by Anne Nesbet
“Well, well, well,” said Mr. Ridge. “What a puzzle. It does seem more likely than not, doesn’t it, that she probably really is —”
“But this is ridiculous!” said Victorine. “Of course Mr. Brownstone knows perfectly well who I am! He practically held me a prisoner in my room for ages!”
“And he was running after us just an hour or so ago, shouting ‘Victorine!’” added Darleen. “Why would he be shouting ‘Victorine’ if he thought she was actually dead?”
“Excellent question,” said Madame Blaché. “We seem to be hearing some dreadful and irrelevant nonsense.”
“What are you calling ‘irrelevant nonsense,’ madam?” said Mr. Brownstone, as if deeply offended. The dark brown eye darted back and forth, examining his audience (but the light brown eye stayed very still). “The question of Miss Berryman’s identity can hardly be ‘irrelevant nonsense’ if we are Miss Berryman’s legal guardians! Indeed, we are more than that — we are her closest kin.”
“Not so very close,” said Victorine through slightly tense lips.
“Ha, ha!” said Mr. Brownstone, as if she had just dealt him the winning card in a game with rules too complicated for any mortal to understand. “Very close. Tell her, Ridge.”
“Well, now,” said Mr. Ridge, who had been oddly silent for the past few moments. “It seems that on this interesting topic, we have been presented, you know, very recently — I mean, this morning — with some new information.”
New information? Darleen and Victorine exchanged glances, and then Mr. Brownstone drew the woman in black forward from where she had been standing behind him. Darleen looked at her pinched, querulous face, and a little shock of recognition went through her. Was it just that she had seen her getting into that taxicab this morning? No, the shock seemed to want to say something more, but the language of shocks can sometimes be hard to decipher.
“My poor, bereaved sister,” said Mr. Brownstone, and his tones were rather theatrical, “will finally be able to tell her full story.”
“Is this ‘full story’ necessary?” said Madame Blaché. “I have business to attend to at Solax. And I’m quite sure Miss Darling here is wanted at home.”
Was it Darleen’s imagination, or did the woman in black flinch slightly at Madame Blaché’s words? That electrical sensation became stronger, buzzing about in her, leaping from nerve to nerve, as if knocking on all of Darleen’s inner doors in alarm.
“You will remember, Mr. Ridge, that when we first came to take charge of poor Miss Victorine Berryman, alone in the world after her grandmother passed away, we explained that we were — well, I believe we said we were distant cousins,” said Mr. Brownstone, smooth as silk. “But at that time, we were simply worried about shocking poor Miss Berryman with too many surprises, just when she had had the shock of losing her grandmother. But now that Miss Berryman is possibly drowned —”
“Not drowned!” said Victorine fiercely.
Mr. Brownstone blinked. “You do resemble her somewhat, I’ll give you that. But it hardly matters anymore.”
“What?” said Darleen. How could Victorine’s identity not matter?
“Because, you see, Mrs. Hugo Berryman had two children.”
“Now that’s quite right,” said Mr. Ridge. “She had two boys.”
“One was the father of Miss Victorine Berryman. He was the younger son. But he had an elder brother, and that brother, Thomas Berryman, was something of a troubled soul.”
“Who died very young,” said Victorine. “He was a wanderer by nature, said Grandmama. He wandered through the gorges and ravines of southern France, until one day he broke his leg and died in some lonely canyon of thirst. It was a most tragic accident.”
“How well informed you are!” said Mr. Brownstone. “You have prepared carefully for this role if you are an impostor.”
“She is Victorine,” said Darleen. “And you know that’s true!”
“As I said, it hardly even matters. Because the accident was more tragic than you know,” said Mr. Brownstone. “During his wanderings, something happened that would change many lives forever.”
Every nerve in Darleen’s body was alert by this point and looking out for danger. She stepped a little to the left, where the window was, and glanced down at the street far below. Of course she got no new information there, other than that seven stories above the pavement is very high indeed. (Her nerves jangled, and the feeling woke itself right up and fluttered a bit.)
“During his wanderings, young Thomas Berryman met a beautiful woman with whom he fell deeply, deeply in love, and they were secretly married in a small church in the village of Venasque just before his unfortunate death in a local gorge — and before he learned of the happy event that would transpire in the following year.”
The woman in black put a handkerchief to her eyes, although Darleen would have been willing to swear that those eyes contained no tears.
“What are you saying?” said Victorine. “Mr. Ridge, what can he be saying?”
“Mmm,” said Mr. Ridge. “He is saying, Miss — well, whoever you actually are — he and Miss Brownstone are not actually distant Berryman relations . . .”
“Aha!” said Darleen, but Mr. Ridge continued on.
“But instead, the person we have known as Miss Brownstone —”
The woman in black dipped in a tiny curtsy, but the tension never left her face.
“— is actually Mrs. Thomas Berryman,” said Mr. Brownstone in triumph, taking over Mr. Ridge’s speech.
“Miss Brownstone is my aunt?” said Victorine. “Surely not!”
“Good heavens!” said Madame Blaché. “How complicated this is all becoming.”
“Most relevantly in terms of the law,” said Mr. Ridge, “Miss Brownstone — Mrs. Thomas Berryman, I mean — is the mother of Mr. Hubert Berryman, cousin to the recently lamented Victorine Berryman and presumptive heir to the Berryman estate.”
A stunned silence filled that room and hovered there for quite some time.
Then Victorine said, “Do you mean that I have a cousin? But then where is he?”
“Mr. Hubert Berryman is waiting outside in the hall,” said Mr. Ridge. “And so, even if you were Victorine Berryman —”
“But I am, as you know. I even showed you my birth certificate. And there must be witnesses who knew my Grandmama and me. You can’t keep saying I’m not who I am, Mr. Ridge! It’s impossible!”
Mr. Ridge looked very torn.
“Oh, dear,” he said. “You look so very like her, I suppose it must be true. Well, then, let’s say you are Victorine Berryman.”
“Yes!” said Darleen. “She certainly is!”
And then something very peculiar happened.
Miss Brownstone (the widow of Thomas Berryman — could it really be?) flung her arms around Victorine and began to cry.
“My darling niece! We were so afraid we had lost you! Come, let’s go along home.”
Mr. Ridge looked rather moved, but Darleen was shocked, as was Madame Blaché, who clapped her hands in irritation.
“Oh, now,” she said. “This seems quite a sudden change in attitude.”
“We will take her in again, won’t we, dear brother?” said the former Miss Brownstone. “She must be very sorry for having worried us so.”
“By being kidnapped!” said Darleen.
“And even though her claim on the Berryman fortune has now been superseded by that of my own darling Hubert, surely we can open our arms and —”
“All right, dear sister,” said Mr. Brownstone, checking his large pocket watch by bringing it up close to his dark brown eye. “She comes back home with us. Time to go, Victorine. Come along quickly now.”
“Yes, quickly,” said the woman in black, and suddenly Darleen knew where she had seen that face before. This woman in black! The two-eyed man! And then her brain went clickety-clack, clickety-clack (approximately the sound of long lines of dominoes tumbling against each other), and in a mere instant, Darleen
figured out all sorts of other very interesting things too. Why, it was like a photoplay after all! In the photoplays, villains were always needing to be confronted and unmasked!
So Darleen pulled herself up to her tallest height and became as close a copy as possible of the Crown Princess Dahlia Louise (known in her exile as Daring Darleen):
“No!” she said. “Miss Berryman won’t go anywhere with you! I absolutely forbid it.”
“Who are you?” said Mr. Brownstone. “You can’t forbid anything.”
“I can,” said Darleen. “I can, and I will, and I do! You may not know who I am, but I’m beginning to think I know who you are! Let’s see if I’m right!”
She darted forward and grabbed the locket from where it lay on Mr. Ridge’s desk.
“Here’s something that can help us: my locket!” she said. It was the most bold-faced lie she had told all day. She could hear Victorine’s sudden, horrified intake of breath — so Darleen simply made her words louder and more dramatic, to drown out any qualms of conscience from Victorine.
“In my locket are pictures, you see,” said Darleen, and she swooped the open locket right up close to the woman in black’s face with a gesture bold enough to impress any camera back at Matchless studios. “The people here in these photographs are my family!”
(Another slightly strangled noise from Victorine — but never mind that!)
“My family! Do you recognize them? Look closely, please do!”
The woman in black glanced at the miniatures, but her face stayed puzzled and blank. (Oh, Darleen was quite certain now. She was positively, absolutely sure.) “What nonsense this is,” said the woman. “I’ve never seen any of these people before in my life. Step aside, little girl. These pictures have nothing to do with me!”
Darleen imagined the camera closer to her now. In her mind’s ear she could almost hear Uncle Charlie shouting, “Emotion, Dar! Emotion!”
Emotion! She let her face crumple, like that poor old fairground balloon when it had sagged to the ground, all deflated with no air left inside. “Oh, dear. Have I gotten confused? I could have sworn you were — Are you quite, quite certain?” said Darleen, and she made her voice match her face, all sheepish and hopeless.
Mr. Brownstone stepped forward and frowned at the pictures in the locket. “You are quite mistaken, girl,” he rumbled. “The people in these photos of yours are nobody we know and entirely irrelevant. Enough of this nonsense. Stand back and hush!”
But Darleen had no intention of standing back — nor of hushing, for that matter. Not a bit of it.
“Oh, dear,” she said — and she couldn’t resist adding a slight tone of regret to her speech. “Then it is as I feared. Here is your locket back, Miss Berryman — yes, yours, not mine —”
(“Oh, Darleen,” said Victorine, shaking her head as she took the locket.)
“Your locket, dear Miss Berryman!” Darleen repeated grandly. (She was still being formal; the scene was not quite over. Not yet!) “Filled with photographs of your family. Not only of your dear parents and your departed Grandmama, but also of your tragically deceased Uncle Thomas —”
She paused then, of course, because drama is absolutely built on suspenseful pauses, and she was pleased to notice, during that pause, that every single adult in that room looked thunderstruck. Except for Madame Blaché, on whose face a wise and delighted smile was beginning to take shape.
So Darleen continued: “The very same Thomas Berryman whom this woman claims to have married! But now they say they have never seen him before! Now tell me, how can a person be married to a man and, goodness, have that man’s child and yet never have set eyes on him in her life? How?”
A moment of electric silence. Then —
“Enough of this charade!” roared Mr. Brownstone, and he grabbed one of Victorine’s arms and pulled.
And that was when chaos broke out. Darleen leaped up onto the windowsill and swung the window open, and it was as if she had just let the feeling out of its cage. It spread its wings and crowed in triumph.
Five pairs of eyes were fixed on her in horror. Some of those eyes looked angry enough that Darleen could imagine their owners trying to give her a helpful shove.
“You listen to me, all of you!” she said, as the breeze from the street canyon tickled the back of her neck. “If you do not do exactly as I say, I will proceed to climb right up the outside of this building, and that will be a spectacle no one in New York City will soon forget. And who knows? Perhaps it will even bring the police running.”
She held on to the window frame and leaned back a bit, just to confirm that this was one of those buildings with fussy little decorations everywhere. Yes, it was. The feeling wanted to dance its way up, from ledge to curlicue to ledge.
“Darleen!” said Victorine, her hand to her mouth. “Oh, dear! Darleen!”
“Madame Blaché,” said Darleen. She was trying to be extraordinarily dignified, to the degree possible when you are standing on a windowsill. “Will you be so kind as to place a telephone call through to my Aunt Shirley at Matchless? You won’t object to our using your telephone, Mr. Ridge?”
Mr. Ridge shook his head rapidly back and forth. His face had gone green.
“Stop this right now!” said Mr. Brownstone, but Madame Blaché was already talking to an operator.
“And what shall I tell your aunt once we are connected, Miss Darling?” said Madame Blaché, who proved able to keep a very cool head under trying circumstances.
“Tell her that she should urgently send here — to this address — my uncles, and they should bring with them the largest photograph pinned to the wall of my dressing room. They’ll know what I mean. The group photograph. The old one. Tell her it is a matter of life and death. Oh, and tell her please not to tell my Papa, because he’ll worry so. But my uncles, yes, they must come right away.”
Madame Blaché was making energetic explanations on Mr. Ridge’s telephone, but she had turned to face the wall so that she wouldn’t distract Darleen in any way. Meanwhile, Victorine’s eyes had not left Darleen’s face for a moment, but Darleen didn’t dare look right at her in case seeing Victorine’s face did something to the feeling that was carrying her so bravely along at the moment.
People were beginning to shout in the street below. Good, she thought. Let them shout! Let the police come up to the seventh floor to see why a girl is balancing with such joy on the windowsill.
“What? What?” said Mr. Ridge, looking ill. “Whatever are you doing, you reckless girl?”
“Your uncles are on their way with the photograph you requested,” said Madame Blaché calmly as she set the telephone back down on Mr. Ridge’s desk. “So, brave Miss Darling, what can we do to be helpful now?”
“Would you mind popping your head out the door and asking the secretary to send that mysterious young Mr. Hubert Berryman person in here? Bring him in. Bring him in! Because I’m pretty sure I know who he is. I know who he is, because I know who she is.”
And she pointed one of her feet at the woman in black.
“And that means I am also certain I know who this person calling himself Mr. Brownstone is too! It’s that eye that gives him away! Oh, I think I know who all of them are! And they aren’t sister and brother at all, at all!”
The feeling was kicking up its heels inside her now!
“Stop this, right now!” said Mr. Brownstone. “Mr. Ridge, this abominable young person in the window now is nobody. Worse than nobody. I’ve heard about her. She is the kidnapper of Miss Berryman, and a shameless thief. And a liar. Victorine, come away from this madness. It’s time for us to go.”
His own lies were piling up into quite an odd and inconsistent tower, thought Darleen as she shifted her hands a little on the window frame and carefully steadied herself once more.
Tears were slipping down Victorine’s cheeks, but she was smiling through them as she shook her head and moved herself in between Mr. Brownstone and Darleen’s window, just in case Mr. Brownstone g
ot any ideas about sudden moves.
“She is not nobody. She is the opposite of nobody,” said Victorine. “She is my dear friend, and she is wonderful, and she is Daring Darleen.” And she added, for Darleen’s own sake, “Oh, Darleen, you really, truly are.”
Madame Blaché slipped back through the doorway after her consultation with the secretary in the hall outside.
“The young man on the bench out there refused my invitation to come into this office,” she said, still cool as a French cucumber. “Are you still doing all right, Miss Darling, in that window? It may be a very long time indeed before your uncles arrive.”
“I’m fine,” said Darleen. She didn’t think she would have to wait as long as all that. Some part of her had been paying close attention to the sounds from outside, and so she was pretty sure some help might arrive well before her uncles. “When the police come in, we will have to ask them to check his ears.”
“Police?” said Mr. Ridge. “Surely not.”
“Darleen?” said Victorine with some concern. “His ears? Are you all right?”
There was a commotion outside the room — doors opening and someone shouting.
“They’re here,” said Darleen. “The police. Tell them — Tell them this woman here who says she’s your aunt used to be Somebody-or-Other Lukes. Claudette? Was it Claudette? My uncles will remember the name. And this man with the two-colored eyes is also no Brownstone at all, I’m quite, quite sure. Oh, Victorine, catch me! I’m coming down.”
And she tumbled forward, hard enough that both she and Victorine rolled to the floor.
“You’re not hurt? Darleen, you’re all right?” said Victorine, as they scrambled to sit up again. “My heavens, what a wonderful actress you are! But wait! Where are those awful Brownstones going?”
The pair of them had slipped right out through the door into the commotion of the hall.
“Quick! Before he talks his way out!” said Darleen, and Victorine helped her scramble to her feet. For some reason Darleen’s legs were suddenly wobbly, although she had felt so strong and steady in the window. Uncle Charlie had told her once that sailors sometimes feel queasy when they come back on shore after a long time at sea, so perhaps this was something like that.