Dream of Fair Woman

by Charlotte Armstrong

  ‘Nag. Nag.’ he said. ‘And she ran out on you?’

  ‘She’s sleeping, now,’ said Megan, ‘and not talking in her sleep. And when, by the way, do we fly to Vegas and get married?’

  ‘Soon. Soon.’

  ‘All right, then. Listen. I think I’m going to clinch our identification.’

  Leon turned on her viciously. ‘You were going to get dear little Alison dead this afternoon. And chickened out. Didn’t you, darling?’

  ‘How could I know I’d have to get into that stupid gown? Even then, I had the stuff ready. And that was better done than you can imagine. I had it in my hair.’

  He goggled at her.

  ‘I came close,’ she said.

  ‘Close. Close,’ he mocked.

  ‘If I had more sense than to do what I couldn’t get away with doing, you ought to be glad. Because what I do, you do, and don’t forget it. It works both ways.’ Her eyes blazed. ‘Now, will you listen to me or not?’

  ‘Go ahead,’ he said sulkily.

  ‘I happen to have the key.’

  ‘What key?’

  ‘To the locker. Where Dorothy’s suitcase is, right now.’

  ‘So.’

  ‘So I’m going to use it, to prove that girl is Dorothy.’

  ‘You are?’

  ‘I’m going to get myself up a bit, and go rent a room from Mrs Cuneen.’

  ‘You can’t do that!’ He was aghast.

  ‘Of course not. But I can look at a room, can’t I?’

  ‘I think you’re crazy. You’ve done enough.’

  ‘I thought you were worried.’ He didn’t answer. ‘I thought you wanted to get her away, somewhere else, where you would have the chance to—shall I say—watch over her? I’m sure you’d find a way to do better than I did. At murder. After all, you’ve had more experience.’

  ‘Ah, lay off.’ He groaned and fell into a chair. ‘Lay off, will you?’ And then bitterly, ‘Maybe she’ll die a natural death.’

  ‘That would be ideal,’ said Megan calmly. ‘If you’ve got nerve enough to wait for it.’

  ‘We’re back to nerve?’ he said angrily. ‘Your nerves were pretty wracked, for two days. After you let her get away. We still don’t know why she ran out or where she’s been or what she’s said. You talk about nerve! I did my share. When we saw her picture, I went and did something about that. I was the one who stood up to the mother. You didn’t even know there was a mother. I was the one who held on to my nerves and bulled my way through that one.’

  ‘Good for you,’ she said. ‘Hold on some more. I told you I’d fix it, with the key. So you’ll get her. And when you do, why then you’ll have her, won’t you?’

  The man said thickly, ‘Don’t leave me.’

  ‘All right,’ she said with sudden energy. ‘What is ideal, darling? That she dies while she is still in that hospital, under their auspices. Isn’t that so? What if I figure how to make that happen, when we both have a perfect alibi.’

  ‘When?’ he said.

  ‘Tomorrow. All you have to do is marry me.’

  At the hospital, in the dim deserted lobby, Matt was talking to Mr Atwood. ‘I’m sorry about your party, sir, but I thought you’d better know that Megan Royce was planning to poison the patient in Room 124 this afternoon.’

  Atwood’s eyes were hard in his bloodhound’s face.

  ‘Look at this,’ Matt had a small tray from the lab in his hands. On it lay an ordinary glass eyedropper. ‘Nicotine,’ he said. ‘It was in the ash-receiver. That thing full of sand, where the corridors intersect, where Megan Royce and I sat down to talk. Megan Royce put this thing in that sand because she hadn’t been able to use it and because I scared her. She was afraid I’d see it. It was in her hair.’

  ‘Did you see it in her hair?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then what convinces you of all this?’ Atwood was very cool.

  ‘The whole thing!’ cried Matt. ‘Her antics. Something about her, when she was in the room. I took her arm. I dragged her away. I didn’t know why, then. I could just feel—some excitement. I can’t explain it.’

  ‘And can’t prove it, can you?’ Atwood was searching Matt’s face.

  ‘And then there was her tension. The way she sat, moved, watched, reacted. The way she panicked. The way she pushed her cigarette deep into the sand. That’s when she got rid of this. I’m positive.’

  ‘But you didn’t see her do it?’

  ‘All right, there is no proof. But I’ll tell you now—and anybody else who wants to know. I won’t release that girl to Leon Daw and Megan Royce.’

  ‘You may have to,’ said Atwood. ‘St John Cotter is making legal noises.’

  ‘Let him. I’ll raise the question.’

  ‘Any visitor, to any patient, or any one of an assortment of hospital personnel, could have put that thing where it was found.’

  Matt said, ‘Theoretically.’

  ‘How was she going to administer it? Pour it in an ear, like Hamlet’s father?’

  ‘I only say she had it ready. She intended—’

  ‘You can’t know an intention. Have you questioned everybody,’ Atwood snapped, ‘who was on the floor, at any time, all day?’

  ‘No, I have not. Will you get in touch with the Police Department about this?’

  ‘I don’t think we had better make an unfounded accusation in a very serious matter.’

  Matt despaired. The world was sluggish. He couldn’t make it move. ‘Then what are you going to do about it?’

  Atwood answered with a question. ‘The girl is all right, I take it?’

  ‘So far. But if I didn’t trust Selma Marsh, for the night, I’d sit at the door myself.’

  Atwood said slowly, ‘Even if it were true that somebody had a wild impractical plan to poison one of our patients, that somebody did not succeed. Did not, in fact, really try.’

  ‘Didn’t succeed, this time.’ Matt felt wild.

  ‘Let me warn you, very seriously, not to mention this idea to the Press.’ Atwood kept looking at him solemnly.

  Matt said furiously, ‘I’ll mention it to the police then. I’ll get in touch with a Lieutenant Clarence Tate the first thing in the morning. He’ll be in touch with you.’

  Matt sailed, fuming, along the park path. Nicotine, the gardener’s poison. Easy to come by. It might have killed her. He didn’t know how. But he did know that Megan Royce had put the poison in the sand. He could see her doing it. Had not seen her at the time. Could see it, now. Plain as plain.

  He had been some time in the hospital, in the lab—pouncing on the discovery, rousting out Atwood. So it was late. The whole world slept. He couldn’t rouse it. The house, when he let himself in, was quiet. His mother had obviously gone to bed.

  He didn’t hesitate long. He went upstairs, fast, and tapped on Betty’s door. When she put on her light and appeared, looking tousled and alarmed, he made her come sit on the top step with him and he told her.

  ‘So there’s murder in it,’ he said. ‘There’s a connection with that murdered body. There’s danger all right.’

  ‘M-Matt?’ Betty’s teeth chattered and she hugged herself against the chill that she was feeling. ‘We know our girl’s not Alison. Alison must be the one in the truck. I don’t want to sound like Tony, but what if somebody was hired to kill Dorothy Daw, and got her double instead? And what if Dorothy caught on to that? And that was her reason to run away?’

  ‘Who is somebody? Who did the hiring? It’s a hypothesis,’ he agreed grudgingly.

  Betty began to shiver so violently that he put his arm around her and held tight. She buried her face in his shoulder.

  ‘It’s a police matter, now,’ he said, with grim satisfaction. ‘They won’t get her.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Uncle Leon and Megan-baby. Listen, Betts, this is strange. But it seems to me that I knew it. Uncle Leon wanted, in the worst way, for me to tell him she would die. How did I know that? I didn’t realise, then … b
ut now I’m sure I did know it. I felt it. In the air.’

  ‘People do sense things,’ said Betty, muffled against him. ‘It’s called intuition.’

  ‘Is that right?’ said Matt vaguely.

  She sat straight suddenly. ‘Some people sense things, sometimes.’ In the dim light her eyes seemed to glitter. ‘Not all. Not always.’

  ‘Well, it’s a police matter, now,’ he repeated.

  ‘Oh, sure,’ she said, in a minute.

  ‘I guess we ought to put in a little sack-time,’ he said, as if he were a kind big brother.

  ‘Sweet dreams, eh?’ she said tremulously.

  ‘I had to tell somebody. Hey, listen, don’t worry too much. We won’t let them get her.’ He kissed her lightly on her cheek and helped her up.

  She stood there in her robe, her face bare of make-up, looking both younger and older than usual. Tears were making the glitter in her eyes.

  ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Get to bed. Don’t feel so bad. Forget it.’

  Her mouth pulled in a strange expression. She said nothing, but turned away.

  ‘Good night,’ he said kindly.

  He went downstairs, feeling a little guilty for having wakened and worried her.

  Betty put herself, robe and all, very deliberately into her bed. She turned off the light and said aloud, ‘For-get it!’

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was nine o’clock on Sunday morning when Matt finally reached Lieutenant Tate on the telephone. Matt told his story and stated his case for an attempted poisoning as quietly and as lucidly as he could. He did not want to sound a calamity howler or a conclusion jumper. But his facts were undeniably feeble. The voice on the other end of the wire listened to his account without excitement. Then Lieutenant Tate said, with no more ado, that he would meet Matt at the hospital at about noon, the earliest he could make it.

  Peg tried to herd her son back to the breakfast table, but he couldn’t sit down. He drank another cup of coffee and left the house.

  Betty Prentiss, at the top of the stairs when he went out the front door, did not call greetings. She saw the top of his head go by. She let him go.

  When she came down, Peg gave her a good morning and by a glance prescribed a quiet Sunday for them both. The morning dragged.

  After church, just after lunchtime, Tony Severson arrived. ‘Good day. Good day. What’s new? He had found them in the kitchen.

  Betty shrugged and Peg said, ‘Do you want some lunch?’

  ‘I see it before me.’ Tony took a slice of bread and began to butter it vigorously. ‘Where’s Matt?’ He looked around suspiciously.

  ‘He’s been gone all morning.’

  ‘Huh?’ Tony placed a chair in his favourite position and straddled it. ‘What’s he after? Am I missing something?’ He was highly intuitive. His lively eyes watched them as he munched on the bread.

  ‘How do we know what you’re missing when we don’t know what you know?’ said Betty crossly. The Press was not to be told about the poison. (The Press was not to be told that Matt was probably on guard, like some idiot knight on a white horse.)

  ‘I don’t know whether I’m glad I know what I know, or not,’ said Tony. ‘How complicated can it get? O.K. Now hear this. I’ve been digging. I went for the vital statistics. I won’t bore you with my methods. But I happen to know this chap in Yuma. So I got this phone call. Fact number one, Alison Hopkins got married, aged sixteen, to a fella name Larry Wimberholtz. Divorce quickly followed—’

  ‘Larry!’ said Betty.

  ‘Why? Why?’ Tony pounced.

  ‘When we saw Bobbie Hopkins yesterday, there was a Larry there. She said he was a friend of hers.’

  ‘Larry Wimberholtz?’

  ‘Larry somebody. She didn’t introduce him.’

  ‘Here, eh? In the area? Hereabouts? Well, well.’ Tony folded his hands on the chair back and put his chin on them. His tongue reached for a crumb.

  ‘What difference does it make?’ said Betty tiredly.

  ‘I dunno. Those are funny people, those Hopkins. They hide stuff under rocks. Fact number two is going to rock the both of you, angels. It’s got me dizzy. Now hear this. Alison Hopkins has got a twin sister. Identical. Can’t tell them apart. No death certificate for this twin, either. Not there. Not here. Now what? Now we only got three girls who all look alike.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Peg said.

  ‘Oh, you got to believe there was this twin. Seems Mom Hopkins and the girls took off for L.A., five years ago. (Pa, he’d taken off long ago.) So they came for the usual. Fame and fortune in Hollywood. And, as usual, it wasn’t growing on the palm trees. What I want to know is how come the neighbours don’t seem to know anything about a twin sister? Why did I have to find out about her from Yuma? So I high-tailed it up to Bobbie’s dump, at the crack of the A.M. And I braced her. I hammered on the door and I hollered and made a big nuisance and pretty soon, there she is. And Bobbie in the morning, urn-boy! Well, so, anyhow … I ask her politely how I can get in touch with her other daughter.

  ‘So our Bobbie looks like she’s going to fall down. She lets out a whisky breath and she says she won’t say. And she says, with some agitation, that nobody can make her say. And she says her other daughter is a religious. How about that? And she says she, Bobbie, respects religion, which is more than a heathen like me knows how to do. And nobody is going to disturb her holy daughter, the one who is out of this world. And she starts to heave and holler so I got to take my foot out of the door. Especially since who pulls up in a car? Lieutenant Tate of Homicide, that’s who.

  ‘And Bobbie finds out he’s from the police and starts hollering that he has got to protect her from me. So he not only won’t talk, he won’t let me talk. He boots me down the hill. But what’s he doing there, you know? And how do you like this twin angle? Oh wow … if I could find this twin before anybody else gets on to her … But I dunno about tangling with the Church, see? You know any good Catholic who could give me a line on how to find out about a nun? Or even if it’s possible?’

  ‘The twin sister is a nun?’ said Peg wonderingly.

  ‘What else?’ said Tony ‘Isn’t that what a religious means? And if she looks as good as the kid in the hospital, oh wow! A nun, an heiress, and a movie starlet … and all of them beeyootiful blondes. I got, here, an embarrassment of riches.’

  The two woman were looking stunned. ‘I don’t understand any of it anymore,’ said Peg.

  ‘What’s the twin’s name?’ asked Betty.

  ‘I don’t have to tell you everything, either.’ Tony looked coy and got off the chair. ‘I’m going to tell you one more thing. There has been absolutely no hanky-panky with the Daw money.’ Tony put his finger beside his nose. ‘The paper knows! Hey, where did Matt go?’

  ‘To the hospital, I believe,’ said Peg.

  ‘Did she wake up? Or did she die? What? What?’

  Peg shook her head and then put it between her hands.

  Tony said in a moment, ‘I got a feeling you two are holding out on me. Is that neighbourly? O.K., I’ll go get it out of Matt.’

  ‘Matt is meeting this police lieutenant,’ Betty said crisply. ‘You’ll have to wait.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’ said Tony, grinning wide. Then he was off.

  When the turbulence of his leaving had left the kitchen air, Peg said softly, ‘Poor Matt.’

  Betty excused herself and went upstairs, not even helping with the dishes. She had nothing important to do upstairs, but she didn’t want to admit that she knew what Peg meant. The girl in the hospital would turn out to be the nun. It fitted, somehow. It felt right. But then—she wasn’t, somehow, real at all! Betty didn’t want Peg to notice the streak of human meanness that made her glad, although ashamed to be.

  Upstairs, the front bedroom stood open, the bed changed and spread, the room clean and bare. The belongings of the girl had been taken to the hospital because Peg had been pestered by people who wanted to photograph them. So it was as if
the girl had never been there.

  Betty closed her own door. She sat on her bed. The house was very quiet. Against the silence a hard truth rang. Poor Matt? But what difference would it make to poor Betty Prentiss, who had something to do upstairs after all?

  For-get it.

  She had sat in his arms last night on the top step. A living waking longing body of a girl who was no nun. He hadn’t noticed. Therefore, he never would. So snap out of it, she told herself savagely. Skip it. Forget it!

  After a while, she heard voices. Peg was coming up with somebody. A female. Betty lay low. Somebody to look at the room, she supposed. She was in no state to pop out and be introduced to a stranger. She hoped Peg wouldn’t knock. After a while, she began to trust that Peg would not. She guessed Peg knew how it was with Betty. Which was humiliating, too. Skip it, she told herself. Wipe it out. OUT.

  Then she heard Peg saying, rather crisply, outside her door, ‘I have another roomer, a very nice girl who teaches. Betty Prentiss is her name.’

  There was silence. Then, Betty could hear Peg’s voice diminishing, going down the stairs. The other voice was silent. Betty hoped this meant that whoever it was had not taken the front room. It was better to be up here alone for a while. When you found yourself in the classical position of being in love with a man who didn’t notice you were alive and got no messages from your living, waking flesh—that was a position to get out of. Alone. The best you could.

  Lieutenant Clarence Tate, who appeared at the hospital, as he had promised, a few minutes before noon, was a quiet man, medium tall, with a seamed coarse-grained face over which a great deal of time seemed to have passed without having affected the middle-aged sturdiness of his body. Time had turned the face into a mask. Tate was not in the habit of giving much away by an expression.

  He had seen the sleeping girl, taken her fingerprints efficiently and without comment. Now he sat in Atwood’s office, listening.

  He listened to Matt, to Dr Prentiss, to Mr Atwood. When they had nothing left but questions, he began to speak. ‘Here are some photographs, taken in Fresno. Photographs are tricky, as I guess you know. But the body found in a truck in Fresno on Tuesday morning, with the neck broken, seems to be a ringer for the girl you have here. Look and see.’