Turret Room

by Charlotte Armstrong

  Now Wendy turned again and she was smiling lopsidedly, lips closed, one end of the mouth tucked up into the flesh of the cheek. “It depends on the one you marry.”

  “I remember Ronnie from a long time ago,” said Edie, feeling blind.

  “I’ll bet you do,” her cousin said.

  “He was a pretty spectacular playboy, way back then. When I was eighteen, I cried all night. Maybe you remember? Somebody had told your grandmother something.”

  “Way-back-then?” said Wendy, insultingly. She wasn’t going to admit anything.

  “How old is he now? And how many wives?”

  “He’s thirty-four,” said Wendy. Her temper flared. “And who cares how many wives. He hasn’t got one now. What in the world is your idea of marriage? You should try it sometime.” She seemed to dance impatiently. “Oh, where is that old idiot? I want her to press my yellow dress. Money is the thing, you know, Edie. Too bad you’ll have to wait for yours, until Granny dies.”

  Edie was lost. “Ronnie Mungo has money, you mean?”

  “I’ll have money, is what I mean,” said Wendy. “Of my own.”

  Edie was stumped, really stumped. Money would have been the last thing to cross Edie’s mind. Mrs. Beck came bustling and Wendy said, “Oh, there you are, Becky. You come on up.”

  Mrs. Beck’s long-jawed face was looking perfectly foolish with devotion. “Yes, lamb. Yes, love.”

  “I’m going to the party,” said Wendy, on the stairs.

  “It will do you good. Do you good, lamb,” said Mrs. Beck, drawn upward behind her.

  Edie sat still, where she was. She had not missed, of course, the obvious fact that Mrs. Beck was Wendy’s slave. She remembered mentioning something like that, and how Granny had said, in Granny’s way, “Oh, Mrs. Beck’s been raising Wendy. After all, if she was willing, why should I?”

  But this was not to the point, really. The point was, how could Edie protect a country boy—rather a pathetically unlucky boy, a boy who was not in the best physical condition to defend himself—from these terrible people? In particular, from Wendy Whitman, who had lied, would lie, being possessed, as far as Edie could tell, of no scruples at all. Which of the household could she approach, to ask for mercy and understanding, or even a mind open to the reestablishment of justice? And, if none, what could she do for Harold Page?

  Mrs. Beck came swiftly down, a yellow dinner dress over her arm. Wendy’s in a yellow mood today, she was thinking. Ah, yellow suits her. She reached the bottom of the stairs and was starting for the kitchen regions, when Miss Edith called her name.

  “Yes, Miss Edith?” Mrs. Beck had very little time for Edie.

  “Mr. Whitman asked me to tell you that he won’t be here for dinner.”

  Good, thought Mrs. Beck. “I see,” she said aloud, “Thank you. Miss Wendy won’t be here either.” She was counting in her mind; that left the old lady and this Edith. This Edith spoke again.

  “Mrs. Beck, you were in the house last night when it happened? You didn’t hear anything at all?”

  “My room is at the back,” said Mrs. Beck. “I don’t hear.” (Let her believe that.)

  “What about the doorbell?” Edie said, quick to remember.

  “I don’t,” said Mrs. Beck, frowning judiciously, “recollect hearing the doorbell. Of course, I woke up, later on …” Now, it occurred to her that she might find out something. She tossed the dress over one shoulder and began to move around the room, straightening this and that. “I am behind in the work,” she sighed, “with the maids away.” Selma was having a bout with the flu and Angie was on vacation. Mrs. Beck was not sorry that they happened to be away.

  “Miss Myra is going to be all right?” she said. “Don’t they say?”

  “They say so.” Edie was standing. With pants on, at this hour! Mrs. Beck could not approve. Then Edie said, “Do you believe it was Harold Page?”

  “Why, Miss Wendy saw him.” Mrs. Beck swooped upon a bit of white, tucked between the cushions and the arm of a big chair. It was a paper napkin. She began to pleat it in her hands.

  “So she says.” Edie was speaking with a nervous air of suspicion. “Of course, Miss Myra will be able to tell us the truth very soon. It may have been some other—madman.”

  Mrs. Beck knew that her eyes were turning. She let out a sigh. “I’m very upset about Miss Myra. To think … in the hospital!” She clicked her tongue. “I wish I could go see her for myself.”

  “Why not?” said Edie.

  “There’s only two for dinner. I wonder if I could take the evening …”

  “Mr. Whitman’s going to be at the hospital until the evening visiting hours are over.”

  (Ah!) Mrs. Beck said, “Oh, I see.” She started toward the kitchen again. Had to press the dress. And think about this.

  But Edie had something else on her mind. “Mrs. Beck, were you here when there was that other trouble? When Harold Page was supposed to have beaten Wendy?”

  (Supposed to have?) Mrs. Beck felt like letting out a piece of her mind. “Oh, she had to be rid of him, Miss Edith. Had to be rid of him. He was not for her. She ran away, for the fun of it, you know. So young. But I couldn’t approve.”

  Maybe she shouldn’t have said that. It wasn’t supposed to be for her to approve. Mrs. Beck’s kingdom was in secret.

  “You do approve of Ronnie Mungo?” the girl was saying.

  “That’s different.” Mrs. Beck was glad to be telling the truth. “Mr. Mungo is a man-of-the-world. And I’ll be with her, you know. He’s promised me. Why, we’ll travel. Do her good to get away from here.” Yes, away from the old lady, and the silly man, the clever stepmother, the gloomy old house. And the town, too.

  “Why,” Edie was asking, “didn’t Wendy ‘get away’ to college? Or take a job?”

  A job! Mrs. Beck felt shocked. But how ridiculous! “What would she take a job for, Miss Edith? That’s not for her. She needs to be gay and enjoy herself, the pretty thing. Oh, I understand her. Poor little motherless child.” (My child.) “Oh, she has suffered.”

  “She has?” Miss Edith was not believing. “How do you feel,” the girl said angrily, “about the poor little motherless, fatherless baby?”

  Mrs. Beck knew how she felt and she said it. “Oh, now that was very hard on Wendy. To bear a child that wasn’t right. Oh, poor lamb! So hard! But we’ve put that behind.”

  She began to stroke the fabric of the dress. She was talking too much. Well, she had a lot on her mind. She said, “Pretty, isn’t it? Does need pressing. I must hurry.” So much to do. So much to think about.

  Edie said, loudly, “I don’t believe Harold Page was here last night at all.”

  Mrs. Beck stopped in her tracks. She turned and made her mouth humble and her voice gentle to correct. “Why, he must have done it, Miss Edith. Poor crazy person. I’m sure he didn’t know what he was doing.” She thought of another point to make. “Miss Myra might have brought it on herself, you know. Not knowing how to handle him.” Mrs. Beck would have known how to handle him.

  “We’ll find out,” Edie said, “when Miss Myra wakes up.”

  Mrs. Beck was glad to hear Wendy screaming down the stairs. “Becky! I can’t find my gold slippers.”

  Her gold slippers? Oh, yes, on the shelf. Mrs. Beck could put her hand on them. “I’ll find them, lamb,” she called upward. “As soon as I can, love. Don’t you worry.”

  She said to Miss Edith, sternly, “Excuse me.”

  Now then, through the long dining room, into the big square kitchen, pull down the ironing board. So much to do. Sometimes Mrs. Beck thought that she, and she alone, had to handle the whole world and all the people in it.

  Edie sat down in a chair feeling frightened and small. Wendy would lie; Mrs. Beck would back her up, whatever Wendy chose to say. The woman had made Edie’s skin crawl. No hope there. Still, nothing was any worse, or any better either, since Wendy had gone upstairs. Not really. Was it? Why did Edie have the feeling that she herself had just done s
omething she ought not to have done, something dangerous? Why was she feeling frightened?

  Chapter Six

  AT a quarter of midnight, the prisoner came out of the turret room with his hair combed neatly, and his white coat on. He came down the stairs on his stockinged feet and told Edie that he was going to give himself up, now.

  She sat up on the sofa and began to try to talk him out of it.

  The big room was dim; there was only one lamp burning. The house was very quiet. It was safe enough to talk here, safer than the turret room, perhaps, the guard being where he was. Granny slept without her hearing aid. Cousin Ted had retired long ago and was asleep in his bedroom, beyond the study, far at the end of the east wing. Mrs. Beck’s room was away at the back. She might not have come in yet, but even if she had, she would not hear soft voices.

  No one could see in. The doors to the solarium were closed. A night light burned in the foyer; Wendy was still out. But the only window in the foyer was well around the wall. Velvet draperies were drawn across the big window and they were heavy. They did not cover the highest part where the glass went up into an arch, but the tree obscured that section. Black leaves made a pattern against the silver night. No one’s angle of sight could come through there and strike down to where they were.

  Edie was sitting up on the sofa wearing a short nightgown with its matching peignoir. She had her slippers on her feet although they were covered by the big, soft, puffy, flowered quilt. She had thought she would sleep down here. (If there was such a thing as sleep.) If anyone ordered her to her room, she would simply go. So it was safe enough. It had seemed safer to be more or less on guard, outside that door.

  She had stolen some food for Harold Page at dinnertime. After he had eaten, he had fallen asleep. Edie had held some hope for darkness, but the moon was up, too soon, too bright.

  There was little hope, anyhow. Edie had spotted the positions of the guards and they had been well placed. The man on the dining room corner could see, along two sides of the house, both the kitchen door and the outside cellar door, at the base of the turret. The guard on the corner of Cousin Ted’s study could see the whole back terrace; there was no way to slip out of the solarium and across that bare expanse to the shrubbery, unseen. The guard near the big tree could see the front door and the driveway turnaround. That took care of doors. As for windows, there was no sliding down the turret wall, no getting out by using the tree, and on the other windows, no shutter could wag and wag unseen. To be caught getting out of a window would be madness. These men had guns.

  Someone far more intelligent than Cousin Ted had placed those guards to keep Harold Page out of this house. They were equally well placed to keep him in.

  She had not attempted to walk him out boldly, by daylight. She was sure that the guard would query a shoeless man, and the boy’s weakness and illness would be too obvious. No such exit could seem casual. So she did not dream of trying to walk him out by this moonlight, either. He must stay until morning. It was safer and there were other ways to help him.

  But her prisoner was restless.

  She said to him now, “Dr. Wesley will call me back in the morning. They promised me. I left my name. And please let me try again with Mr. Tyler? In the morning? It would be better if I could get to him. He’s the Chief of Police, and even if he felt like torturing a confession out of you, he wouldn’t do that. I mean, it isn’t done. He scared me this afternoon. I shouldn’t have let him scare me. I do think I might get him to listen. Are you cold?”

  The boy leaned on the back of the sofa and was shuddering.

  “I’m scared,” he said gravely, “but the one who scares me …”

  She read his mind. “Wendy’s at a party,” she said, a little bitterly. “She’ll be a while, but please go back. Please wait?”

  His head shook a slow negative.

  She said, “I wish you hadn’t left your bag outside, you know. That’s made things worse.” She was feeling a little annoyed, because she wanted to save him so much more than he seemed to want to be saved.

  “I want to get it over with, before Wendy comes,” he said. “I feel, you know … somehow or other … I’ll never, never … She can always beat me.”

  No, she can’t, thought Edie. Not this time.

  “Oh, come on. Cheer up,” she pleaded. “Please. We’ve gone this far.” He wasn’t agreeing. He was leaning on his elbows, with his hands clasped lightly. He had good hands. His young face was grave. “Were you in love with her, Harold?” Edie asked.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Wendy can be very attractive.”

  “I know,” he said. He smiled at her. He wasn’t jittery. He didn’t seem to be afraid. He was chilled, and feverish. “I came up here on leave with a few of the fellows that time,” he began. “We hung around the beach. And here came Wendy Whitman and she chose me. Well, I suppose I believed in chemistry or love at first sight or something corny.” He didn’t sound bitter about it. He was just remembering. “I really did believe that it was so. Just two days, and then we were tearing down to the border in Wendy’s car and she drives like a racer. Oh Lord-ee, it was wonderful! We got into Mexico. We lied about our ages. We got married. We found this motel. I thought to myself, Boy, now you have got everything in the whole world. You have got it all.”

  His hands were quiet. Edie thought, Oh the poor kid, why did he have to meet Wendy Whitman? Ever?

  “But my leave wasn’t lasting forever,” he said, shifting to lean sideways, “so we came back here.”

  “Was the family upset?” Edie tried to imagine. This boy openly in this house.

  “They didn’t seem to be, not too much,” he told her. “They seemed a little bit stiff toward me but I thought that was only natural. Nobody chewed me out.”

  “Cousin Ted and Myra weren’t married yet, were they?”

  “No, but they were engaged. Myra was here all the time. They were fussing about their wedding. Listen, I was so doggoned silly happy, I didn’t really notice anything. I had to go back to camp the next day, and I went. On a big fat pink cloud. Next leave I could get, it was the same. I didn’t see them much. Talk to them much. Notice much. Wendy was going to come and live near the Post. We were making plans”—his eyes flicked to her face—“that is, when we bothered. But she put that off and put it off and those plans … just died. It seemed to get to be too late. Actually, after Wendy got pregnant …”

  Now his eyes were blind. “Yes?” she prodded.

  “She was moody,” he said, quietly. “Mustn’t touch. Then I saw I was … I was like a piece of furniture that somebody had left around the house. They’d act as if ‘Oh, yes, that’s Harold, isn’t it?’ And they’d walk around me. As if they didn’t see me or hear me unless I got in the way. And it kept getting worse.”

  His face seemed to be drawn fine with the memory of that incomprehensible misery. But he drew himself up a little. “You see, Wendy didn’t like being pregnant. She hated that. She gloomed around. Or she’d snap at me or get in a temper over nothing. Well, I tried to be patient and all that stuff. It was a mystery to me.”

  Edie’s heart hurt. Oh you poor kid, she was thinking, you’ve been taken. You’ve been cheated. You’re too innocent.

  “When the baby was born,” he was going on, “they didn’t even—I called them and then they told me. So I came, as soon as I could get a pass. That’s when they let me hold him, that once.” He brooded a moment. “And when I finally left this town, when it was all over but the proceedings, I went, sitting in the back of some truck, and I was crying and swearing. I thought I’d never be back. Well. But I have a son, and whatever they think, I hold myself responsible.”

  Edie was pierced; this seemed to her so comical and so sad.

  She thought, Somebody has to tell him. She said as gently as she could, “Harold, I don’t know whether you’ve ever thought of this …”

  But he straightened, and he grinned down at her.

  “Sure I’ve thought of it, and so
has everybody else. It’s the first thing to think of. Sounds just as if she needed a husband in a hurry? But he’s my baby, all right.”

  Oh no, you are wrong, she was thinking. They fooled you and it was wicked.

  “If that was the truth of it,” the boy went on, “I could have figured it, you know. Not that I wouldn’t have been plenty burned, but I’d see they had some kind of a reason.”

  “Are you sure of the birth date?” Edie pressed. “You say they didn’t call you.”

  “That was because I didn’t matter.” He looked down at her somberly. “The ears? Hereditary in my family? I guess you forgot.”

  “I guess I did,” she murmured. Her face felt hot. He wasn’t as innocent as she had assumed and nobody was. She had been innocent to assume …

  “So how is it to be understood?” he asked her, and she had a funny feeling that, in this moment, he was older than she. “Do you know?”

  “There’s probably nothing to understand,” said Edie hotly, “except that Wendy is spoiled rotten and always has been. Or”—she began to struggle with her own ideas—”not so much spoiled as … I don’t know. But they shut themselves up here. In a tower. They have their own version of the world and other people. Other people don’t count much. They don’t even care about each other, very much, but they still are the only ones who count at all. And you can’t change them. It used to infuriate me. Genevieve, Wendy’s mother, was alive then, and she was a silly woman. You know, I work with real people, who pay attention, at least sometimes. But the Whitmans … Well, I know exactly what you mean about being made to feel as if you were some old box in this house, to be stumbled over.

  “Wendy …” She paused to say this carefully. “I’ll tell you one thing. Their idea of Wendy is set, like concrete. No matter what she does, she is their pretty, sensitive little Wendy, then, and now, and forever more. Their idea of me is set, too. I am unfortunate and have to be fed. It got so … I had to get away. I couldn’t grow. I was going to lose my sense of being anything.”

  He was listening gravely. He seemed to be understanding what she could not quite express. This is a nice boy, thought Edie, and her anger rose.