She was silent, lost in some dark thoughts of her own that she wouldn’t reveal, even to me. There was more here—something she would not touch upon—perhaps because she felt it was dangerous. It was not entirely the past which haunted her. It was the present.
“Irene has hinted that Miles might have been at the studio the night of the murder,” I said, “and I think Donia knows that. Perhaps she’s even suspicious of her brother. It’s likely that she doesn’t suspect you at all, but just knows that anything connected with what happened that night frightens and upsets you. It’s in her character to make use of that.”
“Yes,” Laura said. “That’s true. I’ve grown too easily frightened and I must begin to overcome all this. I must begin tonight. If I’m to go back to Hollywood, I must learn to control my own emotions. There will be questions asked of me by the press. Everything will be dredged up again—I know that So I must learn how to be strong enough never to be shaken.”
“First you’d better get out of this house,” I said. “Gunnar is right. Let me call him. I know he’ll come and take you to his mother.”
“No, Leigh. From now on I’ll be safe here because you are going to stay with me. You’re going to bring your things upstairs and sleep in my bed tonight. The chaise longue will be fine for me. You’re my guardian angel now.”
“You’re out of your mind,” I said. “If you knew how I really feel about you—”
“Poor Leigh. To hate so much. I know quite well how you feel. But you’re Victor’s child—and you won’t hurt me. Whether you like it or not, you’re my wall of safety. So help me to begin what I must do. Go downstairs and fetch me that costume I wore when I played Helen Bradley in The Whisperer. Irene tells me you’ve shown an interest in it. I found her pressing the dress, and I got that out of her. She says you wanted to try it on. But now it is I who am going to put it on. And if foolish little Donia still has the china doorstop, you can bring it back and set it against my door. I want you to find the candlestick as well and bring it here. The time has come for me to face everything—to face down all my fears. All these things should have lost their power over me years ago. Now you’ll help me to see them as they are—no more than inanimate objects, with nothing in them to frighten me. I’ll be free then—and safe. No one can touch me unless they can reach my mind. Hurry, Leigh. Go get all these things and bring them to me.”
I was not ready to hurry, not ready to accept. “First I’m going to get out of these hot ski clothes,” I told her. “And then I want to think for a while. I haven’t decided what I must do.”
Her face was partly in shadow, and it wore that solemn, deeply concerned expression that I knew so well. When she looked like that she was striking, but not really beautiful. And then she did the same thing I had seen so often. Without warning, the brooding look lifted and she flashed her quick, unexpectedly radiant smile—and beauty looked out of her face.
“You haven’t any choice, Leigh,” she said. “You will do what Victor would want you to do. Come back to me quickly.”
I turned from her and went out of the room and down the stairs. A trash basket sat in the lower hall and someone had dropped the china cat into it. I had a momentary qualm about picking it up. I couldn’t yet believe Laura’s claim that Cass Alroy had died at her hands, but the cat doorstop made me feel squeamish. Nevertheless, I lifted it out and carried it into my room. Irene was standing in the dining room door, watching me, and she came after me at once.
“May I come in?” she said. Her look was upon the cat, and she bristled with questions I gave her no time to ask.
“Laura wants it in her room,” I informed her lightly. “And I’m to bring her The Whisperer gown. She’s going to try it on. She’d like the candlestick too, please. I believe it’s in that trunk?”
Irene uttered astonished words in her own tongue, and then gave up and came to help me find what I wanted. When dress and candlestick and china cat had been heaped upon my sofa bed, Irene went to the portrait which I’d left hanging to face the room. When she started to turn it about, I stopped her.
“Let it alone. Let the game stay visible.”
Her eyes studied the picture and I heard her soft exclamation. “Someone has marked in an O!”
“Yes—to block the game.”
“You did this?” Irene asked.
“Of course. Now X can never win.”
“I’d like to believe that. But real actions are not a game.”
“Laura knows who X is, and I think you must have guessed as well.”
She looked at me across the room, and for a moment I thought she might speak out. Then she moved toward the door.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “It would never do to make a mistake.”
After she’d gone, I stood for a little while staring at the door. I had told Laura that I wanted time to think, but I didn’t seem to be thinking. Not even about that game of naughts and crosses. I was behaving as though Laura had placed some hypnotic spell upon me, and I was helpless to do anything except her bidding.
Where was the Leigh Hollins I knew? How and when had my own identity managed to get lost before the whirlwind impact of Laura Worth? I had not caught up with the changes that were sweeping me ahead of a gale I’d not been able to stand against.
When I was dressed in my own Sweater and skirt, I went to the bookcase where Laura’s scrapbooks were kept, and took out the one which covered the time of Cass’s death and the period afterward. I drew a chair near a window and sat down to leaf through the book. What I was looking for, I didn’t know, but Laura’s words had perplexed and mystified me. Perhaps the direct statements of old newsprint would right matters in my own mind. She had told me to come back quickly, but I would let her wait. I would let her wonder what I might really do.
The account was familiar as I read the words, but more of it had been recorded in these pages than my father had pasted into his scrapbook at home. I read further details about the investigation, and as I turned the pages something startling came to light. Other hands had been at work here. Someone had gone carefully through these pages and cut out small sections here and there. Scissors had been at work again and again. Mostly the excisions were slight. Yet they were sufficient so that I could not tell what the cut-out paragraphs had referred to. After a moment of leafing I went to the door and called Irene.
When she came in, I showed her the mutilated pages and she took the book from my hands with no apparent surprise, to examine the remaining print carefully.
“If you’ve looked at these clippings before, perhaps you’ll remember what is missing,” I said.
After a few moments she gave the book back to me. “I don’t remember. But if it’s important to you for your writing, perhaps you can ask Miss Worth. She’ll surely know. Though she may not tell you.”
“But who could have done this?” I persisted. “Have you any idea?”
For a moment I thought she might not answer me. Then she reconsidered. “Perhaps it’s better if you know. Miss Worth has done this cutting.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“I came on her clipping these pages one time when you were out of the room.”
“Then it’s been done since I came here?”
Irene inclined her head gravely.
“But why? She’s begun to tell me a great deal. Why would she want to conceal something about that time in Hollywood if it’s something that appeared in print?”
“She doesn’t tell you everything, no matter what you think,” Irene said quietly. “She doesn’t tell me everything either. There is something she wants to hide.”
I knew this was true. Whatever Laura said, whatever wild confidences she offered, there was always something missing that kept the pieces from fitting together. It was this fact, I realized, that had made Irene confide in me. She wanted to know too. Her next words confirmed my thinking.
“All these years there has been no way to help her, because she will never speak of the thing that
really troubles her. Perhaps now she’s closer to reaching for help than ever before. Perhaps it will be to you, her daughter, that she’ll turn.”
Once more Irene was evidencing a softening of her manner toward me. I was no longer the enemy who might injure Laura. She was beginning to regard me as an ally.
“Early on Monday morning,” she went on, “I’ll go shopping at the market on the wharf. Perhaps you’d like to come with me? You can’t see much of Bergen when you stay so close to this house.”
“I’d love to come,” I said readily.
“Then we’ll persuade Miss Worth to let you go.”
I closed the scrapbook, which was telling me nothing, and carried it back to the table. I did not want to answer her too sharply or hurriedly, but I wanted to make my position clear.
“I don’t have to ask permission. I believe Mr. Thoresen is coming to take us to visit his mother later that day. But early in the morning I’ll be free.”
My hands moved idly over other scrapbooks in the row. Irene watched me for a moment and then went away. I pulled another volume out and laid it open on a table, began to leaf through it idly. From page after page Laura’s face looked out at me. There was a benefit at which she had appeared, a burglarizing of her house when jewels were stolen, an account of a party she had given in her spacious home in the hills above Hollywood.
Famous names leaped out at me from the pages. She had known everyone in those days. Not merely those in her own profession, but the great of the world had paid her homage, been her friends. I knew all this, of course, but seeing these printed accounts made it seem real for the first time. Laura Worth had moved in circles that never opened to the average citizen. She undoubtedly had fabulous memories of the distinguished of the world. My father had known some of them too, but he was more the introvert who did not care for large gatherings of people in his home. There was so much which Laura, the actress, still had to give me, if only I could find my former concern with her from the viewpoint of a writer. Too often lately my emotions crossed all lines, spilling over in a mixture of anger and resentment and pity and … but I had no name for all the things I was feeling toward her.
I ran through several more pages, and was about to close the book when a printed name caught my attention—that of Cass Alroy. I began to read with renewed interest. None of this account appeared to concern Laura, and it was dated several years before Cass became director for The Whisperer. Apparently he had been sued as corespondent in a divorce suit that had taken a rather nasty turn. The man who had sued him was an actor named Arnold Jaffe. The woman accused of infidelity was his wife, Donia. I bent over the book, reading with rapt attention.
Jaffe had won his suit and his divorce, and the report carried the matter no further. What had happened to the rather torrid love affair Donia had conducted with Cass Alroy was not revealed. One thing did emerge during the law procedures, however. Donia’s brother, the distinguished Dr. Miles Fletcher, had stood by his sister throughout the affair, and there had been an occasion when he had threatened to give Alroy a thorough beating. There was no telling whether anything had come of that.
I closed the scrapbook thoughtfully and returned it to its place. I was not sure whether Laura had known Miles and Donia at the time of the divorce. The ramifications were interesting, however. Miles’s quarrel with Cass Alroy had been of long duration and Miles must have been thoroughly disturbed to find the man directing Laura’s picture, and upsetting her so that she had been ill on the set during the filming that had taken place on the day Cass Alroy had died.
By this time I had several matters to question Laura about, and she had been left waiting long enough.
I flung the Venetian red costume over my arm, and picked up the candlestick and the pink china cat. Then I carried everything upstairs to Laura’s bedroom, glad to meet no one along the way.
Laura had been busy while I was gone. If her ankle hurt her, she ignored it. She had pushed back all the furniture so there was a large free space in the center of the room. Her cheeks were flushed from her endeavor, her eyes bright. I set down my armload and looked about in surprise. On the low coffee table which had been relegated to a corner stood a gleaming object—the golden statuette of a man holding a sword, and I knew what it was at once.
“Your Oscar!” I cried, and went to kneel on the floor beside the table, where I could examine the precious symbol without marking its shining surface with fingerprints.
Laura laughed at the sight of me. “You’re bowing before a graven image! I’m not sure it means all that much.”
“It means something in your case. It acknowledges your performance in Maggie Thornton.”
She came to stand beside me, looking rather sadly at the figure of the manikin.
“Of course it’s satisfying to win an award. I can still remember how excited I was that night. And how I forgot the few words I’d tried to prepare ahead of time—in case I won. When the moment came and hurled me up on that stage, all I could do was burble.”
“You thanked Victor Hollins,” I said. “I’ve read about that.”
“Yes—he’d gone out of my life by that time, but much of the credit would always belong to him.”
“And I had been born.” How well I knew those dates!
She said nothing to that, but picked up the shining figure. “Do you know that I nearly sent this to your father after I brought it home? But I knew very well that he would only have sent it back to me.”
“There should have been a twin,” I said. “You deserved the second Oscar too, for The Whisperer.”
She didn’t deny it. “Perhaps I can rectify that.”
I looked up at her sharply. The slight air of sadness still lay upon her as she studied the golden figure.
“The trouble with an award is that the time and cause for receiving it are so quickly past. It’s like having a photograph taken. We are so quickly older than our pictures. By the time an award is won, or a picture is taken, we’re already changing, going on to other things. It’s natural to want what is newest to be our best. There’s never any standing still—we go on to higher ground, or we slip back. And there’s always disappointment when the new achievement doesn’t match the vision we held. There’s been frustration for me in looking back at Maggie Thornton as my best role. I wanted new roles that would be as great. I wanted a finer achievement.”
“And you had it in The Whisperer. The mere fact that circumstances kept you from winning hasn’t taken away from what everyone knows was a stunning performance.”
“Twenty years ago! What can it mean now? That’s why I want to return. That’s why I value your gift in bringing me back to life and ambition.”
There was an outward glow upon her that made her beautiful, and an inward longing looked out of her eyes. I got to my feet and walked away from her across the room. When I looked back she was still holding the Oscar in her hands.
“You may not always be lonely,” she told him whimsically, and set the figure on the table. Then she turned to me. “I see you’ve brought everything I asked for. We can begin.”
Here we went again! There was no use opposing her. “With Hedda Gabler?”
“No! I’ve thought of a better idea. And I’ve found the books.”
She flew to a bookcase and picked up two identical volumes that lay upon its top. I recognized the jacket of my father’s book with a sinking heart.
“Here!” she said and held one of them out to me. “I’ve marked the passages. Sometimes Victor wrote dialogue as though it was to be played on a stage. The script for The Whisperer used whole pages of the book verbatim. I’ll be Helen, of course, and you can read the other roles. I’m sure you’ll be more at home with these words than with Ibsen.”
I didn’t want any of this, didn’t like it. But there was nothing to do but humor her. While she paced the room as Helen Bradley, I sat in a chair and read the lines between her speeches. Her first cue came from a clumsy young maid who was new in the Bradley hous
e, and terribly nervous of the master. Helen, already frightened herself, went into the business of reassuring a young girl who was terrified. In the scene, the maid was kneeling on the floor, polishing an iron doorstop in the shape of a cat.
Laura finished the speech, moving about the room in her elegantly flowing caftan, yet giving something of Helen’s aura even now. Her walk had changed, her manner of holding her head and shoulders made her a different person.
“Tonight we’ll use the china cat,” she said, breaking out of character. “Tonight you can be dusting it while I read the lines.”
“Tonight?” I turned the book face down on my lap and stared at her. “Laura, what are you up to? What do you mean to do tonight?”
There was only a faint edge of nervousness in her laughter to give her away. “Tonight I’m going to prove to you all that I’m still Laura Worth. All you unbelievers are going to come up here to this room—Donia and Miles and Irene—and I’m going to show you what I can do. Perhaps I’ll phone Gunnar and bring him here too. In the meantime, I want to read the scene with Robert Bradley, where Helen realizes her danger. I can almost remember the words. Give me the end of his speech, Leigh.”
I knew the passage she meant and found the page. I read Robert’s deceitful words and heard the stilted sound of my own voice. She picked up the response easily, but I found some comfort in the fact that she stumbled, that the depth of passion wasn’t there as it had been in the picture.
“That was not very good,” I told her flatly when she paused.
Her brilliant smile erased the somber look of Helen Bradley. “Of course it wasn’t. I’m only feeling my way, remembering the words. I always hold something back in rehearsal. Otherwise I’d waste the very essence of a role where it doesn’t really count.”
I listened to her warily, with all my suspicions alert. It was true that she was being carried away by this sudden desire to prove herself an actress, but I sensed that there was something more. There was some hidden motive in what she planned, and the high excitement which drove her had its roots in more than the desire to perform. Nevertheless, I went along with what she wished. I read the lines which cued Helen Bradley’s speeches as woodenly as possible, and now and then I faltered deliberately over the words. This was a safeguard for me. I didn’t want her to catch me up in the emotions she was able to generate in those around her. I wanted to contribute nothing to her performance. It would be better for her if she fell far short of her intent. I wouldn’t interfere with her, but I wouldn’t help her either. I would remain neutral.
Listen for the Whisperer Page 21
