“Well?” Miss Plummer said mechanically.
“Well, you see what I mean about the light? It’s over by the door, I know it like my own. So I ask myself questions. Like this. Would she fall in the shower, get up, walk to the door, turn out the light, walk back to the window, and fall down all over again? Or would she wash in the dark, which I don’t believe for a minute. Funny, you say? Funny, funny, funny.”
“Mrs Cashman—”
Mrs Cashman crowed. “See? It’s getting you, too! I tell you it don’t make sense. Nobody washes in the dark but April. And nobody walks around turning off lights with a broken head. Scares you, don’t it? You look green.”
Miss Plummer saw with horror that the elevator was returning from the eighth floor. “Mrs Cashman,” she whispered, “we don’t want any discussion of this. I’ve had my orders. The Heads are very strict about it, and Mrs Marshall-Gill—”
“Who’s discussing?” Mrs Cashman’s howl was haughty. “I’m only saying what I saw. The Heads ought to be grateful. It’s a good thing for them I get around the way I do. I saw the other one, didn’t I, laying in the rain? She’d still be there for all of them. And as for this one, I’m only sorry I didn’t hang around a little longer, I might have seen something really good. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”
“Mrs Cashman, the Heads and Mrs Marshall-Gill—”
“You tell the Heads and Mrs Marshall-Gill that I wouldn’t live in this place if they paid me! You tell them the neighbours are talking! You tell them—”
The elevator door opened, and Miss Brady and Miss Small stepped into the lobby. Mrs Cashman underwent a short convulsion and indicated her flowers.
“A little tribute from a well-wisher,” she sang without confidence. “I’ll be calling again to inquire.” She scuttled to the entrance and was out in the street before they reached the desk.
Miss Brady wrinkled her nose. “On the level, what did she want?”
“Nothing,” Miss Plummer said. She tried to stop with that but she couldn’t. She had to go on. They ought to know how the neighbours felt. “She was just talking. She talks too much, she’s a terrible talker, they all are around here. You can’t shut her up once she starts. Sometimes I think we ought to get a new doctor, she’s too familiar with Dr Kloppel, no respect. They both talk too much and to each other.” Her voice rose and wavered.
Miss Small patted her hand. “I’ll relieve you when we come back, Ethel. This has been hard on you, I know, but you mustn’t give way. She was gossiping, wasn’t she?”
“Yes, Miss Small. She didn’t really say anything, though, just hinted. It’s upsetting when a woman like Mrs Cashman, who’s always lived in the neighbourhood, and owning her own home, too—”
“What did she say?”
“She thinks it’s odd about Lillian. Same room, she said. You know.” Miss Plummer couldn’t raise her eyes. “Same room as Ruth Miller, she meant.”
Miss Small sighed. “Ridiculous. The next time she comes you send for me or Miss Brady. And stop fretting. Lillian’s all right, everything’s all right… Where’s Kitty?”
“She went to the kitchen for coffee. She says she has a nervous chill.”
Miss Small’s smile showed that she believed in the chill as much as Miss Plummer did.
“New doctor, new switchboard girl! When she comes back, you go up to your room and lie down. I know how little sleep you’ve had.”
Miss Plummer watched them leave, spruce and smart in their fine coats and white gloves. They looked as if they hadn’t a care in the world. When Kitty returned she wasted no words. “You’re to take over,” she said. “Orders. I’m going up for a little rest.”
On the second floor she went directly to the two rooms she shared with her sister. They were empty. She sat in her rocker and stared at the walls. I can’t do my sewing, she thought unhappily; my hands are too cold. I haven’t felt real well for weeks, I’m sickening for something. She led herself step by step to the dark place in her mind, pretending that it held a physical explanation of her trouble. Like the day she went out in the rain without her rubbers and caught cold. Or the day she lost the purse with more than a dollar in it. She counted back the days and nights until she came to the one that was lying in wait. She knew she’d have to meet it sometime.
From that day on, she told herself, I’ve felt wrong. From the day that girl came here. There was something about her, something in the way she looked… As she rocked, she combed the days and nights for fragments of reassurance and contradiction and found none.
The long-distance telephone call. She’d lost the slip. If she could only remember one word, it might help. And now the ad in the paper… She whispered to the walls that were covered with photographs of her sister’s husband. Something dreadful is beginning, she said. I’ve got to get my thinking done so I’ll be ready. I’ve got a feeling I’ll be asked things, that we’ll all be asked things. I’ve got to be ready. That was a Sunday night when she made the call. It was a Saturday when she came, and she went right out again and got in late. I didn’t notice much then except that she was the quiet kind. I took her to be homesick. Then on the Sunday she came to the tea with Miss Brady. She was queer then, I saw it. Maybe I mentioned it to somebody, I don’t know, but I saw it. Then she made the call around midnight, and hung up. Without a word, she hung up.
Miss Plummer went to the door and looked up and down the hall. I wish Ella would come, she said. I don’t feel like myself at all. I’m too cold, it’s not natural.
She went back to the rocker and her thoughts… The next thing was the party. She was the one I asked to get the iodine for the chef. I know she was the one. Even though she looked like everybody else, all those flat faces staring at me, I know it was her. She didn’t know where Miss Brady’s room was, everybody else would know, so it was her all right. And she never did get the iodine.
She stopped rocking. What am I thinking? she asked herself. As sure as I’m sitting here somebody brought me the iodine and bandages. What’s got into me all of a sudden? I never thought anything like this before… But she knew there was nothing sudden about it. It had been there all along and she had covered it over with her little jobs of work because it had frightened her. She went back to the night, minute by minute, because she knew she must… I saw her go up the stairs myself, and I waited. But I was busy, and everybody was running around, and I didn’t see her come back. But she must have. She had to. Didn’t I find the things right on the desk, and don’t that prove it? I must be crazy thinking she didn’t come back, just because I didn’t see her. I must be real crazy.
She went to the door again. The hall was thriftily dark in the daylight. She knew the room to her left was empty, it was Kitty’s; but to the right, beyond the fire door, there was someone to talk to.
I can’t sleep and I won’t take those ugly pills, she said; they might be habit-forming. I’ll run along and see if Agnes is in. It’s her hour off.
Agnes was mending the sweater for Clara; there was additional mending on the table beside her chair, stockings, underwear, and something made of unbleached muslin, crumpled and not very clean. Miss Plummer thought vaguely that it had a familiar look.
“I’m at loose ends for a little while,” she told Agnes. “Can’t seem to settle down to anything, so I told myself I couldn’t do better than have a little talk with you, Agnes.”
Agnes darned steadily. “Glad to have you,” she said. She didn’t look up. Her needle wove in and out and she frowned with concentration. “Take the chair by the radiator, Miss Plummer, it’s warmer there.”
Miss Plummer ignored this. She sat beside Agnes. “What are you doing with the muslin, Agnes?”
Agnes raised her head. “The muslin?” She looked as if she were biting something back. “I don’t know what I’m doing with it,” she said slowly. “I don’t know. I didn’t want you to see that, Miss Plummer, I’m still thinking about it myself, but now that you have, I—”
“Agnes—”
“Why so it is! For a minute you frightened me, you looked odd.” Miss Plummer fingered the material. “There’s a lot of wear in this stuff. What do you want it for?”
“Want it! I don’t want it! I wish it was at the bottom of the sea!... I found it, Miss Plummer.”
“Found? I don’t see how you can say that. Every last one of those dresses was locked away, out of sight. My sister did that herself, she was very particular about it.”
“I know she was. That’s it, that’s the trouble, I know she locked them away.”
“Maybe,” Miss Plummer said, “maybe you’d better tell me what’s on your mind.”
Agnes put the sweater aside. “I meant to keep this to myself until I could figure it out, but I’m not making any headway. Not in the right direction. At first I thought it was pure accident that the dress got overlooked, accident or carelessness. I thought some girl had spilled something on it and got worried and hid it.” Agnes took the dress into her lap and smoothed out the hem. “You see this? Miss Plummer, what would you say this stain was? Look close. Reddish brown, not properly washed out, done in a hurry, like.”
“Coffee?”
“Did we have coffee that night?”
“No… Is it fruit punch?”
“That was orange and pineapple… In a corner of the packroom on this floor,” Agnes said tonelessly. “Hidden. You could tell it was meant to be hidden on purpose… Who would want to do that?”
“But there isn’t anybody on this floor but staff. And staff wouldn’t have any reason—”
“That’s right. Staff didn’t even wear any, except Kitty and Jewel.”
“Kitty and Jewel turned theirs in, I saw that myself.”
“I know… At first I thought some girl had stained it and was afraid to let on. But these girls aren’t the kind to worry about a little thing like that. A little piece of cheap muslin, they’d just laugh.”
“Yes,” Miss Plummer said. “They wouldn’t care about a thing like that.” Her hand crept forward. Their two hands touched the puckered stain, their fingers met and gripped for an instant and drew back.
“Hidden,” Agnes repeated. She looked at Miss Plummer squarely. “Do you think I should speak to someone?”
“No,” Miss Plummer said thinly. “Not yet, not now. You put it away for a little bit, lock it away. We’ll see, we’ll think about it.” It was Miss Plummer’s turn to look squarely at Agnes. “Who would you want to speak to, Agnes?”
Agnes averted her head. “I don’t know.”
When Miss Plummer went back to her room, she found that Mrs Fister had returned. She was checking accounts at the centre table, frowning as she worked. Miss Plummer knew it was the wrong time to talk but she couldn’t wait. She said, “Ella, can you spare me a minute?”
“Not now, Ethel, if you please. I’ve got the butcher here.”
Miss Plummer studied the massive figure. Ella was strong and sure of herself, she was never even sick. She always made the family decisions, and she was always right.
“I’ve got to talk,” she said. “I can’t wait. Something’s bothering me.”
Mrs Fister put down her pencil. “Now what?”
“I think Ruth Miller was killed.”
“Do you know what you’re saying?”
“Yes, I do. I think she was killed. I think I felt it from the first. Others did, too. Kitty, Jewel, some of the boarders, I could feel it in the way they looked and acted. I want you to think about it. You’ve got to tell me if I’m right or wrong.”
“You’re wrong,” Mrs Fister said quietly. “Why do you say such things? Do you want us put out on the street?”
“No, Ella.” She saw her sister’s measuring look. There was no anger in it, only thoughtfulness. That wasn’t like Ella. Not that kind of thoughtfulness. Ella looked as if she didn’t know what to say next.
“Why should we be put out, Ella?”
“Scandal is bad for a place like this,” Mrs Fister said. “Trouble comes and the staff changes. There’s nothing to be gained by such talk, and I don’t want to hear another word.”
“You’re my own sister, Ella. What I say to you is between us two. I’ve got to talk, my head’s driving me crazy… What about Lillian Harris, Ella?”
“Well, what about her? Likely drunk, and we won’t discuss that, either.”
“Did anybody say she was? Did Dr Kloppel say so? If he did, I’d have heard, and I didn’t. I’m asking you to think about Lillian Harris too… Ella?”
“What?”
“Did you notice anything out of the way when the chef was hurt? Try to remember, Ella.”
“No.” Mrs Fister looked at her curtained windows. She kept her eyes on the windows, away from Miss Plummer’s twitching face. Her hands were folded in her lap. “You’d better go on,” she said. “You’d better do your talking to me. What do you mean?”
Miss Plummer leaned forward in her chair. She began with the night Ruth Miller came and described the look that might have been fear. She omitted the long-distance call, because she’d lost the slip. That would annoy Ella. She told about the strange woman who’d wanted a room for a niece named Ruth. She repeated Mrs Cashman’s conversation. “Little things,” she said. “They don’t sound like much, but they stay with me. It’s like I’m being asked to think about them.”
“If that’s all, then stop thinking. In all my life I never heard such nonsense.”
“It isn’t all.” She told about the errand for medical supplies. “I saw her go up the stairs. I told her to try this room first, and if it was locked, Miss Brady’s. I saw her go, but I never saw her come back again. I never saw her again that night, and I’d come to know her in spite of that costume. I watched for her to come back, but she didn’t come. I got the iodine and bandages all right, they were put on my desk. How did they get there? Not by Ruth Miller’s hand. She never came back. I never saw her again, not alive.”
“You can’t be sure of that. You couldn’t tell one from another, nobody could. I don’t know why I listen to you.” Mrs Fister’s hands opened and closed, but she didn’t turn her head.
Miss Plummer went on as if she hadn’t heard. “She was the type of girl that would have handed me the things herself, so I’d know she’d done it properly. She was that type. The doctor says she died somewhere around that time. So if she did—”
“Ethel, listen to me. You were busy, I was watching you. You didn’t have time to notice who came to the desk or who didn’t. She came all right. She put the things where you would find them and went back upstairs to do what she’d planned to do. That’s what happened and you can take my word for it.”
Miss Plummer brushed a hand across her eyes. “No. I’ve tried to make myself believe that, but I can’t. If she’d planned to kill herself, she’d have done it sooner. She wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble dressing up and coming to the party. She’d have made some excuse to April and waited until everybody was down here, having a good time. She wouldn’t have run my errand and then gone back to take her life. There’s no sense to that. No. Not that girl who was even afraid of our little elevator that goes up and down as safe as you please. Don’t ask me to believe that. Don’t ask me to believe she’d stand in a high window looking down—”
“What are you stopping for?”
“I’m seeing how she looked in that doll dress… Somebody killed her up there and brought me the iodine so’s I wouldn’t miss her. And the one that killed her is in the House, safe, and walking around among us. Walking around the lobby and the lounge in broad daylight, walking up and down the halls at night, trying to kill Lillian Harris.”
“Ethel!”
“It’s true. That awful place on Lillian’s head, it’s almost the same.”
“How do you know it’s almost the same?”
“I saw them both, you mustn’t forget that. A lot of people saw Ruth Miller, more than saw Lillian. The police made them
look. Identification… Ella?”
“I’ve had about all I can stand. You’re making yourself sick, and I haven’t the time to take care of you. Go and lie down in your own room.”
“Ella, you packed the costumes away, didn’t you? The next day?”
“You know I did.”
“Are they under lock and key?”
“They are. Linen press. Ethel, I’m losing patience.”
“What happened to the one Ruth Miller wore?”
“That? What do you think? It was examined by the police and given back. It was burned up.”
“Who said to burn it up? That was too soon, I know it was too soon! You should have kept it awhile. Who gave that order?”
“I don’t remember. Very likely I decided myself. It was in no condition for anything. You saw her, so you know what I mean. The mask—”
Miss Plummer tried to look into her sister’s eyes, but they were resolutely turned away. “I saw the mask when they cut it off,” she said slowly. “It was bagged out, like it was filled with—” She swallowed and went on. “You couldn’t tell it had ever been white. You couldn’t tell the colour of the mouth or hair or anything.”
“Didn’t you hear me say I’d had enough?”
“It was her ring they knew her by, her signet ring with initials on it. Like a little girl’s ring, like what you give a little girl on her birthday.”
Mrs Fister got up and walked heavily across the room and back again, coming to stop at Miss Plummer’s chair.
“Look at me, Ethel, don’t hang your head like a fool. Look at me.”
Miss Plummer raised her eyes.
“I want to remind you of something,” Mrs Fister went on. “Everything you have you owe to me. I don’t like to say that, but you’ve put me in the place where I have to. You’ve never been able to hold a regular position because of your health. Not your fault, but there it is. I’m not complaining about that, I’ve always looked after you and I always will. When Fister died and there wasn’t as much as we expected, did I turn you out? No. I sold my nice little home and found this place for myself, and I got you in here, too. I swallowed my pride. I said I had a sister who would be glad to lend a hand for room and board only. I got you the piecework to do, humbling myself to a man I knew before I met Fister. We’re all right now, and we’ll stay all right if you’ll rid yourself of your notions. That’s what they are, notions. I ask you to remember that we’re no longer young. You don’t understand life as I do, you’ve never married. I know what’s best for us, and you don’t. Maybe I can send you away for a little rest, I’ll see. Now go to your room and lie down, and don’t speak of this again.”
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