Dream of Fair Woman

by Charlotte Armstrong

  Alfreda moved, in her white robe that became each of these colours as the wheel turned. She bent over and the girl smiled upward—happily, idiotically, pathetically.

  Alfreda turned again and came, walking in indigo, to Betty. ‘In my office,’ she said grumpily.

  As they went towards the small waiting room Betty looked back and saw the girl sitting quietly on the cushion—eerily blue.

  ‘She is happy here,’ said Alfreda, ‘but perhaps only here. It is a burden. I suppose I must give it over. Others need me.’ The big woman seemed to have become uncertain, needing argument.

  ‘Dr Dienst, I came because of Alison. You know there may be danger.’

  ‘There is no danger whatsoever,’ boomed Alfreda, ‘in my sanctuary.’

  She opened the door to the inner office. The small room was full of tobacco smoke. The girl who was sitting there jumped up and cried out.

  ‘Be still,’ said Alfreda. ‘I’ve brought your sister and it won’t do …’

  Betty said, ‘Alison?’

  The girl said, ‘What’s she doing here? That’s not my sister.’ Her voice had an angry twang. ‘You brought her. You won’t help me. I didn’t think you would. You’re just a fat rat-fink, like everybody else.’

  The girl was edging around for the far side of the desk in what seemed to be senseless panic.

  Alfreda closed the door. ‘You forget,’ she said pompously, ‘I have promised.’ Then, to Betty, ‘Now, just what is it you want?’

  ‘I only wanted her, Alison, to know,’ said Betty, ‘that the police are looking for her.’

  ‘Augh.’ The girl made an ugly sound.

  ‘To protect her,’ Betty insisted. She looked at the girl. ‘We think they tried to kill your sister, while they thought she was you.’

  ‘This is absurd,’ said Alfreda.

  ‘You bet it is,’ said Alison. ‘You damn phony!’

  Alfreda said, ‘Miss Prentiss, go wait in the next room. Or preferably—just go away.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Betty with some spirit, ‘but I know you have no car and no telephone. I can drive her to a police station. It’s safer, Alison, believe me. Don’t you believe me?’

  ‘I haven’t done one thing,’ whined Alison. ‘I haven’t done one thing!’ Both her hands went shoulder high. ‘And somebody better help me.’

  Alfreda’s hand was heavy on Betty’s shoulder. ‘Go and wait,’ she said. ‘Let me be alone with her. It is more important than you realise.’

  Betty was being pushed.

  ‘This one can be saved,’ said Alfreda. ‘I can save her.’

  Betty couldn’t help being frightened. There was something about the girl that was desperate. It wasn’t that. There was something about Alfreda that was too full of glee,’ too well pleased, too swelling—Alfreda’s hand was urging her through the now open door into the waiting room.

  ‘Mrs Cuneen is calling the police,’ warned Betty.

  The woman’s face hardened. ‘Don’t interfere with what you do not understand. Now, sit down. Sit there. And do not, I warn you, so much as speak to Lilianne. Don’t even let her see you. I shall deal with the police, when and if the time comes. And Mrs Cuneen too. You leave my patients to me.’

  Betty was in the other small room now, and Alfreda shut the door in her face.

  Leon Daw’s car nosed into the parking lot behind the new supermarket on Parsons Street. He got out and, shielding his eyes, looked at the raw steep bank where the earth had been cut away. His neck arched, his collar tightened, as he kept looking higher, tracing the ridge above, noting how to reach it.

  Tony Severson was on the telephone in a drugstore. ‘I finally got the address, Mrs Royce-I-mean-Daw, but I think it’s too late—’

  ‘Oh?’ cut in Mrs Daw. ‘Oh, mercy, I don’t understand what has been happening. There’s a Lieutenant Tate, here, from the police …’

  ‘I’ll be right over, said Tony, anguished. ‘It’s my story!’

  A single policeman in a car was proceeding as instructed, driving steadily, but not fast, considering placidly the best way up that hill.

  Betty Prentiss didn’t know what to do. She tiptoed to peek through the open door of the waiting room and could see, on a long slant, the girl in the robe, sitting on the cushion and watching the colours change with the enchanted expression of a small child who still believes in magic.

  This is crazy, Betty thought. But she was afraid to disobey; she didn’t know what might happen if the girl on the cushion were to turn around and catch sight of her. So Betty stepped backwards and sat down on the edge of a chair where, by leaning forward slightly, she could still see.

  Head down, feet dragging, Matt trudged the park path. When he opened the door of his mother’s house, it hit soft obstacles. All the fat phone books of the Los Angeles area were scattered on the floor of the front hall.

  ‘What in the …’

  ‘She’s Lilianne!’ his mother said, appearing in the archway. She knew. Dr Jon had called her.

  ‘Yes, she is, Ma.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Sure. Fine,’ He didn’t fool her. ‘What goes on here?’

  ‘Oh, that idiot, Tony Severson!’ Peg began to gesture dramatically. ‘Alison was up in the temple. Betty figured that out. We both smelled cigarette smoke up there this morning. But that must be how the house on Opal Street caught fire. So we knew. And Betty went to warn her and I called the police. But Tony had some mad idea and he called Megan Royce and told her.’

  Matt took in this spate of jumbled information as one lightning stroke. (He had forgotten! He had forgotten! There was a third one. One dead. One a goner. But a third girl!) ‘How long ago?’ he demanded.

  ‘A while,’ his mother said. ‘But Megan Royce and Leon Daw … There is no phone at the temple. It isn’t listed. They don’t know where it is.’

  Matt said, ‘Yes they do.’ He turned and fled out the door. He raced around the house and got into his mother’s car.

  Leon Daw walked softly and read the nameplate on the pillar. This was the place. He went up to the door, but he did not touch the brass knocker. He slipped to his left; he looked in through the window.

  There she was. The light was green.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Betty, still on the edge of the chair, was falling into a strangely dreamy state. The slow changing of the coloured light out there was hypnotic. The temple was very still. She could hear no voices from the inner office. The girl on the cushion in the big room was silent.

  When Betty saw the front door opening slowly, in silence, her brain at first took no message. When she saw the figure of a man, coloured emerald at the moment, she wondered, idly, locked in a passive state, what man was an intimate of Alfreda’s, that he entered here without knocking. She saw him peering ahead of himself. When she saw his left hand stretch backwards along the door’s edge to feel for the little button that would make it lock, she tensed. But it was not until the door was closed, and the figure was washed in paling green, that she began to guess who he was. The cut of his clothing? Those portly curves?

  Betty stood up.

  Matt pulled on the brakes of his mother’s car. He saw Betty’s Chevy. He saw the black car. He raced upon the temple’s porch. He wrestled with the doorknob. The door was locked.

  Betty saw Leon Daw begin to cross the shallow foyer, walking as if he curled his toes to keep upright on ice.

  The girl was sitting gracefully on her cushion. She did not hear him. She did not turn her head. The light was deep gold and slowly orange. When it began to be red, Betty saw the knife, ruby bright, in the man’s hand.

  She shouted.

  Matt heard a shout. He jumped to the left, to the first window. Light was seeping over the interior, in changing colours. It was confusing. A body flung itself on his back, jolting his breath out. Matt twisted his head around. It was a policeman. ‘Wait,’ Matt gasped. ‘Look—’

  Inside, the light was bluing and suddenly Matt,
with his forehead on the cold glass and the cop’s hand hard on his shoulder, could see plainly. Saw the bend of a pale figure near the floor, the bend of a darker figure over it.

  And then a racing body hurled itself across his cone of vision upon the standing man.

  He knew it was Leon Daw who straightened in violent shock, who turned and cast Betty’s body off his back. He saw Betty flying helplessly. He saw, and felt, her crash into the wall.

  Saw the man’s face and teeth. Saw him turn to look for what had been knocked out of his hand. Saw the girl in the robe, standing. Blue was greening. He saw Alfreda’s bulk, in the left corner of his vision, her robe catching the coming of the green. Lifted his leg and kicked out glass.

  Felt rushing out of the place, like an explosion, a terrible force.

  Saw, through shatters, the girl in the yellow-green robe stand high. Saw her hand and arm swing upward, as neatly as if she had been a trained assassin. Went through the window, shoulder first, glass shards cracking.

  Swept his gaze once over the girl Alison’s terror, where she huddled to his left.

  Saw how Alfreda was wrenching the blackened knife from Lilianne’s golden hand. Looked once at that girl’s face and its childish smile, that sought and expected praise. Looked at the blood down the front of her robe as the light, going orange, turned it black.

  Saw the fallen man and his black blood on the floor.

  Went slithering to where Betty was crumpled.

  Heard Alfreda’s voice crooning, ‘Sleep, Lilianne. Go to sleep now. It is all over. Go to sleep.’ And by the tremor in the voice was confirmed in a knowledge that was not scientifically demonstrable.

  Alison began to scream. ‘She did it! She did it! You saw it! Don’t get me mixed up in it! I didn’t do it! I didn’t do anything!’

  Heard the cop’s, ‘Now, wait. Now just a minute, miss. Now take it easy.’

  Bent, in indigo, to Betty—and thought he would never bring his senses single—to hear her heart.

  Then, mercifully, the coloured lights stopped changing. There was a rasp of fabric and the curtains opened. In daylight, Matt straightened and looked behind him.

  Lilianne was on a cushion in a corner, her head against the wall, her eyes closed, her hands passive in her bloodied lap. She slept?

  Alfreda was standing beside one of the arches, her hands twisting and moving in agitation.

  Alison was momentarily silent, standing free, with her feet apart, her face shrewd, yet torn into mask and underlay. Two-faced and tormented, she looked like her mother.

  Matt caught at his brains and brought them to his clear duty in all this madness. He called to the cop harshly, ‘Get an ambulance.’

  ‘D.O.A. on this one,’ said the cop, who was looking down at Leon Daw.

  ‘Get an ambulance, please.’

  Alison’s feet stuttered on the floor and she began to run. The cop moved almost lazily and caught and held her. ‘I don’t think so, miss,’ he said.

  ‘I want out! I want out!’ she shrieked. ‘It was my sister. I’m the other one.’

  Matt yelled. ‘Will you call an ambulance? This girl is badly hurt!’

  Saw Alfreda take hold of the wiggling, struggling blonde whose underlying face was so ugly in its torment to escape.

  Turned his head back and bent to Betty. Heard the door slam. Heard a heavy sigh.

  Outside, the cop was talking in his car. The blonde girl began to run along the road. She stumbled and fell headlong, and lay still.

  When the floor vibrated, Matt muttered, ‘Don’t touch her.’

  Alfreda said over his head, ‘I am a doctor.’

  Matt looked up at her and said, ‘You are a killer.’

  He didn’t wait to see her react. He bent to Betty, who was lying on the bare floor, looking as if she were asleep.

  Peg Cuneen looked down at Megan’s face in the Wednesday morning paper. ‘She still looks old and ugly and mean, to me.’ Peg’s coffee cup shook in her hand. She’d been up all night long.

  ‘She didn’t fool you, Ma.’ Matt wanted to comfort her. ‘You saved a lot of trouble. The lieutenant was pleased, wasn’t he?’

  ‘In old clothes and that thing on her head! She was so snoopy and critical. She did open all the dresser drawers. I thought she was looking for something wrong with my house.’ Indignation perked Peg up. ‘As if I’d have had her in it!’

  ‘She was planting the key. Now we know. With Alison telling how she gave the key to jolly old Megan, and you seeing through to the bone. Oh, Megan’s had it. Accessory, twice over. She was a little too smart, telling Tate about Bobbie’s phone message.’

  ‘She isn’t smart. She’s just intricate-minded.’ His mother was so tired that she began to sound like Sybil. (Potions and cryptic advices.) ‘It’s not smart to think everybody else is stupid.’

  He said, ‘It’s all over but Megan’s trial, and that could be months from now.’

  ‘I don’t suppose,’ said his mother darkly, ‘that it is ever going to be all over.’

  ‘No Daw money for Megan. Did you read Dorothy’s will?’ Money was a safe subject.

  ‘I did not,’ Peg said. (His father used to say that.)

  ‘Lots of Daw money to this Doctor Harkness and his noble project. Good. Fine. Until you get to the fine print, that is.’

  ‘What, dear?’

  ‘There’s a little joker.’ Matt was trying to sound cheerfully cynical. ‘He gets it if, and only if, at the time of her death, he was married to Dorothy.’

  ‘But he wasn’t, was he?’

  ‘There may be a fight. St John Cotter will deal with the Daw money. Good luck to it.’ (His father used to say that.)

  His mother looked at him with her fatigue-smudged eyes and said deliberately, ‘Poor Dorothy.’

  (But Dorothy was dead. The Cuneens had never known her and never would. She was dead, now. Alison, alive, bore the mark that would not tan. And what marks Dorothy’s body bore, that Tate had kept to himself, were, some of them, known to a Dr George Harkness.)

  ‘Mr and Mrs Larry Wimberholtz are in seclusion,’ Matt read loudly.

  ‘What’s to become of Alison?’ Peg was looking at him in the same way.

  ‘Nothing much,’ he said as lightly as he could. ‘Did you read her interview? Seems Alison only hopes that all this tragedy will deepen her art.’ Matt threw the paper to the floor.

  ‘Tony,’ said his mother, ‘is just a little boy playing games. He’s sick and astonished about Betty …’

  Matt didn’t want to talk about Betty Prentiss. ‘Alison says it was Larry who beat the baby. Larry says it was Alison.’

  ‘It was Alison.’ His mother spoke as if she knew for sure. She twitched her shoulders. ‘She didn’t do anything.’

  Matt struggled to follow this. ‘To Dorothy, you mean? I know. That’s why the law will let her off.’

  ‘She won’t get off. She didn’t do anything—when her sister was in trouble. Nobody gets off cheating.’

  ‘If you ask me,’ Matt said flatly, ‘Alison is only one jump behind her sister, on the way to the booby hatch.’ If Peg needed to be told that he was wide awake now, then he had better tell her. ‘And so much for the three of them. Because Lilianne is a goner.’

  ‘What will they do with Lilianne?’

  ‘The law? Nothing. They can’t convict her. It would be self-defence, if anything. But it wasn’t anything. Alfreda pulled the strings.’

  ‘That can’t be proven, can it?’

  ‘No. I suppose it wouldn’t hold up. Alfreda is doing penance. She won’t “save” any more young girls.’

  ‘You see?’ his mother said. ‘It isn’t going to be over. Things have changed.’

  ‘It’s over, as far as we’re concerned.’ This wasn’t true.

  ‘Are you going, now?’ his mother asked pointedly.

  He got up. ‘Are you coming?’ he countered. (He’d have to go.)

  ‘No. I saw her. I’ll wait, now, for Elizabeth to get here. She’ll want
to see Betty.’ Peg turned away. ‘Give her my love.’

  ‘I will, Ma.’ But he hesitated.

  He had been thinking, trying to think, most of the night, waiting in the hospital while they operated, while the surgeon undid the damage and succeeded, so they said, in restoring to working order the brain in Betty’s head.

  Thinking that if Betty had stood still and screamed, Matt would have burst through the window and the cop behind him. But Betty hadn’t known that they were there.

  So it was done. And not to be undone.

  So Leon had not killed poor soulless Lilianne, thinking she was Alison and there alone. He hadn’t killed her, before three eye-witnesses. He had been killed. Alfreda had put her own furious reaction … to violence with violence … into a second-hand murder of a murderer.

  Still, why had Betty done that? She hadn’t thought, had she, hadn’t gone over pros and cons, when she had simply hurled herself? People don’t always think. Oh come, he had known that. He had known that the brain was comparatively new in the universe.

  But if she hadn’t thought, then had she felt? And what could Betty Prentiss have felt for Lilianne Kraus? Was it, then, just an unwillingness to see harm done, pain given, death dealt? Was there such a thing as so powerful an unwillingness? An instinct? A civilisation?

  Or—and now he cringed to think what he was about to think again—had Betty felt for him? For Matt? For his dream? And in some old-fashioned, wicked sacrifices—No, no, incredible! It would also be unbearable. He writhed, even to imagine it. He didn’t want to see her, lest it be so. His mother had seen her for a moment. He had not. He couldn’t live with that. If it were so, he could never look at Betty Prentiss again. But she couldn’t have. She was modern. The trouble was he had lost his faith.

  Could he ask his mother? She wasn’t very old; she might be wise; she’d had a life. (Matt remembered his father with a pang. Bobbie, Megan, and Alfreda. The names rang in his head, unbidden. So much for the three of them. Poor women. Only Peg had had a man like his father.) All right. His mother must be woman-wise. Maybe she could tell him.