Often there would be a house perched on what looked like an inaccessible crag, its cheerful yellow paint defying the brown and black landscape. A forbidding landscape conquered by a hardy people. I had no sense of belonging here.
From the hotel window I could look down into the busy square where the statue of a violinist stood fiddling. He too stood upon craggy rock. The weather was brisk and chill, for all that it was sunny, and the people on the streets were dressed for winter. I had left forsythia blooming in New York, but here there was snow on the mountains and one’s breath rose mistily on the air. Gulls swooped past at window level, and I could hear their raucous screaming.
Over the roofs of opposite buildings the mountain, Flöyen, rose steeply to its rock-faced summit, with rows of red-roofed houses climbing nearly to those heights where dark fir trees took over and marched to the top. To the right, clustering thickly on lower slopes, were more houses, set helter-skelter, as though their streets ran crookedly. Over there was the district of Kalfaret—the district where my Norwegian grandmother had once lived.
I had asked the porter at the desk downstairs if he knew the house of the former American movie star, Laura Worth. He had nodded at her name. Yes, indeed he knew.
“She lives in Kalfaret—the old patrician part of the city. If you walk toward the park you can see the houses. Perhaps you can see them from your room upstairs.”
I asked him to give me her address and telephone number, and he looked them up for me, wrote them on a pad.
“You must remember that Miss Worth is half Norwegian,” he said, smiling as he pushed the paper toward me across the desk. “She belongs to Bergen now.”
I thanked him without comment and returned to the self-service lift with the door that did not open automatically. When I reached my room, I went at once to the phone. Direct action was what I wanted. I had taken time for lunch since I’d come in from the airport, and that had been slow, using up more than an hour. Now I wanted to set the wheels in motion, start what I had come here for.
A woman’s voice with an American accent answered my ring. My heart began to thud as I would not have expected it to. When I asked for Miss Worth, my business was promptly demanded. I said I was Leigh Hollins, from New York, and that I wanted to see Laura Worth. She would know who I was.
The woman repeated my name, and I sensed shock in her tone. Miss Worth could not talk to anyone just now, the voice explained. Would I be at my hotel for the next hour? If so, I would be called back.
I had to be satisfied with that. More than an hour had passed and I was growing restless. It began to seem that Laura Worth might not be willing to see me, that my direct approach was too sudden to bring me anything but refusal. No matter. There was still Gunnar Thoresen to fall back upon. My father had been sure that he would help me.
The shrilling of the phone sent me rushing toward it, and once more my heart began to beat in that thick, heavy way. Would her voice sound the same as I remembered it from all those films? I would recognize those smoky tones anywhere, I was sure. But it was a man who answered my “Hello”—only the desk clerk from downstairs.
“Dr. Fletcher is here to see you, Miss Hollins,” he said.
Dr. Fletcher? That was a name out of the past. Could he mean that the same Dr. Fletcher who had rescued Laura Worth after the tragedy was here in Bergen?
“He asks if he may come up to see you,” the clerk went on. “It concerns Miss Worth, and is very important.”
“Yes—yes, of course,” I managed. “Ask him to come straight up.”
I hung up the phone, adjusting myself to this new turn of events as I moved about the room, whisking a few things out of sight, straightening the chairs and coffee table in the sitting room section.
The knock on my door sounded in less than five minutes and I went to open it. I was prepared for a large man from the newspaper accounts I had read, and the picture I’d seen. He had been forty then, now he was sixty—and perhaps even larger than he had been because he seemed to have filled out considerably. His black hair was untouched by gray, but he combed it from the side across the top of his head to conceal the balding, and he wore a full black mustache that hid his mouth. In the picture I remembered, he had been cleanshaven, and his mouth had looked fairly grim. Perhaps with good cause at that time. There seemed a certain wariness now in his gray eyes, but no lack of self-confidence. This was a man who knew what he wanted, was sure of what he meant to do, but who was, nevertheless, not altogether sure of me.
“Please come in,” I said and gestured toward the small sofa.
He crossed the room and stood for a moment beside the window. “You’ve quite a view of the mountain here, in spite of those buildings. Bergen is a beautiful town. And I see you can watch Ole Bull at his fiddling.”
I knew he referred to the statue of the well-known musician and composer below my window. I noticed that he gave the name the Norwegian pronunciation. Just as Gunnar was pronounced “Goonar,” the composer was “O-le Bool.”
But I did not feel like indulging in chitchat.
“Do you know who I am?” I asked directly.
He turned from the window as I sat down in a chair opposite the sofa. “Yes, of course. You are Victor Hollins’s daughter.”
“And Laura Worth’s,” I added.
He lowered his large frame carefully onto the sofa springs. “I’ve always wondered if that story was really true.”
“Of course it’s true,” I said.
His shrug was questioning, and now he examined me even more closely. I felt the chill of imminent dismissal behind his look, and suspected that if Dr. Fletcher had anything to say about it, I would not see Laura Worth.
“Why have you come here?” he asked, as flatly direct as I had been.
“My father died a month ago, and I found he had left me a letter. He wanted me to meet my mother, but there was another reason besides for my coming here. I’ve done some writing, though of course I could never follow in his steps. I’ve had some things published and now I’m doing a book of interviews with famous women stars who were in motion pictures in the thirties and forties. I’d like to do a sketch of Laura Worth to make the book complete.”
“Miss Worth never gives interviews. She hasn’t done so for twenty years. You must know that.”
His eyes troubled me. They were a pale gray which seemed to hold light in them in some strange, brilliant way. They were eyes that missed nothing. They noted my navy blue knit, the dark blond hair that swept my cheeks, they studied my face and obviously found it young and not very interesting. They probed for my motives. They made me defensive. Dr. Fletcher was even more sure of himself now, and confident of holding the winning cards in whatever game he played. I did not like him at all, and I didn’t even know the game.
“Perhaps she will want to see me,” I said. “I’ve brought her something from my father. In a sense, I’m a message to her from him.”
“It’s a bit late in the day for such a message,” Dr. Fletcher told me, smiling thinly. “I’m sorry that you’ve come a long way for nothing. Miss Worth isn’t well and such a meeting would be needlessly upsetting for her. I can’t permit it.”
“As her doctor?”
The smile took on a slight edge of triumph. “As her husband, Miss Hollins.”
I gaped at him, far from poised and sure of myself. “I—I didn’t know she was married.”
“The fact hasn’t been widely broadcast,” he said. “Miss Worth did me the honor to become my wife two months ago. Fortunately, it was my sister who answered the phone when you called, and of course she recognized your name and came to me at once. We haven’t troubled Mrs. Fletcher with the news that you are here. Nor shall we. I must make it very clear, Miss Hollins. Our door will be closed to you. And my wife never answers the telephone herself. I have her health and well-being very much at heart, and I don’t intend her to be disturbed by specters out of the past. She has suffered enough.”
So now I was a specter
out of the past. I studied him helplessly for a moment, and he shrugged again under the force of my stare and rose to his feet.
“I hope we understand each other, Miss Hollins. I thought it best to make this clear to you in person. Mrs. Fletcher, I might say, is well protected from all outside intrusions that she might find wearing and disturbing. It will be useless for you to stay in Bergen. Even if I were sure that you are her daughter, I know that she rejected motherhood long ago. She would not care to see you.”
He went past me to the door, and I followed him automatically, unable to think of anything to say. When he had gone, his footsteps fading quickly on the soft hall carpet, I flung myself upon the bed and stared angrily at the ceiling.
There was one way in which I resembled my mother all too well. My father had told me so ruefully more than once. The word “no” was something we could never accept. Even when I was small I had been a difficult child to forbid. Ruth had learned early that I could be persuaded, but I couldn’t be negatively commanded.
Laura Worth had once been like that. She was apparently so no longer. She had grown old and ill, and she had finally married Miles Fletcher whom she would not marry in those long-ago days in Hollywood. A husband! This I had not expected to cope with. And especially not with this man who had figured rather unpleasantly in those newspaper clippings I had read so many times. He had been in love with Laura and he had exchanged angry words with Cass Alroy at the studio the afternoon of the murder. But in spite of that matching footprint size in the dirt outside the fire door through which the murderer must have escaped, he’d had a safe alibi. All these things I remembered.
There was no use in thinking about all that, however, or permitting myself to be defeated by this setback. Possibly even Gunnar Thoresen could not help me now, but I must try him as the next step. If he failed me, there would be some other way.
I found the name of his company in the phone book and put the call through. After a small delay, he came on the wire, and I liked his manner of speaking. His voice had a deep timbre, a resonance that was pleasing. His accent was English, rather than American, his speech slightly formal.
“I am Leigh Hollins,” I began, “and I’ve come to Bergen—” but he broke in at once.
“Leigh Hollins! You are Victor’s daughter? I am very sad to hear of your father’s death.”
“I’ve brought you a letter from him,” I said.
“I will be grateful for that. May I take you to dinner tonight? We will have much to talk about.”
“Thank you. But first—I’m here for another reason as well. My father wanted me to see Laura Worth. Perhaps he has told you that I’m writing too. Now I want to do an interview with her for a book I’m planning about women movie stars of her day. But seeing her appears hard to arrange. Apparently I’m not to be allowed to meet her.”
He seemed to consider my words, and I wondered if he knew of the relationship between me and Laura.
“Perhaps my father told you?” I added. “She is my mother.”
“I know this,” he said gently. “And of course you must see her, regardless of Dr. Fletcher.”
I liked his quiet confidence, and the fact that he knew at once where my source of trouble lay.
“I will think of something,” he said, and I found that I believed him implicitly.
I told him of Miles Fletcher’s visit to the hotel and just what he had said.
The deep, quiet voice at the other end of the line pondered aloud. “I have a friend in Laura’s household—Irene Varos. I think she will help us.”
“Who is Irene Varos?”
“It is difficult to give her a label. She is a Yugoslavian woman whom Laura found years ago when she was traveling in Europe. She engaged her as part secretary, part housekeeper, part personal friend and assistant. Irene does not like Dr. Fletcher. I will prevail upon her. You will see.”
“You’re saving my life,” I told him.
He laughed briefly, and was grave again at once. “You have come at the right time. Laura needs you. You should be very good for her. You may be able to help her.”
His words dismayed me. I didn’t want to give him a false impression to start off with. “I’m afraid—” I began, but he broke in before I could continue.
“I’m sorry, but there is a long-distance call for me on another wire. I will have to go. If six-thirty is convenient, I shall pick you up at your hotel—the Norge, is it?—and then we may talk. Do not worry. I will make arrangements. Good-bye now, Leigh Hollins.”
I could do no more than thank him and agree. For a moment or two after I’d hung up, I sat staring at the phone. Gunnar Thoreson might very well provide the solution to my problem. He had sounded assured, and determined to see that I met Laura. But he was also harboring a mother-daughter illusion about us that had nothing to do with the facts. Perhaps it was just as well that he’d mistaken my motives. If he knew how I really felt about Laura Worth, he might not be so willing to help me. Nevertheless, I felt a little guilty about deceiving him. He was being kind and helpful, and he was my father’s friend. I had no wish to make him believe what, unfortunately, could not be true. Yet at the same time, I needed all the help I could get if I was to confront Laura Worth with my double purpose.
Now I had the afternoon on my hands, and I didn’t mean to spend it sitting in a hotel room. Bergen was outside, waiting for me, and I might as well start getting acquainted. So far, I had felt no stirring of recognition, no feeling that through my mother I had come from this place. The crowding circle of black mountains—the Seven Mountains that hemmed Bergen in—had only depressed me. But there was something active I could do.
Downstairs I found no cabs at the hotel door, but the doorman told me there was a taxi stand a half block away on Torgalmenning, the main business street of the town. I crossed through traffic and hailed a cab. The driver studied the slip of paper I held out to him and nodded as I settled back in the seat. I was on my way to the area in which Laura Worth lived.
We drove past the expanse of open park with its lake, its central fountain, bandstand, and great museums, and moved along a hillside busy with traffic. There were few stop lights, yet the traffic was not unduly wild at the cross streets. Each driver seemed to bluff gently to see who got across first. The roads were narrow, not built for motor travel, but most of the cars were moderate in size. We passed the old tollgate that had once marked the edge of town and the driver identified it for me. We drove among the lime trees of Kalfaret.
The hillside houses were mostly square and white, though some were brightly colored. They were two-storied, with steeply peaked tile roofs rising to a ridge at the top and well adorned with chimneys. The cab took a side street up the hill and now there was scarcely room for passing, but few cars. The driver slowed and motioned toward a house ahead.
A tall sustaining wall bordered the street, with the house he indicated high above. I could not see it well from the cab window and I asked him to go past. When we were a little distance away around a curve, I told him to stop and wait for me. Then I got out and walked back.
The house was white and set against a hillside which still wore the dead browns of winter. I could glimpse the steeply slanted blue tiles of the roof rising high above me, with only the upper dormer windows visible, looking down upon me blankly, curtained and secluded. There was a garage set into an indentation near the steps up the hill, and a small car stood outside its door. Steep steps running parallel with the street climbed toward the house.
I walked past on the far side and then turned to look back. Nearby bushes around the opposite house offered a shield and I stood still for a few moments studying the area. Crooked streets ran this way and that, and the houses were so built that each in turn looked upon the chimneys of neighbors lower down the steep hillside.
My grandmother had once lived in this house. Now Laura Worth lived here. I said the words to myself, but nothing happened inside me. They were empty of meaning, of emotion. No sudden feeling of
kinship engulfed me. I did not belong to Norway.
Sounds from above caught my ear, and I saw that four people were coming along the side of the house, down a walk that slanted toward the steep flight of steps. Instinctively I stepped farther behind the scraggly brown bushes that shielded me from view.
The man was Dr. Fletcher. A woman leaned upon his arm. She was enveloped in a coat made from some hazy autumn color of fur, with the pale, soft collar pulled high about her face. On the other side she was guarded by a younger woman who was quite thin, and slightly taller. A second woman came skipping along energetically behind this entourage—a small brown, wizened little person in a colorful Norwegian sweater and green slacks. I made identifications to myself as well as I could. The woman in fur was of course Laura Worth. I could not see her face, but she walked like an invalid, as if she were much older than I knew her to be. The second woman would be the housekeeper-secretary Gunnar had mentioned—Irene Varos. The lively, wizened little person must be the doctor’s sister.
Painfully, the woman in fur descended the steps, leaning upon her supporters. When she reached the street level, she raised her head for the first time. For the first time I saw her face and held my breath. It was a white, thin face, devoid of makeup, its good bone structure visible beneath skin that had long since lost the bloom of youth. But it was a face I would have known anywhere. The dark eyes looked sunken, but the shape and tilt of them was there. And age could never change the structuring of those facial bones, or destroy the memory of beauty that lay beneath that translucent skin.
The two who helped her led her toward the car, assisted her into it. Then Irene Varos got in beside her, and Dr. Fletcher took the driver’s seat. The little woman stood on the steps, watching her brother as he backed the car out and drove away down the street. Then she ran back up the steps and disappeared above me around the side of the house. Just as the car turned away, Laura glanced out the window on her side. She seemed to look directly at me, and for an instant our eyes met, though I doubt that she was aware of me standing there. Then the car was gone down the hill, and I was left staring at a house empty of her presence.
Listen for the Whisperer Page 3