The Widow Nash: A Novel

by Jamie Harrison

  She turned out the light and tried to fit her mind into a different world. But on still nights, in sudden absences of wind, she could hear everything. That weekend the Elite was hosting a stockman’s convention, and the ranchers’ bellows mixed with an argument down the alley, geese flying overhead, dogs yipping, a late train. Across the hall, Miss Randall still emitted pigeony coos, and now the same drunk who’d sung about birds and bushes during the stabbing began his nightly warble.

  I long for her peaches, I yearn for your apples, but Bella’s plums bake up best...

  Dulcy walked to the bathroom and stopped at the window on her way back. Lewis and his actress were gone, but everything else had an echo: snow would begin to fall, someone new would run down the street with a knife. Durr was working, his glowing glass roof blotting out the stars. A figure approached from the alley, and she thought of Henning again, and wondered if this was a headache coming on, if she’d soon smell dead mice or spices or metal. Maybe she’d only be trapped in sound: a stockman in the lobby howled about fucking Holsteins and that cow, and a zither-like instrument wailed and blended with the drumbeat sound of a guest dragging a suitcase down the hall.

  The radiator hissed, and she stripped off the top blanket before she climbed back in. Miss Randall fussed if the climate was less than tropical, and Eugenia was the sort of proprietress who listened to the loudest complaint. The heat didn’t seem to make Miss Randall any happier: her moans had once again evolved into yips, and Dulcy’s always tentative love of humanity eroded. She was prone to what Walton called shit-fits of rage, and when the drunk began singing about cherry pie, Dulcy lunged out of bed and hiked the window, hissing like a goose.

  The singer was directly below, momentarily silent as another man lit his cigar. They both looked up at the sound of the window, and the man with the match met her eyes and turned back to the drunk.

  “Quiet, you,” he said.

  It couldn’t be Henning, but it was so much like him that the no came too late to save her from the shock, electric fear. Dulcy stepped back without closing the window, then dropped to her knees on the floor, out of sight but with her forehead pressed to the frame. She kept her eyes shut for a few seconds, then looked again, but only made out the top of the man’s hat, a dismissive gesture of his hand, and a movement to the right, at the alley: Lewis Braudel rounding the corner, alert but unsteady, Samuel trailing behind. They nodded to the Henning man as if they’d met before—familiar, but without warmth—then disappeared into the lobby, and the man finally turned his face toward the streetlight again.

  Not Henning Falk, but she was sure one of his brothers had arrived from Seattle.

  She wouldn’t have slept that night anyway, but Gerry Fenoways began roaring in the hallways an hour later, pounding on Eugenia’s door, pounding on every door. My mother is dead you fucking cunts get up and mourn her or I’ll burn you up . Dulcy didn’t have to go out to the hall to follow the police chief’s progress—he stripped his clothes off and flung himself about while Eugenia implored him (Calm yourself, ducky) in a keening voice. The Henning doppelganger had been given the room next to hers, and she heard him complain when Deputy Bixby arrived with Dr. Macalester. How could this be a policeman?

  It’s hard to be sane when you’re alone; it’s harder to be sane when you’re alone and drinking and have good reason to worry. After stabbings and fingerless men, a Falk brother was too much to fathom. Part of her brain—her pit brain, Walton had called it—screamed they’re all in league; while her rational brain had been so frittered by every coincidence since the dawn of time (thanks to Walton, again) that some fragment simply refused this new ludicrous assault. She floated between what she thought she’d seen and what was vaguely reasonable, but there was no one to tell her how she’d drifted. A brave woman, a person who could think clearly about odds and the future, might take a train to Seattle and find the right quiet time to kill her enemy, and for a half hour she calmed herself with scenarios, thoughts of knives and poison and sharp rocks. Imagining it was easy, almost soothing, until she thought of Henning.

  •••

  In the morning, Irving knocked, bearing her morning roll and coffee and newspaper. He eyed the bureau that had blocked his entry. “Did Chief Fenoways bother you?”

  “I think Gerry has other doors to knock on,” said Dulcy, who’d woken up crosswise on the bed.

  “We don’t all wet the hallways when our mothers die, do we?”

  “No,” she said, watching his black eyebrows wiggle, wondering about Irving’s mother. “Did other guests complain?”

  “Of course,” he said. “But they could see he was batty, and it wasn’t our fault.”

  “Where did he end up?”

  They were alone in the room, but Irving leaned forward to whisper. “Mrs. K’s bed.”

  Irving gave her pragmatism, and with coffee she found equilibrium: she’d been drinking. She wasn’t worth finding, and the state teemed with six-foot Scandinavians. The house was worth the risk—there’d been no recognition in the man’s eyes last night, and even if this really was one of Henning’s brothers, there were a hundred reasons for him to be traveling through town. She was a paranoid mess. She needed to leave this hotel, but not this town.

  She was forever padding down these stairs to ask misleading questions, and she paused on the mezzanine to study the battlefield. In the cold, hard morning light of the lobby—every fray showing on the upholstery, Eugenia’s cheeks looking like crepe paper balloons—this man seemed less like Henning. He wasn’t either of the brothers she’d seen close up, the brothers who had followed her in Seattle, Martin and Ansel. Still, seeing this man again gave her spine a jolt, and she was flushed as she took the fern chair. He kept his blank blue eyes (light blue, not dark and grayish like Henning’s) trained on the sidewalk outside the plate glass, and barely noticed the way Irina gave extra twirls as she poured coffee. Surely an attention to females was a family trait, along with a tendency to carefully observe, but this man had no regard for drab women or the men at neighboring tables, who simmered in curiosity at the natty gray wool suit, the fine shoes.

  On the other hand, this not-Henning ate a vast, Henning-style plate of food, half a chicken with spinach and fried potatoes. He dropped money on the table and walked past Dulcy to peer through the lobby windows of the newspaper, then paced while she pretended to read. When she looked back up he was staring directly at her but didn’t flinch away, and she realized he was actually looking past her at Miss Randall, intent upon her customary dessert of tapioca pudding.

  Dulcy looked down at her newspaper, the crisp letters telling her about mendacity and murder and the promise of another snowstorm, and felt a gust: Samuel and Rex and Lewis had surged into the lobby. They greeted the mystery man as Eugenia swooped down on them.

  “You’ll be trying the new chef tonight,” she said to Samuel.

  “I will not,” he said. “I have too much to worry about.”

  “What would that be?”

  “Dead girls on ice blocks, while Lewis asks horrible questions,” said Samuel, moving around her for the door. “My poor mess of a cousin and his rotten investments.”

  Rex blushed. “Such a nice boy, when his mind is quiet,” said Eugenia.

  Dulcy guessed she didn’t mean Lewis, who’d belatedly noticed her, and tapped his hat with his bad hand. Eugenia was given a mock bow. “Your guests look tired, Mrs. Knox. What was that noise about last night?”

  “I didn’t realize you spent time in your room, Mr. Braudel.”

  He grinned, and they were gone, crossing the street to a waiting Durr, and the group started south down Second Street, arguing. Rex kept a sidelong eye on the others, trying to fall into a step that had no collective rhythm whatsoever—these men were all in their own world, like competitors in an odd race, contestants in a strange beauty contest. Rex was so pretty, and so frayed, with loops of art
ful hair; Samuel had a nice profile, but his skin was gray, and his parts didn’t quite fit. Durr limped with fine posture and looked annoyed with all of them. The new man, out in the light, looked harsh-featured and brutally pale, with none of Henning’s weird angelic glide. He looked like he wanted to be sick to his stomach; he looked miserable and afraid.

  Dulcy’s eyes skittered over Lewis, who flexed his maimed hand while he listened to something Durr said, something private while Samuel gestured at Rex and the new man.

  They are in league, thought Dulcy, dizzy from mapping out eye directions. She made for the Enterprise door. The secretary looked down and up again in surprise, because Dulcy had been distracted enough that morning to come down in her eyeglasses, but she claimed she had no idea where the men had gone. Dulcy sensed a territorial interest, and back in the lobby she tacked toward the front desk, where Irina fiddled with a new compact of rouge, flipped through a catalogue of bows and combs and barrettes. She had to know.

  “I don’t know if there’s room for improvement in your appearance,” said Dulcy.

  “Hah,” said Irina. But she smiled.

  “I have a question,” said Dulcy. “Who is that new guest?”

  “Mr. Braudel?” Irina rolled her eyes. “He is not new. He is simply strange.”

  “No, the other. Tall, reddish hair. Is he a cattleman?”

  The girl snorted. “No, a businessman. He is not one of those cowboys, or trading Jews, or sheepherding Catholic faggots.”

  When Irina kept her mouth shut, she managed to look grave and thoughtful and lovely. Speech ruined the effect. “Ah,” said Dulcy. “He does have pretty blue eyes.”

  Irina turned another page in her catalogue, but she smiled again. Dulcy’s view of the hotel log was blocked by Sears’s shirtwaists, and she drummed her fingers, one eye on the other door. “Are you waiting for the wind to stop, for your usual walk?”

  “Silly, aren’t I?” said Dulcy. She made out an F in the signature in the register.

  Irina leaned closer, her voice dropping. “But listen, I have a question. Do you know something much about Miss Randall?”

  Leonora Randall was still in the dimmest corner of the lobby, finished with tapioca and back to her scrapbook. Dulcy avoided thinking of her own lists. “Beyond the fact that she likes the boiler on high?” asked Dulcy. “Not a thing. Has she been asking about arrivals, too? I’ve always gotten the sense she’s waiting for someone.” Eternally.

  “No. She’s even quieter than you are.” Irina’s forehead wrinkled, as if she belatedly wondered if this last comment was true. “Do you really think she’s from Ohio? Someone asked if she might have a New York sort of voice. A city-like voice. And my ear is not so good, and I thought you’d know, because Mrs. Knox said you’ve been there.”

  Dulcy tried to think; she bought time. “I’d have to hear her again. She always sounds so heartbroken, it’s hard to recall an accent.”

  Irina leaned forward. “A guest thought she might have a different name. The man you just asked about, from Seattle. Mr. Falk, Lennart Falk. He is here to see the body of the suicided girl they keep bringing back and forth. That is why he is out with Mr. Peake and Mr. Braudel, waiting for the body to come. I think he must be not family, but some sort of detective.”

  “But who is he looking for?” managed Dulcy. “Did he give you a name?”

  “Ramsay, I think. So much like Randall.” Irina leaned forward again. Her blouse was low, and Dulcy, blood slowly returning to her brain, wondered if Irina would tilt like this for the man from Seattle. If he was like Henning after all, it should do wonders for his attention. “‘Do we have a Miss Ramsay,’ he asks, ‘name of Lena?’ ‘No,’ I say. ‘Do we have a brunette girl,’ he asks, ‘who is new to the town and all strange and lonely?’ ‘Well, only Miss Randall, of course,’ I say. ‘And me,’ I joke.”

  Irina’s English was inexact, but evocative. Bereaved Maria Nash, who’d hinted at a long marriage, was not a girl. Miss Randall was taller, and ungainly—Samuel Peake said she looked like a flute with mildewed pads—but still nominally a medium-sized brunette maiden. “Lena Ramsay?”

  “Something like that,” said Irina. “I did not want to ask him to repeat. He does not have a sense of humor, or so much more English than myself. He has said he goes from town to town looking for this girl, and perhaps he is tired.”

  “Perhaps,” said Dulcy. “Does he mean to stay long?”

  “No, but look at me, look at you. It happens,” said Irina.

  “Look at Miss Randall,” said Dulcy. It was a foul thing to do, but she was desperate.

  “Of course, maybe he will see the body and be satisfied.” Irina leaned closer. “But I think he thinks not. I think he thinks Miss Randall is his runaway. Why else follow a girl so plain?”

  Irina’s stunning vanity often rendered her stunningly stupid, but it sometimes lent clarity. Part of Dulcy wanted to smack her, and a small fragment wanted to protect Leonora Randall, but the largest piece of her heart was ready to run again. She’d thought that she was good at it. “Can’t he just view Mr. Durr’s photographs of the body?”

  “I don’t know,” said Irina. “Perhaps he has been told to look for something to do with this dead girl’s teeth. Perhaps he’s been told to look for a mole or a broken bone. Last night before Chief Fenoways drank so much he told me”—Irina leaned forward again, looked sideways, whispered—“told me, just me, that they will look at this dead girl for such things, and bring down one of Dr. Macalester’s machines.”

  This dead girl: Dulcy imagined herself on a metal table, the leg she’d broken when she was little now rotten and stretched out into the green maw of an X-ray. She’d fallen climbing for the first peach after years of bad weather, weather Walton, naturally, blamed on a volcano. The Boys had been there, and they’d known how bad the break had been—the bone had come right through her skin; they could have told Victor about this one identifying mark. But if Lennart Falk was studying a woman like Miss Randall, it meant Victor thought she really might be alive.

  Before Walton had jumped out a window, Dulcy had the capacity to think through each act and reaction. She hadn’t been a great chess player, but she could at least see three or four moves in the future, even if she couldn’t manage her own temper. Now she’d been waylaid by her own poorly thought-out novella, built on panic and wishful thinking, and she made for her room, rabbit to the bolt-hole. Having the trunk sent had been a mistake, going to Butte had been a mistake, not killing herself had been a mistake. She wept—she didn’t want to leave this place. She opened drawers and squinted at underwear, forgetting the eyeglasses on the collapsing bun on her head. When she bent for a slip, they fell, and one lens popped out.

  It slowed her down. She found the chair by the window, fixed the lens, brushed out her hair, and attempted thought. This man had never seen her in the flesh; this man had looked right through her, which meant that she didn’t quite match whatever he’d been told to find: a dark-haired nervous case, young and wandering. If he had a photograph, it might only be the old one from the paper, hair down, no rounding to her body. He was looking for an idea, not a face, and something put her out of contention—the believable tale of widowhood, the expensive black mourning dress with the high neck, the flat, practical boots she wore for walks. Her hair was up, and she’d lost weight, and it must all have conspired to make her invisible.

  She shouldn’t run or hide, she did not want to be mysterious in her absence, but she needed to do something about the notebooks, the one piece of irrefutable evidence that could reveal her identity. She studied the space behind the radiator, the ledges above windows, the plumbing alcove behind the water closet. She considered the mattress, and she thought of taping a notebook to the back of each awkward botanical print on the walls. She finally settled on the shearling coat, hanging in the closet, already protecting her cash and the diamond. She made a
larger rip in the lining and lowered the notebooks in, maneuvering them around the hem until the coat regained some balance but still felt soft at the waist, where someone might put their hand if they pawed through the closet. The pink book was the last to go in, and she flipped it open to an early page, wondering if she should just burn the thing:

  The earthquake came, and rocked the quivering wall,

  And men and nature reeled as with wine.

  Whom did I seek around the tottering hall? For thee.

  Whose safety first provide for? Thine.

  Walton’s first instinct had never been to save anyone, even himself. She smiled down at the flourish after thine and touched the corner of her glasses to feel that the right lens was secure. She finally understood: she’d always been too vain in front of Victor and Henning to wear her glasses, even playing tennis, even at the theater.

  •••

  She dressed for shopping and sailed back down to the lobby, manic and free of fear. Miss Randall was still placidly concentrating on her big loopy handwriting, and Lennart Falk was back in place, looking strained and pale. He had a copy of Butte’s Tidende og Skandinav on his lap and didn’t give a glance as she passed through the lobby. He had eyes only for the wallflower, despite the fact that Irina swayed like a debutante as she delivered tea. By now he seemed like a poor shade of Henning, and he certainly didn’t have his brother’s subtlety: he marched between the newspaper and the wire office and the train station on the far side of Park Street, smoking and staring blatantly at Miss Randall through the window. She didn’t notice his existence.

  Irina, suddenly her friend, waved her over. “They sent the wrong person from Billings,” she said. “The wrong iced coffin. It was a fat man, not this girl. Now they wait again.”