Laura, page 16
That’s how my mind is now. For two hours I’ve been shivering in my slip, unable to go through the movements of undressing. Once, long ago, when I was twenty and my heart was broken, I used to sit like this at night on the edge of the bed in a room with stained walls. I’d think of the novel I was writing about a young girl and a man. The novel was bad; I never finished it; but the writing cleansed all my dusty emotional corners. But tonight writing thickens the dust. Now that Shelby has turned against me and Mark shown the nature of his trickery, I am afraid of facts in orderly sequence.
Shelby’s treachery was served to us with dinner, accompanied by the raspings and groanings of rainy-weather static. I could not pretend to eat; my leaden hands refused to lift the fork; but Waldo ate as greedily as he listened to every morsel of news.
Shelby had gone to the police and sworn to the truth of his having been in the apartment with Diane on Friday night. He had told them, as he told me, how the doorbell rang and how Diane had clattered across the room in my silver mules, and how she had been shot when she opened my front door. Shelby said that Diane had summoned him to the apartment because she was afraid of violence. Diane had been threatened, Shelby said, and although he had not liked the idea of seeing her in Laura’s house, she had begged so pitifully that he could not deny her.
Shelby’s attorney was N.T. Salsbury, Jr. He explained that Shelby had not confessed earlier because he was shielding someone. The name of the suspect was not included in the broadcasts. Deputy Commissioner Preble had refused to tell reporters whether or not the police knew whom Shelby was shielding. Shelby’s confession had turned him into a witness for the State.
In every broadcast Deputy Commissioner Preble’s name was mentioned three times a minute. Mark’s name was not used at all.
‘Poor McPherson,’ Waldo said as he dropped two saccharine pills into his coffee-cup; ‘between Shelby and the Deputy Commissioner, he’s been crowded out of the limelight.’
I left the table.
Waldo followed me to the couch again, the coffee-cup in his hands.
‘He’s not that sort at all,’ I said. ‘Mark isn’t like that, he’d never sacrifice anyone . . . anyone for the sake of notoriety and his own career.’
‘You poor dear child,’ Waldo said. The coffee-cup rang against the wood of the table, and Waldo’s free hands reached again for my hand.
‘He’s playing a game, Laura; the fellow’s devilishly clever. Preble is enjoying his little victory now, but the plum in this pudding will be pulled out by our own little Jack Horner. Heed my warning, sweet, before you’re lost. He’s after you; he’ll be here soon enough with some scheme to worm that confession out of you.’
The shadow of hysteria returned. I pulled my hand away, stretched on the couch, closed my eyes and shivered.
‘You’re cold,’ Waldo said, and went into the bedroom to fetch my afghan. He spread it over my legs, smoothing out the wrinkled surface, tucking it under my feet, and then standing above the couch again, content and possessive.
‘I must protect my sweet child.’
‘I can’t believe he’s only been trying to get a confession. Mark liked me. And he’s sincere,’ I said.
‘I know him better than you do, Laura.’
‘That’s what you think,’ I said.
‘I’ve dined with the fellow practically every night since this affair began, Laura. He’s courted me strangely, why I cannot say, but I’ve had a rare chance to observe his nature and his methods.’
‘Then he must be interesting,’ I said. ‘In all the years I’ve known you, I’ve never seen you dine with a dull person.’
‘My dear babe, you must always justify your bad taste, mustn’t you?’ Waldo laughed. ‘I spend a few hours with the fellow; ergo, he becomes a man of wit and profundity.’
‘He’s a lot more intelligent than a lot of people who go around calling themselves intellectuals.’
‘What a die-hard you are, once you’re interested in a man! Very well, if it will please you I’ll plead guilty to a certain shabby interest in the fellow. I must confess, though, that my curiosity was roused by observation of the blossoming of his love for you.’
‘For me!’
‘Don’t sing so high, sweet canary. You were dead. There was dignity in that frustrate passion. He could make no use of you, he could destroy you no further, you were unattainable and thus desirable beyond all desire.’
‘How you twist things, Waldo! You don’t understand Mark. There’s something about him,’ I insisted, ‘ something that’s alive. If he’d been wallowing in frustrated romance, he’d never have been so glad when I came back.’
‘Trickery.’
‘You and your words,’ I said. ‘You always have words, but they don’t always tell meanings.’
‘The man’s a Scot, child, as parsimonious with emotion as with shillings. Have you ever analyzed that particular form of romanticism which burgeons on the dead, the lost, the doomed? Mary of the Wild Moor and Sweet Alice With Hair So Brown, their heroines are always dead or tubercular, death is the leit-motif of all their love-songs. A most convenient rationale for the thriftiness of their passion toward living females. Mark’s future unrolls as upon a screen.’ Waldo’s plump hand unrolled the future. ‘I see him now, romanticizing frustration, asking poor cheated females to sigh with him over the dead love.’
‘But he was glad, glad when I came alive. There was a special quality about his gladness as if—I flung the words bravely—‘as if he’d been waiting for me.’
‘Ah!’ said Waldo. ‘When you came alive!’ His voice bubbled. ‘When Laura became reality within his grasp, the other side of sentiment was revealed. The basic parsimony, the need to make profit of the living Laura.’
‘You mean that all of his kindness and sincerity were tricks to get a confession? That’s silly,’ I said.
‘Had he merely been trying to get a confession, the thing would have been simple. But consider the contradiction in the case. Compensation as well as confession, Laura. You had become reality, you came within the man’s reach, a woman of your sort, cultivated, fastidious, clearly his superior; he was seized with the need to possess you. Possess and revenge and destroy.’
He had seated himself on the couch, balancing his fat buttocks on the edge, holding my hand for support!
‘Do you know Mark’s words for women? Dolls. Dames.’ His tongue clicked out the words like a telegraph instrument clattering out the dots and dashes of a code. ‘What further evidence do you need of a man’s vulgarity and insolence? There’s a doll in Washington Heights who got a fox fur out of him—got it out, my dear, his very words. And a dame in Long Island whom he boasted of deserting after she’d waited faithfully for years.’
‘I don’t believe a word.’
‘Remember the catalogue of your suitors, darling.
Consider the past,’ Waldo said. ‘Your defense is always so earnest, you blush in that same delightful way and rebuke me for intolerance.’
I saw shadows on the carpet. A procession passed through my mind of those friends and lovers whose manliness had dwindled as Waldo’s critical sense showed me their weaknesses. I remembered his laughter, fatherly and indulgent, the first time he had taken me to the theatre and I had admired a handsome actor’s bad performance.
‘I hope it’s not too tactless of me to mention the name of Shelby Carpenter. How much abuse I’ve endured because I failed to discern the manliness, the integrity, the hidden strength of that gallant poop! I humored you, I allowed you to enjoy self-deceit because I knew you’d ultimately find out for yourself. And look, today.’ He spread his hands in a gesture that included the rueful present.
‘Mark’s a man,’ I said.
Waldo’s pale eyes took color; on his forehead the veins rose fat and blue; the waxen color of the skin deepened to an umber flush. He tried to laugh. Each note was separate and painful. ‘ Always the same pattern, isn’t it? A lean, lithe body is the measure of masculinity. A chiseled profile indicates a delicate nature. Let a man be hard and spare and you clothe him in the garments of Romeo, Superman, and Jupiter disguised as a bull.
‘To say nothing,’ he added after a moment’s dreadful silence, ‘of the Marquis de Sade. That need is in your nature, too.’
‘You can’t hurt me,’ I said. ‘No man’s ever going to hurt me again.’
‘I’m not speaking of myself,’ Waldo said reproachfully. ‘We were discussing your frustrated friend.’
‘But you’re mad,’ I said. ‘He’s not frustrated. He’s a strong man; he’s not afraid.’
Waldo smiled as if he were bestowing some rare confidence. ‘That incurable female optimism has, I dare say, blinded you to the fellow’s most distinguishing defect. He guards it zealously, my dear, but watch the next time you see him. When you observe that wary, tortured gait, you’ll remember Waldo’s warnings.
‘I don’t understand you,’ I said. ‘You’re making things up.’ I heard my voice as something outside of me, shrill and ugly, the voice of a sullen schoolgirl. Auntie Sue’s red roses threw purple shadows on the green wall. There were calla lilies and water lilies in the design of the chintz curtains. I thought of colors and fabrics and names because I was trying to turn my mind from Waldo and his warnings.
‘A man who distrusts his body, my love, seeks weakness and impotence in every other living creature. Beware, my dear. He’ll find your weakness and there plant his seeds of destruction.’
I felt sorry for myself; I had become disappointed in people and in living. I closed my eyes, I sought darkness; I felt my blood chill and my bones soften.
‘You’ll be hurt, Laura, because the need for pain is part of your nature. You’ll be hurt because you’re a woman who’s attracted by a man’s strength and held by his weakness.’
Whether he knew it or not, this was the very history of our relationship, mine and Waldo’s. In the beginning it had been the steely strength of his mind, but the ripeness of my affection had grown with my knowledge of his childlike, uncertain heart. It was not a lover that Waldo needed, but love itself. With this great fat man I had learned to be patient and careful as a woman is patient and careful with a sickly, sensitive child.
‘The mother,’ Waldo said slowly, ‘the mother is always destroyed by her young.’
I pulled my hand away quickly. I rose, I put the room between us; I retreated from lamplight and stood shivering in shadows.
Waldo spoke softly, a man speaking to shadows. ‘A clean blow,’ Waldo said, ‘a clean blow destroys quickly and without pain.’ His hands, it seems as I grope for clear recollection, were showing the precise shape of destruction.
He came toward me and I shrank deeper into the corner. This was strange. I had never felt anything but respect and tenderness for this brilliant, unhappy friend. And I made myself think of Waldo dutifully; I thought of the years we had known each other and of his kindness. I felt sick within myself, ashamed of hysteria and weak shrinking. I made myself stand firm; I did not pull away; I accepted the embrace as women accept the caresses of men they dare not hurt. I did not yield, I submitted. I did not soften, I endured.
‘You are mine,’ he said. ‘My love and my own.’
Dimly, beyond his murmuring, I heard footsteps. Waldo’s lips were pressed against my hair, his voice buzzed in my ears. Then there were three raps at the door, the grating of the key in the lock, and his embrace relaxed.
Mark had climbed the stairs slowly, he was slow to open the door. I backed away from Waldo, I straightened my dress, pulled at my sleeves, and as I sat down, jerked my skirt over my knees.
‘He enters with a latchkey,’ Waldo said.
‘The doorbell was the murderer’s signal,’ Mark said. ‘I don’t like to remind her.’
‘The manners of the executioner are known to be excellent,’ Waldo said. ‘It was thoughtful of you to knock.’
Waldo’s warning had posted signals in my mind. Seeing Mark with his eyes, I became aware of the taut, vigilant erectness of his shoulders, the careful balance, the wary gait. It was not so much the quality of movement as the look on his face that told me Waldo had been right in saying that Mark guarded himself. He caught my curiosity and threw back a challenge as if he were saying that he could match scrutiny with scrutiny and, as mercilessly, expose my most cherished weakness.
Seating himself in the long chair, his thin hands gripping the arms, he seemed to relax watchfulness. Tired, I thought, and noticed the hint of purple in the shadows of the deep-set eyes, the tension of flesh across narrow cheekbones. Then, quickly, hailing into my mind the scarlet caution signal, I banished quick and foolish tenderness. Dolls and dames, I said to myself; we’re all dolls and dames to him.
He said, ‘I want to talk to you, Laura,’ and looked at Waldo as if to say that I must get rid of the intruder.
Waldo had grown roots in the couch. Mark settled himself in the long chair, took out his pipe, gave notice of endurance.
Bessie slammed the kitchen door and shouted good night. One of them in Washington Heights had got a fox fur out of him, I told myself, and I wondered how much it had cost him in pride and effort. Then I faced him boldly and asked, ‘Have you come to arrest me?’
Waldo swayed toward me. ‘Careful, Laura; anything you say to him can be used against you.’
‘How gallantly your friends protect you!’ Mark said. ‘Didn’t Shelby warn you of the same thing last night?’
I stiffened at the sound of Shelby’s name. Mark might be laughing at me, too, for having trusted a weak man. I said boldly: ‘Well, what did you come here for? Have you been to Wilton? What did you find at my place?’
‘Sh-sh,’ cautioned Waldo.
‘I don’t see how it can hurt if I ask where he’s been.’
‘You told me that you knew nothing of the murder, that you bought no newspapers and that the radio at your cottage was out of order. Isn’t that what you told me, Laura?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘The first thing I discovered is that your radio works perfectly.’
My cheeks burned. ‘But it didn’t work then. Honestly. They must have fixed it. I told the boys at the electric shop near the railroad station in Norwalk to go up there and fix it. Before I caught my train I stopped and told them. They’ve got my key, that will prove it.’
I had become so nervous that I ached to tear, to break, to scream aloud. Mark’s deliberate hesitancy was aimed, I felt, at torturing the scene to hysterical climax. He told of checking on my actions since my alleged (that was his word) arrival in Wilton on Friday night, and of finding nothing better than the flimsy alibi I had given.
I started to speak, but Waldo signaled with a finger on his lips.
‘Nothing I discovered up there,’ Mark said, ‘mitigates the case against you.’
Waldo said, ‘How pious! Quite as if he had gone to seek evidence of your innocence rather than proof of your guilt. Amazingly charitable for a member of the Detective Bureau, don’t you think?’
‘It’s my job to uncover all evidence, whether it proves guilt or innocence,’ Mark said.
‘Come, now, don’t tell me that guilt isn’t preferable. We’re realists, McPherson. We know that notoriety will inevitably accompany your triumph in a case as startling as this. Don’t tell me, my dear fellow, that you’re going to let Preble take all the bows.’
Mark’s face darkened. His embarrassment pleased Waldo. ‘Why deny it, McPherson? Your career is nourished by notoriety. Laura and I were discussing it at dinner; quite interesting, wasn’t it, pet?’ He smiled toward me as if we shared opinions. ‘She’s as well aware as you or I, McPherson, of the celebrity this case could give your name. Consider the mutations of this murder case, the fascinating facets of this contradictory crime. A murder victim arises from the grave and becomes the murderer! Every large daily will send its ace reporters, all the syndicates will fill the courtroom with lady novelists and psychic analysts. Radio networks will fight for the right to establish broadcast studios within the court building. War will be relegated to Page Two. Here, my little dears, is what the public wants, two-penny lust, Sunday supplement passion, sin in the Park Avenue sector. Hour by hour, minute by minute, a nation will wait for dollar-a-word coverage on the trial of the decade. And the murderess’—he rolled his eyes. ‘You, yourself, McPherson paid tribute to her ankles.’
The muscles tightened on Mark’s cheeks.
‘Who emerges as the hero of this plushy crime?’ Waldo went on, enjoying his eloquence. ‘The hero of it all, that dauntless fellow who uncovers the secrets of a modern Lucretia is none other’—Waldo rose, bowed low—‘none other than our gallant McPherson, the limping Hawkshaw.’
Mark’s hand, curved around his pipe, showed white at the knuckles.
The quiet and the dignity irked Waldo. He had expected his victim to squirm. ‘All right, go ahead with it. Arrest her if you think you’ve got sufficient proof.” Bring her to trial on your flimsy evidence; it will be a triumph, I assure you.’
‘Waldo,’ I said, ‘let’s quit this. I’m quite prepared for anything that may happen.’
‘Our hero,’ Waldo said, with swelling pride and power. ‘But wait, Laura, until he hears a nation’s laughter. Let him try to prove you guilty, my love, let him swagger on the witness stand with his few poor shreds of evidence. What a jackanapes he’ll be after I get through with him! Millions of Lydecker fans will roll with mirth at the crude antics of the silver-shinned bumpkin.’
Waldo had taken hold of my hand again, displaying possession triumphantly.
Mark said, ‘ You speak, Lydecker, as if you wanted to see her tried for this murder.’
‘We are not afraid,’ Waldo said. ‘Laura knows that I will use all of my power to help her.’
Mark became official. ‘Very well, then, since you’re assuming responsibility for Miss Hunt’s welfare, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t know that the gun has been discovered. It was in the chest under the window of her bedroom in her cottage. It’s a lady’s hunting gun marked with the initials D.S.C. and was once owned by Mrs. John Carpenter. It is still in good condition, has been cleaned, oiled, and discharged recently. Shelby has identified it as the gun he gave Miss Hunt
