Women Crime Writers

by Sarah Weinman

  Chapter 4

  BERTHA MOORE had waited more than fifteen years for a child, and when the child, a girl, was born, Bertha could not quite believe in her good fortune. She had constantly to reassure herself. At all hours of the day and night she tiptoed into the nursery to see if the baby was still there, still alive. She could not settle down to read or sew even for a minute; she seemed to be half-suspended in air like a gas-filled balloon held captive only by a length of string. At the other end of this string, fixed and stationary, was her husband, Harley.

  She did not make the mistake of ignoring Harley after the birth of the baby. She was, in fact, extremely kind to him, but it was a planned and unemotional kindness; at the back of her mind there was always the thought that she must take deliberate pains to keep Harley contented because the baby would be healthier and better adjusted if it had a happy home and a good father.

  What spare time Bertha had was spent in conversations with friends and relatives about the perfections of her child, or in frantic calls to the pediatrician when it regurgitated its food or to Harley when it cried without apparent reason. During nearly twenty years of marriage Bertha had learned not to disturb Harley at his studio. She unlearned this in a single day, easily, and without the slightest compunction. These calls were “for the baby’s sake,” and as such were beyond reproach and above criticism. The baby flourished, unaware of its demands on its parents. Bertha called her Angie, which was short for Angel and had no connection with her registered name, Stephanie Caroline Moore.

  At 4 o’clock Angie was in no mood for her bottle. Bertha was waltzing her back and forth across the living room when the telephone rang. She shifted the baby gently from her left arm to her right and picked up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello. Is that Mrs. Moore?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t know me, but I’m a friend of your husband’s.”

  “Really?” Bertha said, in a lively manner, though she was hardly paying any attention. The baby’s hair felt so soft against her neck and its warm skin smelled of flowers and sunshine.

  “I’m Evelyn Merrick. Perhaps your husband has mentioned me?”

  “He may have.” With considerable effort the baby turned her head to listen to the conversation, and she made such a droll face that Bertha laughed out loud.

  “Are you alone, Mrs. Moore?”

  “I’m never alone. We have a new baby, you know.”

  There was a pause. “Of course I knew.”

  “She was just four months old yesterday.”

  “They’re so sweet at that age.”

  “Aren’t they, though. But Angie’s more like six months than four, even the doctor says so.” This was practically true. The doctor had, after considerable prompting from Bertha, agreed that Angie was “quite advanced,” and was “developing nicely.”

  “That’s such a cute name, Angie.”

  “It’s only a nickname, really.” What a nice voice the woman had, Bertha thought, and how interested she was in the baby. “Speaking of names, I’m afraid I didn’t catch yours.”

  “Evelyn Merrick. Miss Merrick.”

  “It does sound familiar. I’m almost sure Harley’s mentioned you. Most of the time I’m so busy with the baby I don’t hear what people are saying. . . . Stop that, Angie. No, no, mustn’t touch. . . . She’s trying to pull out the telephone cord.”

  “She sounds just adorable.”

  “Oh, she is.” Bertha had admired other women’s babies for so many years—telling the truth, if the baby was cute, fibbing if it wasn’t—that she felt it only just that other women now had to admire hers. The nice thing was that none of them had to fib about Angie. She was perfect. There was no compliment about her so bulky, no piece of flattery so huge, that Bertha couldn’t swallow with the greatest of ease and digest without the faintest rumble.

  “Does the baby look like you or like Harley?”

  “Oh, like me, I’m afraid,” Bertha said with a proud little laugh. “Everyone thinks so.”

  “I’d love to see her. I’m quite—mad about babies.”

  “Why don’t you come over?”

  “When?”

  “Well, this afternoon, if you like. Angie’s restless, she won’t go to sleep for hours.” It would be fun to show the baby off to one of Harley’s friends, for a change. Harley was very modest about Angie and hardly ever brought anyone to see her. “Harley won’t be home until six. We can have some tea and a chat, and I’ll show you Angie’s baby book. Are you an artist, by any chance, Miss Merrick?”

  “In a way.”

  “I just wondered. Harley says the baby’s too young to be painted, but I—well, never mind. You will see for yourself. You know our address?”

  “Yes. It will be a pleasure meeting you, Mrs. Moore.”

  They said good-bye and Bertha hung up, feeling a pleasant glow of anticipation and maternal pride.

  She was not, by nature or experience, a suspicious woman—Harley had dozens of friends of both sexes—and it didn’t strike her as odd that Evelyn Merrick hadn’t explained the purpose of her call.

  “A nice lady,” she told Angie, “is coming to admire you and I want you to be utterly captivating.”

  Angie chewed her fingers.

  When the baby’s diaper and dress had been changed and her half-inch of hair carefully brushed, Bertha went back to the phone to call Harley.

  Harley himself answered, sounding sharp and distrustful the way he always did over the telephone, as if he expected to be bored or bamboozled.

  “Har? It’s just me.”

  “Oh. Anything wrong with the baby?”

  “Not a thing. She’s bright as a dollar.”

  “Look, Bertha, I’m awfully tied up right now. There’s a man here who . . .”

  “Well, I won’t keep you, dear. I just wanted to tell you not to hurry home, I’m having company for tea. A Miss Merrick is coming over to see the baby.”

  “Who?”

  “A friend of yours. Evelyn Merrick.”

  “She’s coming there?”

  “Why, yes. What’s the matter, Har? You sound so . . .”

  “When is she coming?”

  “Well, I don’t know. It was kind of indefinite.”

  “Listen to me carefully, Bertha. Lock the doors and stay in the house until I get home.”

  “I don’t under—”

  “Do as I say. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “What do you mean, we?”

  “There’s a man in my studio right now looking for that woman. He says she’s crazy.”

  “But she sounded so sweet—and she was so interested in Angie and wanted to see . . .”

  But Harley had hung up.

  She stood, wide-eyed and pale, hugging the baby to her breasts. Angie, sensing the sudden tension, and resenting the too tight and desperate embrace, began to cry.

  “Be a good girl now, Angie,” Bertha said, sounding very calm. “There is nothing the matter, nothing to be afraid of.”

  But the calm voice did not reassure the baby; she heard the quickened heartbeat, she felt her mother’s trembling muscles, and she smelled fear.

  “We will simply lock the doors and wait for daddy. There’s nothing to cry about. My goodness, what will the neighbors think, such a little girl making so much noise. . . .”

  Carrying the howling child, Bertha locked the three outside doors and pulled the heavy drapes across the bay window in the living room. Then she sat down in the rocking chair that Harley had bought her because she’d said no one could raise a baby without one. The darkened room and the gentle rocking motion quieted the child.

  “That’s a sweet girl. You settle down now and go to sleep. My goodness, we mustn’t get excited about a little thing like a crazy . . .”

  The door chimes pealed.

  Without even glancing toward the door, Bertha carried the sleeping child to the nursery and laid her in the crib and covered her with a blanket. T
hen she walked slowly back to the front hall as the chimes pealed again.

  She stood, waiting and listening, her face like stone. There were no sounds of cars passing or children playing or women hurrying home from the super market. It was as if everyone, forewarned of danger, had moved to another part of town.

  “Mrs. Moore?” The voice came, soft but persistent, through the crack of the oak door. “Let me in.”

  Bertha pressed the back of her hand tight against her mouth as if afraid words might come out without her volition.

  “I hurried right over. I’m dying to see the baby. Let me in. . . . I know you’re there, Mrs. Moore. What’s the matter? Are you afraid of me? I wouldn’t harm anyone. I only want to see Harley’s baby. . . . Harley and I may have a baby, too.”

  The words seeped through the crack of the door like drops of poison that could kill on contact.

  “Does that shock you, Mrs. Moore? You don’t know much of what goes on in that studio of his, do you? What do you think happens after I pose naked?”

  Make her stop, Bertha prayed silently. She’s lying. She’s crazy. Harley would never—he’s not like that—he told me they were all like pieces of wood to him. . . .

  “Oh, don’t think I’m the only one. I’m just the latest. After the posing it comes so natural, so inevitable. Have you been fooled all these years? Haven’t you wondered, in the back of your mind? Aren’t you wondering now? I should lend you my crystal ball. Oh, the things you’d see!”

  And she began to describe them, slowly and carefully, as if she were instructing a child, and Bertha listened like a child, not understanding some of the ugly words she used but hypnotized by their implications of evil. She couldn’t move, couldn’t get out of range of the poison. Drop by drop it burned into her heart and etched nightmares on her mind.

  Then, quite suddenly, from the corner, came the quick, tinkling song of a Good Humor man. “My Bonnie lies over the ocean. . . . Oh, bring back my Bonnie to me.” The song ended and began again, but in the interval Bertha heard the tap of heels on concrete. Moving lifelessly, like a dummy on hinges, she walked into the living room and parted the heavy drapes on the bay window.

  A woman was running down the street, her dark hair lashing furiously in the wind, her coat flapping around her skinny legs. She turned the corner, still running, heading south.

  Bertha went back to the nursery. Angie was sleeping on her side with her thumb in her mouth.

  Bertha stood by the crib and looked down at the baby, numbly, wondering what kind of man its father was.

  “Bertha. Are you all right, dear?”

  “Of course.”

  “We got here as soon as we could. This is Mr. Blackshear. My wife, Bertha.”

  “How do you do.” She shook hands with Blackshear. “Would you like a drink?”

  “Thanks. I would,” Blackshear said.

  “I will, too. I was going to have tea, but . . .” I was going to have company for tea. A nice lady was coming to admire the baby. I dressed Angie up and brushed her hair. I was feeling happy, I remember. That was a long time ago.

  “Bertha, you’re sure you’re feeling all right?”

  “Yes,” she said politely. How odd Harley looked, with his crew cut and his sunburn and his horn-rimmed glasses. Not like a painter at all. Perhaps that was because he didn’t do much painting any more—other things went on in his studio that were more important. . . .

  Harley mixed her a bourbon highball. It tasted weak and sour, and after the first sip she just held the glass to her lips and looked over the rim of it at Blackshear. Quiet, dignified, respectable. But you couldn’t tell. If you couldn’t tell about Harley, you couldn’t tell about anyone in the whole world.

  Her hand shook, and some of the highball spilled down the front of her dress. She knew both the men had seen the little accident. They were staring at her in a puzzled way, as if they realized that something was wrong and were too diffident or polite to ask what.

  “She was here,” Bertha said. “She asked me to let her in, and when I wouldn’t, she talked at me through the crack of the door. I didn’t answer, or make any noise, but somehow she knew I was there, listening.” She glanced quickly at Harley and away again. “I can’t tell you what she said, in front of a stranger.”

  “Why not?”

  “It was about you, your relations with her.”

  “I had no relations with her except one day last week when she came to the studio for a job and I turned her down.”

  “She said she was one of your—models.”

  “Go on,” Harley said grimly. “What else?”

  “She said you and she—she used terrible words—I couldn’t repeat them to anyone. . . .”

  The blood had drained from Harley’s sunburned face, leaving it gray-tan and lifeless, like sandstone. “She implied that I had sexual relations with her?”

  “Implied.” Bertha began to laugh. “Implied. That’s funny, it really is. If you could have heard her . . .”

  “You listened to her, Bertha?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t want to, I hated it, but I listened.”

  “Did you believe what she said?”

  “No.”

  He accepted the faint and unconvincing denial without pressing her further. He even tried to give her a reassuring smile, but he looked sick and exhausted as he turned to Blackshear. “Is this the kind of mischief the Merrick woman goes in for?”

  “It’s a little more than mischief, I’m afraid.”

  “Well, she may be insane, but she seems to know a lot about human frailties.”

  “She does.” Blackshear thought of the things Evelyn Merrick had said to Miss Clarvoe. She had used Miss Clarvoe’s own special set of fears as she had used Mrs. Moore’s, and to a lesser extent, Lydia Hudson’s, not creating new fears but working on ones that were already there. In each case she had taken a different approach, but the results were the same, uncertainty, anxiety, dread. Miss Hudson had a strong enough personality to settle her own problems; Helen Clarvoe’s, perhaps, would never be settled; but Mrs. Moore had a need for, and the ability to accept, help.

  Blackshear said, “Evelyn Merrick gets her satisfactions out of other people’s pain, Mrs. Moore. Today it was yours. But there have been others.”

  “I didn’t—know that.”

  “It’s true. There is absolutely no limit to what she would say to cause trouble, and perhaps in your case she had an extra motive. Mr. Moore tells me that he was busy at the time she came to the studio and he gave her a quick brush-off.”

  Bertha smiled, very faintly. “Harley’s quite good at that.”

  “The Merrick woman may have wanted to pay him back. Little episodes like that, which the ordinary person would pass off easily and forget about, often become terribly exaggerated in the mind of an unbalanced woman.”

  “Of course, I didn’t believe her for a minute,” Bertha said, in a very firm, reasonable voice. “After all, Harley and I have been happily married for nearly twenty years. . . . I suppose Harley’s told you about our little girl?”

  “He did.”

  “Would you like to see her?”

  “I’d like it very much.”

  “Let me get her,” Harley said, but Bertha had already risen.

  “I’ll get her,” she said, smiling. “I have something to tell her.”

  Angie was still asleep. She woke up, at Bertha’s touch, and made a squeak of protest that turned into a yawn.

  Bertha spoke softly into her tiny ear. “Your father is a good man. We mustn’t either of us forget that. He is a good man.”

  She carried the child into the living room, walking fast, as if she could get away from the whispers that echoed against the walls of her memory: You don’t know much of what goes on in that studio. . . . Have you been fooled all these years? . . . Oh, the things you’d see in my crystal ball. . . .

  Bertha listened.

  Chapter 5<
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  “HELEN? Is that you, Helen dear?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is mother.”

  “Yes.”

  “I must say you don’t seem very happy to hear from me.”

  “I’m trying.” Helen thought, she sounds the same as ever, like a whining child.

  “Please speak up, dear. If there’s one thing I can’t bear it’s telephone mumblers. Helen? Are you there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “That’s better. Well, the reason I wanted to speak to you, I just had a very mysterious phone call from Mr. Blackshear. You remember, that broker friend of your father’s whose wife died of cancer?”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, suddenly out of a blue sky he called and asked if he could come and see me tonight. You don’t suppose it has anything to do with money?”

  “In what way?”

  “Perhaps he’s discovered some misplaced stocks or bonds that belonged to your father.”

  “I hardly think so.”

  “But it’s possible, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, I suppose.”

  “Wouldn’t it be a lovely surprise, say just a few shares of AT&T stuck away in a drawer and forgotten. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

  “Yes.” She didn’t bother pointing out that her father had never bought any shares of AT&T, and if he had, they wouldn’t be stuck in a drawer and forgotten. Let Verna find it out for herself; she had a whole closetful of punctured dreams, but there was always room for one more.

  The expectation of money, however remote, put a bright and girlish lilt into Verna’s voice. “I haven’t seen you for ages, Helen.”

  “I realize that.”

  “How have you been?”

  “Fine, thank you.”

  “Are you eating properly?”

  It was an impossible question to answer, since Verna’s ideas of proper eating varied week by week, depending on which new diet attracted her attention. She dieted, variously, to grow slim, to gain weight, to correct low blood sugar, to improve her complexion, to prevent allergies, and to increase the flow of liver bile. The purpose of the diet didn’t matter. The practice was what counted. It gave her something to talk about, it made her more interesting and unusual. While her liver bile continued at the same old rate, Verna flitted from one diet to another, making other women who could and did eat anything look like clods.