She started to rise but her heel caught in the rung of the chair and she fell forward, her face grazing the sharp edge of the desk. She lay still, tasting the metallic saltiness of blood, listening to the throbbing of the pulse in her temples and the panic beat of her heart.
After a time she pulled herself to her feet and moved slowly and stiffly across the room toward the mirror above the telephone stand. There was a slight scratch on her forehead and one corner of her mouth was bleeding where the underlip had been cut by a tooth.
. . . “I have a crystal ball. I see you now. Real bright and clear. You’ve been in an accident. Your forehead is gashed, your mouth is bleeding. . . .”
A cry for help rose inside Miss Clarvoe’s throat. Help me, someone! Help me, mother—Douglas—Mr. Blackshear . . .
But the cry was never uttered. It stuck in her throat, and presently Miss Clarvoe swallowed it as she had swallowed a great many cries.
I am not really hurt. I must be sensible. Father always boasted to people how sensible I am. Therefore I must not become hysterical. I must think of something very sensible to do.
She went back to her desk and picked up her pen and took out a fresh sheet of note paper.
Dear Mr. Blackshear:
You may recall that at my father’s funeral you offered to give me advice and help if the occasion should ever arise. I do not know whether you said this because it is the kind of thing one says at funerals, or whether you sincerely meant it. I hope it was the latter, because the occasion, you may have already inferred, has arisen. I believe that I have become the victim of a lunatic. . . .
Chapter 2
. . . IT IS distressing to me to have to confide these sordid details to anyone. I do not lightly cast my burdens on other people, but since you gave my late father such expert counsel, I would very much appreciate your advice in the situation I have described to you.
If you would be so kind as to telephone me when you receive this letter and let me have your opinion in the matter, I would be extremely grateful. I intend, of course, to express my gratitude in more practical terms than words.
Yours very truly,
Helen Clarvoe
The letter was delivered to Mr. Blackshear’s office and then sent on to his apartment on Los Feliz because he had gone home early. He no longer appeared regularly at his office. At fifty, he was retiring gracefully, by degrees, partly because he could afford to, but mostly because boredom had set in, like a too early winter. Things had begun to repeat themselves: new situations reminded him of past situations, and people he met for the first time were exactly like other people he’d known for years. Nothing was new any more.
Summer had passed. The winter of boredom had set in and frost had formed in the crevices of Blackshear’s mind. His wife was dead, his two sons had married and made lives of their own, and his friends were mostly business acquaintances whom he met for lunch at Scandia or the Brown Derby or the Roosevelt. Dinners and evening parties were rare because Blackshear had to rise long before dawn in order to be at his office by 6 o’clock when the New York stock exchange opened.
By the middle of the afternoon he was tired and irritable, and when Miss Clarvoe’s letter was delivered he almost didn’t open it. Through her father, who had been one of Blackshear’s clients, he had known Helen Clarvoe for years, and her constrained prose and her hobbled mind depressed him. He had never been able to think of her as a woman. She was simply Miss Clarvoe, and he had a dozen or more clients just like her, lonely rich ladies desiring to be richer in order to take the curse off their loneliness.
“Damn the woman,” he said aloud. “Damn all dull women.”
But he opened the letter because on the envelope, in Miss Clarvoe’s neat, private-school backhand, were the words Confidential, Very Important.
. . . Lest you think I am exaggerating the matter, I hasten to assure you that I have given an exact account both of the telephone call and my subsequent conversation with the switchboard operator, June Sullivan. You will understand, I am sure, how deeply shocked and perplexed I am. I have harmed no one in my life, not intentionally at any rate, and I am truly amazed that someone apparently bears me a grudge. . . .
When he had finished reading the letter he called Miss Clarvoe at her hotel, more from curiosity than any desire to help. Miss Clarvoe was not the kind of woman who would accept help. She existed by, for, and unto herself, shut off from the world by a wall of money and the iron bars of her egotism.
“Miss Clarvoe?”
“Yes.”
“This is Paul Blackshear.”
“Oh.” It was hardly a word, but a deep sigh of relief.
“I received your letter a few minutes ago.”
“Yes. I—thank you for calling.”
It was more like the end of a conversation than the beginning. Somewhat annoyed by her reticence, Blackshear said, “You asked me for advice, Miss Clarvoe.”
“Yes. I know.”
“I have had very little experience in such matters, but I strongly urge you to . . .”
“Please,” Miss Clarvoe said. “Please don’t say anything.”
“But you asked me . . .”
“Someone might be listening.”
“I have a private line.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t.”
She must mean the girl, June Sullivan, Blackshear thought. Of course the girl would be listening, if she wasn’t busy elsewhere; Miss Clarvoe had probably antagonized her, or, at the very least, aroused her curiosity.
“There have been new developments.” Miss Clarvoe’s voice was guarded. “I can talk about them only in the strictest privacy.”
“I see.”
“I know how busy you are and I hate to impose on you, but—well, I must, Mr. Blackshear. I must.”
“Please go on.” Behind her wall of money, behind her iron bars, Miss Clarvoe was the maiden in distress, crying out, reluctantly and awkwardly, for help. Blackshear made a wry grimace as he pictured himself in the role of the equally reluctant rescuer, a tired, detached, balding knight in Harris tweeds. “Tell me what you want me to do, Miss Clarvoe.”
“If you could come here to my hotel, where we can talk—privately . . .”
“We’d probably have more privacy if you came over here to my apartment.”
“I can’t. I’m—afraid to go out.”
“Very well, then. What time would you like me to come?”
“As soon as you can.”
“I’ll see you shortly, then, Miss Clarvoe.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much. I can’t tell you how . . .”
“Then please don’t. Good-bye.”
He hung up quickly. He didn’t like the sound of Miss Clarvoe’s gratitude spilling out of the telephone, harsh and discordant, like dimes spilling out of a slot machine. The jackpot of Miss Clarvoe’s emotions—thank you very much.
What a graceless woman she was, Blackshear thought, hoarding herself like a miser, spending only what she had to, to keep alive.
Although they communicated quite frequently by letter, he hadn’t seen her since her father’s funeral the previous year. Tall, pale, tearless, she had stood apart from the others at the grave; her only display of feeling had been an occasional sour glance at the weeping widow, Verna Clarvoe, leaning on the arm of her son Douglas. The more tears her mother shed, the more rigid Helen Clarvoe’s back had become, and the tighter her lips.
When the services were over, Blackshear had approached Miss Clarvoe, aware of her mute suffering.
“I’m sorry, Helen.”
She had turned her face away. “Yes. So am I.”
“I know how fond you and your father were of each other.”
“That’s not entirely accurate.”
“No?”
“No. I was fond of him, Mr. Blackshear, not he of me.”
The last time he saw her she was climbing stiffly into the back seat of the long black Cadillac that was used to transport the chief mourners, Mrs. Clar
voe, Helen and Douglas. They made a strange trio.
A week later Blackshear received a letter from Miss Clarvoe stating that she had moved, permanently, to the Monica Hotel and wished him to handle her investments.
The Monica was the last place in the world he would have expected Miss Clarvoe to choose. It was a small hotel on a busy boulevard in the heart of Hollywood, and it catered not to the quiet solitary women like Miss Clarvoe, but to transients who stayed a night or two and moved on, minor executives and their wives conducting business with pleasure, salesmen with their sample cases, advertising men seeking new accounts, discreet ladies whose names were on file with the bellhops, and tourists in town to do the studios and see the television shows. All the kinds of people Miss Clarvoe would ordinarily dislike and avoid. Yet she chose to live in their midst, like a visitor from another planet.
Blackshear left his car in a parking lot and crossed the street to the Monica Hotel.
The desk clerk, whose name plate identified him as G. O. Horner, was a thin elderly man with protuberant eyes that gave him an expression of intense interest and curiosity. The expression was false. After thirty years in the business, people meant no more to him than individual bees do to a beekeeper. Their differences were lost in a welter of statistics, eradicated by sheer weight of numbers. They came and went; ate, drank, were happy, sad, thin, fat; stole towels and left behind toothbrushes, books, girdles, jewelry; burned holes in the furniture, slipped in bathtubs, jumped out windows. They were all alike, swarming around the hive, and Mr. Horner wore a protective net of indifference over his head and shoulders.
The only thing that mattered was the prompt payment of bills. Blackshear looked solvent. He was smiled at.
“Is there anything I can do for you, sir?”
“I believe Miss Clarvoe is expecting me.”
“Your name, please.”
“Paul Blackshear.”
“Just a moment, sir, and I’ll check.”
Horner approached the switchboard, walking softly and carefully, as if one of his old enemies had scattered tacks on the floor. He talked briefly to the girl on duty, hardly moving his mouth. The girl looked over her shoulder at Blackshear with sullen curiosity and Blackshear wondered if this was the June Sullivan Miss Clarvoe had mentioned in her letter.
Blackshear returned her stare. She was an emaciated blonde with trembling hands and a strained white face, as if the black leech of the earphone had already drawn too much blood.
Horner bent over her but the girl leaned as far away from him as she could and started to yawn. Three or four times she yawned and her eyes began to water and redden along the upper lids. It was impossible to guess her age. She could have been a malnourished twenty or an underdeveloped forty.
Horner returned, his fingers plucking irritably at the lapels of his black suit. “Miss Clarvoe didn’t leave any message down here, sir, and her room doesn’t answer.”
“I know she’s expecting me.”
“Oh, certainly, sir, no offense intended, I assure you. Miss Clarvoe frequently doesn’t answer her telephone. She wears ear plugs. On account of the traffic noises, a great many of our guests wear . . .”
“What is the number of her suite?”
“Four-twenty-five.”
“I’ll go up.”
“Certainly, sir. The elevators are to your right.”
While he was waiting for an elevator, Blackshear glanced back at the desk and saw that Horner was watching him; he had lifted his protective veil of indifference for a moment and was peering out like an old woman from behind a lace curtain.
Blackshear disappeared into the elevator and Mr. Horner lowered his net again, and let the lace curtain fall over his thoughts: That suit must have cost a hundred and fifty dollars. . . . These con men always put up a good appearance. . . . I wonder how he’s going to take her and for how much. . . .
Miss Clarvoe must have been waiting behind the door. It opened almost simultaneously with Blackshear’s knock, and Miss Clarvoe said in a hurried whisper, “Please come in.”
She locked the door behind him, and for a few moments they stood looking at each other in silence across a gully of time. Then Miss Clarvoe stretched out her hand and Blackshear took it.
Her skin was cool and dry and stiff like parchment, and there was no pressure of friendliness, or even of interest, in her clasp. She shook hands because she’d been brought up to shake hands as a gesture of politeness. Blackshear felt that she disliked the personal contact. Skin on skin offended her; she was a private person. The private I, Blackshear thought, always looking through a single keyhole.
The day was warm for November, and Blackshear’s own hands were moist with sweat. It gave him a kind of petty satisfaction to realize that he must have left some of his moisture on her.
He waited for her to wipe her hand, surreptitiously, even unconsciously, but she didn’t. She merely took a step backward and two spots of color appeared on her high cheekbones.
“It was kind of you to go to all this trouble, Mr. Blackshear.”
“No trouble at all.”
“Please sit down. The wing chair is very comfortable.”
He sat down. The wing chair was comfortable enough but he couldn’t help noticing that it, like all the other furniture in the room, was cheap and poorly made. He thought of the Clarvoe house in Beverly Hills, the hand-carved chairs and the immense drawing room where the rug had been especially woven to match a pattern in the Gauguin above the mantel, and he wondered for the dozenth time why Miss Clarvoe had left it so abruptly and isolated herself in a small suite in a second-rate hotel.
“You haven’t changed much,” Blackshear lied politely.
She gave him a long, direct stare. “Do you mean that as a compliment, Mr. Blackshear?”
“Yes, I did.”
“It is no compliment to me to be told that I haven’t changed. Because I wish I had.”
Damn the woman, Blackshear thought. You couldn’t afford to be nice to her. She was unable to accept a compliment, a gift of any kind; they seemed to burn her like flaming arrows and she had to pluck them out and fling them back with vicious accuracy, still aflame.
He said coldly, “How is your mother?”
“Quite well, as far as I know.”
“And Douglas?”
“Douglas is like me, Mr. Blackshear. He hasn’t changed either. Unfortunately.”
She approached the walnut desk. It bore no evidence of the hours Miss Clarvoe had spent at it. There were no letters or papers visible, no ink marks on the blotter. Miss Clarvoe did not leave things lying about. She kept them in drawers, in closets, in neat steel files. All the records of her life were under lock and key: the notes from Douglas asking for money, her bank statements and canceled checks, gardenia-scented letters from her mother, some newspaper clippings about her father, an engraved wedding invitation half torn down the middle, a bottle of sleeping pills, a leash and harness with a silver tag bearing the name Dapper, a photograph of a thin awkward girl in a ballet dress, and a sheaf of bills held together by a gold money clip.
Miss Clarvoe picked up the sheaf of bills and handed it to Blackshear.
“Count it, Mr. Blackshear.”
“Why?”
“I may have made a mistake. I get—flustered sometimes and can’t concentrate properly.”
Blackshear counted the money. “A hundred and ninety-six dollars.”
“I was right, after all.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Someone has been stealing from me, Mr. Blackshear. Perhaps systematically, for weeks, perhaps just once—I don’t know. I do know that there should be nearly a thousand dollars in that clip.”
“When did you discover some of it was missing?”
“This morning. I woke up early while it was still dark. There was some argument going on down the hall, a man and a woman. The woman’s voice reminded me of the girl on the telephone, Evelyn Merrick, and I—well, it upset me. I couldn’t go back t
o sleep. I began to wonder about Miss Merrick and when—whether I would hear from her again and what she hoped to get out of me. The only thing I have is money.”
She paused, as if giving him a chance to contradict her or agree with her. Blackshear remained quiet. He knew she was wrong but he didn’t feel that anything could be gained, at this point, by stating it: Miss Clarvoe had another thing besides money which might interest a woman like Evelyn Merrick, and that was the capacity to be hurt.
Miss Clarvoe continued quietly. “I got up and took a pill and went back to sleep. I dreamed of her—Evelyn Merrick. I dreamed she had a key to my suite and she let herself in, bold as brass. She was blonde, coarse-looking, made up like a woman of the streets—it’s so vivid, even now. She went over to my desk and took my money. All of it.” Miss Clarvoe stopped and gave Blackshear a long direct stare. “I know such dreams mean nothing, except that I was disturbed and frightened, but as soon as I woke up again I unlocked my desk and counted my money.”
“I see.”
“I told you about the dream because I wanted to make it clear that I had a reason for counting the money. I don’t usually do such a thing. I’m not a miser poring over a hoard of gold.”
But she spoke defensively, as if someone in the past had accused her of being miserly.
“Why do you keep such a large amount of cash in your room?” Blackshear said.
“I need it.”
“Why?”
“For—well, tips, shopping for clothes, things like that.”
Blackshear didn’t bother pointing out that a thousand dollars would cover a lot of tips, and the black jersey dress Miss Clarvoe was wearing indicated that her shopping trips were few and meager.
The silence stretched out like tape from a roller until there seemed no logical place to cut it.
“I like to have money around,” she said, finally. “It gives me a feeling of security.”
“It should give you the opposite.”
“Why?”
“It makes you a target.”
Women Crime Writers Page 42