Seventeen Widows of Sans Souci

by Charlotte Armstrong

  Georgia Oliver said gently, “Let’s us go to the chapel while they enjoy themselves. We must see the bells, too. Then we can sit in the garden awhile. O.K.?”

  So the three of them ambled around some corners, and along a cloistered way and finally entered the chapel.

  The very air of it struck upon Nona Henry like a wave upon a rock. She resisted it. Was this Church? A Holy Place? Or was it a Museum? What?

  It was a very narrow, strangely proportioned room. The rafters and the crude white walls and the blaze at the far end were strange to Nona. She followed Mrs. Fitz and Georgia Oliver down the center aisle toward the altar and the jumble of gilt-framed saints, and candles, and religious clutter.

  Mrs. Fitz and Georgia arrived, paused, stood quietly contemplating these things, until Mrs. Fitz sighed with a small despair. They turned and began to walk back at the same pace. Nona followed them out of the chapel on the side opposite that by which they had entered. Here was a charming enclosure. A series of masonry arches were high in a ruined wall and some bells hung in the arches.

  “So lovely,” sighed Mrs. Fitz. “Of course, I am not a Catholic. I’m afraid I don’t understand the chapel. But this! To me!” She lifted her small pink face and Georgia looked up too, and they were rapt.

  Nona was feeling the grief. It had slashed at her, it had caught her unaware, somewhere in that chapel. It had to be met. Terms must be made with it. She said hastily, “I think I’ll just go back a minute.”

  “Of course,” said Georgia with her sweet and ever-permissive smile.

  Nona was not a Catholic, either. But those candles, she thought, burn there for someone’s grief. Was there something in this place that could help? If she were before the altar all alone, could she pray? And be healed?

  But as she walked down the aisle again toward the tinsel and the gilt and what, to her Protestant eyes, was simply garish junk and pitiful, prayer stuck in her throat.

  No good to her. Nothing.

  She walked back quickly, almost in a panic, and turned to go out into the air, but to her right where she would be alone. There were cloisters here and a vista of green gardens. Against one of the columns of the covered way, a figure leaned and was familiar. Who? Oh, that coat, the red. It was Tess Rogan.

  She was leaning against a pillar, looking across the gardens, but her head turned as Nona emerged. “Hi,” she said.

  “Oh, hello,” said Nona. “You are Mrs. Rogan, aren’t you? I’m Nona Henry, from Sans Souci.”

  Tess Rogan grinned. It was the only word for the spreading of her generously proportioned mouth. “How do you like this?” she inquired.

  “I am not a Catholic,” said Nona. “I suppose I don’t quite understand … the array in there.”

  Tess Rogan said, immediately, “The gold? The frankincense? The myrrh?”

  Her words boomed and gonged in Nona’s breast. They gave her panic.

  “But it’s not real …” she stammered. “I’m sorry. If you are a Catholic … I don’t mean …”

  “Oh, I’m not a Catholic,” Tess Rogan said. She put the back of her head against the masonry. “It’s real, just the same.”

  Nona’s mouth was dry. She said, “Excuse me? I am with Mrs. Fitzgibbon. I …”

  Mrs. Rogan said, “They were Franciscans, you know.”

  Nona ducked her head. “I don’t know,” she stammered. She hurried across and out to the enclosure where Mrs. Fitz and Georgia were still standing.

  “Shall we go back to the first garden?” said Mrs. Fitz in her soft voice. “I do love this spot. But there is a bench, I know, where we can wait for the others. Mrs. Henry, wouldn’t you like to roam about and see a little more?”

  “No, no,” said Nona. “I’ll stay with you.” She felt frightened. The grief was dark and heavy upon her heart. But a stone, not a sword.

  When they came through, at the end of the chapel, the figure of Tess Rogan was gone from where it had stood.

  Mrs. Fitz sat on a bench for a long time, waiting. She was tiring, as Georgia and Nona could tell. At last, Georgia sent Nona hurrying toward the shop to stir up their chauffeur. She met the Gadabouts, who were just coming forth, chattering, bearing packages.

  “I think Mrs. Fitzgibbon is a little weary …”

  “Oh, is she?” said Sarah Lee contritely. “Then we’ll go, if you’ve seen all you want, Nona?”

  “Yes, I think I have,” Nona said. Her conscience pricked her. “Do you know, I saw Mrs. Rogan from Sans Souci?”

  “You did!” cried Sarah Lee. “How did she get down here?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t ask. She seemed to be alone.”

  Sarah Lee said, “I wonder if she needs a lift home.”

  “There really isn’t room,” said Bettina Goodenough shrilly. “If Mrs. Fitz is tired, I wouldn’t want to crowd the car.” She was clutching her packages. Evidently she did not want to do a casual favor.

  “Well, that’s so,” said Sarah Lee, agreeing. She peered about them. “I don’t see Mrs. Rogan now. Do you? I guess she’s gone. So skip it.”

  Nona said nothing. It was not her business. It was not her car.

  They found Mrs. Fitz murmuring her hundredth comment upon the swallows and their nests against the tall ruins. Her voice was definitely feeble. Time to go. They went slowly out into the dusty small town street. Mrs. Fitz leaned upon Georgia. She confessed that luncheon, in that restaurant, might have been indiscreet. She ate so very meagerly and carefully at home. And she was accustomed to lying down right after lunch each day. She would be all right, of course …

  There was concern for Mrs. Fitz in the car, on the way home.

  It was on their way home that Nona found out what was not going to happen to her on Christmas Day.

  “Well,” said Sarah Lee, “that’s that, and tomorrow night we are off to Vegas.”

  “To where?” said Georgia.

  “Oh, we go to Vegas for Christmas,” said Sarah Lee. “We go over on the train. There’s nothing doing around here.”

  “Well, of all places!” said Georgia, generously amused, and speaking with her characteristic smiling tolerance. “I suppose you’ll gamble. Aren’t you the sports, though!”

  Bettina laughed merrily.

  “She always wins,” said Sarah Lee. “Not me. But I don’t mind. Listen!”

  Nona was silent in the tonneau, trying to swallow her sense of having been unfairly abandoned. There would be no Gadabout girls to help her through Christmas Day. But they hadn’t told her. She ought to have been told.

  “Oh, we went last year,” said Bettina, as if Nona had spoken. “It’s a lot of fun. You know, Sans Souci is dead as a doornail.”

  They had not asked, and they did not now ask, Nona whether she might care to go along.

  It was unreasonable to feel, as she did feel, betrayed and let down.

  Ursula Fitzgibbon seemed to sense something. “What are you doing on Christmas Day, Mrs. Henry?” she asked. “Have you family coming?”

  “No one,” said Nona, rather crisply.

  “Say, let me tip you, Nona,” said Sarah Lee in her coarse husky voice. “Just don’t let Felice Paull rope you in.”

  “No?” said Nona rather saucily.

  “Oh Lord,” Sarah Lee groaned. “Felice Paull always gets up a Christmas dinner. At Hunt’s, for heaven’s sakes! I am telling you! Don’t go! It’s simply ghastly.”

  “She hasn’t asked me yet,” said Nona, rather rebelliously. “I don’t know Mrs. Paull.”

  There was silence.

  “She means well,” said Georgia generously.

  “I’m sure she does,” said Mrs. Fitz with a sigh. “My son, Robert, will be here,” she went on sweetly, “for Christmas Day. And Georgia, of course … just family. Won’t you come to dinner with us, Mrs. Henry? Right across the hall. I don’t like to think of you alone …”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t do that,” said Nona quickly. “Thank you. But you will want to be family …”

  “Why,
we’d love to include you.”

  “You are very thoughtful.” Nona felt frozen. A waif, was she? Orphan? To be taken in by kind hearts? Not that this heart wasn’t kind. “I’d best be alone,” she said. “I hope you’ll understand.”

  Mrs. Fitz’s dry old fingers touched her. “Of course,” she murmured.

  At last they dived down into the bowels of Sans Souci. When the car stopped, Ursula Fitzgibbon’s sigh was unquestionably relieved. “Such a lovely day!” she said. “So good of you to take me, Bettina. I did enjoy it.”

  “You’re not too tired?” asked Sarah Lee anxiously.

  “I am tired,” admitted Mrs. Fitz. “After all, I am seventy-five. And at such an age, one tires.” She was brave.

  Georgia was helping her tenderly from the car.

  Nona stood by. Abandoned? She said to the Gadabouts, “Thank you very much for a delightful time.”

  “Not at all,” said Bettina. “Why, we were glad to have you.” She laughed and her dental plate showed, and Nona suddenly, savagely, longed to tell her so. Instead she said, with a little frown, “I do hope poor old Mrs. Rogan got home all right. She is seventy-one, isn’t she?”

  She knew that the little dart had been felt just where she had meant it to strike and that it stung. The Gadabouts were silent.

  “Mrs. Rogan?” said Ursula Fitzgibbon. “Oh, was she at San Juan Capistrano?”

  “I spoke to her,” said Nona. “Yes, she was there. Alone.”

  “Oh, then we ought to have asked her,” said Ursula, “how she came. I do hope she had a way to get home.” Her small pinkish face was concerned.

  “She got down there,” said Sarah Lee brusquely.

  “She couldn’t have expected us to come along,” said Bettina. “I didn’t see her.”

  “She must have made her own arrangements,” soothed Georgia.

  “I suppose so. Of course.” The trouble cleared from Mrs. Fitz’s brow. “So nice to have been with you.”

  “Let me go ahead,” said Nona solicitously. “I’ll ring the elevator down.”

  She could tell that somewhere behind her, Sarah Lee was nudging Bettina.

  It was all so small. So unimportant and so small.

  But, she perceived, the smallest and least important pond can have its ripples.

  Chapter 8

  Sometimes, somebody comes to the edge of a pond and throws in a stone. Two days before Christmas this inquisitive stranger came into the lobby of Sans Souci at about six P.M. when Oppie Etting was at the desk. The stranger did not look prosperous. His manner was not confident. He put himself against the counter sideways. His tone was apologetic.

  “A Mrs. Quinn living here?”

  Oppie Etting had, both literally and figuratively, big ears and a long nose. When he said, “There is nobody here by that name, sir,” he did not say it with the proper frost. The very seediness of the stranger, and a palpable but indefinable air he had of being not quite square with society, made Oppie feel very curious.

  “Reason I ask, I believe I saw her come in here,” the stranger said in a wheedling tone.

  “She may be a visitor, of course,” said Oppie, too helpfully. “In which case, I wouldn’t necessarily …”

  “Reason I think she lives here,” said the stranger, “I saw her first come out and then come in again.”

  This was presenting the matter in the form of a little puzzle and Oppie was drawn to consider it. He saw the flaw. “Perhaps you should have spoken to her, then,” he said lightly.

  This broke any formal relationship from Oppie’s side. This asked a personal question.

  The stranger used both hands to hold himself away from the counter, but he leaned on them. “Oh, she wouldn’t know me,” he said confidentially, reading Oppie’s interest in Oppie’s eyes. “I’m just an old newspaperman. But I never forget a face, you know. It was Mrs. Quinn, all right.” He looked behind him. There was no one else in the lobby. His eyes licked at the Christmas tree. “I’m looking for a story,” he confided.

  Well, Oppie couldn’t bear it. Oppie put his elbows on the counter. “A story? That so?” Oppie was extraverted and he got bored.

  “Never heard of Mrs. Quinn?” the stranger asked. “Well, I guess that was twelve, fourteen years ago. Long ago and far away. Also, she’s probably not using the name of Quinn.”

  Now, he held Oppie like a three-year child.

  “Might be a little money in this,” the stranger said, delicately probing here. “With a little help …”

  Oppie straightened up. “I’m afraid I can’t help you,” he said virtuously.

  The stranger backtracked quickly. “And I could sure use a little money,” he said, putting on what was obviously intended to be a rueful smile. “A follow-up story, see? Where is she now? Like that. I’ve had a bum year, bad luck. Health went back on me. But you don’t know any Mrs. Quinn, you say?” His eyes reproached Oppie for holding out against a poor unlucky man.

  Oppie was hung between raging curiosity and his duty to repulse this character, in whose bad luck he could not believe. The man looked like one who would create bad luck for himself, being out of step with the rhythms of prosperity. Oppie said, “You may have made a mistake,” stiffly.

  “No mistake,” the stranger said with complete assurance. “I know her. I was at her trial.”

  “Trial?” Oppie’s brows went up.

  “Murder trial, yeh.” The man nodded as if this were the only really interesting kind of trial there was. “She killed her husband’s girl friend. Or, I should say, ‘allegedly’ she did.” The stranger was deeply cynical. “They got her off. Called it an accident. You can believe that or not. Afterwards, this Mrs. Quinn, she disappeared.”

  “What happened to Mr. Quinn?” burst Oppie. His elbows were back on the counter.

  “Divorce. Nobody knows where he is, either. But I’ll tell you where she is. Mrs. Quinn was in and out of this building, today.”

  Oppie moistened his lips. His brain whirled with pleasant excitement. “About how old a woman is she?” He succumbed. “Is she tall or …?”

  “Well …”

  Then the glass door opened. A shaft of air from the patio crossed the stale lobby and touched them. Oppie straightened guiltily and the stranger took a step backward.

  Mrs. Caroline Buff, seventy-seven, was coming in. Mrs. Buff had more money than any other widow in Sans Souci. She lived in the first-floor angle apartment, 107, and she was the only tenant in the building who lived with her own furniture. She had even had her floors carpeted.

  Now she came toward the men, walking well, her beautiful white head of hair immaculately coifed, her face serene, her clothes exactly right, expressing exactly what she was, an elderly woman of means and good taste. Her whole aura was that of a person securely square with all the known world.

  “Good evening, Mr. Etting. May I ask you …?” Mrs. Buff did not ignore the stranger, yet he receded to the status of a mongrel roaming the outskirts of civilization.

  Oppie gave her due reverence. “Anything I can do, Mrs. Buff?” The stranger was postponed.

  “I am expecting a package from New York,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am, I believe it is here.” Oppie dived below the counter. When he bobbed up again, the stranger was across the lobby at the glass door. Oppie cast him a glance and the stranger looked back, with an air of hesitation, perhaps a promise to return. Then he pushed out and Oppie could see his badly held body scurrying away between the lampposts.

  This was the last that was ever seen of the inquisitive stranger at Sans Souci.

  But he had thrown a stone.

  Oppie Etting thought until he thought he’d split. First, the stranger was no joker, no hoaxer. He might be in error, but he had not been playing a game, or exercising a queer sense of humor. No, the stranger had wanted money, all right. In fact, it now seemed to Oppie that he could have been hinting at money from pressure. For certainly anyone like this Mrs. Quinn would prefer not to have her whereabouts
known to a newspaper. Oppie did not think there could be much money in a mere follow-up story. He congratulated himself upon his own shrewdness.

  But the tantalizing question was: Did this Mrs. Quinn, under another name, live in Sans Souci? A woman with a trial behind her? A trial for murder! Oppie thought he would split.

  But he dared not, he knew, mention any of this to Morgan Lake. Morgan Lake had been severe with Oppie before, in the matter of gossip with, or about, the tenants. He’d have none of it. He’d want to know why Oppie had not simply sent the man away. There would be no discussion. But Oppie had to discuss this with someone or Oppie would burst.

  Maybe he could tell Kelly Shane about it. Kelly was a pit of discretion, a receiver of confidences, a listener who buried forever what he heard. (Or else it went down to some dark-skinned parallel civilization from whence it never reappeared to bother anyone white.) But Kelly Shane, whose hours were erratic, was gone for this day, and would not be around again till 6:30 in the morning. And Oppie, off at one A.M., crossed Kelly’s path only infrequently. So Oppie thought and thought, by himself, and kept watching for the stranger to reappear, but he did not return … and Oppie would split!

  Was one of the widows at Sans Souci this Mrs. Quinn? An alleged murderess? Who had “got off”? Changed her name? Disappeared? It was possible! Oppie’s veins thrilled. Yes, it was possible! He kept going over the seventeen names in his mind. Oh, this was too juicy a bit for such as Oppie to keep to himself, forever.

  Forever lasted until nine P.M. when Harriet Gregory came into the lobby to buy cigarettes, as she often did. Oppie eyed her.

  Harriet Gregory was moody about Oppie Etting. Loneliness was nothing rare at Sans Souci, but she was, in some ways, the loneliest widow of them all. So, some nights, she kidded Oppie and set up a companionable gossipy, giggly session, in which Harriet assigned him the role of the devil and herself the role of the tempted who shouldn’t laugh, but who did appreciate wit since she was very witty herself. Then, on other nights, her innate snobbery won over the loneliness and Harriet revenged it by being extremely haughty and rude to him.