Dream of Fair Woman

by Charlotte Armstrong

  They looked at the pictures. They were brutally clear. It was very much the same fair face. The hair was cut short. That was the second most obvious difference. Matt winced to see the primary difference. The girl in the pictures was not sleeping, but dead. Dead. Dead.

  The truck, Tate told them, was carrying cartons of wooden toys. The driver, Bailly, had loaded in Los Angeles and driven directly to a hamburger joint on San Fernando Road, where he parked the truck, on Monday night, from about eleven-thirty to midnight. He was inside, having a meal and bracing himself for the night run with four cups of coffee. Now that he had begun to speak, the lieutenant went along with apparent candour in an easy flow, as one among his peers.

  ‘Now, they interrogated this Bailly in Fresno, on Tuesday. On Wednesday, a police officer from Fresno came on down and I co-operated with him, checking out what the driver had testified about his actions in this area. By Wednesday night, it seemed pretty plain that he had told the truth. Which didn’t get us very far.’

  Tate reached for the photographs and put them away as he went on talking. ‘The hamburger place has a big parking lot where nobody saw a thing. The truck was in a slot nearest an alley. Nobody lives on the alley. But the counterman knows the driver and says he was there, at that time, eating, just as he said. My colleague went on up the line, checking every stop the driver says he made, but it turned out that he had stopped only very briefly, at country corners. So it began to look as if the body was put into his truck while it waited in that parking lot, on San Fernando Road, on Monday night. Which put it up to us to try for an identification of the victim, as having come from around here.

  ‘Which identification, by the way, somebody wanted to prevent. Not a stitch of clothing. And the fingertips of the deceased were crisscrossed with small cuts, probably from a razor blade. We are also inclined to think that the hair was cut short after death.’

  ‘How can you identify?’ Atwood inquired.

  ‘We are checking out Missing Persons. Circulating dental charts. Of course, that takes time.’

  ‘And our girl’s fingerprints?’ Atwood looked hopeful.

  The lieutenant sighed, for lay ignorance. ‘If we find your girl’s prints some place, we can assume she left them there. But unless we’ve got her prints on file, that won’t tell us who she is.’

  Atwood groaned softly. Dr Prentiss said, ‘She is the other one.’

  ‘Probably so.’ Tate nodded. ‘I saw the news photo Friday morning. And the resemblance. But she wasn’t the one I was after—not being dead, you see. But as soon as I heard there’d been two identifications of your girl, it looked as if our dead girl had to be the other one. Either Dorothy Daw or Alison Hopkins. And the case comes down here.’

  He looked stern.

  ‘On Saturday morning, checking up on the Daw girl, I showed these photographs to Leon Daw, who wouldn’t have any part of them. I checked on where the Daw girl was last seen.’

  ‘You saw Leon Daw on Saturday?’ Matt broke in. ‘What time, sir?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he didn’t mention that. To me, I mean. Not at all.’

  Tate’s face did not change. He waited for Matt to go on and when Matt did not, the lieutenant continued his own account.

  ‘Dorothy Daw dropped out of sight, Tuesday, midday, at the Union Railroad Station. By then, our girl was already in the morgue in Fresno, so it seemed clear that our dead girl isn’t Dorothy. So, I went after Hopkins.’

  The lieutenant paused and looked at them sombrely. ‘I waited for today, because the body was transferred to us and arrived last night. Early this morning, on the strength of her reaction to these photographs, I was able to take Mrs Bobbie Hopkins to see the deceased. So I can tell you that Mrs Hopkins definitely identifies our girl, the dead girl, as her daughter Alison.’

  ‘Wait a minute!’ Matt felt outraged.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Tate severely. ‘She fell apart quite a bit, but she made a positive identification. So …’

  There was an intrusion. Tony Severson knocked and squeezed into the room, pleading himself as a messenger from, and a personal friend of, Mrs Cuneen. Tate accepted Dr Prentiss’ acceptance, only warning Tony to listen off the record. But whatever message Tony had proposed to deliver was temporarily lost in the shuffle.

  Because Matt lunged forward. ‘Did Bobbie Hopkins look for a scar or a mark?’ he demanded.

  Tate’s deadpan turned to him. ‘What scar is this?’

  Matt burst into an account of the mark that would not tan.

  ‘The dead girl has a nice easy tan, all right,’ Tate said thoughtfully. ‘Mrs Hopkins didn’t mention any particular mark.’

  ‘Is there any mark? Or marks?’

  ‘Other marks?’

  Matt recognised his own technique. Tate wasn’t going to be forthcoming on the subject of marks. ‘Mrs Hopkins didn’t even look?’ he cried.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then the woman is crazy. She identified this girl, our girl, as her daughter Alison, on Friday. She practically fell apart then, about being a mother. Yesterday she told me about a mark on Alison that this girl, our girl, does not have. I told her so and she argued with me. Now, she identifies your body as Alison and didn’t even mention the mark that might prove it. O.K. Either she doesn’t know what she’s saying or doesn’t care. She doesn’t make sense at all. Don’t you know that she says Alison left her house, alive and well, on Tuesday evening? How could Alison be dead in a truck on Monday night? There’s something wrong here.’

  Tate said, ‘She was pretty hysterical. Took it hard. She admitted to me it might have been Monday night that Alison left her. I don’t know that I’d call Mrs. Hopkins the most reliable witness in the world.’

  ‘Then you don’t believe that identification either,’ cried Matt.

  Tate didn’t answer. Prentiss said thoughtfully. ‘Still—what you call the mark indicates that we haven’t got Alison. Surely you can inspect the victim for such a mark.’

  Tate nodded glumly, his face giving nothing away.

  But now Tony pushed forward. ‘Excuse me, gents. Did you know that Alison has a twin sister? Identical. Who is some kind of nun.’

  Tate turned to stare at him. Tony bubbled out his news, but he had the knack of attracting a scolding. The lieutenant turned very cold. How had it happened that Mr Severson had not given his information to the police? Tony said, ‘I’m giving it. I’m giving it.’ But the lieutenant grew colder. Why had he not given it early this morning, in Mrs Hopkins’ driveway? ‘You weren’t in the mood,’ said Tony, and the lieutenant was not amused. Mr Severson had better mend his ways and had better be sure to remember that what he had just heard in this room was off the record and not to be broadcast. Furthermore, Mr Severson had better go now, unless Mr Severson had anything more to say that would pertain.

  Mr Severson had. Did the police know that Alison Hopkins had once been married to a Larry Wimberholtz? And did the police know that there was a reason to believe this man was now in the area?

  The police did not say whether the police had known. The police put Tony out.

  After he had gone, Atwood said impatiently what all of them were thinking. Three girls, all alike, were simply too many. Furthermore, it meant that they still did not know which one of them lay asleep in Room 124.

  Matt said hotly that if they didn’t want two out of three dead, they had better protect the one they had. An eyedropper full of poison, found so near the room of a girl whose double had already been murdered, justified in Matt’s opinion a round-the-clock police protection.

  But the police officer did not offer any. He said that he would prefer, and it was a hard word as he said it, that the girl not be let out of this hospital until Tate gave his permission.

  Atwood was much relieved by this pronouncement. He shook the lieutenant’s hand heartily and announced that the hospital would keep her, and would protect her, for its own sake. He would hire two guards, one to replace the policeman who cou
ld no longer be spared for the lobby, to keep the Press out. And the other to stand guard at the door of the girl’s room. He would move her, in fact, to a different room and its location would not be given out at all. The guard would wear a gown and enter the room whenever anyone else did. Atwood had every confidence in the Police Department. He felt sure that the lieutenant would clear up the whole affair, very soon. Meantime, the lieutenant could rely on the hospital.

  Tate permitted a wintry smile to widen his mouth and said that he would now visit the Cuneen house, if Mr Cuneen was ready.

  Dr Prentiss, nodding general approval, went off about his business. Matt walked through the park with the policeman, trying to feel happier about the whole thing. But he was deeply depressed.

  Tate said, ‘You’d rather Alison wasn’t the dead one, eh?’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with what I’d rather.’ Matt felt shocked.

  ‘Probability says your girl is this religious twin. That is, until we find out the twin is dead, long ago. Or tucked away in some convent. Or also recently vaccinated.’

  ‘Vaccinated? Oh, I see. Our girl has no scar, of any kind. Yours has?’

  Tate wasn’t saying what scars his girl might have. ‘Everybody gets vaccinated. The scar could vanish with the years?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Within three years?’

  ‘Three?’

  ‘Looks like your girl shouldn’t be Dorothy. And shouldn’t be Alison, either. Alison just got back from Spain. So those two would have to have been vaccinated within the last three years. That’s the law. Otherwise, they don’t get back into the United States.’ In a moment, the lieutenant asked the sky, ‘But does a vaccination always leave a scar?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Matt miserably.

  ‘I’m not so sure your girl isn’t Alison.’

  ‘Why is that, sir?’ said Matt quickly, his heart jumping.

  ‘I don’t know why that is. You get hunches. This is quite a bit like the old shell game.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘My job is to find out which walnut shell the dead girl is under.’

  ‘That involves finding out which girl is in the hospital and where the third one is. If any.’

  ‘Seems so. Why don’t we get a clue from the name she gave, I wonder? What was it again?’

  ‘Olin, Dolan, Tollin, Bowlen.’

  ‘You didn’t publicise that?’

  ‘No, sir. It couldn’t help. And people by any of those names would have been pestered.’

  ‘And besides, you didn’t like your mother looking like a fool.’

  Matt suddenly felt as if he were less than half the other man’s age.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Lieutenant Tate listened respectfully to Peg’s tale of the girl’s arrival, which was told with the glibness of practice now. As she went, she quite obviously decided that she liked and trusted the man. Tate’s face could not change much but his voice seemed to soften.

  When they all three went upstairs, Betty came out of her room, was introduced, and told her portion of the story with precision and calm. Matt tried to wink congratulations at her, but her eyes wouldn’t meet his.

  They all four went into the front bedroom. Tate had the grey suitcase with him, destined for the police lab. He set it down, and asked if the room had been occupied since the girl’s departure.

  Peg said, ‘No, sir. Let me see—I think three people have come, because of my For Rent sign. A woman was here today. Fortunately, she didn’t want the room. I wasn’t exactly drawn to her, either.’

  Tate was quick. ‘You weren’t drawn to this girl, then?’

  ‘Not really,’ Peg answered frankly. She went on defensively, ‘But you see, she looked so exhausted. She needed to lie down and rest, I thought. Everybody is somebody.’ Peg began to sputter as if this were an argument. ‘That girl is somebody. Somebody has to notice. It’s my house.’

  ‘You apologising, ma’am, for a good heart?’ the lieutenant said. ‘Don’t do it. In my business, I meet too many people with scar tissue beating in there.’

  Um—boy—the philosopher, thought Matt and glanced to see whether his contemporary was beginning to be amused. But Betty was just standing there, detached and unresponsive.

  The lieutenant asked to what degree the room had been tidied. He looked into the closet, along the floor, along the edges where the mattress met the bedstead, at which point Peg said, mischievously, that she always turned a mattress.

  He said he wasn’t surprised and began to open the dresser drawers.

  Betty leaned on the doorjamb, watching rather dreamily. She wasn’t feeling a thing, she told herself. Matt was a nice boy, the son of old friends. She wouldn’t see very much of him in the years to come. She would go home in a day or two, get a part-time job of some kind that would be interesting for the summer, or perhaps plan a few little excursions to interesting places. Next year, she would live elsewhere. Take an apartment. She wouldn’t be here.

  Tate said, ‘What’s this?’ He had a key in his hand, a medium-sized key with a flat round head.

  ‘Why, I don’t know,’ said Peg. ‘Let me see.’

  He let her see. ‘It was down in the top drawer, under the paper. Not yours, Mrs Cuneen?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. I can’t imagine …’

  ‘When did you line those drawers, ma’am?’

  ‘Why, soon after the last girl left me. That was … let me see … the end of April.’

  Betty said, ‘I’m afraid that hasn’t anything to do with the girl in the hospital. I looked in those drawers myself and I would have found it.’

  ‘Perhaps not. It was hidden.’

  ‘But I’m rather sure. It wasn’t there on Wednesday.’

  ‘You searched the whole room, did you, Miss Prentiss?’

  ‘We did,’ Matt said. ‘Betty and I.’

  ‘Uh huh. Two people searching can fail to overlap.’

  Betty protested no further.

  ‘This may not mean anything,’ the lieutenant said with the key in his open hand. ‘But since you don’t claim it, Mrs Cuneen, why don’t I run down whatever it is the key to?’

  ‘Can you really do that?’ Peg gasped.

  ‘We can have a good try,’ he told her comfortingly.

  At point of departure, the lieutenant had a word of warning. ‘I understand,’ he said, ‘that you young people were trying to follow some trails?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I think you had best leave that to us, now.’

  ‘I see,’ said Matt a bit stiffly. ‘Fortunately, the hospital is taking steps.’

  Tate said sternly, ‘A personal conviction doesn’t count in court.’

  ‘So I understand, sir.’

  ‘Your girl was not poisoned. Nor was anybody else. Are you prepared to accuse this Mrs Royce of attempted murder? How will you back that up?’

  ‘I am personally convinced of it,’ Matt said, quietly. ‘I have no way of proving it. I am stating it, to you.’

  Tate said mildly, ‘We’ll see what we can do, of course.’

  And he went away.

  Peg was aglow. She had liked him. She was sure he’d get to the bottom of the whole thing. Hadn’t they liked him, too?

  Matt said he thought Tate was a bit of a sentimental old coot. Didn’t Betty?

  Betty said, ‘It doesn’t matter whether we like him. It’s in his hands now. I hope he gets it straightened around pretty soon. After all, I do have to pack up and toot off home, one of these days.’

  ‘Oh, Betty,’ said Peg brightly. ‘I’ll hate seeing you go but you ought to have a little fun during the vacation.’

  They went off together into the kitchen with a curious jauntiness.

  Matt stood in his mother’s living-room, feeling abandoned. He thought his mother was being awful damn quick to shake off all the responsibility she had been taking so seriously. And Betty was welching on a handshake, wasn’t she? Didn’t that count anymore?

 
Matt remained, he felt, responsible, at least to a degree. For instance, he had to go over to the hospital in a little while to see what nuts this day would bring.

  He might as well go now. He pounded back through the park, feeling put-upon and disgruntled.

  There was a new guard already at the big front doors of the hospital, a man in a plain suit who wanted to know who Matt was. Matt was privileged and could prove it. When he was inside, it didn’t take him long to find out where they had moved her. There was a guard sitting on a straight hard chair beside the door of 208. There were gowns hanging there. Matt didn’t go in; he had no reasonable reason. He looked at her through the open door.

  She slept as sweetly as before.

  No one had come to see her. No nuts for Matt to interview. But he remembered something. Speaking of nuts —He had an idea. He went racing home again.

  In Room 124, the patient lay dozing. Nobody was coming to see her during these visiting hours. They had only just put her in here. They’d gone home, to sigh with relief, no doubt. She dozed defensively. Then she sensed a presence, opened her eyes, and stared into the startled face of an ugly oldish woman who was leaning over the bed.

  The patient heaved herself up. The ugly woman in the raincoat stepped back so as not to be hit by the patient’s knobby old forehead rising so abruptly from the pillow. ‘Say, who are you?’ the patient demanded.

  But the intruder turned and ran away, without explanation or apology.

  The patient in Room 124 put her hard old thumb on the call button. When the nurse came, she had her bed cranked up and sat glaring at the walls, thinking hard thoughts about her daughters-in-law. It didn’t occur to her to mention a visitor-to-somebody-else who must have made a mistake.

  The ugly woman in the raincoat left her car at the Lockheed Airport’s parking lot. Carrying the big brown paper bag, wearing the old coat, the flat shoes, the scarf on her head, with the five-ninety-eight nylon wig hanging down around her old and ugly face, she boarded a plane.

  Tony Severson had had an idea. It was brilliantly simple.