The Darkness Knows

by Cheryl Honigford

  “Now?” Vivian said. “I haven’t got much time.” She wondered for the hundredth time where Charlie might be. She supposed she’d just have to go home and wait for him. It was the only safe thing to do. She glanced down at the paper in front of her. There was something she was missing, a connection she wasn’t making… Peggy had used the typewriter, as had Mr. Hart’s secretary, but who else?

  “Well, you’re always so in demand,” Peggy said with a smile. “I finally have you all to myself, and I want to take advantage of the opportunity. I promise it won’t take long.” Her gray eyes were bright, as if she was excited or about to cry.

  Vivian smiled. She knew the girl was throwing shameless flattery at her, but Vivian never minded a little flattery, even at a time like this. “Okay,” she agreed. “Just for a few minutes though. Then I really have to get going.”

  Peggy followed her into the studio and closed the door. The click of the latch echoed in the empty room.

  The girl cleared her throat and straightened her shoulders, standing a bit taller. “You shouldn’t have gotten involved.” Peggy paused.

  Vivian waited for her to continue her monologue, but the girl simply stared at her, a slight smile on her thin lips. Vivian’s smile faltered.

  “Go on, Peggy,” she said. “I’m listening.”

  Peggy’s brow furrowed. “You shouldn’t have gotten involved,” she repeated. It was obviously a line she’d been practicing.

  “Yes, all right, Peggy. That line sounds fine. What’s next?”

  Peggy shook her head, sighing. “No, Viv. This isn’t part of a script. I’m saying, You shouldn’t have gotten involved.”

  “What do you mean?” Vivian asked, ice crawling up her spine as she realized they were completely alone on the twelfth floor—in an almost soundproof studio. “Involved with what?”

  “Fiddling with the typewriter just now…”

  “Oh.” Vivian laughed nervously and took a step toward the door. “I know it’s not my job anymore, but I can’t seem to tear myself away.”

  “I know very well what you were doing,” Peggy said in a low voice. She leaned back against the door and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Peggy, what’s going on here? I need to get back to—”

  “I suppose it really is my fault you’re mixed up in this, isn’t it? After all, I mentioned you in the letter.”

  “The letter?” Vivian swallowed, her throat as dry as sandpaper.

  “I picked Lorna Lafferty out of thin air, you know. Must be the alliteration in the name that makes it so memorable. I had nothing against you. I still don’t…”

  Details tumbled, clicking into place in Vivian’s mind, little things she’d overlooked—expressions, choices of words, the Os, the typewriter, the threatening letters. It all suddenly came together in one thundering, inescapable conclusion. Peggy hadn’t just typed the threatening letters. Oh no. She’d done far worse. “You killed Marjorie,” Vivian whispered. “Why?”

  Peggy shrugged, her eyes flicking to the floor. “Your dashing Mr. Haverman knows why.”

  “Charlie?” Vivian breathed.

  Peggy smiled. “I knew there was something going on between you two,” she said as if she’d caught Vivian confessing a sin. Then she frowned and said, “I suppose you could ask him, but I don’t think he’ll answer. Not now.”

  Vivian felt the hair on the back of her neck bristle. “Where is he?”

  Peggy shrugged again.

  “Where is he?” Vivian repeated, keeping her voice as steady as possible.

  “Slowly suffocating in that shabby rented room he calls an office, I suppose,” Peggy said. “It seems he’s opened the gas line to end his guilt and misery over Marjorie’s death—or, that’s what it’ll say in the papers tomorrow, anyway.”

  Vivian made a move for the door, but Peggy pulled a revolver from the pocket of her cardigan, aiming it dead center at Vivian’s chest. “Don’t even try it,” she said.

  Vivian stopped midstep and raised her hands reflexively. The weapon looked exactly like the prop gun Frances had leveled at her a few minutes earlier, but she couldn’t take the chance that this gun held only blanks. Vivian’s eyes darted around the room, looking for something, anything, to aid in an escape. There was nothing. The studio was empty except for the piano in the far corner. The small control room was dark behind the square pane of glass. Panic seized her. Peggy had killed Marjorie, and now she’d…

  Charlie. Oh God, Charlie.

  “His guilt and misery,” Vivian repeated in a dull voice, feeling like her legs might give way under her. She looked at Peggy, at the gun, helplessly.

  “Oh, I left a letter with Charlie too,” Peggy said. “His suicide note explains how he’d killed Marjorie and how the guilt was making his life a living hell.”

  Vivian stared at the girl. Suicide letter? But why would Charlie have killed Marjorie? He didn’t even know her, or she thought he hadn’t. What had that letter said? What Marjorie was… What Charlie is…? Vivian shook her head. None of this made any sense.

  “You sent me that warning earlier tonight with the clipping from the Patriot.” She watched the gun, watched Peggy’s finger hover over the trigger.

  “I did that for your own good.”

  “My own good?”

  Peggy shifted the gun slightly, moving her finger away from the trigger. “It was an apology. I got you mixed up in this, mixed up with him, and I wanted to lessen the blow a little for you when he was found dead. You see, this way, you’d already have suspected him of being a murderer. And when it was confirmed with his suicide note confession, then maybe you wouldn’t take it so much to heart.”

  Vivian clenched her hands into fists at her sides. An apology? Lessen the blow? Vivian regarded the girl through narrowed eyes. Vivian felt sick, but she couldn’t fall apart now. Charlie was out there—likely hurt, possibly dying. Vivian was the only one who could save him, and to save him she had to get out of this room. At the very least she had to get to the telephone on the desk outside and call for help. She glanced at the door behind Peggy. She had to get out there somehow. Vivian stared into the unblinking eye of the gun and stiffened her spine. She took a deep breath.

  “You were wrong, Peggy,” she said, trying to keep the trembling out of her voice. “I hadn’t suspected. I had no idea.”

  Peggy’s gray eyes flicked to hers, and she studied Vivian for a moment. “You didn’t?”

  Vivian shook her head.

  Peggy sighed, pushing out her lower lip so that the wisps of fine brown hair around her temples fluttered. “But you were getting close. I could see it all over your face.”

  Vivian eased one foot tentatively off the floor, hands still raised, and Peggy cocked the gun, the metallic click-click loud in the empty room. “Don’t.”

  Vivian’s heart thudded painfully in her chest. Her eyes shifted to the clock above the window of the empty control room. It was already after eight o’clock, the second hand moving forward in merciless little jerks. Charlie had gotten that note and left just shy of noon. That was eight full hours ago. She felt the warmth drain from her face, her entire body.

  She wasn’t going to be in time to save Charlie no matter what she did now. If Peggy had done what she’d said she’d done, he was already gone. Vivian’s heart thumped once, painfully hard, and then seemed to stop entirely. Gone. And now she understood that Peggy likely had no intention of letting Vivian out of this room alive—not now that she knew the truth.

  “I don’t understand any of this, Peggy,” Vivian said, her voice and her mind somehow still working.

  “Haverman took you to the foundling home, didn’t he?” The gun was still pointed squarely at Vivian, but Peggy’s arm had visibly relaxed, the elbow bending slightly under the pistol’s weight.

  Vivian blinked. Nodded. The foundling home. She had to keep Peggy
talking, keep her distracted. Find a way out. There had to be a way out of this. Peggy looked at her expectantly for a long moment. “You really don’t know?” When Vivian shook her head, Peggy said, “Maybe you two weren’t as close as I thought.” She emitted another long sigh, and then the words tumbled out in a rush.

  “Marjorie Fox had a baby. Of course, she was little Effie Juergens then, Father’s dutiful secretary and more. Father likes his secretaries…but you know all about that, don’t you?” Peggy’s bland face crumpled with disgust. “Father didn’t care a whit for her. I know he didn’t. How could he? He already had Mother. So he took care of it, or at least he told Effie that he had. A member of the board of directors can easily get access to the confidential files.”

  Vivian’s head was spinning. That explained it. She touched the Bible in her pocket. Marjorie was really Effie, and Effie had had Mr. Hart’s baby when she was his secretary so many years ago. Mr. Hart had joined the Chicago Foundlings Home board of directors to cover up his own secret—an illegitimate child.

  “He told Marjorie that the baby had died. But the baby hadn’t died,” Peggy said.

  Vivian remembered Charlie’s closed expression outside the foundling home, his hardened jaw, how he’d refused to look at her. He’d been protecting himself. How could Vivian have been so blind?

  “You destroyed the letter Marjorie was carrying from the foundling home and replaced it with the fan letter, didn’t you?”

  Peggy raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t replace the letter. She didn’t have it when I confronted her in the lounge, and it wasn’t really from the foundling home. I wrote it using some of Daddy’s blank stationery. He keeps it in his desk, you know.”

  “You wrote it?” Vivian shook her head. “Why? What did it say?”

  “That the child she’d given up had found out who she was and would go to the press if she didn’t meet with him.” Peggy was proud, Vivian thought. Proud of her complicated scheming. Proud to have someone to share it with.

  “But Charlie didn’t know then that Marjorie was his mother. Why on earth would you do something like that?”

  “Why would I make it up, you mean? I knew that was her worst nightmare. Marjorie was never the maternal type. And she still had ambitions to go beyond radio, deluded as they may have been, especially at her age. A scandal like a bastard child would have sunk her. So I wrote that letter to shake her up, to show her what it felt like to be harassed—just like she harassed my father, my mother, me. Then I found myself alone with her in the lounge, and I decided to needle her about it. I just wanted to get a rise out of her. But she didn’t play along.” Peggy shrugged. “I got angry, and I hit her with whatever I could find.”

  “The whiskey bottle.”

  “Ironic, really. We all knew the bottle would get her someday.” She smiled. “Anyway, that was an accident. I hadn’t meant to do it.” Peggy was so engrossed in her story that the barrel of the gun had wandered slightly to the right, no longer centered on Vivian’s chest. Should she make a break for it?

  “And when you realized she was dead, you rushed to the typewriter and cranked out some nonsense to throw the police off.”

  “Good, wasn’t it? A red herring, and apparently it worked like a charm. You really believed there was a Walter that couldn’t live without you.”

  Vivian ignored the dig. “And then you snuck out down the back stairs.”

  Peggy nodded, and something else clicked into place for Vivian.

  “You took Graham’s cuff links, didn’t you?”

  The shock on Peggy’s face was almost comical. “He left them in the studio. I just picked them up so I could return them to him,” she said defensively.

  “Of course,” Vivian said. “And you dropped one in the stairway, or hadn’t you noticed?”

  It all made sense, all of the little things along the way that had tripped her up and kept her from guessing the truth. Kept her suspicion aimed mistakenly at Graham, Frances, Morty, Mr. Hart, Charlie—nearly everyone in at the station except the real culprit.

  “You know, Marjorie showed that fake letter from the foundling home to your father. I heard them arguing outside the ladies’ room.” Vivian thought of the smell in Mr. Hart’s office when she’d woken from her fainting spell after finding Marjorie. He must have taken the letter and burned it in the ashtray on his desk.

  “I should’ve known she’d run to Daddy,” Peggy said, her face twisting with annoyance. “I didn’t want to get him involved.”

  “Is that who Marjorie was blackmailing? Your father?”

  Peggy laughed suddenly, a sharp bark in the silence. Vivian jumped. “Marjorie Fox was blackmailing herself,” Peggy said.

  “Herself?”

  “She was always trying to manipulate Daddy. That’s how a drunk like her kept a plum role like Evelyn Garrett,” she said. “She’d come to the house begging for favors, money… It was disgusting. And Daddy went along with it because he felt he owed her something. And he didn’t want Mother to find out…to upset her… She’s so terribly sick.” Peggy’s voice cracked.

  “One evening a few weeks ago, Marjorie showed up with a silly note cut from some letters in a magazine and convinced Daddy she was being blackmailed over their secret. That’s when I got the idea for the letter from the foundling home. That horrible woman deserved to get a real scare. And that’s all I really meant to do,” she said, her voice shaking. “I just meant to scare her.”

  Peggy shook her head, her face reddening. “But she underestimated me,” she said, sticking out her lower lip like a petulant child. “Everyone underestimates me.”

  “You shot at me outside the masquerade.”

  “I didn’t shoot at you.”

  “Charlie,” Vivian whispered.

  “I knew Daddy knew about Charlie, but I didn’t know until the night of the masquerade that Charlie knew about Daddy. I overheard Charlie confronting Daddy. Charlie was trying to weasel in on our family too. He wanted my father’s attention, his recognition. He wanted too much. I’d already killed Marjorie and gotten away with it. What was another murder? But then you got in the way and I missed my shot—literally. But that led to an even better idea. Soon they’ll find Charlie’s lifeless body next to the suicide note confessing his murder of Marjorie. Two birds with one stone.”

  Peggy shook her head, giving Vivian a small smile. “You know, it wasn’t planned, but it really was fun watching you think this was all about you. You do have quite an ego. You stole all of the attention for yourself.” Peggy tipped her head to one side. “You’re a lot like Marjorie, you know,” she said.

  Vivian narrowed her eyes at Peggy. “Is that an insult or a compliment?”

  Peggy smiled briefly. “Oh, it’s a compliment. Marjorie was a talentless drunk, but she knew what she wanted. And she knew how to get it…just like you.”

  Vivian glanced toward the door, catching a flicker of movement behind the smoked-glass panel, the distinct shadow of someone passing in the hallway beyond. Passing and moving on. No, stop, Vivian pleaded in her mind. Come back, whoever you are.

  “I’m sorry to have gotten you all mixed up in this,” Peggy said, raising the gun at Vivian again. “But you have to understand I can’t let you go now.”

  “What if I promise to never say a word about any of this?” Vivian said, making every effort to keep her voice steady.

  “Then I’d say you’re a liar.”

  Vivian’s stare shifted from the barrel of the gun to the girl’s cold, gray eyes. Peggy watched Vivian expectantly. It was now or never, Vivian’s only chance. She hitched in her breath, opened her mouth, and screamed. It was truly bloodcurdling, one of her best.

  Peggy winced, letting the gun drop. “That was right on cue,” she said. “You know, it’s as if this were all a scene written for The Darkness Knows. I couldn’t have imagined it playing out better. But Harvey Diamon
d isn’t coming to save you. No one can hear you, and no one will hear this.” Peggy raised the gun again, biting her lower lip in concentration as she took aim.

  The heavy oak door flew open behind Peggy, making contact with her backside with a satisfying thump and knocking her off balance. The gun flew from her hand and skittered across the parquet floor. Vivian watched it land near the piano bench, spinning twice before finally coming to rest. The spell broken, Vivian lunged forward. She felt the heel of her right shoe snap off and the pain shoot up her leg as her already tender ankle twisted again. She crawled toward the gun, her hand reaching it a split second before Peggy’s did. Vivian kicked out savagely with her left leg and made contact with Peggy’s stomach. Vivian struggled to her feet, the loaded gun in her own hands. She pointed it down at Peggy, trying to look as if she knew how to use it.

  Imogene stood in the doorway, openmouthed with shock.

  “What—”

  “Oh, Genie, thank God,” Vivian said. “Call the police. Ask for Sergeant Trask and tell him to get to Charlie’s office right away. He’s in terrible trouble.”

  Imogene glanced from Vivian to Peggy and back again. Then she nodded, eyes wide, and scurried from the room.

  Vivian swallowed and tightened her grip on the gun. She narrowed her eyes at Peggy, who curled into the fetal position on the floor, her arms over her head.

  “That was close, wasn’t it, Peggy?” Vivian said, her voice shaking. “You almost got away with it.”

  Peggy lowered her arms and glared at Vivian, teeth bared in a snarl. “Your beloved detective is still dead,” she said. “That’s all I really wanted.”

  Vivian knew it was a taunt, just empty bravado, but her stomach dropped just the same. Charlie could very well be dead, and what would she do then?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Vivian nudged the hospital room door open, heart thudding in her chest. There were two beds in the room, Charlie’s nearest to the door. He was lying on his back, eyes closed. She watched automatically for the rise and fall of his chest. Her fear was irrational, of course. The police had already told her they’d gotten to his office in time. But she watched anyway, only satisfied when she saw his chest rise and heard a tiny rumble of a snore drift toward her. She stepped into the room and eased the door closed behind her.