Listen for the Whisperer

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  I watched Gunnar as he played, and felt the pain of new knowledge and awareness. It was a pain from which I did not rebel, as once I would have done. The novelty of feeling fully alive—or letting myself be vulnerable—was something I would not reject.

  Laura tapped her foot to the tunes and smiled her delight. “You should see the dances in full dress,” she told me. “The peasant costumes are different for every region, and they are unbelievably beautiful. The men dress up as well as the women, and it’s all quite exciting. If you were to be here longer we would go out to Fanaseter when the season begins and watch them dance the old dances there on the farm. We would eat goat cheese, and those tiny delicious waffles made in the shape of a heart and served cold. But there’s no time, no time.”

  Gunnar heard her and stopped his playing, came inside. “Why is there no time?”

  “I’ve already sent off several letters,” she told him. “I have begun to make arrangements. I won’t wait. I’ll follow up my letters in person. And Leigh will go back to New York.”

  “Having done as much damage here as she can possibly do,” Gunnar said, no longer troubling to be polite.

  Laura came up from the sofa and went directly to him. “Oh, no! You don’t understand. Leigh has brought me to life. She has challenged me, disapproved of me, shaken me into being alive. She has made me see that I was being sorry for myself and playing the coward. Now I am willing to take the risks I must take. She has brought me out to meet life again.”

  “All these things your marriage did not do for you?” Gunnar said.

  His mother stirred on the sofa and spoke to him firmly. “Come now! You must not say such things to our guests.”

  “The time for politeness is past,” Gunnar countered, equally firm. “You don’t know everything that has been happening, Mother.”

  Laura came to me and touched my arm. “It’s time for us to go, Leigh. Gunnar is in one of his dark Norwegian moods.” She went to Mrs. Thoresen and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “I will see you again before I leave, and we will try to have a good visit. Gunnar, where are our coats, if you please?”

  She made her exit with dignity and if his words about her marriage had pierced her guard, wounded her, she showed it not at all. He drove us in silence back to Kalfaret. When he got out of the car at the foot of the steps, Laura pulled down his head and kissed him on the cheek as she’d done his mother.

  “You’ll be over being cross with us soon. I’m looking forward to a lovely evening at the theater Wednesday night. Shall we take our own car and meet you there?”

  Her pretty ways were always winning, and he smiled at her wryly, agreeing. For me he had hardly a glance as I said goodbye and followed Laura up the steps.

  Above us the house waited and the familiar sense of foreboding descended upon me as we followed the walk along the side and waited for Irene to let us in the front door.

  Chapter 13

  That night the rain began, and I found out what rain was like in Bergen. It rained all the next day and the waters of the harbor and the lakes turned an angry gray. Clouds boiled down over the mountains and Ulriken was lost in a black canopy. Rain beat upon the crocuses in the garden, upon the sleepy slanting roofs, and water rushed along the gutters. The traffic did not cease its flow, nor did the Bergensere stay indoors because of the weather. Rain was a normal condition and it deterred no one from his purpose.

  Laura remained undepressed by the lowering weather, but I began to feel trapped and restless. Now I had too much time to think, too many things to weigh and question, unfamiliar emotions to cope with. I left Laura alone hardly at all, and whether her new husband liked it or not, I slept in her room at night. She wanted me there and I made no effort to oppose her wish.

  Nothing had really changed between us except inside myself. Perhaps I was a little gentler with her, but she was still tart and imperious with me. She knew that something had given way inside me, but she took no advantage of the fact. If anything, she held me even more at arm’s length, making it clear that for her I was a journalist, and nothing more.

  Apparently the rain bore down heavily upon the other members of the household as well. Miles and Donia snapped at each other, Irene watched them with suspicion and restrained herself with difficulty from being rude to Donia. I suppose we all watched one another. All, that is, except Laura. Since she knew where danger lay, she relaxed in my company and managed to laugh in the face of whatever might threaten her.

  The matter of a passport, plane reservations—all these things she was busily taking care of, asking no help from anyone, knowing the others might impede and delay her purpose. The day of her departure had not been set, but it would be in a week or two, she felt sure.

  I made no plans of my own. I had no plans. When Laura left, I supposed I would go back to New York. Whether I would ever see her again, I didn’t know—though I would miss her. Now I could accept that. Gunnar I would undoubtedly never see again, and that would leave me with an aching emptiness for a very long time. Once back in New York, I would no longer be the same person I’d been when I left, but I didn’t know yet how the change in me would take effect. I could only wonder what good it was going to do me to come alive, to learn how to feel these new emotions, when both the people I could feel most strongly about were soon to be dropped out of my life.

  It was late afternoon of Wednesday, the day of the play. We were not to meet at the theater, after all. Miles planned to take us to an early supper that night, which would include Gunnar. I had come downstairs to put on the indigo silk that was the one dressier frock I’d brought along. Laura said Bergen audiences did not wear evening dress for the theater, but she was apparently making her own exception to the rule, for I’d seen the brown and white organza she had laid out on her bed. It was a couturier design of an ageless style. Irene was to help her dress and I was in my downstairs room, clipping carved ivory buttons to my ears and listening to the rain.

  Laura tapped on the door, and rushed in breathless, wearing a negligee clasped loosely about her.

  “Have you seen Irene? She was to come and zip me up.”

  “I haven’t seen her,” I said. “But I’ll take care of the zipping, if you like. Do I look all right for the evening?”

  She hardly glanced at me, but walked straight across the room to her portrait, where it hung on the wall face out, as I left it these days.

  “Look!” she cried, and there was a catch in her voice.

  I went to stand beside her and saw that something new had been added to the eerie game. Where I had scratched a cypher to block the game from X’s winning, now a large X was cut across the O, negating its purpose.

  Laura grasped my arm and her fingers felt like ice, her teeth had begun to chatter.

  “Don’t,” I said. “It means nothing. You mustn’t be upset by this sort of nonsense. I’ll stay with you. Nothing is going to happen. Someone wants to frighten you, and you mustn’t let them succeed.”

  She stared at her younger self looking out from the portrait—that lovely young woman, so ready for loving.

  “It’s the beginning of the end,” she said. “The final warning. Time is slipping away.”

  I started to protest, to soothe her, but she turned from me. “I must find Irene. Help me look for her, Leigh.”

  I didn’t see why she should feel such urgency about locating Irene, but I humored her. While she searched one part of the downstairs, I searched another. No one was there.

  “She’s not upstairs, either,” Laura said. “Her room’s empty, and Miles and Donia say they haven’t seen her. We must find her, Leigh. We must!”

  “Perhaps she’s gone out on some errand,” I suggested. “Why don’t you let me help with your dress, and we’ll wait for her to come back?”

  But she would not wait. “No—I have a feeling that something’s wrong. Leigh, put on your rain things and look in the garden—look around the house outside.”

  Her anxiety was contagious, and I bega
n to feel uneasy as I put on my raincoat and boots, tied a scarf over my hair. She let me out the front door, where I was able to see along the walk that led to the street steps. The side yard was empty. A wild wind had begun to blow, and rain slashed into my face, thrashed the limbs of trees and filled the gray afternoon with a roaring of sound. I squelched my way around the back of the house, where only a small border of space intervened before the steep rise of the hill. No one would have climbed up there and I hurried around to the dining room side, where there was a small garden, with flower beds that were beginning to take on a tinge of green.

  I saw her at once. She lay face down on brownish ooze while the rain beat upon her back. She wore no coat, as though she had not intended to come outdoors, and her gray dress was already soaked through. The dark coil of her hair had loosened and lay wet upon her shoulders. I knelt and touched her, called her name. When she moaned softly and stirred under my hand, I ran to the dining room doors, where Laura stood waiting for me.

  “I’ve found her. We’ll have to get help to bring her in,” I said. “She’s lying out there near the flower bed.”

  Laura clapped a hand to her mouth and stepped back into the room as I passed her.

  “Miles,” I said, “—I’ll get Miles.”

  For an instant she moved as if to stop me. Then she dropped into a leather chair and sat there shivering. I didn’t stop to get out of my wet things, but ran upstairs, calling for Miles. Both he and Donia came to their doors and stared at me.

  “It’s Irene!” I cried. “She’s lying in the garden near the dining room doors. I think she’s been hurt.”

  Miles ran downstairs, and Donia came after him. Laura remained in her chair, while Donia and I watched Miles go out in the rain and gather Irene’s limp body into his arms. We held the doors while he brought her dripping into the room—as Gunnar had carried me only two days ago. Donia ran to spread a wool throw over the living room sofa, and Miles put Irene down carefully. She stirred and reached a hand to her wet hair.

  “My head,” she moaned. “It hurts me.”

  Miles bent to examine her and found the bruise at the side of her head. I watched him, feeling as cold as Laura, finding that my own teeth had a tendency to chatter. There had been only soft earth in the garden where Irene had fallen—there had been nothing there, as far as I had seen, that could have caused the bruise on her head when she fell.

  I returned to the dining room, where Laura sat huddled in her chair. She looked up with wide, terror-filled eyes.

  “It has begun,” she said. “It’s the beginning of the end. That cross on the canvas—and now Irene—”

  “Don’t fall apart,” I told her sharply. “I’m going out to look for something.”

  She stayed where she was, gripping the carved arms of the chair with tense hands while I went into the rainy garden. I found what I sought almost at once, but there was a squeamish moment before I could lean over to pick up the long brass candlestick where it lay on the brown grass. The last time I’d seen it, it had stood on a table near the garden doors in the dining room, where Laura had left it when she had carried it downstairs.

  Rain would have washed all fingerprints away—it did not matter if I picked it up. The curving body of the dragon which writhed about the stick felt cold to my fingers, and the tiny scales formed an unpleasant texture to my touch. I carried it back to Laura.

  She covered her face with her hands at sight of it, and I took the candlestick into the room where Irene lay. She looked in my direction as I came in, saw what I carried. There was shock in her eyes as she fixed her gaze upon the dull brass. I gave the candlestick to Miles, though he seemed reluctant to take it, and I watched him, and watched. Donia.

  “Someone must have struck her down with this,” I said. “How did it happen, Irene? You had no coat on—why were you in the garden?”

  She started to say something, and then looked past me to the door. I turned and saw Laura coming slowly into the room. Irene closed her eyes and said nothing.

  I prodded her, in spite of Miles’s disapproval. “Who struck you, Irene?”

  Laura came close to the couch and stood looking down at her, so that when Irene’s lashes fluttered open she saw Laura there above her.

  “I don’t know,” she murmured. “I don’t remember what happened.”

  Laura had silenced her. It was Laura who would not allow that one name to be spoken.

  “You’ll be all right,” Miles told Irene. “A slight headache, perhaps. I’ll give you something to take.”

  His words seemed forced, too casual for the circumstances. I couldn’t endure what was happening.

  “Look!” I cried. “We’ve got to do something! Laura’s portrait was defaced. The binding on her ski was damaged. I was pushed downstairs. And now this. Yet no one asks questions or points a finger. What do you all know that makes you keep quiet? Are you waiting for someone to be killed?”

  Irene closed her eyes as though the shrillness of my voice hurt her. The other three stared at me, but not at each other.

  “No one has been seriously injured,” Laura said. “Let it alone, Leigh.”

  Miles leaned toward Irene, ignoring me. “Would you like to go up to your room?”

  If Irene felt pain or dizziness as she pulled herself upright, she suppressed the fact. “Yes, please—I’ll go upstairs.”

  “Take my arm,” Miles said.

  As he waited for Irene to steady herself, he looked at Donia for the first time, and his sister stared back at him. It seemed to me that a challenge was flung between them—one had challenged, and the other had picked up the figurative glove. But I did not know which was which.

  “Are you all right?” I said to Laura.

  She seemed to have recovered herself and she nodded almost fiercely. “Yes. If you’ll come and help me dress—”

  “Do you still plan to go out?” I asked in surprise. “After what’s happened—”

  “Of course we’re going out. Irene will be glad to be left alone. She knows she’s perfectly safe in an empty house. Safer than if any of us stayed home.”

  “How can you possibly—” I began, but she shook her head at me, her expression tense.

  “I must. I must,” she said. “For a few more days I must.”

  Miles help Irene to her room, and Laura followed, with me right after her. When she was sure that everything had been done that Miles wished, she drew me into her room and flung off the negligee.

  I helped her reluctantly into the brown and white organza. It was a dramatic dress, with a long, flaring hemline, and a scooped-out neck edged with white. She set it off with simple gold jewelry—a necklace and delicate earrings.

  I watched her in continuing amazement I wanted to question her, but I knew it was useless. She had a good suspicion of what had happened in the garden, but she had no intention of telling me what it was. She seemed filled with nervous energy, almost with an elation that I did not understand. It was as if her courage rose with evidence of danger all around her. Irene had spoken about murder, and Irene had been struck down. Yet when I had zipped up Laura’s gown, she stood looking at her pale, beautiful self in a long mirror as if this were any evening and nothing eventful had happened.

  “The warning of X came to nothing,” she said. “I might be dead by now—but I’m not. I’m alive.”

  I agreed with her dryly. “Two days ago there was another attack. That time I took the brunt. Now Irene has done the same thing. In either case it might have been you. Don’t you think you’d better save yourself—and us—by speaking out.”

  She clasped a filigree bracelet around her wrist, not looking at me. “No. Not yet. I have my plane reservation for Saturday. There are only a few days left to get through. Then I’ll be free—safe.”

  “Does Miles know when you’re leaving? Or Donia?”

  “Neither of them knows. You’ll take me to the plane in the taxi. Then you’ll get yourself away from Bergen.”

  “And leave
Irene to their tender mercies?”

  “No one will be hurt, once I’m gone. I’m the catalyst. They’ll separate. They won’t stay in the house.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” I said doubtfully. “Would you like me to come with you?”

  Her reflection in the mirror gave me a surprised look. “To Hollywood? But of course that would be very good for your piece, wouldn’t it? A firsthand account of the return of Laura Worth!”

  “Yes, it would be very good,” I agreed quietly.

  She turned from the mirror, a vision in brown organza, the pallor of her face somehow suiting the gown far better than high color would have done. Only her lips were red. Her long lashes were brushed with black, her lids tinted faintly blue.

  “Don’t try to look after me,” she said. “Except for a little while recently, I’ve never been the leaning type. I don’t want a daughter in my life. I never have. Go back to New York and forget me, Leigh Hollins.”

  “I’ll do that.” I answered her carefully, revealing nothing. This was what I’d asked for by giving too much of myself that day at Gunnar’s house.

  “We’ll be leaving soon,” she went on. “It’s too bad it’s raining, but I have a cape I can wear over my dress. And you’re ready in your raincoat and boots. It’s nearly time to leave. I’ll look in on Irene and then we’ll call the others.”

  She was in control of everything—of herself and the situation. She could be hard—without feeling, without empathy. Once she had told me that she must live only from day to day—and that was exactly what she was doing. Perhaps from hour to hour. I wished that for my own salvation I might go back to hating her. But now, though she could hurt me as never before, I was no longer angry with her—but only amazed. She had a strength that made me feel that I was soft clay by comparison. I had ceased to know my own shape and form.

  Too often lately there was a sense of tears burning behind my eyes, a sense of yearning, though I wasn’t sure what I longed for. Perhaps what I really wanted was the solace of my old protective anger. I wanted my shield back—that shield which had for so long guarded me from outside hurt. Only it was gone now—perhaps forever. I watched Laura, and saw that however misguided she might be, she was beautiful and brave and unbeaten. I wanted to see her escape from whatever tormented her, and I knew I would give myself to helping her in that purpose—whether she thanked me or not. At least she would use me, and for a little while longer I could be near her, I could warm myself at her bright flame. This was a longing which had been in me all my life, and which I’d denied. It had always been a part of my admiration for the actress, Laura Worth, although I’d convinced myself that it was only the actress I admired.