“But you did. Congratulations. Just what do you expect them to find in that house? If you’ll recall there were rumors just after my cousin sailed for Europe just after the murder that she was seen throwing a mysterious parcel overboard.”
“Oh, I know all about that. I’ve talked to nearly everyone who was onboard who were around and still alive. It was just poppycock, nothing more.”
“But that was nearly twenty years ago.”
“Yes, I know.” He smiled again. “You’re thinking I must be some sort of mad eccentric, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am.”
“But,” Waldo asked, “do you think I’m dangerous?”
“No, not dangerous.”
“Then you will ask your cousin to see me… and this young man?”
Miriam hesitated and then said, “Perhaps. But I don’t think it will do any good.”
“As long as you ask.”
“I have to go now,” Miriam said, bringing the matter to an emphatic end. “Goodbye.”
“So nice meeting you,” said Waldo, “and you’re even more beautiful than they ever reported in any of the crime journals.”
Miriam started the car and setting it in motion, lifted a brow. “Thank you… I suppose,” and with that she drove off.
Charlotte was in a state as she handed Miriam the copy of the tabloid she had received in the morning mail.
“This is Jewel’s work,” cried Charlotte, hurling the paper from her. “She’ll never be satisfied until she drives me out!”
“I saw her in town, Charlotte,” said Miriam. “She’s old and sick. I don’t think she had anything to do with it.”
“Just because she couldn’t hang on to her husband,” Charlotte ranted, “she blames me. If she’d just taken an interest in him. If she’d just bothered to recognize his talent, his music, just because he needed some sort of beauty and youth and understanding in his life…”
“That’s all done with,” interrupted Miriam. “It has been for years now.”
“Oh, has it?” railed Charlotte. She drew forth another envelope from the morning mail and handed it to Miriam. “Just take a look at this…”
Miriam took out a single sheet of paper on which was scrawled a single word—“MURDERESS.”
“I don’t even bother to open the mail anymore,” said Charlotte. “I know what’s in it.”
“How long has this been going on?” asked Miriam.
“I’ve had one of those every week, every Monday morning for the last eighteen years. She sends them.”
“But that’s incredible!”
“Who else could have sent them?” asked Charlotte. “It’s her guilty conscience that makes her do it.”
“Oh, Charlotte, why have you stayed here like this all these years? Why have you thrown your life away?”
“It wouldn’t have been any different anywhere else. I tried escaping to Europe and they hounded me there. And I promised Daddy…”
“You must leave now!” Miriam interrupted. “There are people coming to pack. You mustn’t interfere.”
“I won’t leave. Not while she’s still here, not as long as they call me a murderess. I will not leave…”
“You’ve no choice. You must understand that!”
“Then they’ll have to carry me out!”
“That may well be the case if you don’t behave yourself.”
Leaving Charlotte, Miriam went downstairs where Hugh was waiting. “She’ll never listen to reason. Never,” Miriam told him. “I don’t know what she thinks she’s protecting here.”
The helpers arrived that afternoon and Miriam set them to work. They approached the old rooms unwillingly, almost with a kind of superstitious fear. Charlotte saw them as she stood on the landing, and then turned and went back into her room and locked the door. Miriam cast her eyes heavenward in exasperation.
That night as Miriam lay in bed, she was awakened by the sound of music, of a piano being played downstairs. Getting up and slipping on her negligee, she went out into the hallway and saw that Charlotte’s door was open and in the lower hallway, the shine of moonlight came from the open door of the ballroom. She looked back in the direction of the bedroom and the revolver lying on the bedside table, but left it there and started down the stairs.
There in the ballroom was Charlotte, sitting at the piano and playing the song John Mayhew had written for her—the song that children now chant the accusing words to. Only now Charlotte was playing the song as written by John—a song of love for her. Her voice was wistful and almost young. Miriam hesitated, loath to intrude, but then she heard a crash of chords from the piano, a gasp, and then, the sound of sobbing.
Miriam ran into the room which was flooded with moonlight coming in the French windows which comprised the entire far wall of the room and reflected in mirrored panels decorating the walls. Charlotte was huddled on the floor beside the piano in mute terror, too frightened evidently to make even a sound as she stared at something on the keyboard of the piano.
Miriam hastened to Charlotte trying to coax words from her, but Charlotte could only sob as her gaze remained fastened in the direction of the keyboard. Miriam followed her stare and suddenly froze in shock. There on the keyboard was a tapered, severed hand.
As soon as she recovered from the first revulsion of the sight, Miriam pulled Charlotte’s face away, got her to her feet and helped her up the stairs. Once she had calmed Charlotte, she returned to the ballroom, paused for a moment in the doorway and reluctantly entered the room.
She found the light switch and turned on the large overhead chandelier bringing the room into vivid aliveness. At first she thought she saw another hand before realizing it was only a workman’s glove left on one of the gilt chairs that lined the room.
Hesitantly, she made her way to the piano forcing herself to look at the keyboard. She stopped in limp relief. The hand, or whatever it was that was there, was gone. After a moment, she crossed to the French window and started to close it when she heard a sound from outside. She looked out into the darkness to see a figure moving hastily out of sight and away beyond the shadows of the hedges. Thoughtfully, she pulled the window firmly closed and locked it.
The next day the workers returned to continue the packing. As they worked, they made speculations among themselves. Through the previous day’s familiarity, the house had become less menacing to them.
“My mama,” said one of the women, “she always claimed that if it wasn’t for her Daddy payin’ ever’body off, she’d of come up for trial sure as sin. She was the last one to see John Mayhew alive out there in that cabin. And they say she had a temper like a wildcat when she got goin’.”
“She’s still got that, all right. Stealin’ another woman’s husband… and she was pretty enough in them days. She coulda had any young bachelor in the county.”
“What I heard, her Daddy had to get her out of town. It wasn’t just to keep her from comin’ to trial he shipped her off to Europe… there was another reason.”
“You reckon that’s so?”
“But her cutting him up that way…! They found one of his hands right here on this property.”
“So it stands to reason that the rest of him’s likely to be around here someplace…”
“It gives you the creeps, her here in this house all these years. Where’d you suppose you got to hide something like that—a head of somebody?”
“Ain’t nobody goin’ to do a thing like that. Not even her.”
“Oh yeah. Then how come they found that one hand…” the woman picking up the drapery suddenly uncovered another workman’s glove. The other woman saw it and let out a scream. They all laughed at her.
“That old hand could be just about anywhere inside this house. The woman turned and pointed to the boxes stacked around. “In there… in there… or…” she turned her attention to a large ornately carved box, “or it might just happen to be in this little coffin box here.”
“Coffin…?” the other wom
an gasped. “Oh, no, don’t you open that!”
Just then Charlotte suddenly appeared. “No!” she said with controlled fury, “Don’t put your grubby hands on that… don’t you dare!” She regarded them with eyes filled with blazing hatred. “Get out!” She picked up a nearby candlestick and hurled it blindly at them. “Get out, the lot of you!”
Miriam appeared and tried to get Charlotte back under control, but it was too late. Neither Charlotte nor the workers could be reconciled. The workers hadn’t wanted to come there to that death house anyway.
Charlotte took the carved box and headed back up stairs in heavy retreat.
“Must have something mighty private in there to carry on thataway,” one of the workers grumbled, picking up her things to leave.
As bad as it was to lose the workers, Miriam’s day was made even worse when Hugh arrived to announce that old Judge Grannie was on his way out to talk to Charlotte. The Judge had been a friend of Charlotte’s father and had been prevailed upon by the commissioner and others to come and talk reason to Charlotte. Miriam was close to throwing up her hands as she told Hugh, “The whole situation is impossible. Charlotte is quite mad and should be committed.”
“Then why not discuss that with the Judge? Charlotte is in no condition to talk to him.”
Charlotte, it just so happened, was a witness to the Judge’s arrival when he came to the house hours later. Below, Hugh and Miriam welcomed the Judge but explained that Charlotte was too ill to see him. The Judge, a very old man, seemed to have forgotten the purpose of his visit. The sight of the house excited all sorts of reminiscences in him—of the good times they had there and the tragedy that had occurred. It seemed impossible to get him to discuss the matter of Charlotte and getting her out of the house.
“Charlotte…,” the old judge finally said, “it’s a terrible thing how they’ve crucified that poor child… frightful… frightful. You’d think they’d be satisfied they drove her poor Mama and her poor Daddy into their graves with grief and scandal…”
“Yes, of course,” said Miriam. “That’s why someone must persuade her to leave here…”
At this point Charlotte, fully dressed now in her finest, and every bit the vivacious southern debutante of forty years ago, swept into the room.
“Why Judge Grannie!” she exclaimed, posing prettily in the doorway. “I just heard you talkin’, just the least sound of your voice up there in my room and right away I knew it was you!”
“Miss Charlotte!”
“How long? When was the last time you were in this house?”
Incredibly, Charlotte and the Judge began to create a scene from the past, acting out what happened, Charlotte playing the young southern belle to the Judge’s fatherly old man. Miriam and Hugh watched incredulously. The Judge, it was obvious, was senile and of no help to them at all. Charlotte, in the end, talked of her Daddy and how he made her promise to stay in the house and to never give in to the town and the people. She began to weep, so overcome with grief that Hugh had to help her upstairs to her room. The Judge, far from accomplishing his purpose of persuading Charlotte that she must leave, was eased out of the house by Miriam, still in a fury against the town meddlers who had bullied that “poor helpless little thing.”
That evening Hugh drove Miriam into town to see the commissioner to ask him for an extension of time for the demolition crews to take over the house. At first, he refused.
“What are you going to do?” asked Miriam. “She may be ill. And she seems to be deranged. Are you going to march in there and throw her out bodily?”
“Well, I could hardly take the responsibility for that kind of action.”
“And you can’t simply tear the house down with her in it.”
“No…”
“I will do my best to get her out as soon as possible.”
“Perhaps if you weren’t here. If there wasn’t anyone to help her?”
“You tried that before I came back and it didn’t work. And she is my only living relative, the only one left. And there is the danger that someone might harm her. I have to stay.”
The commissioner countered, “But if we bring a criminal charge against her…”
“It will only delay and make matters worse,” Miriam fired back. “I’ll be responsible for her… at least to see that she doesn’t shoot anyone. You’ll simply have to give me a little time.”
In the end the commissioner agreed to give Miriam another week.
As she went to the car, Miriam was met by Paul Selvin, who tipped his hat and smiled. “I don’t like to make a nuisance of myself,” he said, “but I did want to enquire if you’d had the chance to speak to your cousin.”
“I’ve had the chance,” replied Miriam, “but I haven’t had the nerve.”
“Perhaps if I were to just drop in…”
Miriam shrugged, “Why shouldn’t you? Everyone else in town has.”
“Tomorrow then?” Paul asked.
“If you don’t care what you do with your time. There’s every chance that Charlotte will refuse to see you.”
“But then perhaps you’ll keep me company yourself?”
Miriam laughed, got into the car with Hugh and they drove away.
The night was warm and muggy. Miriam slept lightly and fitfully. Further down the hallway, Charlotte rose from her bed and looked out into the evergreen hedges. Was there a figure there? Or was it a trick of light and her imagination?
“John?” Charlotte whispered. She stood a moment longer in indecision and then moved back into the house. Emerging into the hallway, Charlotte paused, took a silent step or two in the direction of Miriam’s half-opened doorway and listened. Hearing nothing, she turned and hastened down the stairs. At the foot of the stairs she stopped. The silhouette of a man seemed to loom against the window, and then it moved back and forth to become the shadow of a shrub. She opened the front door and found nothing more than the night and a breeze. She turned and went back into the house. She paused at the door of the drawing room and looked in. She started inside but a face loomed suddenly out of the darkness. She stopped, her heart pounding, as she realized that it was her own youthful face, caught in a patch of moonlight, staring from the portrait. Then hearing what she thought was a bit of music she started toward the ballroom. The door, usually kept closed, was ajar. There seemed to be a moving figure again, this time within the oblong of light shining from the doorway. She started forward and stopped, a little afraid and uncertain, and then thinking she heard the music again, moved slowly down the length of the hallway to the door and shoved it open.
Upstairs, Miriam moved restlessly in half-sleep. On the nightstand was the revolver, perfectly visible in the soft glow of the safety light. She too heard the music—a soft tinkle from the piano being played as before. The sound continued for a moment before she sat upright into full consciousness. For a moment she listened, and then rousing herself, she got up from the bed, put on her negligee and left the room. Out in the hallway, she stopped, peering downward to listen to the music. She turned back to look toward the bedroom but was drawn back sharply by a cry from below. She rushed back to the bedroom and snatched up the gun.
As she headed for the stairs, she heard the sound of smashing glass, which came again and again with shrill keening which continued as she rushed to the now closed door of the ballroom.
For a moment she was unable to get the door to open, but then open it flew nearly hurling her backward. The room seemed madly aglitter with moonlight although the French windows were closed. She heard sobs coming from somewhere at the center of the dimness. She switched on the lights, and then looked around in mute stupefaction. All the mirrored panels in the room had been smashed, the floor littered with bright shards. Charlotte stood at the center of the room crying, clutching her arm with her hand. At her feet lay one of the hammers the workers were using when packing the furniture.
Miriam hurried across to Charlotte. “Charlotte, are you all right? What have you done? Why, Charlot
te? Why, Charlotte?” The question poured out almost on reflex.
Charlotte could only sob and shake her head, and when she took her hand away from her arm, blood oozed through her fingers and down the length of her arm.
“You did this, didn’t you?” Miriam demanded to know.
Charlotte shook her head and finally got out the single word, “No.”
“Then who did it? You were here. You saw. Who did it?”
Charlotte looked back in the direction of the closed French doors. “John…” she finally managed to breathe. “He’s angry at me.”
“Go along,” Miriam demanded. “Go on up to your room. I’ll come in and fix your arm in a minute.”
As Miriam went to test the French windows, to make sure they were locked, she found one unsecured. She opened it and looked out and for a moment thought she saw a moving figure out there, but the light made it uncertain.
The next day Miriam showed Hugh and Velma the room, which Velma, complaining all the while, had been set to cleaning up.
“It ain’t the sort of thing anybody in their right mind would do,” Velma proclaimed. “Bustin’ up a place like this… that Miss Charlotte…”
Miriam interrupted, “No one said my cousin did it.”
“Nevertheless,” Hugh put in, “whoever did it was in a violent state of mind. One way or the other, Charlotte’s got to be made to leave before anything else happens.”
“I know,” Miriam said, “that’s why I called you. I wanted you to be here when I talked to her. If need be, I think we should give her a strong sedative… if you agree to that, of course.”
“We’ll see,” Hugh replied.
As they left the room, Velma straightened up from her work, and then slowly, leaving enough time so that she wouldn’t be observed by them, followed silently after to watch and listen.
Much to their surprise, Hugh and Miriam found Charlotte packing, getting her things ready, apparently, to leave.
“What are you doing?” Miriam asked in disbelief.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Page 23