Then someone came in from the hall, touched the switch near the door, lighting the Tiffany lamp. The sudden illumination blinded me for an instant, and then I saw that it was Laura who stood before her own portrait, dressed in a long white gown with a lacy yoke and ribbons at her throat. The painting had been turned toward her, and she stood facing it. In one hand she held a pair of shears, the pointed blades gleaming in lamp light. For some reason the sight of those shining blades in Laura’s hand was so terrifying, that I had scarcely a glance for the man who stood in the doorway. The whispering voice could have been Laura’s. She could have come here to frighten me, to do me some harm. If that were true, then surely I must question her very reason. I felt a little sick, as well as fearful.
From the doorway Miles saw me and touched a finger to his lips. Then he came into the room in his foulard dressing gown and pajamas. He went to his wife’s side and gently took the scissors from her, laid them on a table.
Laura did not appear to recognize him. Her face was rapt, her eyes staring, and I realized with a further touch of horror that she was asleep. Miles stared past her at the portrait for a moment, then without speaking touched Laura’s elbow, guiding her with the lightest pressure, so that she turned to walk docilely across the room to the hall, and went with him up the stairs. I stepped into the hall after them and watched them go up. At the turn of the stairs Miles looked down at me, and there was some sort of dark warning in his face.
I found I was trembling when I went back to my room. This time when I closed the hall door, I set a chair atilt beneath the knob. I lowered each window to an inch or two, and closed the garden doors. Then I went to stand before the portrait, where Laura had stood—and now I saw the dreadful destruction that had been wrought.
Shockingly, marring the painting from frame to frame, ran the deep lines and cross lines of a terrible game. A vandal’s hand had scarred the portrait across and across in a game of tic-tac-toe. Naughts and crosses had been cut roughly into nearly every space for the game in progress—a contest that was nearly finished. Two crosses marked the diagonal, with just one more to be put in place for X to win.
Strangely, the vicious, destructive game had been cut into the canvas below Laura’s face. No jagged scar marred her beauty. The cuts ran across her breast, her lap, her open, giving hands. I reached for the scissors where Miles had placed them and picked them up in fingers that were shaking. Bits of canvas and pigment clung to the sharp points, giving evidence of the use to which they had been put. When I’d set them aside as if they burned me, I looked again at the portrait.
Whose turn was it now? I wondered in eerie fascination. Would O have a chance to block the winning of the game? Or would X perform the coup de grâce at the next turn? And who was O? Who was X?
I wondered if Miles had succeeded in getting Laura upstairs without waking her. When she wakened, would she know what she had done? Perhaps it was better if she didn’t learn. Perhaps the oddly warning look Miles had given me meant just that—that I was to say nothing to her of what I had seen. I turned the portrait gingerly about with its face to the wall, as Irene had hung it. I did not like to touch something that had turned evil and threatening almost before my eyes.
My bed was still warm and I crawled gratefully into it and lay there shivering. It was a good thing I was to see Gunnar Thoresen tomorrow. Already he stood for sanity and common sense in my eyes. I would tell him about all that had happened, and he would reassure me. He would give me his quiet, rather beautiful smile—and I would be reassured. As a matter of fact, when the time came, he did none of these things. But it helped me to go to sleep by believing that he would.
When I awakened in the morning, it had been light for a long time. Probably from three o’clock on. But at least I had slept and I woke up rested, and almost convinced that I had never heard that whispering voice in the night. There was still the portrait, however, and the scissors which lay upon a nearby table. I was glad that the picture faced the wall, for I had no desire to look again at that dreadful game of tic-tac-toe.
Breakfast was the breakfast of home. Laura had taught Irene her own American ways. There was bacon and eggs and toast, with delicious hot coffee. Coffee that suited my palate better than the bitter European brand served at the hotel. I ate alone because I had risen late, and I was glad enough to be without company except for Irene Varos.
She said nothing about Laura’s walking in her sleep, or about the damage to the portrait, and I wondered if she knew about either. For some reason she seemed pleased with me this morning. She sat at the table across from me for a second cup of coffee and told me that Laura was up and feeling refreshed, that she was eager to talk to me. Which meant that Miles must have said nothing to his wife about what had happened last night. But eventually she would have to know—unless that picture was kept always with its face to the wall, so that she never looked at it.
Here, at least, was my opportunity to talk to Irene, perhaps to draw her out a little. Carefully I circled away from danger, looking at her for the first time as a woman in her own right, rather than merely as resident dragon. If I knew more about Irene, she might help me to better understand Laura.
Her thin, rather solemn face, beneath straight black brows, was not unattractive. Her dark hair was pulled back too severely. If it had been loosened a litttle it would have framed her face more appealingly. She wasn’t a handsome woman, but there was strength and character in her face. For many years she had been close to Laura, and I knew she could tell me things as an observer that Laura herself might be unaware of. Yesterday she had even hinted that she might help me.
“Do you have any family, Miss Varos?” I asked conversationally. My interviewing had begun.
She shook her head. “My parents are dead, and so is my older brother. I had no one when Miss Worth and I met in Yugoslavia, and she asked me to come and work for her. I was assigned to her there for a little while, and we became acquainted.”
“Was it difficult for you to leave your country?”
“Miss Worth had friends in high places at that time. It was arranged.”
I pressed her a little more boldly because it was necessary to find the tender places. They were what told you most about a man or woman, and Irene Varos was very close to Laura.
“Hasn’t working for Laura Worth curtailed your own life?” I asked.
Her smile was stiff, as though she did not use it very often. There was no great amusement in it.
“Mr. Thoresen has warned me that you’re here to ask questions and we mustn’t mind. Of course everything which surrounds Miss Worth must be of interest and value to you. Therefore, I suppose I am of interest and value.”
“I’m glad you understand,” I said.
Her face grew solemn again, and a little sad. “There was a man whom I might have married. He—he died. If that had gone differently I might never have left my country.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She raised her coffee cup in thin fingers. “It was long ago. I can’t remember his face. It’s quite possible that I could have made a different life. But there were circumstances … Perhaps Miss Worth has been my work and my child.” Again she gave me the stiff little smile. Irene was in her thirties, Laura in her fifties, but I knew what she meant.
“May I ask you other questions? Ones less personal?”
“Of course. I’ll try to answer.”
“I’m fascinated by Laura Worth’s collection of things from her great days in pictures. They all seem to have been arranged lovingly and carefully. When did she have the heart for that? She seems to have put her career out of her life for a good many years.”
“It was when we first came to Bergen,” Irene said, and her face softened a little, grew younger. “This was the first time she had a place for her collection, and I helped her arrange the room. She still had thoughts of returning to pictures then, and all these things meant a great deal to her. They meant all the more after her marriage and divorce. S
he wanted them carefully preserved and labeled, so that the room might be a showplace where she could bring her friends. I learned while I assisted her. She told me a great deal about her life in Hollywood when she was making pictures.”
“Have you ever seen any of her pictures?”
“Of course. She has copies of several films. When we first came here she would sometimes show them to a few friends.”
“Does she have the film of The Whisperer?”
“She has it, but this is one she never likes to show. The memories are too painful.”
“Did she ever tell you about that time? About the tragedy?”
“Yes—she told me.” The words, the tone, were suddenly clipped, and I knew that Irene would not talk to me about the night when Cass Alroy had died. I plunged toward a problem more immediate, hoping to catch her off guard, so that she’d talk to me frankly.
“Did you know that Laura walked in her sleep last night?”
She did not seem particularly startled. “Last night? No, I didn’t know. Sometimes she does leave her bed at night. I try to watch and follow her. Last night I’m afraid I slept soundly. What did she do?”
“She came into my room. I’d gone outdoors for a little while to—to see what Bergen looked like at night. When I came back in she was standing before that portrait that you’d turned with its face to the wall. She had a pair of scissors in her hand.”
“Scissors?”
“Yes. Dr. Fletcher must have missed her, because he came down and found her. He took the scissors away from her and got her back upstairs.”
Irene shook her head sorrowfully. “She shouldn’t be left alone at night. There was a time when I found her outside at two o’clock in the morning. She’d climbed the retaining wall that rises from the street. If I hadn’t rescued her in time she might have fallen and been seriously injured.”
This added to the picture of a neurotic and deeply disturbed woman and I felt a growing sense of uneasiness about her. But it was what had happened last night that interested me most.
“Before Dr. Fletcher found her,” I went on, “she defaced her own portrait. With that pair of scissors she held.”
Irene stared at me for a moment and then left the table. I followed her to the room and watched while she took the picture from its peg and turned it face out. The jagged scars of the game were even more clear by daylight. Irene put out a hand and traced the lines, touched the X’s and O’s with the tip of one finger.
“It’s a game,” she said wonderingly.
“An unfinished game. What do you think it means?”
“How can it mean anything when it’s something she’s done in her sleep?”
“Perhaps that’s the very time when the deepest meanings surface,” I said. “And you can see that she didn’t scar the face of the portrait. All the grooves are cut into it below the face. Isn’t there some significance in that?”
Irene gave me a sudden intent look. “When did you see Dr. Fletcher?”
“When he came into the room from the hall. He must have missed her and come downstairs a little while after she left her bed. Has he told her what happened, do you think? Did she say anything to you this morning?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“Then he can’t have told her.”
“No—not yet.” With a sudden agitated motion Irene reached toward the picture and turned it once more toward the wall. “She mustn’t come in here and be shocked by this.”
“But she’ll have to know,” I said. “Isn’t it better if she’s told before she accidentally discovers it by herself?”
“Perhaps Dr. Fletcher is waiting for an opportune moment.” Irene’s tone was dry and faintly bitter.
“What do you mean?”
She turned from the picture and went back to the dining room, with me in her wake. We sat down at the table and she poured me a hot cup of coffee. My questions hung in the air between us.
“Perhaps he would like to do her an injury,” she said at last.
“An injury? You mean he might tell her about this in some hurtful way?”
“That wouldn’t surprise me,” Irene said. “She has an affection for him. He can hurt her when he wants to.”
“Then why don’t you tell her first?”
“And have Dr. Fletcher send me away from the house for upsetting her? He’d like to do that. He’d like her to be unguarded. Perhaps she even senses this. That’s one reason why she wants you here.”
“Perhaps I’ll tell her myself then.”
“In that case, you must do it very gently.”
I shook my head, already rejecting the idea. “No—I don’t want to tell her at all.”
“Yet someone will,” Irene said quietly. “But it cannot be me.”
I finished my coffee and pushed my chair back from the table. “Is Dr. Fletcher in now? Perhaps I’ll talk to him, find out what he plans.”
“He has an appointment, and he’s gone out. She’s alone upstairs, waiting for you.”
“What does he do around Bergen that he always seems to have appointments? Especially since today is a holiday. I thought he was retired.”
“I believe he’s arranging for a new practice. Doctors are always wanted. Miss Worth tells me he’s looking for a suitable office. She wants to stay in Bergen, and he doesn’t care to be entirely idle. There are those he could see, even on a holiday.”
“I’ll go to her now,” I said. “Thank you for talking to me about these things, Irene. You are very good to Laura.”
She smiled for the first time and began to clear away the dishes quietly. I went upstairs to Laura’s bedroom. Her call to “Come in,” was cheerful and strong. Even in speaking two words, she sounded like the Laura Worth I knew on the screen and I had a momentary sense of unreality as I entered the room. How could I be here, talking to this legend of a woman? And how did everything else I was learning about her fit that legend?
This morning she had forsaken the chaise longue, and was standing at the balcony door. Again she wore one of her fabulous long gowns from another day. This one was of palest aqua chiffon that floated when she moved—all grace and flattery. On another woman, this dressing in styles of the past might have seemed pathetic—but not in Laura Worth. She knew what looked well on her, and she had the confidence to make her own style. As though the world might still follow her. It was hard to reconcile this vital, confident woman with the staring sleepwalker I had seen last night.
She turned with the bright balcony behind her, her face in shadow so that for a moment she gave the illusion of youth.
“Good morning, Leigh Hollins! I’ve slept well for once. Nothing disturbed me, and I’ve eaten a huge breakfast.”
I wanted to say, “No sleepwalking?” but I held my tongue. Today I was more partisan than I’d been yesterday, and I did not feel like hurting her, no matter what had happened in the night. Today she would be Laura Worth, and I the writer, and our being mother and daughter would not come into it at all. I slammed a door in my mind upon a voice of protest. “Later,” I told it, “later.”
She floated toward me into the room, gestured me into one chair, and took another. The arrangement was calculated. My chair faced the bright clear light from the picture window and balcony, while her own was in shadow. I did not mind being manipulated. I would get more from her this way. It was the actress I had come to interview.
She gave me no chance to begin, however. “I know what I shall tell you about,” she informed me, sitting erect in the brocade chair, with her knees crossed so that aqua chiffon made a lovely line of thigh and leg. I found myself sitting pigeon-toed, with my notebook on my knees and my pencil clutched like a child’s above an exercise book. I hadn’t felt so self-conscious at other interviews I’d done, but now I was aware of straightening my toes and pulling back my shoulders from their hunching.
Laura did not seem to notice. I don’t think she was much aware of me as a person—she was too wrapped in her own performance.
“Will you hand me the paperweight, please,” she said, motioning gracefully, not waiting for me to begin my questions, but taking command without a by-your-leave.
The paperweight was not something I wanted to talk about, but I had no choice. I picked up the glass sphere from the low table and carried it to her. She held it up to the light so the tiny glass flowers sparkled with color.
“I want to tell you about the day I gave this to Victor Hollins,” she said.
I laid my pencil down across the page that had so little writing on it from yesterday, and braced myself inwardly. Whatever I might write about Laura Worth, it would not be this. I did not even want to hear, and my heart began its deep, rebellious thudding. With only a few words she was destroying my ability to interview.
“We’d just finished making Maggie Thornton,” she said. “We knew it was good. Victor assured me that I would win an award for my performance, and I told him it was because of his writing. We were terribly in love.”
“Please—” I said. I had to stop her. I wanted to listen to none of this.
She did not hear me. She played to me, but she forgot me as anything more than an audience.
“He was marvelously good looking in those days. He reminded me a little of Leslie Howard. He had the same gentleness, the kindness that Leslie used to portray in his roles. But there was a greater virility in Victor and sometimes he forgot to be kind and spoke with the same bite he could use in his writing.”
I made some sound of resistance, of protest. I wanted to see Victor only through my own eyes. She went right on.
“When the picture was finished and we were sure there would be no more remakes, he told me we were going away together. I put myself in his hands. I didn’t even ask where. And we came to Scandinavia, because he knew my roots were here. In Copenhagen we sat in Tivoli Gardens and watched the world go by. We shopped in Strǿget. We climbed the Round Tower, where Catherine the Great once drove her horse-drawn carriage around the wide ramp to the top. We saw Copenhagen from the tower at night, with the bright streets radiating away from us.
Listen for the Whisperer Page 12
