What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (17 page)

Reaching out to the clasp, Blanche opened the window and drew it back. The breeze hurled itself in upon her face, stirred her hair, then fell away into an abrupt and complete stillness. The branch close outside reappeared, slapped against the grille, vanished.

Revived, Blanche stretched her hand out, grasped the grille and using her cane as a brace, pulled herself up. Straining forward, she peered down into the garden below. It was deserted and utterly still. She managed to cling a moment longer, then let go and fell back again into her chair.

She turned her gaze back to the sky, trying to guess the time of
day by the slant of the sunlight; it was possible that Mrs. Bates had made her first visit of the day already, which could mean a long and disastrous wait.

She seemed to sit there in an island of silence, and there rose again in her mind the fear that Jane would come into the room and find her. She made herself listen all the harder.

When at last a sound came, she recognized it instantly; even without seeing she was able to trace Mrs. Bates’s progress as she opened one of the French doors, came out onto the walk, took up the hose and turned on the water. Taking the note tremblingly from her pocket, she reached out to the grillwork and drew herself up.

Yes, she was there! Mrs. Bates, wearing her smock and her big floppy hat, had already started along the flower beds at the side of the lawn beneath the hedge. Blanche put down forceably an impulse to cry out, fearful of what unknown horror might befall her if Jane should hear and come upstairs. She let go and dropped back into her chair; she needed to conserve her waning strength until the sound of the water told her that Mrs. Bates was directly below.

The waiting was nearly unbearable. Reaching back, she parted the drapes and listened. She thought she heard a sound from downstairs, but at the same moment the eucalyptus slapped suddenly against the window making her uncertain. She turned back again. Gradually the sound of the water came nearer, until she was certain Mrs. Bates had reached the corner nearest the window. She reached up to the grille.

Mrs. Bates was almost exactly where she had guessed. As the woman rounded the corner, Blanche strained anxiously forward. Holding herself close to the grille she tried to attract Mrs. Bates’s attention by waving the sheet of paper between the bars. Mrs. Bates, however, her face totally hidden beneath the wide brim of her hat, remained concentrated on her chores. Again Blanche needed to restrain herself from crying out.

“Oh, hurry!” she whispered to herself. “Hurry!”

Mrs. Bates’s next move brought her almost precisely into position beneath the window. More than ever, though, her face was hidden beneath the brim of her hat. Blanche pressed forward, totally unaware of the cold bite of the bars against her cheek. Reaching the note out as far as she could into the open, she released it.

And then she knew that she
would
cry out, knew that she must; now that Mrs. Bates had the note it couldn’t really matter. She parted her lips. But she did not speak. Instead, hearing a sound close behind her, she whirled about, her face taut with fright.

A hand tore at the drapes, stirring them into violent life, hurling them back. Blanche dropped into her chair, fumbling frantically for her cane.…

Mrs. Bates, catching a flash of something white, looked down, saw the note and stooped to pick it up. As she did so she had an impression of a childish scrawl. She started to smooth it out in her hand, but then, hearing her name shouted from somewhere in the direction of the house, she turned, still holding it, and started in that direction.

“Out here, Harriett!” she called.

As she approached the house, Harriett Palmer appeared on the walk and, waving something before her, hurried forward.

“Have you seen this?”

Arriving at Mrs. Bates’s side just as she straightened from turning off the water, Harriett held out the paper. Folding it quickly back to the second page, she pointed to a photograph in the upper left hand corner.

“Look at that!”

Mrs. Bates stared at the picture. It was of a woman, a woman in middle years evidently, angular-faced and for the purpose of the picture stiffly smiling. A pleasant-looking woman, actually, but by no means pretty. The reproduction, though, was a poor one and as
far as Mrs. Bates could tell it might have been a picture of almost anyone. Aware of Harriett’s eyes fast upon her, she frowned in a further effort at recognition.

“Don’t you see who that is?”

Slowly Mrs. Bates shook her head. “I—no, I don’t think so.” As she spoke, though, her gaze fell to the caption beneath the picture: MURDER VICTIM. “Oh, no!” she breathed, repelled at the very thought that anyone of her acquaintance could ever meet with a violent or newsworthy death. “This—this isn’t someone we know?”

“Yes,” Harriett assured her, “yes, it is. Just look again. Don’t you see? It’s the woman who cleans for the Hudson girls. There’s her name—see—Stitt, Mrs. Edna Stitt. Every Friday for three years now I’ve seen her walking up the hill to their house.”

Gazing down at the picture with reluctant recognition, Mrs. Bates nodded. “Terrible,” she murmured, “terrible…”

Harriett nodded in the direction of the Hudson house. “Do you suppose they know yet? They just found her this morning—the police—in a ditch over in the park. They said she’d probably been there a couple of days.”

Mrs. Bates shook her head; she felt suddenly empty and cold inside. It was hard for her to believe that people could really do such terrible things to each other. Murder…

“I just don’t know…” she said vaguely.

“I never noticed whether they get the early edition or not.” Harriett glanced down at the paper again. “Gives you a funny feeling, doesn’t it? She was a widow, too, poor thing.”

Mrs. Bates, making a brief clucking sound, let her gaze lift across the length of the garden to the Hudson house and the window at the center of the second story. Curiously, she had the impression that only a moment before the window had been open and the drapes pulled back. But now it was closed.

“What’s the matter?” Harriett asked.

Mrs. Bates looked around. “Nothing,” she said “nothing.” She
forced her lips into a smile. “Come on in and we’ll have a cup of hot tea. It’s kind of windy.”

Harriett nodded in quick agreement; the subject of Mrs. Stitt’s mysterious demise had yet to be fully explored. “I’d love it.”

Mrs. Bates crossed to the open French door, motioning Harriett into the house ahead of her. As she paused to take off her hat, she looked back again in the direction of the Hudson house. Then, remembering, she glanced down at the piece of note paper still clutched in her hand. Crumpling it into a tight ball, she thrust it into the pocket of her smock and hurried inside.

S
he stood before the mirrored wall, close to the windows where the light was harshest, looking at herself with a steady, troubled stare. Frightened at the slowly admitted and slowly emerging spectre of herself there in the mirrors, she moved back a bit into the shadows. Lifting her skirt slightly in a dainty gesture, she placed one foot before the other and pointed the toe at an angle. Then quickly, with a small moan of pain, she turned away. The reality, now that it had fully emerged, would not be dimmed by mere shadow. She saw clearly now that the finer, better self that had always awaited her just beyond the horizon of the next moment did not exist, had never existed and never would. The things she had done, the person she had become, could not be altered by mere wishing.

She knew it now; the tomorrow that contained the Jane Hudson she had always believed herself truly to be, would never dawn. Others had good reason to feel as they did about her. Blanche would always be afraid of her, would always want to escape her and leave her alone. Mrs. Stitt would be forever dead. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow would contain always the horrors she had committed today, yesterday and the day before. Slowly, Jane lifted her hand to the welt across her cheek where Blanche had hit her with the cane. Tears welled swiftly in her already swollen eyes and spilled down her cheeks.

She had not been sane. She had begun to see that plainly. She
had dwelt for a time in a world removed, utterly, from reality. But the impact of the full realization that she had actually killed another human being had released her from that world into the limbo of now. She was like a child who had shocked herself out of her own temper tantrum by inadvertently breaking a treasured piece of china; the angry delirium was past, but the calm present was made even worse by the imminent threat of some terrible retribution.

Beneath the level of her first awareness was the thought she still refused to recognize except as a dark, uneasy feeling; the only real solution to the horror in which she now found herself was to surrender herself to the police. It was fear, though, that impaired this recognition, fear of the police themselves, and a new fear, still half hidden in her subconscious, that another experience of shock might plunge her back into madness.

Affairs, though, could not possibly be allowed to continue as they were. The time would soon come when she would be forced to see what must be done and do it. But not just yet, the fearful part of her cried, not just today. But, meanwhile, what was she to do about Blanche? Her own freedom, it was now painfully evident, could be maintained only at the cost of Blanche’s. If only she could make Blanche understand; if she could just make her see that the danger was over, that it was only a matter of being patient now a little bit longer…

Leaving the room, she closed the door after her with not even the slightest backward glance into the mirrors. She would never enter the room again; she had learned this day to despise even her own mirrored image.

In the kitchen, she crossed to the table, pulled out a chair and sat down. Taking up a paper napkin, she dried the tears from her eyes. She sat there, looking about the kitchen in an attitude of dejection, looking to see that everything was in order. Suddenly it had become very important to her that the house be kept clean and orderly. It was as if, by setting to rights the externals of her
world, she would be able to rid herself of the chaos within. And yet, even as she sat there, her gaze was drawn again and again to the cupboard where the liquor was put away. There were two bottles there, two full quarts, brand new, unopened.

She glanced down at her trembling hands. She hadn’t touched a drop in four days—not a drop. But now, after what had happened upstairs with Blanche—after seeing the awful, animal fear in Blanche’s eyes… She put her hands together, lacing the fingers tight, in an effort to stop their trembling. She put them down firmly on the table, holding them steady, and sat staring down at them, as if for confirmation of the strength of her own determination. Nothing, though, could stop the trembling inside.

By compulsion, her eyes lifted again to the cupboard. Giving up the drink had been a part of her penance. It had been hard, hard at first, but then she saw that Blanche was getting better and seemed to be learning to trust her again, and it had been worth it. There had been the two of them again—no matter what had happened. Just as Daddy had said… But now—now she was alone as before. Alone and lost.

She was lost in hell, she told herself in sudden anguish, lost and doomed forever to a burning hell of unavailing remorse. Her madness had begun in her fear of losing Blanche, of losing, at last, Blanche’s forgiveness. And it had ended in her bringing upon herself, finally and irrevocably, the very thing she had feared. So what did it matter now? What did anything matter? What was the good of doing penance when you were already judged and damned forever? There was no turning back, no changing any of it, not now. Rising slowly, her hands still clasped before her, she started across the room.

She stood before the cupboard, looking up at it… looking… What was the use of anything? Of anything at all? Pulling her hands loose, wrenching them apart with brutal suddenness, she reached up and threw open the door.

In the moment when Edwin stepped off the bus and paused to look up the hill, the street lamps came on marking the rising curving path ahead for him with their dull, intermittent light. The sun had gone down now, but the sky had yet to obtain the deep shades of night. Edwin, his pale face creased with strain, made his way to the corner and started up.

Edwin had finally decided to leave Del, to simply abandon her. He could no longer stand the sight of her. Or even, now that he was away from her, the thought of her. You had to survive. He had reasoned it out this way in an attempt to justify himself. You had to watch out for yourself; that was how the world was made.

For two days he had thought about it, until it came clear to him that he would have to start with the means available to him. Jane Hudson had money or at least access to some and would, therefore, have to provide him with his beginning. She had even promised him money, and a job, too, and so she was in his debt for these things. She was in his debt, and he was determined to find a way to make her pay up.

As he reached the drive in front of the Hudson house, however, all his carefully bolstered determination began to totter upon its own faulty foundation, and it occurred to Edwin that he had not yet committed himself to this undertaking irretrievably. He could still call it off. Del would be glad to have him back. He hesitated. Then, crossing to the door, he resolutely pressed the bell; Del would always be glad to have him back.

The sound of the bell rang in the kitchen with a sudden sharpness that almost caused Jane to knock over her glass. Gripping the edge of the table, she leaned forward and peered narrowly into the black maw of the hallway.

Her first reaction was one of panic. They had come for her! They had come and she was alone. She couldn’t bear that, she couldn’t.… The bell rang again and then, almost immediately, again. She rose from her chair and moving as if in a daze, crossed into the hall. Bumping against the edge of the door, she paused, cautioning herself to be very, very quiet. If she didn’t let them know she was there, they would have to go away after a while. And then she would run away.…

Entering the living room, she attempted to walk through the darkness on tiptoe, but she staggered and fell against one of the chairs. Bracing herself, blinking hard to make out the dim shapes of the French windows, she straightened and took a new heading.

“I am very, very drunk,” she told herself in whispered secrecy, “so I must be very, very careful.”

The sound of the bell came again, echoing back hollowly from the distant ceiling. Making her way slowly, teetering across to the center window, she put her hand to the drape and peered out. At once she recognized the awkward, hulking figure on the terrace.

He had come back! Just when she had thought she would never see him again, just when she was so utterly deserted and alone in the world, he had come back to her. With a small cry of relief and joy, she started toward the door. But then she stopped. She couldn’t let him in. She mustn’t. It was much too dangerous. She couldn’t even let him know she was there.

But why?

She paused, trying to make it all fit together in her befogged mind. What possible danger could there be in just seeing Edwin? What foolishness! Edwin wasn’t dangerous. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. He was her friend, her only friend, and he had come to—to help her. Of course! He had heard she was in trouble and had come to help her. That was exactly the sort of thing Edwin would do. Aware suddenly that the bell had been silent for some while, she moved quickly back to the window and looked out again. In the outer dimness, Edwin’s dim figure was already moving down
the steps and onto the drive. Shoving herself away, she hurried to the door and pulled it open.

“Edwin!” she cried. “Edwin!”

In the lowering darkness he stopped and turned. After a moment’s hesitation, he came back, lumbering breathlessly up the steps.

“I—I thought maybe I’d missed you again,” he wheezed. He crossed toward her with an unaccustomed air of decisiveness. “I’m glad I didn’t though.” But as he came closer to her, he hesitated, stopped. “But maybe…”

Jane moved her hand with limp urgency, motioning him inside. “Come on in,” she said shakenly. “You’ve got to come in… you’ve
got
to, Edwin… and… and have a drink with me. You’ve got to!”

Blanche turned her head on the pillow, listening. There had been the repeated ring of the doorbell, and now—she was almost positive of it—there was the sound of voices from down in the kitchen. Staring hard into the darkness, she strained to hear. Yes, she was positive of it now, there
were
voices. Jane’s. And some man’s.

She had awakened sometime earlier, feeling heavy and ill. For a while she had remembered nothing and then, slowly, it came back to her, her encounter with Jane there at the window and her subsequent headlong plunge into unconsciousness. And she remembered something else, too, from a fleeting moment of awareness—Jane giving her something in a glass of water.… A drug?

And then, remembering the rest of it, she realized that a great deal of time had passed since she had dropped the note out the window and help had still not come. Mrs. Bates, then, had deliberately abandoned her. Or Jane had found some way to forestall any interference. Since then she had lain in the darkness, empty and despondent. Again she had failed.

I will die,
she had told herself,
I feel it, I know it.
And she had
wondered how death would come to her. Her eyes reached into the dark, seeking some vision of death, of its shape and substance. Would there appear a benevolent spectre, a gentle-faced angel in white robes such as she had seen in her Sunday-school books as a child? Or would there be—just dying, a gradual, uneventful diminishing until there was simply nothing left? Tears welled upon her cheeks and she knew she was weeping, but she was too weary even to lift her hand and wipe them away. Now, however, with the sound of the voices, hope once more began to pulse within her.

There was a stranger in the house, someone perhaps who would save her. From below came the muted sound of laughter, this followed by the brief hiss of running water. The man laughed again, by himself. If she could only let him know that she was there, that she needed his help!

She
had
to do it. She had to think of a way. She repeated this over and over to herself, hoping that the mere repetition would somehow generate some plan of action in her mind. The laughter came again, and there in the darkness, she pressed her hand to her forehead in an effort to think.

Thinking was actually painful to her; her mind seemed almost bruised with weariness. She breathed deeply, trying to concentrate upon the fresh air and the revitalizing effect it was having upon her responses. Still strong in her mind was the thought that it would be so much pleasanter just to forget everything, to give up the struggle and drift back into sleep—and death. There would be no more bother then, no more of this awful weariness; it would be over. But then there was a faint crash from below, as if a glass had been dropped, and she was jarred into renewed alertness.

A crash. The thought came to her spontaneously, prompted by the sound; what she wanted to do was make a noise, knock something over, make a loud and startling crash. The kitchen was almost directly below.… She pressed her hand harder to her brow in a new effort to think and remember. There was something perfectly obvious…

The tray! Jane had brought her lunch into the room when she had arrived and found her at the window. She had put it down—she’d had a glimpse of it there—yes, on the nightstand. Within easy reach. If Jane had not remembered to take it away again…

Rolling herself as best she could to the left, she felt for the table and the tray. The tray was there. It was there! But from her present position she was just barely able to reach it with the tips of her fingers.

Weakness, both mental and physical, was her most formidable foe. Turning upon the bed, using her elbows to propel and guide herself, she struggled to pull herself closer. Panting, damp with perspiration, she dragged herself slowly across the bed until she felt certain she must be within reach. She lay still for a moment, trying, through the labored rasp of her own breathing, to hear the sounds from down in the kitchen. She hadn’t any time to waste, she knew that; the stranger might decide to leave at any moment.

Groping through the darkness, she again felt for the edge of the tray. Almost instantly her hand found the cold metal and caught hold of it. Her pulse quickened with a heavy drumming in her ears. Would he know, whoever he was down there? Would he guess her desperation?

Taking a deep breath, she worked her fingers away from the corner of the tray to the center of the front edge. Again she paused, listening to the muted sounds from down below, and then she drew her hand forward. Nothing happened. The tray, a heavy one, too heavy for her feeble strength, refused to budge.