“– red hair,” Fern Hartley had said, leaning forward, eyes bright with memory.
“Across the aisle from you in Miss Burton's English class. Of course you remember, Pam. She went with the boy who stuttered.”
I am Pamela North, who used to be Pamela Britton, Pam told herself, behind a fixed smile. I'm not an imposter; I did go to Southwest High. If only I could prove it by remembering something – anything. Any little thing.
“The teacher with green hair?” Pam North said, by way of experiment. “Streaks of, anyway? Because the dye – ” Consternation clouded Fern's bright eyes.
“Pam!” she said. “That was another one entirely. Miss Burton was the one who – ”
It had been like that from the start of the party – the party of three couples and Miss Fern Hartley, still of Centertown. They were gathered in the long living room of the Stanley Pitts' house – the gracious room which ran the depth of the small, perfect house – an old New York house, retaining the charm (if also something of the inconvenience) of the previous century.
As the party started that warm September evening, the charm was uppermost. From open casement windows at the end of the room there was a gentle breeze. In it, from the start, Fern's memories had fluttered. And none of the memories had been Pam North's memories.
Fern has total recall; I have total amnesia, Pam thought, while keeping the receptive smile in place, since one cannot let an old schoolmate down. Did the others try as hard? Pam wondered. Find themselves as inadequate to recapture the dear, dead days? Both Hortense Notson and Phyllis Pitt had given every evidence of trying, Pam thought, letting her mind wander. Fern was now reliving a perfectly wonderful picnic, of their junior year. Pam was not.
Pam did not let the smile waver; from time to time she nodded her bright head and made appreciative sounds. Nobody had let Fern down; all had taken turns in listening – even the men. Jerry North was slacking now, but he had been valiant.
His valor had been special, since he had never even been in Centertown. And Stanley Pitt had done his bit, too; of course, he was the host. Of course, Fern was the Pitts' house guest; what a lovely house to be a guest in, Pam thought, permitting her eyes briefly to accompany her mind in its wandering.
Stanley – what a distinguished–looking man he is, Pam thought – was with Jerry, near the portable bar. She watched Jerry raise his glass as he listened. Her own glass was empty, and nobody was doing anything about it. An empty glass to go with an empty mind, Pam thought, and watched Fern sip ginger ale. Fern never drank anything stronger. Not that she had anything against drinking. Of course not. But even one drink made her feel all funny.
“Well,” Pam had said, when Fern had brought the subject up, earlier on. “Well, that's more or less the idea, I suppose. This side of hilarious, of course.”
“You know,” Fern said then, “you always did talk funny. Remember when we graduated and you – ”
Pam didn't remember. Without looking away from Fern, or letting the smile diminish, Pam nevertheless continued to look around the room. How lovely Phyllis is, Pam thought – really is. Blonde Phyllis Pitt was talking to Clark Notson, blond also, and sturdy, and looking younger than he almost certainly was.
Clark had married Hortense in Centertown. He was older – Pam remembered that he had been in college when they were in high school. He had married her when she was a skinny, dark girl, who had had to be prouder than anyone else because her parents lived over a store and not, properly, in a house. And look at her now, Pam thought, doing so. Dark still – and slim and quickly confident, and most beautifully arrayed.
Well, Pam thought, we've all come a long way. (She nodded, very brightly, to another name from the past – a name signifying nothing.) Stanley Pitt and Jerry – neglecting his own wife, Jerry North was – had found something of fabulous interest to discuss, judging by their behavior. Stanley was making points, while Jerry listened and nodded. Stanley was making points one at a time, with the aid of the thumb and the fingers of his right hand. He touched thumbtip to successive fingertips, as if to crimp each point in place. And Jerry – how selfish could a man get – ran a hand through this hair, as he did when he was interested.
“Oh,” Pam said. “Of course I remember him, Fern.”
A little lying is a gracious thing.
What a witness Fern would make, Pam thought. Everything that had happened – beginning, apparently, at the age of two – was brightly clear in her mind, not muddy as in the minds of so many. The kind of witness Bill Weigand, member in good standing of the New York City Police Department, always hoped to find and almost never did – never had, that she could remember, in all the many investigations she and Jerry had shared since they first met Bill years ago.
Fern would be a witness who really remembered. If Fern, Pam thought, knew something about a murder, or where a body was buried, or any of the other important things which so often come up, she would remember it precisely and remember it whole. A good deal of sifting would have to be done, but Bill was good at that.
Idly, her mind still wandering, Pam hoped that Fern did not, in fact, know anything of buried bodies. It could, obviously, be dangerous to have so total a recall and to put no curb on it.
She remembered, and this from association with Bill, how often somebody did make that one revealing remark too many. Pam sternly put a curb on her own mind and imagination.
What could Fern – pleasant, bubbling Fern, who had not adventured out of Centertown, excepting for occasional trips like these – know of dangerous things?
Pam North, whose lips ached, in whose mind Fern's words rattled, looked hard at Jerry, down the room, at the bar. Get me out of this, Pam willed across the space between them. Get me out of this! It had been known to work or had sometimes seemed to work. It did not now. Jerry concentrated on what Stanley Pitt was saying. Jerry ran a hand through his hair.
“Oh, dear,” Pam said, breaking into the flow of Fern's words, as gently as she could. “Jerry wants me for something. You know how husbands are.”
She stopped abruptly, remembering that Fern didn't, never having had one. She got up – and was saved by Phyllis, who moved in. What a hostess, Pam thought, and moved toward Jerry and the bar. The idea of saying that to poor Fern, Pam thought. This is certainly one of my hopeless evenings. She went toward Jerry.
“I don't,” she said when she reached him, “remember anything about anything. Except one teacher with green hair, and that was the wrong woman.”
Jerry said it seemed very likely.
“There's something a little ghoulish about all this digging up of the past,” Pam said. “Suppose some of it's still alive?” she added.
“Huh?” Jerry said.
He was told not to bother. And that Pam could do with a drink. Jerry poured, for them both, from a pitcher in which ice tinkled.
“Some time,” Pam said, “She's going to remember that one thing too many. That's what I mean. You see?”
“No,” Jerry said, simply.
“Not everybody,” Pam said, a little darkly, “wants everything remembered about everything. Because – ”
Stanley Pitt, who had turned away, turned quickly back. He informed Pam that she had something there.
“I heard her telling Hortense – ” Stanley Pitt said, and stopped abruptly, since Hortense, slim and graceful (and so beautifully arrayed) was coming toward them.
“How Fern doesn't change,” Hortense said. “Pam, do you remember the boy next door?”
“I don't seem to remember anything,” Pam said. “Not anything at all.”
“You don't remember,” Hortense said. “I don't remember. Phyllis doesn't. And with it all, she's so – sweet.” She paused. “Or is she?” she said. “Some of the things she brings up – always doing ohs, the boy next door was. How does one do an oh?”
“Oh,” Jerry said, politely demonstrating, and then, “Was he the one with green hair?” The others looked blank at that, and Pam said it was just one of the
things she'd got mixed up, and now Jerry was mixing it worse. And Pam said, did Hortense ever feel she hadn't really gone to Southwest High School at all and was merely pretending she had? Was an imposter?
“Far as I can tell,” Hortense said, “I never lived in Centertown. Just in a small, one–room vacuum. Woman without a past.” She paused. “Except,” she said, in another tone, “Fern remembers me in great detail.”
Stanley Pitt had been looking over their heads – looking at his wife, now the one listening to Fern. In a moment of silence, Fern's voice fluted. “Really, a dreadful thing to happen,” Fern said. There was no context.
“Perhaps,” Stanley said, turning back to them, “it's better to have no past than to live in one. Better all around. And safer.”
He seemed about to continue, but then Clark Notson joined them. Clark did not, Pam thought, look like a man who was having a particularly good time.
“Supposed to get Miss Hartley her ginger ale,” he said. He spoke rather hurriedly.
Jerry, who was nearest the bar, said, “Here,” and reached for the innocent bottle – a bottle, Pam thought, which looked a little smug and virtuous among the other bottles. Jerry used a silver opener, snapped off the bottle cap. The cap bounced off, tinkled against a bottle.
“Don't know your own strength,” Clark said, and took the bottle and, with it, a glass into which Jerry dropped ice. “Never drinks anything stronger, the lady doesn't,” Clark said, and bore away the bottle.
“And doesn't need to,” Hortense Notson said, and drifted away. She could drift immaculately.
“She buys dresses,” Pam said. “Wouldn't you know?”
“As distinct – ?” Jerry said, and was told he knew perfectly well what Pam meant.
“Buys them for, not from,” Pam said.
To this, Jerry simply said, “Oh.”
It was then a little after eight, and there was a restless circulation in the long room. Pam was with Phyllis Pitt. Phyllis assured her that food would arrive soon. And hadn't old times come flooding back?
“Mm,” Pam said. Pam was then with Clark Notson and, with him, talked unexpectedly of tooth paste. One never knows what will come up at a party. It appeared that Clark's firm made tooth paste. Stanley Pitt joined them. He said Clark had quite an operation there. Pam left them and drifted, dutifully, back to Fern, who sipped ginger ale. Fern's eyes were very bright. They seemed almost to glitter.
(But that's absurd, Pam thought. People's don't, only cats.)
“It's so exciting,” Fern said, and looked around the room, presumably at “it.”
“To meet you all again, and your nice husbands and – ” she paused. “Only,” she said, “I keep wondering ...”
Pam waited. She said, “What, Fern?”
“Oh,” Fern said, “Nothing dear. Nothing really. Do you remember – ”
Pam did not. She listened for a time, and was relieved by Hortense, and drifted on again. For a minute or two, then, Pam North was alone and stood looking up and down the softly lighted room. Beyond the windows at the far end, lights glowed up from the garden below. The room was filled, but not harshly, with conversation – there seemed, somehow, to be more than the seven of them in it. Probably, Pam thought, memories crowded it – the red–haired girl, the stuttering boy. Fern laughed. Her laughter was rather high in pitch. It had a little “hee” at the end. That little “hee,” Pam thought idly, would identify Fern – be something to remember her by. As Jerry's habit of running his hand through his hair would identify him if, about all else, she suddenly lost her memory. (As I've evidently begun to do, Pam North thought.) Little tricks. And Fern puts her right index finger gently to the tip of her nose, presumably when she's thinking. Why, Pam thought, she did that as a girl, and was surprised to remember.
Her host stood in front of her, wondering what he could get her. She had, Pam told him, everything.
“Including your memories?” Stanley Pitt asked her. Pam noticed a small scar on his chin. But it wasn't, of course, the same thing as – as running a hand through your hair. But everybody has something, which is one way of telling them apart.
“I seem,” Pam said, “a little short of memories.”
“By comparison with Miss Hartley,” Stanley said, “who isn't? A pipe line to the past. Can't I get you a drink?”
He could not. Pam had had enough. So, she thought, had all of them. Not that anybody was in the least tight. But still ...
Over the other voices, that of Fern Hartley was raised. There was excitement in it. So it isn't alcohol, Pam thought, since Fern hadn't had any. It's just getting keyed up at the party. She looked toward Fern, who was talking, very rapidly, to Jerry. No doubt, Pam thought, about what I was like in high school. Not that there's anything he shouldn't know. But still ...
Fern was now very animated. If, Pam thought, I asked whether anyone here was one cocktail up I'd – why, I'd say Fern. Fern, of all people. Or else, Pam thought, she has some exciting surprise.
It was not eight thirty. A maid appeared at the door, waited to be noticed, and nodded to Phyllis Pitt, who said, at once,
“Dinner, everybody.” The dining room was downstairs, on a level with the garden. “These old stairs,” Phyllis said. “Everybody be careful.”
The stairs were, indeed, very steep, and the treads very narrow. But there were handrails and a carpet. The stairway ended in the dining room, where candles glowed softly on the table, among flowers.
“If you'll sit – was Phyllis said, starting with Pam North. “And you and – was They moved to the places indicated. “And Fern – ” Phyllis said, and stopped. “Why,” she said, “where is – ”
She did not finish, because Fern Hartley stood at the top of the steep staircase. She was a slight figure in a white dress. She seemed to be staring fixedly down at them, her eyes strangely bright. Her face was flushed and she made odd, uncertain movements with her little hands.
“I'm – ” Fern said, and spoke harshly, loudly, and so that the word was almost a shapeless sound. “I'm – ”
And then Fern Hartley, taking both hands from the rails, pitched headfirst down the staircase. In a great moment of silence, her body made a strange, soft thudding on the stairs. She did not cry out.
At the bottom of the red–carpeted stairs she lay quite still. Her head was at a hideous angle to her body. That was how she died.
Fern Hartley died of a broken neck. There was no doubt. Six people had seen her fall. Now she lay at the bottom of the stairs and no one would ever forget her soft quick falling down that steep flight. An ambulance surgeon confirmed the cause of her death and another doctor from up the street – called when it seemed the ambulance would never get there – confirmed it, too.
But after he had knelt for some time by the body the second doctor beckoned the ambulance surgeon and they went out into the hallway. Then the ambulance surgeon beckoned one of the policemen who had arrived with the ambulance, and the policeman went into the hall with them. After a few minutes, the policeman returned and asked, politely enough, that they all wait upstairs. There were, he said meaninglessly, a few formalities.
They waited upstairs, in the living room. They waited for more than two hours, puzzled and in growing uneasiness. Then a thinnish man of medium height, about whom there was nothing special in appearance, came into the room and looked around at them.
“Why, Bill!” Pam North said.
The thinnish man looked at her, and then at Jerry North, and said, “Oh.” Then he said there were one or two points. And then Pam said, “Oh,” on a note strangely flat.How one introduces a police officer, who happens to be an old and close friend, to other friends who happen to be murder suspects – else why was Bill Weigand there? – had long been a moot question with Pam and Jerry North. Pam said, “This is Bill Weigand, everybody. Captain Weigand. He's – he's a policeman. So there must be – ” And stopped.
“All right, Pam,” Bill Weigand said. Then, “you all saw her fall. Tell me about it.” H
e looked around at them, back at Pam North. It was she who told him. Her eyes had been “staring”? Her face flushed? Her movements uncertain? Her voice hoarse? “Yes,” Pam said, confirming each statement. Bill Weigand looked from one to another of the six in the room. He received nods of confirmation. One of the men – tall, dark–haired but with gray coming, a little older than the others – seemed about to speak. Bill waited. The man shook his head. Bill got them identified then. The tall man was Stanley Pitt. This was his house. “But,” Bill said, “she hadn't been drinking. The medical examiner is quite certain of that.” He seemed to wait for comment.
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