The Woman Who Fell From Grace

by David Handler

  It was a small, narrow room. Single bed with rock-maple headboard and woven white cotton spread. Matching maple dresser and nightstand. Oh, Shenandoah memorabilia crowded the walls. Autographed photos of a fifteen-year-old Fern, costumed and bewigged, standing on the set with Sloan, with Barrett, with Flynn. Framed pages from her shooting script. A review from the local paper that singled out her fresh beauty and fine performance. It had been the high point of her life. I wondered, as I ate my sandwich, if it had been on her mind as she tumbled headlong down that stairway.

  There was a paperback copy of a Jackie Collins novel on the nightstand next to an old-fashioned windup alarm clock. One drawer, shallow, containing two pairs of eyeglasses, a prescription bottle of high blood pressure pills with her doctor’s name on it, two rolls of pennies, a small tin of Bag Balm antiseptic ointment, and a snub-nosed, .38-caliber Smith & Wesson Chief Special, loaded. There were no personal papers of any kind. None in any of the dresser drawers either.

  I found them on the top shelf of her closet in a shoebox, a big fat wad of them wrapped in tissue paper and bound up in rubber bands. Love letters, all of them written by the same strong hand on plain white stationery and dated during June and July of the year the movie had been made: Fern, my darling, I cannot eat or sleep for the pain and longing of thee. I cry out in the night for your touch … And so on. Each letter was signed Thine Sweet Prince. No other name. He wrote her poetry, too, with no apologies to either Emily Dickinson or Hallmark:

  O beauty, whose name be Fern

  She who comes to me whilst I sleep

  It is for her lips, pouting blossom, I yearn

  And for her pure, pure heart I weep.

  There were dozens more of them. I wrapped them back up and pocketed them and put the shoebox back up on the top shelf of the closet. I turned around to discover Mercy standing there in the bedroom doorway, blond hair tousled, blinking from the light. She wore a sleeveless white cotton nightshirt and nothing over it. The material wasn’t quite sheer but it wasn’t exactly flannel either. I could see the curve of her hips beneath it, the ripe fullness of her breasts and thighs. On her feet she wore a pair of fuzzy slippers fashioned to look like giant bear paws.

  “What are you doing in here?” she wondered, yawning.

  “Got hungry,” I replied. “Wandered in and started looking at all of Fern’s pictures. Sorry if I woke you.”

  She ventured into the room a few steps. “Fern was so proud of that,” she said softly, gazing at the wall. She turned to me and swallowed. She didn’t seem quite as confident as she usually did. She glanced at the bed, hesitated. She sat down on it, hands folded in her lap. “You didn’t. Wake me, I mean. I’ve been tossing and turning.”

  “Thinking about her?”

  “More about Polk, to tell you the truth.”

  “What about him?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. Her bare arms were smooth and strong. I offered her my beer. She reached for it and took a small sip.

  “Kind of hard on him, aren’t you?” I suggested.

  “Maybe I am,” she conceded. “There’s just something so solemn and perfect about him that sometimes I can’t help myself, y’know? I mean, there’s no trace of the man after he leaves the room — he’s odorless, colorless, tasteless … ”

  “He’s a politician,” I pointed out. “To the bone.”

  She helped herself to more of my beer. “I really do like him. He’s kind and fair. It’s just that mother loves him, and I feel like she’s pushing me into it. I’m used to that. Mother has never given me much freedom. Most of the time that’s okay. I know she wants what’s best for me. But this … ” She trailed off, stabbed at the braided rug with her giant slipper. “Sometimes I think I’d like to buy a ticket to somewhere, anywhere, and just go and not tell a soul. And never come back.” She looked up at me. “I know what you’re going to say — never is an awfully long time.”

  “No, that’s a little Manilowish for me.”

  “All I’ve ever done is go to school. There are so many places I still want to go, so many things I want to experience. I can’t even begin to think about settling down and marrying Polk. I mean, how can I know if I even want to stay here until I’ve been somewhere else first?”

  “You can’t,” I replied. “I took a year off when I got out of school. Bummed my way through Europe. Scribbled in a notebook. It was something I needed to do before I settled down.”

  “And were you glad you did it?”

  “I don’t know yet. I still haven’t settled down.”

  She looked at me seriously. “How come you seem to understand me and no one else here does?”

  I left that one alone, very aware of her there on the bed. Her soft young mouth, the smell of her. She smelled like baby powder. Merilee smelled like Crabtree & Evelyn avocado-oil soap, though I can’t imagine what made me think of that just now. “My parents didn’t understand me either,” I said. “Still don’t.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “Only if I think about it.”

  “Fern sort of did,” Mercy said. “But she never did have the nerve to leave here. Do things on her own.”

  “How about your uncles?”

  “My uncle Edward has traveled a lot. But he’s a guarded sort of person. He and I have never found it easy to talk to one another. It’s easier to talk to Uncle Frederick, only he still treats me like I’m a little girl.”

  “He mentioned that someone at your school might be willing to track down period detail for me.”

  “How about me?”

  “You?”

  “I’d love to help you. It would be an honor, really. I’m really good at library work. Just let me know what you need and I’ll find it for you. Okay?”

  She stuck out her hand. We were in the process of shaking on it when Mavis appeared in the doorway wearing a blue silk robe, her tight copper ponytail brushed loose. She didn’t like any of it — her daughter sitting there on the bed in her see-through nightshirt. The empty bottle of beer. The two of us holding hands. She didn’t like it one bit. She turned her icy blue eyes on me, jaw clenched under her permanent smile. “You’re fired!” she snapped. “Get out!”

  “But nothing is going on, Mother!” protested Mercy.

  “I came in for a snack, Mavis,” I exclaimed. “I’m afraid I woke Mercy and she —”

  “We were just talking,” insisted Mercy.

  “Go upstairs, Mercy!” Mavis ordered.

  “But Mother, nothing was —”

  “Go upstairs!”

  Mercy rolled her eyes and got up. “We were just talking, Mother.” Then she padded out the door.

  Mavis watched her go, her arms crossed. Then she turned back to me. “I hate you for this.”

  “Mavis … ”

  “I feel betrayed. I feel violated. I feel used. You are no longer welcome here. I expect you to be gone by morning.”

  “Mavis, I assure you it was entirely innocent —”

  “Don’t insult me any more than you already have.”

  “She just needed someone to talk to. It happens. However, if you insist, I’ll be out in the morning.” I started for the door. She stepped aside so I could pass. “Naturally, you have my word I’ll divulge none of the contents of your mother’s diary. And I’ll try to set aside the fact you’ve insulted me, though I’m not sure I can.”

  “I’ve insulted you?” she cried. “How?”

  “By not believing in me. By thinking I’d ever do something sleazy. Something to hurt you.”

  She lowered her eyes, unclenched her jaw. She went over to the bed and yanked on the spread until it was good and taut. She sat down on it. “Perhaps I … ”

  “Perhaps you did.”

  “You … ” She cleared her throat. “You read Mother’s diary?”

  “I did. I’d like to take a look at the original.”

  “It’s in the safe in Mother’s library.”

  “May I see it?”

  Mavis
frowned. “Right now?”

  We took the covered arcade, her slippers clacking on the bricks. There was an electronic security panel at the back door. She entered a numerical code to disarm it. Then we went in, and she turned on the lights in the library. The safe was hidden behind a hinged section of raised paneling next to the fireplace.

  “Father installed it,” she informed me. “He had it done in the early thirties, when the local banks began to rail. Including the one he himself ran.” She spun the tumbler once, then began to work the combination. “There’s no money in it now, of course.”

  “Who else knows the combination?”

  “My brothers.”

  “Not Richard?”

  “Richard is not privy to private family matters.”

  The safe clicked open. She reached inside, pulled out a worn old leather-bound writing tablet and handed it to me. Blobs of red wax remained where it had been sealed shut. I opened it to the end. Alma’s writing left off where my copy did — just before she identified who was in Vangie’s room with Sloan. There was nothing but blank pages after that. I held the first blank up to the light to see if any impression from her pen had been left on it. It hadn’t. I examined the gummed binding. Slivers from the pages that had been ripped out remained stuck in it. Several pages. I closed it and looked at the traces of sealing wax.

  “This seal was unbroken when you opened the vault on Geraldo?” I asked.

  “It was,” Mavis replied.

  “So these pages were torn out fifty years ago? There’s no way it could have been done after that?”

  “Not that I can imagine.” She looked at me, puzzled. “Why do you ask?”

  “Could someone other than your mother have done it?”

  “I seriously doubt it. None of us knew the notebook existed at all. Not until after she’d died and her will was read. She’d told no one she was working on it.”

  “Not a soul?”

  Mavis mulled this over. “Her lawyer must have known. He had to. He drew up the codicil to her will. Yes, Polk LaFoon knew. Old Polk One. He’s long dead, of course.”

  “Why did she insist on the fifty-year delay?”

  “Mother was not a haphazard or arbitrary person. Whatever she did she did for a reason.”

  “And what was that reason?” I pressed.

  “I can’t say.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Can’t. I honestly don’t know, Hoagy. None of us do.” She took the notebook from me, put it back in the safe, and closed it. “Nor do I understand what you are getting at.”

  “I’m getting at this, Mavis. Those pages were torn out because they revealed what made Fern O’Baugh scream. Fern knew something. Whatever it was got her killed. She was murdered.”

  Mavis’s eyes widened in shock. “Fern fell.”

  “She had help.”

  “But Polk Four said she —”

  “Polk Four doesn’t agree with me. In fact, he thinks I’m nuts.”

  “And why shouldn’t I?” she demanded.

  “No reason. Except for the fact that I’m not. Did Fern ever say anything to you about what she saw?”

  “Not a word. I did wonder about it myself when I read the diary.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “I know she worshiped Laurel Barrett. Possibly she found Sloan in there embracing another woman. Evidently a great deal of that sort of thing went on. I wouldn’t know myself. I was only a child then.”

  “But would that send her fleeing down the stairs?” I wondered aloud. “Screaming hysterically?”

  Mavis sat in the chair behind her mother’s writing table. “I’ve figured it out, you know. It’s been bothering me. It’s why I was awake at this hour, heard you and Mercy.”

  “Figured what out, Mavis?”

  She reddened. “Why I can’t lie to you,” she replied, going schoolgirlish on me again. “I think it’s because you see inside me. No one else can. Richard … he sees only my strength, not my vulnerability. But you do. I don’t know why, but you do. I sensed it the very first time we met. I-I apologize about before, Hoagy. About not trusting you. I do trust you. And I don’t think you’re crazy.”

  “Thank you, Mavis.”

  “Only, answer me this, Hoagy — why would someone want to kill poor Fern now, all these years later?”

  “Fern believed that Sloan’s death, was covered up,” I said. “She’d decided to stir up the waters. Someone didn’t want her to.”

  “Why?”

  “I haven’t figured that part out yet. Tell me something, Mavis. Did Fern have a boyfriend at the time the movie was being made? An admirer? Some guy who carried a torch for her? Was there anybody like that?”

  She thought this over. “There was someone.”

  “Who?”

  “He was a few years older than Fern, and already engaged to another girl, whom he eventually married.”

  “Who was it, Mavis?”

  “It was Franklin Neene,” she replied.

  “Charlottes father.”

  Lulu was no longer asleep in her easy chair. She was sitting just inside the door, scowling at me.

  Richard had taken the chair. Also a glass of my single malt. He sat there waiting for me, comfy as can be. He and his gold-inlaid Browning twelve-gauge, which was pointed right at me.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “HANDSOME LITTLE PIECE YOU’VE got there, Richard,” I observed.

  “Isn’t it, though?” he agreed, draining his scotch. His navy-blue cashmere robe had fallen open to reveal his bare, exceptionally simian legs. The barrel of the Browning was resting on one of them, setting it on a course due south of my equator. “A Christmas present from my Mave,” he added thickly.

  “Would it happen to be loaded?”

  “Yes, it would, lad,” he replied, shaggy eyebrows squirming.

  “Can I talk you into pointing it, say, somewhere else … ?”

  “I’m afraid you can’t, lad. Sorry.”

  “Quite all right. Pour you another?”

  He held his empty glass out to me. “Damned gentlemanly of you.”

  He’d gone through about half of my Macallan. I poured us both some, then sat on the love seat. We drank. The Browning never left me.

  “You’re messing with trouble, lad,” he said.

  “I generally am, in spite of myself.”

  “Sniffing about my henhouse in the wee hours. My women tiptoeing up and down the stairs, their little hearts aflutter. Bad business this, a young rooster about.”

  “Your description is most flattering,” I said, my eyes on the shotgun, “but I assure you I —”

  “Can’t tolerate it. Won’t. Expect you to stay out here at night.”

  “I got hungry.”

  “Then I expect you to starve.” He puffed out his deep chest. “Got it?”

  I said I did.

  “Excellent. Knew we’d understand each other. Now that I’ve spoken my mind we can relax and enjoy your fine whiskey.” He stood the gun on the floor against the sofa and sipped his drink. “Do you hunt, lad?”

  “No, I’m too good a shot. I might actually hit something.”

  “But that’s the sport of it.”

  “I’ve never considered murder a sport.”

  He twitched at me. “I’ve not yet made up my mind about you — whether you’re good for Mave or not, I mean. She’s spoken of little else since you arrived.”

  “I do have that effect on some people.”

  “Still,” he said, “I think you and I are more than a little alike.”

  Oh?”

  “Saw it about you from the start. Way you carry yourself. You’re a gentleman, lad. We speak the same language. Live and die by the same code. It’s in our blood. They haven’t got it in theirs, you know. The brothers Glaze. That’s why they’ve never understood me.”

  I got busy with my drink, wondering who else was going to open up to me tonight. Roy? One of the peacocks? I only wished Lulu would. She was still giving me
the Greta Garbo from under the coffee table. Maybe she just needed more fiber in her diet.

  “They’ve never shown me an ounce of respect,” Richard went on. “Think I checked my balls at the altar. Think I’ve no proper job. Not true, any of it. Someone has to do what I do — make sure Mave is contented. Because if she’s not, she makes bloody well sure no one else is. That’s my job, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Tricky as brain surgery.”

  “How long has it been since Mavis and her brothers have actually spoken to each other?”

  He grinned at me from behind his mustache. “At least as long as I’ve been around, lad, and that’s twenty-six years.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “It’s the money. Of course it is. Alma gave Mave complete control of the family purse strings. The brothers, they’re merely glorified bean counters. Resent it terribly. Despise Mave for it.”

  “They both have professions of their own,” I said. “Why didn’t they ever move on, start fresh? Why hang around here and torture themselves?”

  “They can’t help it, lad. They’re pampered little babies, and Shenandoah, it’s their mums golden tit. Besides, this way they can try their damnedest to make Mave miserable. It’s bats, all of it. Of course it is. Plenty here for everyone. But you know about families. … ”

  I tugged at my ear. “Yeah, I suppose I do.”

  “As do I. Why I came to North America as a young man. And why I’ve never been back. I’m second son, you see. Kenneth, my older brother, he got it all. The lordship. The property. Master of all he surveys. I got nothing. That’s how it’s done. Kenneth offered me a position. But I wasn’t about to have that bastard ordering me about. The brothers Glaze, they like to ride me about it. They know it’s a sore spot with me. Know it because it’s their own damned sore spot as well, isn’t it?” He chuckled to himself. “As it happens, I merely traded one chain of succession for another, but this one’s tilted a bit more in my favor. I’ve a fine life here. A grand life.” He sipped his whiskey.