I stiffened in my chair, but I didn’t speak. The door seemed very far away.
“You never guessed, did you? I could always be so clever—so stupidly clever! I badgered poor Linda into driving me to see Saxon that afternoon before the benefit. I hid under a blanket in the back of her car, so they’d think it was only Linda going through the entrance at the Eldorado. But I was the one who confronted Saxon in his study that day. I’d brought one of Ralph’s guns with me, because I couldn’t trust Saxon not to expose everything at the Annenberg. I tried to win him that day he came to the house, when I dressed up. But he was sick of his own guilt, and he hated me. So he was going to destroy us both in one terrible, dramatic gesture. I had to stop him. But all I meant to do was threaten him, frighten him a little.
“And then it got out of hand again—another accident, when he tried to take the gun away from me. Afterwards, I told Ralph to put away all his guns, so the police wouldn’t ask questions about the one that was missing. I suppose Ralph guessed. But he kept still because I was his meal ticket. I suppose he’d have blackmailed me later if it seemed a good idea.”
She stopped pacing and leaned against the table. Annabella rubbed her head against Monica’s arm.
“I think Saxon came to the end of his rope that day in the restaurant when he couldn’t protect you against Owen. He hated being old and a coward. That must have destroyed his last shred of pride, so he was all the more determined to finish us both off with what he meant to say the night of the benefit. He told me so right there in his study.”
It was hard to believe what she was telling me. “It was really you who shot Saxon?”
“Yes. I never meant to!” She was wailing now in despair. “But we struggled for the gun—and it went off!”
“Linda was there?”
“Yes, she saw it all, and she smuggled me out again afterwards. That’s why she’s been half out of her mind since it happened. One big break we had was when Owen Barclay swore that he saw Saxon alive. He lied, of course. But that kept Linda out of trouble. Oh, Carol, it was just like the other time—”
“When Saxon shot Peggy Smith?”
“He didn’t shoot her! That was the awful thing. It might have been better for everyone—including me—if he had.”
Monica went to the bookshelf again, and this time she pulled out a volume and handed it to me.
“Here you are! This is what you wanted to read, isn’t it?”
The book was another copy of the one with the mutilated pages that I’d found in the Arlen room. Only this copy was intact.
“I tore those pages out,” she told me. “I didn’t dare let you read what was printed there and make the connection. I suppose Linda read it a long time ago, but it was a small item, so she probably made nothing of it and forgot all about it. Now you must read what it says. It’s your chance to know what really happened.”
I opened the book to the section that had been missing. This was the volume about old Hollywood tragedies, and at once I came upon the same early photo of Monica that I’d found separately in a file at Smoke Tree House. It had been reprinted here, and I studied it again. The large, slightly tilted eyes that had given her face such distinction even before she became famous had been evident in this youthful picture.
At first, as I began reading the missing chapter, I felt irritated by the popular exposé style of the writer, and started to skip. Then, suddenly, I realized that these paragraphs were talking about Monica only incidentally. The photograph of her as a young woman would pull the reader in, but the account took another and astonishing direction into facts I hadn’t known before.
I finished the pertinent passage feeling short of breath and intensely aware of Monica watching me from across the room. I didn’t need to read the rest of the chapter, but I read over again those few revealing paragraphs. Now I understood very well why those pages had been torn from the book at Smoke Tree House. All else had grown out of what had happened at El Mirador that day—and it was still happening. Yet not even Linda knew.
The memorable voice spoke to me from across the room, its tone gentler now, no longer shrill. She was almost pleading. “You know now who died at El Mirador, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I know who died. It was Monica Arlen.”
She sighed deeply. “I’m glad it’s over. I couldn’t keep it up any longer. That book gives you the answer. That’s my picture, of course. Peggy Smith’s picture—not Monica’s. I’d just been hired by the studio as her double and stand-in. Some reporter picked this up and ran the story in a minor magazine. We looked so much alike, that if it hadn’t been for our eyes no one could have told us apart.”
I looked up at the portrait that dominated the room. “Is that Monica?”
“No. I posed for that. It’s my secret I’m hiding in the smile. Monica got bored sitting for portraits, and she made me fill in for her sometimes. After all, I had those interesting eyes that she wanted to imitate. Alva helped her achieve that in makeup, and she did it so well that they came to be known as Monica Arlen eyes. Though they belonged to Peggy Smith! This was all before she met Saxon and their double careers made them both more famous than ever.”
“You were still her stand-in?”
“Oh no. That was for only one picture. She really didn’t like the resemblance, and I knew she was going to get rid of me. So I started to make myself necessary to her. I was already a fan, and she liked my devotion—though it wasn’t quite like Linda’s. “Linda’s a much nicer person than I ever was. When I did everything I could to stop looking like her, she began to use me in other ways—as her secretary, her companion, her friend. She paid me very well not to look like her, and since I’d doubled for her in just that one picture, the likeness was played down and forgotten. I made it my business to seem as drab and quiet and colorless as I could. When she wore her hair in that shoulder cut, I let mine grow long, and skinned it back—which didn’t flatter me. I didn’t mind because there was a lot in it for me, and it gave me a chance to live in her house—this house—and be part of an exciting life that I’d otherwise never have had. She even encouraged me to do my own creative work. Or rather, Saxon encouraged me. That was another joke—the sculptured bust at the museum is a self-portrait too. Of me! She’d never sit still long enough to pose, but she loved it when we both got credit for it. Sometimes when she didn’t want to go to a party or make an appearance, I doubled for her again, and no one guessed. I could do her so well by that time, and we both laughed about it. Of course when Saxon came along, everything changed.”
She paused, lost in her dream, her face shining white in the shadowed room. The “Monica” look was gone. She seemed another woman—perhaps the woman she really was.
“You fell in love with Saxon?” I said.
“How could I not? It was Saxon who really saw my talent as a sculptor and encouraged me. It was because of Saxon that whatever talent I had began to grow. This ring!” She tore it suddenly from her finger and threw it at me across the room. “I created the ring. It’s yours now, as it was hers. I’ll never wear it again!”
I picked up the intaglio emerald from the floor and placed it absently on my finger, hearing again the rising anger in her voice.
“Did you mean her to die?” I asked.
“Of course I didn’t! She brought her own little gun that night when I stayed at El Mirador with Saxon. Oh, he wasn’t in love with me, though I pretended to myself that he was. He played around a bit, but Monica was always his real love. I think everything ended for him when she died. If I hadn’t been there to take hold, I don’t know what would have happened. The scandal would have rocked him out of any further chance of a career. That’s the way the studios were in those days, and they could throw stars away if they became useless—unpopular.
“So I was the one who figured everything out. I was always the clever one, the strong one. We had El Mirador to ourselves that night. All those who were filming had gone to their hotels. No one heard the sho
t, and I saw what we could do. I would be Monica. I’d always believed that I could be as good as she was, if only I’d had her luck. So I told Saxon that if he would keep still, I would keep still. The Arlen-Scott pictures could go on, and there would be no murder charge. I knew her so well. I could be her so easily—except with a very few people.”
I had never known the real Monica at all, but this was hard to grasp in an instant. I’d been living a make-believe story ever since I came, while the real story ran along underneath. When I had time to retrace it, a great deal would come clear.
“You didn’t get away with it, did you?” I said. “It was all harder than you expected.”
“Harder and easier. It was lucky that Monica and I were both blondes at the time—our natural color—and that recently I’d cut my hair. So all I had to do was comb my hair like hers and carry on. I was the one who put her into my clothes after she died, and cleaned off her makeup. So she’d look like me—Peggy—when she was found. No one really questioned the switch at the time.”
“How could you?” I said. “How could you and Saxon go through with carrying her out to the desert, making it look like Peggy Smith’s suicide.”
“It took guts.” The voice was harsh now. “My guts.”
“Why did you hint to me one time that it might have been murder?”
“I had to hold that over Saxon. I was beginning to be afraid of what he might do. Wally was telling Linda a few things, so I knew.”
“Yet in the final test you weren’t an actress, after all! You failed when they had to redo those few scenes. I should think the director would have been suspicious.”
“I didn’t fail! I could play her beautifully. Only it was more difficult when she was playing someone else. I could have been as good as she was, if they’d given me a chance. But Saxon told me I couldn’t act, and I didn’t dare go on and risk it. The director made allowances because Saxon and I were breaking up, and Peggy had died, so I was naturally not myself. He’d never worked with me before, and he didn’t know me all that well. Alva and Nicos were the only ones who guessed. Though I suppose if I hadn’t gone into hiding I’d have been found out eventually.”
“Why didn’t they speak out?”
“Because of Saxon. He told them the truth and asked them to keep still. And he did a lot for them. Lately, though, I think Alva’s been itching to talk, and Nicos, who feels indebted to Saxon, has kept her still. That’s why she sent you to see Henry Arlen. I suppose she thought he’d tell you things that would give the truth away. But I went with you and put on a very good act. Monica had taken me to see him that time years ago, and I’d heard a lot of those old stories. I fooled him completely. He never suspected me at all.”
I could understand so many things now. I remembered Saxon telling me that I looked like Monica around the eyes. He had been thinking of the real Monica—as he had later when he’d spoken of her with such affection. I knew now why he’d been shocked and angry when he’d seen Peggy looking so much like Monica in the beautiful kimono from Mirage. And why he’d thought Cadenza should be mine.
I could even understand why he’d put me into his will. I was his only real connection with the past, and in a sense this had been a gesture toward his lost love. Perhaps even an assuagement of his own guilt?
“How could you want to carry off such a masquerade? Especially after Saxon died?” I heard the break in my voice.
Her shoulders drooped. “That was the hardest part—the really awful part. When we came out of the theater I told Linda to send you and Jason to find him. I couldn’t bear to think of him lying there, and no one knowing.
“In my dreams he comes back to haunt me. Sometimes I’m afraid to go to sleep at night.” She straightened and stared at me scornfully. “What else could I do? You were so easy to fool. Just as Linda has always been. There was never any reason for you to suspect. And of course there was the book. I wanted you to write the book because I owe that to me. I wanted you to tell about Peggy Smith. You’d have written about the talent I threw away. You’d have given me a chance to be me again.”
“You even sent me to college,” I said. “Why—when I meant nothing to you?”
“In a way that was part of the masquerade—to do what Monica would have done. But in another way … sometimes I got mixed up about who I really was. Especially after you came. Sometimes I almost believed I was Monica Arlen.”
I could feel a strange pity for her, in spite of everything. “What’s going to happen now? Linda will be here any minute, and she’ll have to be told.”
“I think you will keep quiet.” Her voice softened, as though she couldn’t help the “Monica” whisper that crept into it. Only now the sound chilled me. She stood up and I knew she was closer to the door than I was. Yet I had to speak out. There could be no more pretense.
“Nothing can go on as before,” I said.
“You’d better think about that. Just think about what will happen—to all of us—if you talk. No, Carol, you aren’t going to say a word.”
I was sure I could move more quickly than she could. I had only to reach the door … Besides, she had no weapon now. There couldn’t be another “accident.”
She saw what was in my face, and even as I hesitated she sprang toward the door, moving like one of her own cats. With her back to the door she faced me.
“I know what you’re thinking.” She spoke with an unexpected sadness, a wistfulness that took me by surprise. “Don’t be afraid of me, Carol. Don’t ever be afraid of me. What you do is up to you. I don’t care anymore. Sometimes, in the last weeks, it’s seemed almost as though you really were my family. The one I never had. I told you about those gray streets—I let that slip. And about the mother I hated. But all that was in Chicago, where I grew up, not in the desert. You’ve been good to me, and kind. If you can’t be any longer, then I deserve that too. Let’s go upstairs. I’m very, very tired.”
She went to the corner of the room where the white cats were huddled. “Come along, my darlings. Don’t be frightened.” At once the two leaped lovingly into her arms. At the table she nodded to Annabella. “You too, Annie dear. We’re going to bed now.”
Annabella sprang to her shoulder, and all four, human and feline, went proudly out the door together. Perhaps a tremendous burden had been shed for her tonight. Without mimicking Monica, she moved like a younger woman, walking erectly toward the stairs with the cats in her arms. This was Peggy Smith.
“I’m going to bed now,” she announced. “Some of the rooms are still made up, so we can take our pick.”
There was nothing to fear from her, and I followed her toward the stairs, hearing the contented purring of the cats.
When we reached the entrance hall, a sound of running feet on the floor above made us stop and look up. Jason had appeared at the head of the stairs, and he shouted down to us.
“A car’s just come up the drive. Owen Barclay’s out there with two of his men. I’ve called to the police officer to stop them.”
“Keith!” I cried, and rushed toward the stairs.
Outside we heard a sound of scuffling, and then momentary silence. It wasn’t hard to guess what had happened. Our police guard hadn’t lasted against Owen’s men.
Peggy hurried up the stairs with me, and at the top she ran ahead to lose herself in the shadows of the upper hall. I stood frozen on the top step, with Jason beside me.
The front door was already shivering under blows as the lock tore loose. The bedrooms were far away, and it was too late to reach Keith without leading them to him.
Owen and his two thugs stood in the great pink marble room below, looking up at us. Owen was unarmed, but both men carried guns. He gestured triumphantly to the two, who started up black marble stairs ahead of him, holding their guns on Jason and me. Owen looked especially pleased at the sight of Jason.
“Good,” he said. “I’ve got a score to even tonight.”
We backed away from the head of the stairs, but the three kept
coming, and Owen’s voice went on almost pleasantly.
“I’m leaving the country, Carol, and Keith is coming with me. There’s nothing you can do to stop me, and if you really have anything on me, you’ll have to stand in line with the rest. Once I’m away, it won’t matter.”
He came up the stairs past his men, moving confidently, slowly, and when he reached the top he spoke again.
“You might as well tell us quickly where my son is. It will save you some roughing up. My boys are expert at that, you know. And they’ll take special care of your friend Jason Trevor, as well.”
Neither Jason nor I spoke, but Peggy Smith began to move in a peculiar way. She was backing toward us along the wall—and I suddenly guessed what she might do. There was no way to stop her, and I didn’t think it would help. Owen might even kill her.
He watched her odd movements warily, and one of the guns was pointed at Peggy’s back. Then she was close enough, and she whirled about with the three cats in her arms, and moved toward Owen.
A look of horror came into his face and he took a hasty step backwards. “Stay right there!” he shouted. “Don’t come near me! Stop her!”
Before either of his men could move, she ran toward Owen, hurling all three cats into the air. They flew at their target with claws bared, the white cats spitting in terror, and Annabella’s wild shriek one to curdle the blood. Owen flung up his arms and stepped backwards again—into empty air. He crashed down the stairs, and the cats flew with him, their claws slipping on marble as they landed and righted themselves. Owen lay sprawled on his back halfway down, with Annabella on his chest, all her fur standing on end.
Owen’s men had watched in a state of shock, their guns useless. Now one of them ran down to bend over Owen. “Jeez!” he said. “He’s dead!”
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