The Woman Who Fell From Grace (25 page)

“And what are you up to?” Pam wondered, watching me.

“Taking a small stroll.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Just felt like breaking in my new shoes.”

“Must I remind you that the carriages leave in —”

“Please, Pam. You’ve stripped me of what’s left of my dignity. Leave me my secrets.” With that I straightened my tricorne hat and hobbled out the door.

The great north lawn was ablaze with the party-tent lights. Waitresses were setting the banquet tables. Musicians were testing their microphones. The peacocks were honking. A couple of old-fashioned movie-premiere kliegs stabbed way up into the black sky overhead, adding to the good old colonial effect. Lulu and I took the path that bordered the lawn, then plunged into the woods alongside the cemetery. It was dark and quiet in there. I could see only what was ahead of me in my flashlight beam, hear only the clopping of my shoes. Briefly, I thought I heard footsteps in the woods behind us, someone following us. But when I stopped, I heard nothing. And my flashlight beam found nothing. Lulu whimpered. I shushed her and moved on, sorry for the moment that Bowser wasn’t with us. I could use someone like him, someone with no class or breeding. Someone who’d happily sink his teeth into a nice meaty leg if I asked him to.

I saw the weak flicker of a light up ahead. It was an oil lamp sitting on the pine table under the gazebo. Frederick was there already, seated at the table, smoking a cigarette. He stood when he heard me. He was dressed for the ball as I was, though he had a cape of peacock-blue silk over his outfit, and gold braid on his tricorne hat. I don’t know why I didn’t get gold braid on mine. I’ll bet his shoes fit, too.

“Ah, here you are, Hoagy,” he rasped pleasantly.

“Frederick,” I said.

“Not exactly.” He dropped the cigarette on the rough wooden floor and stepped on it. “Horrible things. My fingers will stink of nicotine for a week. … I’m afraid you’ve fallen for a trick we’ve played on people since we were boys, Hoagy. I do Frederick and Frederick does me. Drove our teachers crazy. I think I do him better. Just my opinion. You see, Frederick was in the shower when you phoned. I’d stopped over for my costume and answered it for him. Naturally, you assumed you’d reached Frederick. Your tough luck, I’m afraid. If you had gotten Fred, you might have lived.” Edward reached under his cape and pulled out a revolver and pointed it at me. “But you got me.”

“K
IND OF THE WRONG
period, isn’t it, Edward?” I said, my eyes on the gun. “A dueling pistol would be so much more appropriate.”

“You’ll forgive me the historical inaccuracy.”

“I’ll try. But I’m making no promises.”

“You’ve gotten too close, young man. Much too close. And I have survived too long to be brought down now, particularly by some washed-up writer.”

I glanced down at Lulu. “Are you going to take that from him?” In response she yawned and curled up under the table. Bowser. I needed Bowser, crashing through the woods, saliva dripping from his fangs. “Mind if I sit down, Edward? My feet are killing me.”

“Please do.”

He stayed where he was, the gun on me. “You know the truth, of course. That’s why you wanted to speak with Frederick.”

“Yes. I was off course for the longest time. Mavis and her damned collarbone kept throwing me. That business in your mother’s diary about how little Mavis took a horse out one day, and fell, and was missing until Sterling Sloan found her in the pasture across the way. It seemed odd to me. Supposedly, Sloan rarely left his trailer. What was he doing out there with Mavis? And why was she still afraid to get back up on a horse so many years later? Because she broke her collarbone as a child? That didn’t sound like Mavis to me. Some other form of childhood trauma seemed more like it. Like, say, the great Sterling Sloan trying to hand her his shlong. And maybe trying to do it again in Vangie’s room on the last day of filming. I figured maybe
that’s
what Fern saw, and what Alma walked in on. And I figured Alma shot Sloan because of it — the protective mother taking the law into her own hands. It all fit together, Edward. Except it didn’t. Because if Alma killed Sloan, then who ran
her
down several months later on Beverley Street? Laurel Barrett? Possibly, except she was out of the country — I checked. And then there was now to factor in. Okay, Fern and Cookie were killed to keep things covered up. That part worked. But why kill Mavis? If all of this had been done to protect her, then why kill her? That made no sense. And it got me nowhere — except back to you.

“And how, may I ask, did you arrive at me?” he inquired calmly. “You tipped me off yourself the day Fern died. We were all sitting there in the old house while Polk Four attended to her body. You were pretty upset about it.”

“It’s true, I was.”

“So upset you messed up. You turned to Frederick and said, ‘I keep thinking of the night mother died. I was at Fern’s when I got the news, remember? She was the one who actually told me.’ Frederick got somewhat curt with you and changed the subject. None of which meant much to me until later, when I interviewed Polk Two about that night Alma died. He told me all three of you kids were home when she was hit. A small discrepancy, but it stuck with me. And it didn’t go away. Just got bigger and bigger. What had you been doing at Fern’s? Why had Frederick gotten so snappish about your mentioning it? The answer was plain — Fern was your alibi for that evening in case Polk Two ever got around to checking up on you. Only he never did because Frederick covered for you, said you were home. And Polk Two accepted it. I guess he just didn’t believe that you could murder your own mother, even though he was fully aware that you’d murdered once already. You murdered Sterling Sloan — the man you loved.”

Edward lowered his eyes. The gun never left me. “It’s true,” he said softly. “I loved Sterling. I’ve never stopped loving him.”

“It was
you
. You were Sloan’s mystery lover. Fern saw you two together in Vangie’s room. That’s why she screamed. It must have come as quite a shock to a teenaged girl back in those days to discover that her Romeo, her Sweet Prince, was gay.”

He was silent a moment. “It happened for me,” he began slowly, “that very first night I saw him standing out there in the rain. I felt something I’d never felt before, not for any girl. Even Fern. She and I were so close. We gave each other our souls. But I’d never felt the
hunger
for her that one read about. The physical part, that was never real for me somehow. Until I met Sterling. He was … I suppose he was the very man whom I most wished to become. Brilliant, artistic, sophisticated. He was a soul in torment, a man locked in a loveless marriage. That simply made him all the more romantic. It was merely a business arrangement, their marriage. Good for both of their images. Laurel went her way, he went his. At least he was discreet about it. … I was so terribly flattered when he showed an interest in me. Of course, being a naive small-town boy, I had no idea
why
he was so interested. Not until the two of us were together in his trailer one afternoon. He got one of his terrible headaches and asked me if I’d massage his neck. As I did, I-I felt it happening to me — I felt myself coming alive. And then he looked at me and I knew he felt it, too. He took my hands in his and led me over to the daybed. We kissed. Gently, tenderly. And then he undressed me. I was powerless to stop him. I didn’t want to stop him. It felt so right. For me it was. For me it was love.” Edward’s eyes moistened in the lamplight. “I loved him, don’t you see? I’ve never loved anyone else in my entire life.”

“You did try though,” I suggested.

“I did,” he acknowledged. “Years later, after I had finished law school, taken a job in the Justice Department in Washington.” He chuckled softly. “I suppose I was the only murderer on the staff.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure,” I said. “You took a wife.”

“Yes, Danielle. A sweet, lovely woman. I hurt her badly.”

“Indeed you did. Her husband told me all about it on the phone this afternoon. How she’d been married once before, briefly, to this man who’d wanted so desperately to conform. But he couldn’t. It was clear from the first night he couldn’t. Your marriage was annulled — on the grounds of nonconsummation.”

“I wasn’t being
me
,” Edward explained. “Only with Sterling was I me.”

“And he broke your heart, didn’t he?”

“Such a tired old story,” he murmured. “Such a cliché. But what did I know? I was eighteen years old. I thought he loved me as I loved him. I believed him when he said he would take me with him to Hollywood, to London, to wherever. That he would divorce her.” Edward gazed out the gazebo at the woods. He seemed very far away now. The gun didn’t. “How was I to know I was nothing to him? I was just some boy he’d diddled on location, one of the dozens he’d flicked and forgotten through the years, a bimbo. How was I to know? I didn’t. Not until he told me. In Vangie’s room, that last day of filming. That’s when I found out. He said he wanted me to stay behind. He said he was no good for me, that I’d be better off forgetting about him. I couldn’t believe what he was telling me.
Wouldn’t
believe it. I threw myself into his arms, sobbing, begging, covering him with kisses. … That’s when Fern saw us. That’s what she saw. I heard her scream, saw her run away. A moment later Mother came into the room. Sterling and I were merely standing next to each other by then. But she
knew
. Somehow, she
knew
. Not that she said a word to either of us. She merely said, ‘Excuse me,’ in that stiff, proper way she had and walked out of the room.”

“And put it in her diary — the pages you tore out.”

“Her lawyer, Polk One, did it, actually. Before he sealed it and put it in the safe.”

“And that evening you went to Sloan’s hotel room and you shot him.”

“I went up there to tell that evil bitch Laurel she had to let him go. I wouldn’t believe him, you see. I wouldn’t believe he didn’t love me. It set Laurel straight, face-to-face. I told her Sterling was mine, not hers. I told her there was no love between them anymore and she should be sensible and divorce him. I thought I was being very adult, very mature. And she … she simply rolled her eyes at me and called to him in the bath: ‘Oh, Sterling, dear, one of your little friends is here!’ As if I were some irritating stray that had followed him home, some petty nuisance. And when he came out and saw me there, I realized from the way he looked at me that I
was
.”

“So you shot him?”

“Never. I would never have. … I-I shot her. I shot Laurel.”

“And you missed?”

Edward shook his head. “Sterling jumped in front of her at the last second. He took the shot. She screamed. I heard her screams in my ears as I ran out the door, down the hall, out of there.”

“Your mother was summoned by Polk Two as soon as Laurel told him what had happened. Alma put the fix in for you. Both the townspeople and Goldwyn’s people were only too happy to oblige her. No one wanted a scandal.”

“Precisely,” Edward agreed bitterly. “Mother protected her precious little boy. The studio protected their colossal investment. They weren’t about to jeopardize it because of some faggot killing. Toriello dreamed up the aneurysm story, symptoms and all, and everyone went along with it. It was all covered up. Buried. And it would have stayed that way if it hadn’t been for Sam Goldwyn. The greedy bastard had a hit on his hands and he knew it. Even before the movie came out he knew it. Right away, he began pressuring Mother to write a sequel. He even tried telling her how to write it — De Cheverier has to win the duel with John Raymond at the end, he said. After all, Errol Flynn was still alive. Sterling Sloan wasn’t. Well, Mother didn’t like being bullied by anyone, especially Goldwyn. She told him that if there ever was a sequel, she would write it in her own way and in her own time, thank you. He offered to buy up the rights to her characters and commission his own film sequel without any book. She declined. That should have been the end of it. Except he wasn’t through, Goldwyn. Not so long as there was a gutter left to climb down into. He put it to Mother this way: Let me do my sequel or the whole world will find out that your son murdered Sterling Sloan and got away with it. Goldwyn figured that would break her. Break any mother. But he was wrong about Alma Glaze. Because she didn’t care about me, not as much as she cared about her fool creation. She told him fine, go ahead and tell the world about Edward. She sold me out. Told me so to my face. She had a choice to make and she made it — she put her book ahead of her own son. I ask you, Hoagy, what kind of woman would do that? Only an evil one. Miserable, horrid,
evil
… I did the only thing I could do. I killed her. So Goldwyn could have his way. So that what had happened would stay private. Sterling and me … that was nobody’s business. Nobody’s.” He chuckled softly. “Ironically, it was only after I’d killed her that I learned about the codicil she’d added to her will. I hadn’t known. None of us had. Only her trusted legal advisor, Polk One. She did it to punish Goldwyn. Oh, the bastard thought about contesting it. Taking the estate to court. But the war was on by then. Wartime was no time for long, ugly court battles. Or big-budget Hollywood epics. So he quietly dropped the whole thing, moved on. … It was right, what I did. I’ve never been sorry that I killed her. Not sorry in the least.”

“How nice for you. May I ask you how you did it?”

“You may. I overheard her on the phone with Polk One. A Saturday afternoon, it was. She wished for him to come out to Shenandoah at once. I suppose to talk about the codicil. He couldn’t make it. She said she’d come into town that evening, meet him at his office at six. He agreed. After all, she was a rather important client. I moved swiftly, seizing the opportunity. I made a date for eight that evening with Fern. As soon as Mother left for town, I stole a bottle of bourbon from the liquor cupboard and did the same. I left my car near Fern’s house, took the bourbon with me, and went hunting through the neighborhood for a car. I found one with its keys in it just a few blocks away. No one saw me take it. It was suppertime, the street was deserted. Polk One’s office was on Beverley Street. I parked down the block and waited there for her to come out, my hat down over my face, my collar turned up. And when she did, she got what was coming to her. She flew fifty feet through the air when I hit her. God, it felt good. I kept right on going, until I was outside of town. I left the car there. Poured the bourbon all over the seats so Polk Two would think a drunk had done it. Then I ran to Fern’s. I was only a few minutes late for our date. I was there when I got the news about Mother. Frederick phoned me. He knew I’d be there. And he knew why.”