbidden to everyone!”
I regarded her with a writer’s interest, giving up my longing for the sofa. Like an actress, a writer too must be watchful and alert for the signs which depict character and betray inner meaning.
“I shouldn’t think Laura Worth’s career was very mysterious,” I said. “In a sense, all these things belong in the public domain. They’ve been written about and talked about, photographed and recorded.”
“And then closed up in a locked room.” Donia hopped down from the trunk and tapped the top of it with her long fingernails. “This trunk, for instance. Why should it be locked since my brother and I have come here? You’re a reporter—you should be interested.”
“I’m not exactly a reporter,” I said. “I don’t concentrate on fresh news. I’m interested in personalities.”
Oh, I know about you. I used the wrong word. I’ve read your things. That piece about Barbra Streisand was less than kind. But very well done. You’re an excellent writer. Are you going to be as sharp with Laura Worth?”
“I happen to be a buff when it comes to Worth pictures. And I suppose I really prefer to write about that period in Hollywood, when there was still something of the old glamour.”
She watched me out of bright, shrewd eyes. “My husband was in film work and we lived in Beverly Hills before we were divorced. Underneath the glamour it was pretty tawdry. I hated it when my brother began to attend Hollywood celebs in his practice. Of course they had money. Some of the time. But Miles became too involved. He’d have done better to leave them alone.”
What she meant was that he’d have done better to leave Laura Worth alone. I didn’t know how well she had known Laura in the old days, but she certainly had a viewpoint that I should learn more about. And she seemed quite ready to talk. If only the room didn’t stifle me with its locked and ancient odors.
“Is it possible to let more light and air into this room?” I asked, and moved to open shuttered doors that gave onto the rear yard. When they’d been spread wide, I found myself looking up the steeply pitched hill to the house and garden above. Fresh, cold air swept in, bringing with it a smell of the sea, laced by a scent of sun-warmed pines. Donia took her cue from me and opened the shutters of two side windows. The room grew brighter and the smell of dust and camphor lessened. I would certainly need to leave everything open tonight.
“About that trunk—” Donia said, and returned to flick the lock with a long fingernail, the jungle vine of her dress seeming to twine about her as she moved, “—you should waste no time getting to your research. Why not open it now?”
“Do you have a key?” I asked. No one had told me not to look at whatever I pleased, and I agreed that no time should be lost.
“It’s not up to me to unlock it,” said Donia virtuously.
That, I thought, meant that she didn’t know where the key was. I smiled at her.
“You’re dying of curiosity. Perhaps the key’s been left somewhere in the room. Let’s explore.”
I went to the makeup table that had once served in Laura’s dressing room, and poked about on its top. There was a sandalwood box with a carved lid, and I opened it. Inside was a ring of keys. I jingled them in my fingers as I went back to the trunk.
The third key fitted the lock and the hasp lifted. Donia, alive with her odd, young-old avidity, was beside me. A wave of camphor rose with the lid of the trunk and I had to step back, choking.
At once Donia pounced upon the top article in the trunk. It appeared to be a bolt of red cloth, rolled into a bundle. “Let’s unpack it all!” she cried.
I took the bundle from her, feeling my first qualm of uncertainty. “Perhaps I’d better ask permission first.”
“And if she says you can’t go through the trunk?” Donia demanded. “Then you’ll lose your chance. Don’t wait—go ahead!”
She was like a child in her eagerness, for all that she wore a wizened monkey face. I felt a revulsion toward her urgency.
“At least I think I should go through it with Laura,” I said. “Then she can tell me about these things as we unpack them. It’s really no use to do it myself.”
I started to replace the rolled bundle of cloth, but Donia stopped me with an outstretched hand.
“There’s something in that. You can feel how heavy it is. Unwrap it and see.”
I began to unroll the cloth, and as it came free in my hands I recognized what it was, and drew in my breath. I was holding the very costume that Laura Worth had worn as Helen Bradley in The Whisperer. The heavy object that had been wrapped in its folds fell to the carpet and I paid no attention as I shook out the creased and wrinkled garment that had once played a role in the picture made from my father’s book.
Its color—as it had been in the book—was Venetian red. It was trimmed with gray bands of caracul, and embroidered with black silk on the fitted bodice and skirt. Though the dress had photographed black, I remembered the glint of silk embroidery, the soft look of the fur. The tight bodice had set off Laura’s figure beautifully—and she had never looked more entrancingly feminine, more touchingly lost.
My toe struck the object that had dropped from the gown’s wrapping and I bent to pick up a tall candlestick. Its brass had long ago tarnished to a dingy green-gold, but once it must have been a handsome article. A Chinese dragon coiled upward around the candlestick’s column, lifting its fanged head beneath the candle holder. Polished, the dragon’s scales would have gleamed in candlelight.
Donia gave a small, shuddering cry. “That’s the candlestick! That’s the dragon candlestick!”
I didn’t know what she meant, but it was a beautiful thing. I flung Laura’s costume across the open trunk and carried the candlestick to the garden doors, so that I could better examine it in the light.
Laura saw me there when she came through the door from the hall. She saw the candlestick in my hands and like Donia she cried out—in a sound of pain and distress. I could only look at her in astonishment as she sped toward me across the room and snatched it from me. Donia retreated to a far corner, where she hovered, watching with malicious zest.
Laura carried the candlestick back to the trunk without a word and dropped it into the top tray. Then she saw the Venetian red gown and caught it up almost in disbelief. The purple-red of her Burgundy velvet and the brownish Venetian red merged into each other, mingling like a flow of blood. She held the costume to her breast, her face growing pale, her eyes sunken and dark.
“I’d forgotten that I’d kept this,” she said, and put out a hand to steady herself against the open lide of the trunk.
I spoke softly. “I’d like to see you wear that costume again. You haven’t grown heavier. It would still fit you beautifully.”
Donia giggled, but it was only a nervous sound. Her face wore a frightened look when I glanced at her.
With an effort, Laura seemed to recover herself. She rolled the dress into a wad and stuffed it down in the trunk. Then she let the lid fall with a slam.
“Where are the keys?” she said.
The ring had dropped to the floor and I picked it up for her. She took the keys from my hand and found the right one. When the trunk was locked she closed her fingers about the ring. For the first time since she had come into the room she looked directly at me.
“I’d forgotten something,” she said. “That’s why I came downstairs. To tell you that there are certain things in this room which must not be disturbed. This trunk is one of them. Do you understand me, Miss Hollins?”
All her authority, her stage presence were there as she commanded me. The very use of my last name was a reproach, an accusation. She stepped back from the trunk, turned toward the door—and without warning crumpled into a heap on the floor, fainting dead away. I remember hearing the clatter of the keys as they fell from her hand. I remember a
sudden scuttling from the corner as Donia snatched at the ring and caught it up. Then I ran to the door and called for help.
Miles hurried downstairs, with Irene following. He knelt beside Laura for a moment, and then lifted her in his arms and carried her to the sofa across the room. Irene went to the dressing table and picked up a bottle from its top. Without a word she handed it to Miles, and I saw the green glass crown stopper of an old-fashioned bottle of smelling salts.
He held the open bottle briefly beneath Laura’s nose, and she gasped at the whiff of ammonia and began to breathe heavily. Dark lashes flashed up from her cheeks and she looked dazedly about the room.
“What frightened her?” Miles spoke over his shoulder to Donia and me.
His sister answered quickly. “It was that red dress she wore in one of her pictures. Miss Hollins found it in the trunk over there and Laura seemed terribly upset at the sight of it.”
Miles glanced at me with distaste. “Naturally she would be. She must stay out of this room.”
Laura put her hand on his arm. “Of course I must not stay out of it, Miles dear. I must come here often to help Leigh with all she needs to learn about me. It was very foolish and weak of me to faint. The dress brought it all back too vividly. The dress and—” she broke off and closed her eyes, breathing rapidly.
“The dress and what?” Miles asked.
She turned her head from side to side, not answering.
“There was a brass candlestick,” I said. “She dropped it back in the trunk.”
“A candlestick!” There seemed a note of surprise in Miles’s voice.
“With a Chinese dragon wound about it,” I said.
“Help me to my room, please.” Laura sat up, and Irene came to her quickly.
“I’ll take her upstairs, Dr. Fletcher. This has happened before. It passes. I think she’ll be able to walk now.”
Laura suffered Irene to help her from the sofa, then she thrust her hands away and stood alone. “I’m sorry. It’s a ridiculous weakness.” She turned to me. “If you please—I prefer not to have that trunk opened at all. There’s nothing in it for your chapter about me.”
Momentarily she seemed a pitiful figure—forcing herself to stand alone and erect, trying vainly to summon that authority she needed more than ever. She could not command me now. And because she was not commanding, I gave in.
“I won’t ask you questions about the trunk,” I promised her.
She seemed to grow stronger under my eyes and she gave me her quick radiant smile as she moved toward the door. She did not look at Miles again, and she rejected the offer of Irene’s supporting arm as she crossed the hall and went up the stairs.
Donia rushed to the doorway and watched her go. Then she turned back to her brother. “It was the candlestick that frightened her. I saw her face when she glimpsed it in Miss Hollins’s hands. It was not the dress. I only said that.”
Miles went to the trunk and tried to lift the lid. “It’s locked,” he said.
“I have the keys.” Donia was quick.
For a moment he seemed to hesitate. Then he glanced at me and shook his head. “Let it go,” he told his sister, and he followed Laura out of the room.
Donia stood looking after him and there was a strangeness in her face. It was as if love mingled with distrust of her brother, and confused her, so that she did not know which took precedence. She gave herself a curious little shake that set the green and purple vine twisting about her slight figure, and went rushing out of the room with the nervous swiftness of movement that seemed to characterize her. In a moment she was back, looking in at me, her eyes bright and baleful.
“That was very clever of you—to promise her no questions about the trunk. But of course that will not keep us from going through it some other time, will it?”
I think she saw by my face that she had better not wait for an answer. This time she disappeared for good, and I heard her clattering up the stairs. When I was alone I went to the sofa where Laura had lain, and stretched out upon it full length. I felt utterly weary and totally confused. There were threatening currents abroad in this house, and I was beginning to hope that I could gather the material for my piece quickly and get away. My own ambivalence toward Laura Worth was part of my confusion. It had always been there, but in the past I had accepted the fact that I could admire her as an actress and detest her as a woman.
Now the contradictions were worse than before. When she was arrogant she angered me—and she could humiliate me as well. She made me long for a chance to use whatever weapons I could find against her. Then a moment later she would look frail and weak, and I would be disarmed—even though unwillingly—because I could not fight so fragile a foe. There were even moments when I found myself admiring her as a woman of some courage, only to think her utterly foolish an instant later. How was I to write about a woman like this? And how foolish I had been to promise her no questions about the trunk. With so many contradictions in evidence, I needed a key to the secret of her complex character. That key lay buried in a past she had shared in part with Miles Fletcher, and perhaps even with his sister Donia. As well as with a man who was dead—Cass Alroy. I wondered if there would be a picture of Cass Alroy in that trunk.
Driven by sudden curosity, I left the sofa and went to Laura’s dressing table. I meant only to look in the sandalwood box for the keys, but there was a quilted chair in front of the kidney-shaped table, and I pulled it out and sat down, facing my own dim reflection in the mirror. Behind me bright daylight radiated from garden doors and side windows, leaving my face in shadow. There were bulbs of tinted glass around the mirror, and I found a switch and pressed it.
The light was merciless upon my face. It showed me youth that was somehow marred. Laura had said I had an open young face. But the openness seemed only to betray emotions that were less than attractive. I probably showed anger and resentment quickly. Only when I thought of my father did the look soften a little, while my eyes welled with tears. I had come here because of him, really. But not for any purpose he would have approved. He was too forgiving—Victor Hollins. He had been gentle and loving and kind, and Laura had wounded him cruelly. I must not forget that. I would never forgive it. I must not look at her in her moments of frailty and forget what she had been, what she had done.
With a gesture of rejection for my very self, I touched the switch to turn off the lights around the mirror. The sandalwood box stood near my hand and I flipped up the lid and looked inside. The keys were there. Donia had put them back. I smiled to myself, but I only closed the box with a click. My decision about the trunk would have to come later.
Somewhere in the house a phone sounded. I heard steps upstairs and an answering voice. Then Irene came running down to call me.
“It’s for you, Miss Hollins. There’s an extension in the downstairs hall.”
Gunnar! I thought. It could be no one else, and my spirits lifted as I went to pick up the receiver. After a few hours in this house, he spelled light and clear air and honesty. I forgot his disapproval of me. I had almost forgotten that Norway lay outside these windows and that I need not brood inside forever.
“This is Leigh Hollins,” I said, and the sound of my lifting spirits was in my voice.
“So you have told her who you are,” he said. “Good. You sound cheerful.”
He seemed pleased, and I did not contradict him.
“Yes, I’ve told her. It makes no difference to her who I am, so long as I can write a story.”
He made no comment on that. “I have called to see if you can come to lunch with me tomorrow. It is a holiday and I’ll be away from the office.”
“I’d love to.” I accepted without hesitation. There was much that I wanted to tell him. He might be able to help my confusion of thought, since he knew Laura so much better than I did.
“That is fine,” he said. “I suggest that we drive part way up Flöyen and leave the car. Then we can walk the rest of the way to the restaurant at the top.
You like to walk, I believe?”
“I love it,” I said. I was elated by the prospect of escape, and of being with someone who was not wrapped in the past or driven by old horrors.
“Bring Laura with you, if you can,” he said.
My elation evaporated. I said, “Oh?” rather blankly.
“If she isn’t able to make the climb, we’ll go up in the funicular,” he told me. “This isn’t an official invitation, you understand. It is up to you to persuade her to come with you.”
I could guess what he meant. If he invited her formally, he would have to ask Miles as well, and plainly he did not want that.
“I’ll do my best,” I said, and in a moment we hung up.
Laura was tired and did not come down to dinner that night, so I had to postpone seeing her. Miles and Donia and I dined in the long, elegant dining room. There was a huge rectangular table with tall-backed leather chairs set around it, and Miles was seated at one end, Laura’s empty place at the other. Donia and I faced each other across the table’s width. I had changed from my sweater and skirt to a beige knit dress, but she still wore her winding green and purple vine.
Again there was dark woodwork, and many paintings hung around the walls. Exquisite blue and white plates from China had been set on a rack above one door, and there was a wedged cabinet made to fit the corner, with a scene on the front of it done in deep carving—of dogs and men, with a mountain behind. A great tankard sat upon the carved sideboard, with a tollgate scene etched upon its silver.
At dinner that night I learned more about how the household was run. Help was practically nonexistent in Bergen, though Laura had found a cleaning woman to come in twice a week. Irene cooked and served the meals and kept a general eye out for management of the house, for all of which she was well paid. Often Donia did the dishes. The wealthy home with many servants was a thing of the past.
Irene had learned something about Norwegian cooking, and we had a popular dish that night—reindeer roast, served in a sauce made of sour cream, thickened with a little melted goat cheese, and garnished with green grapes. Miles pointed out that the wild game of Norway had no gamy taste because it was marinated in milk ahead of time to neutralize the flavor. There were the usual boiled potatoes, and a fresh cucumber salad.
Listen for the Whisperer Page 10
