Dream of Fair Woman

by Charlotte Armstrong

  ‘I’ll do that,’ said Peg decisively. ‘You go up there.’

  ‘Go?’

  ‘Because if she’s there, she must be there all alone.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘The quicker the police—You go and you take her to the police. Or I can go.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Betty with resignation. ‘I’ll go, Peg. My car’s here. I’ll go right away.’

  ‘Or I could take Tony with me.’

  ‘She wouldn’t know Tony,’ said Betty wearily. ‘Or you either, Peg. But she’s met me. I’m the one who should go.’

  ‘Good girl,’ said Peg. ‘Do it.’

  She hung up and dialled the police number. She couldn’t have said why she was doing what she was doing. She knew it must be done.

  She wasted no time asking for Tate. She gave her message crisply. ‘Will you tell Lieutenant Clarence Tate, at once, that Mrs Cuneen called to say this. He is looking for an Alison Hopkins. Tell him I have reason to believe that she is, right now, alone in a place called the Temple of Health Through Art, run by a woman named Dr Dienst who calls herself Alfreda.’

  Peg took her breath. Something made her hesitate.

  ‘Do you know where that is?’ she demanded.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ the voice said calmly. It began to repeat her message.

  When she was satisfied, Peg went into her living-room to deal with Tony’s ears. But he wasn’t there. She found him hovering over the extension telephone on the kitchen counter.

  ‘Is it O.K., Mrs Cuneen-mavourneen,’ he said, with cream on his whiskers, ‘if I make a little bitty phone call?’

  ‘Of course,’ Peg said, dismissing suspicion.

  So Tony turned his back and began to dial.

  In the Spanish house, Megan was sitting, still and tense, in the big back room. Leon Daw would not let her upstairs or out of his sight. He had been roaming the downstairs rooms. He had been sharpening the knife he had brought with him, on the electric sharpener in the kitchen. Now he was standing at the glass door to the patio, slapping the flat of the knife monotonously upon his palm. The sound was getting on Megan’s nerves.

  She gathered her legs ready to spring and said boldly, ‘What in the world are you doing with that thing?’

  ‘I have a hobby,’ he said bitterly.

  ‘Oh, Leon, don’t be so gloomy. You can’t tell what will happen. Nothing may happen.’

  ‘I’m not particularly gloomy,’ he said. ‘I don’t seem to have an awful lot to live for.’

  He heard her gasp and turned around.

  ‘Except, of course, the publicity,’ he said.

  ‘Leon, put that thing away and don’t—’

  ‘I am changing my modus operandi,’ he said and laughed. ‘Don’t think I’m going down alone.’

  ‘You have in mind taking someone else along?’ she snapped. The man was cracking up. She wasn’t afraid of him physically. She was ready to fight for her life.

  ‘Why not?’ he muttered. ‘What’s the difference? I’m not a murderer.’ He lifted his countenance and began to howl, as if to the moon. ‘It all started with that stupid love-bitten little ignoramus—who had a silver spoon stuck in her mouth by luck, and never knew one thing about earning a living. A living.’

  ‘Leon, darling,’ Megan tried again, ‘you mustn’t go on like this. You’re not thinking. Suppose the police come here? You can’t talk to them if you don’t pull yourself together a little bit. Why don’t you go upstairs and lie down? Let me …’

  The phone rang.

  ‘I’ll answer,’ she said quickly.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, you won’t.’

  Peg had begun to clear a portion of the kitchen counter when Tony got his connection.

  ‘Tony Severson, here. May I speak with your wife, please, sir?… No, I’d better talk to her.

  ‘Hi, Mrs Royce, I mean, Mrs Daw. Listen, Dorothy is, right now, all alone in a place called the Temple of Health Through Art run by a Dr Dienst who calls herself Alfreda. Now, I’ll find out where it is and I’ll go there my—’

  Peg’s hand cut the connection with a bang.

  ‘Hey,’ said Tony, shocked.

  She said, ‘You listened in!’

  ‘But, Baby-doll, that’s my business. Look, tell me where this—’

  ‘I won’t tell you a single thing,’ Peg cried. ‘You did wrong. I remember what you forgot. Megan Royce tried to poison the girl in the hospital.’

  ‘What! What!’

  ‘Yes. Matt says so.’

  ‘Naw. He must have had some brainstorm.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have told her.’

  ‘But listen—but wait—’ Peg walked away and he trailed her, begging. ‘O.K., then let me go up there. Tell me where it is, and I’ll go get her myself. I’ll take care of her.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ said Peg. ‘The police will take care of her.’

  ‘You’re blowing my story!’ screeched Tony Severson.

  ‘I hope so. I hope so.’

  ‘Now look, Mrs Cuneen-belovéd, I can find out where it is. I can look in the phone book. So—save me five minutes? Angel? Precious?’

  ‘No, I won’t.’

  ‘I’ll ask Information.’

  ‘Not on my telephone,’ Peg said craftily. Then severely, ‘This is serious police business and you can read about it in the newspapers.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Dr Prentiss waved the idea of regalia aside. The man on guard looked startled. Then grateful. He did not follow the three of them into the room where she was sleeping.

  ‘Will you please disengage that thing?’ Alfreda said.

  Dr Jon took away the feeding needle from where it was strapped to her arm.

  Matt slipped around to the window side of the bed and stood well away, watching and listening. Alfreda gazed down. ‘Of course. I knew it would be she.’

  ‘You are sure? When her own mother was not?’ said Dr Jon. ‘Better wake her, if you can.’

  ‘You have been warned. I must, then, take her.’ Alfreda rolled her big eyes.

  ‘We’ll see. How will you do this, Doctor?’

  ‘Her mother is dead.’ Alfreda pursued her argument. ‘Her sister is incompetent. I am the only one who can be responsible for Lilianne.’

  ‘Let her say so.’

  A faint contemptuous smile crossed Alfreda’s lips. She stood close over the bed and began to speak. Her voice took on cadences that were somehow familiar. Matt glanced sharply at Dr Prentiss and saw his craggy face turn sour with knowledge.

  Alfreda was using the hypnotist’s cadences, the hypnotist’s language, the monotony, the insistence, and a great dominating attention.

  ‘Lilianne, you are sleeping a good deep sleep. You have been sleeping a good long time. You have slept for a week. You are well rested, now. So, in a little while, I shall count to three and snap my fingers. When I have counted to three and snapped my fingers you will wake up, feeling well rested. You will not be afraid, because I am here. Alfreda is here with you, now.’

  The voice went on and on, repeating and repeating. The big woman was exerting a tremendous effort. She was stalking her prey, the girl’s awareness. Matt was tense and becoming a little angry. He met Dr Prentiss’ eye and the doctor shook his head slightly, as if in warning. Sad warning. The scene seemed to drift away. It became unreal. Alfreda went on and on. The girl sighed. Her head moved slightly. It turned towards Alfreda’s side of the bed.

  But she did not wake.

  Alfreda lifted her hands and flexed her fingers. She took in breath and began again. With an addition. ‘Lilianne, when you wake, I shall take you with me to the temple. When you wake, we shall go there. Lilianne, I shall take you with me to the temple and you may stay there with me. You may stay there all the time. Night and day. I shall count to three and snap my fingers. You will wake up and we shall go to the temple where you always feel so safe and happy and in tune. If you are ready, we shall go.’

  Alfreda stopped, watched, listene
d, seemed to divine the right moment.

  ‘One … two … three …’ Her fingers snapped.

  Matt was not breathing. The room was so still the finger-rack seemed to echo in deep emptiness. Nothing happened for a moment. Alfreda did not move or speak. But she was projecting a force that Matt could almost see.

  Then the girl in the bed opened her eyes. They were grey.

  Alfreda said softly and cheerfully, ‘Come, my dear. Sit up now.’ She bent and as the girl began to lift her head, Alfreda slipped a strong left arm down behind her back and lifted. Matt jumped to activate the mechanism that would raise the head of the bed. The girl could see him. At least she was looking at him. But there was no reaction in her glistening eyes.

  ‘Alfreda?’ she said in the childish piping Matt had heard before.

  ‘I am here,’ said Alfreda.

  ‘May I question her?’ said Dr Prentiss. ‘What is your name, young lady?’

  ‘Alfreda?’ The girl’s hands were tight on Alfreda’s big right arm.

  ‘It’s all right. Tell him your name.’

  ‘Alison …’ the girl said.

  ‘Doctor?’ said Dr Prentiss.

  ‘Just a minute, Doctor,’ snapped Alfreda.

  The girl began to look terrified. ‘No,’ she moaned. ‘No, no, no doctors, no.’ She swayed from side to side as if to struggle out of bonds.

  Alfreda said, ‘You had better let me deal with this. Now, Lilianne.’

  ‘Leading the witness, Doctor?’ said Prentiss.

  The girl began to heave dry sobs. ‘Hush. No doctors,’ said Alfreda. ‘I am here. Tell Alfreda. What did Alison do?’

  ‘Alison stole my name. Alison wanted it.’

  ‘You must tell the gentleman your name,’ said Alfreda, ‘the one your daddy gave you.’

  ‘Lilianne,’ the girl said. Her eyes were on Matt and he had to believe that they were not intelligent eyes.

  ‘Very well,’ soothed Alfreda. ‘Very well, my dear. Now, we shall go to the temple.’

  The girl began to smile. Her eyes glistened.

  ‘But you must feel strong enough to put on clothing,’ said Alfreda. Strength surged obediently into the girl’s body. She sat up using her own muscles and threw off the covers with one sweep of her arm.

  ‘Just a minute,’ said Dr Prentiss.

  ‘I must take her, as you see.’ Alfreda seemed to be able to use a voice that the girl did not hear at all. Alfreda slid the white robe from her arm and put it on the bed. The girl did not touch it. She seemed to have been forbidden. She was held, like a child in a game of Statues.

  ‘That girl will have to be institutionalised,’ said Dr Jon softly, ‘and you know it.’

  ‘I must either put her back to sleep,’ said Alfreda calmly, ‘or take her with me. Otherwise, she will suffer. I warned you. There was a very strong conditioning.’

  ‘She must be under competent and accredited psychiatric treatment,’ said Prentiss. ‘If you won’t put her there, I will.’

  ‘You can’t talk to me about my patient.’ Alfreda was both shocked and offended.

  ‘Your patient, to whom you did not come?’ said Dr Jon. ‘If you think that protocol, or anything else, will keep me from an obvious duty, you are much mistaken. I’ll see to this temple, by the way.’

  ‘Threats, Doctor?’

  ‘Responsibility, Doctor.’

  The girl began to sway and moan as if she were in pain. Matt dared not move.

  Dr Prentiss said to Alfreda sharply. ‘Steady her.’

  Alfreda’s lip curled. ‘Your patient? Why don’t you?’ It was brutal. The girl was in pain. She seemed to be groping, like a wounded insect, with blind feelers.

  Dr Jon said coldly, ‘It may take a day or two to make proper arrangements. If you do not agree that arrangements will be made, then she must suffer. And I’ll pull your temple down.’

  The big woman licked her lips. ‘And if I agree?’

  ‘Take her. Forty-eight hours. No more.’

  ‘She does not suffer,’ said Alfreda defiantly, ‘when her spirit is in tune.’

  ‘She has no spirit,’ said Dr Prentiss sternly. ‘It has been stolen. I seem to have heard that this is an evil.’

  Force was meeting force, a clash of Titans. But Matt cried out, ‘Why doesn’t somebody help her?’

  ‘I’ll order sedation,’ Prentiss said.

  But Alfreda turned. ‘Lilianne. Put on your robe, now.’

  Matt couldn’t bear to see any more. He blundered past them and went out the door, while the girl groped eagerly for the white garment:

  Alfreda said, to Dr Prentiss, ‘I could, perhaps, prepare her for leaving me?’ Her voice coaxed, now.

  ‘Do that,’ snapped Dr Jon, ‘if you have any mercy.’

  He came out into the corridor, beckoned to a nurse and sent her flying into the room. The girl shrieked. Alfreda began a controlling chant.

  Matt said fiercely, ‘What is that?’

  ‘I wonder,’ said the doctor. ‘Too many shock treatments? Addition to the hypnotic state? I suppose there is a word for it. In the vernacular, brainwashing. I don’t like knocking her out with drugs.’

  ‘You are going to let her go?’

  ‘Dr Dienst will do what’s proper, or see her temple fall. I may pull it down anyway. Depends upon what else goes on in that place. We’ll see.’ The doctor was full of anger. ‘I’ll make a report.’

  ‘What can be done for … for Lilianne?’

  ‘Not much, I suspect,’ said the doctor, full of hard truth. ‘I think she’s a goner.’

  Matt said, ‘Do you need me?’

  ‘No, no. I’ll see the office.…’

  Matt went away down the corridor. He went into a storeroom. There was no one there. He leaned his forehead on the wall. The girl was empty. No soul, no self. Stolen? Whether by her sister, or her mother, or by her experiences, her woundings, by some too zealous efforts to cure her, or finally by the power of Alfreda’s greedy spirit—this body harboured no one. She was better off sleeping, he thought without tears. Better off as somebody’s foolish dream.

  He waited where he was. He didn’t want to watch them go.

  Betty parked her car. The land below was covered with a bluish haze but she got out into pale sunshine. She went up under the pillars and used the brass knocker. Nothing answered.

  She moved to one of the big multipaned undraped windows and leaned tight to the glass. She could see all the way through the big empty room, where the floor cushions made their spots of colour. There was nobody in the room. She put her palms beside her eyes and moved her head to see all she could, to right and left.

  ‘I’m probably wrong,’ she said to herself aloud.

  But she shifted along the façade of the building. She could not see very far into the small dark offices, with no glass wall at their opposite sides. She wondered if there was a bluish drift of smoke, there above the sill. She couldn’t be sure.

  After a while, she went back to sit in the car. She supposed she ought to wait and speak to the police. It was quiet up here and peaceful. There was nobody around. The few other houses on this ridge seemed silent and empty on their perches. Betty simply sat there.

  She’d only come here because Peg had told her to come. She was here. Why should she bother about anything more? Perhaps the police would be along. Perhaps not, she’d rather be here than waiting in the hospital. Why should she wait in the hospital? Nothing that was happening there could make any difference to her.

  Leon said, ‘He didn’t give the address.’

  ‘He doesn’t know it. So much the better.’ Megan was full of energy. ‘That woman in the thing, the robe. It’s her place. You heard what she said about some new market?’

  ‘On Parsons Street,’ Leon’s mouth worked.

  ‘And there was a ground-slip? Parsons Street isn’t far. It isn’t long, either. You can find it.’

  ‘We can find it.’

  ‘No, no,’ Megan said. ‘He was cut off. He’ll
call back. I’ll make sure he comes here. I’ll keep him away from the place where she is. She’s there alone, he said. Go talk to Alison, darling. Maybe it’s not too late. Bribe her. Go, talk to Alison, quickly. I can—if you like—imply that you are lying down upstairs.’

  Leon had taken a step. At this last, he turned back and picked up the knife from where he had dropped it near the phone.

  He said nothing. Nor did Megan.

  When he had gone, she sighed. She began to rehearse, mouthing phrases. ‘Simply appalled.…’

  When the taxi pulled up, Betty watched them get out of it. First Alfreda, who turned to pay the fare, fishing money out of some mysterious fold of her robe. Then the girl. Barefoot. Wearing a long white robe with a white cord at her waist.

  Betty tumbled out and ran towards them. She recognised this girl. Remembered her way of standing, the hair falling around her face, the forlorn air about her, the unappealing passivity.

  Alfreda saw her and said sternly, ‘Not now, Miss Prentiss.’

  ‘Oh, hallo,’ said Betty.

  The girl looked at her. ‘Oh, hallo,’ she said feebly.

  Alfreda stiffened. It was as if she were offended because Betty had been recognised. ‘What is it?’ she said to Betty impatiently. ‘Lilianne must be taken care of, as you can see.’

  ‘It’s about the other one, the sis—’

  ‘Be still,’ Alfreda commanded. The taxi moved off. Alfreda said irritably, ‘Come in, I suppose. Come in.’

  She used a key. As soon as the door swung open, the girl went past her on a straight line to a blue floor cushion. She sat down and bent her head and clasped her hands.

  ‘She’s quite all right, in this atmosphere,’ said Alfreda crossly. ‘Quite serene. Quite happy. As you see.’ Alfreda’s fingers were automatically fixing the little lock button on the edge of the door.

  ‘Dr Dienst,’ said Betty, ‘if the … if someone else is here …’

  ‘Don’t speak.’

  ‘But please,’ Betty whispered. ‘Where can we talk?’

  ‘Wait.’

  Alfreda took strides to a high panel in the wall, beside one of the arches. She opened it and pulled switches. The plain putty-coloured curtains at the far end of the big room began to move on their tracks, to close. A light went on in the ceiling and a colour wheel began to move slowly over it. A pinkness deepened slowly to crimson, then crimson began to become purple.