What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (19 page)

J
ane’s gaze darted out through the windshield following the forward thrust of the headlights. At the same time she consciously resisted the impulse to drive more swiftly, fearful that she might miss him in the dark. He might be hidden in the deep shadows at either side of the street, trying to elude her. She leaned forward over the wheel, her eyes sharp for the first glimpse of his graceless, lumbering figure.

And then, as she passed beneath the second street light and guided the car into the bend, she saw him. He was seated on the wall, slouched to one side, facing away from the street. His hands rested flat on the wall, bracing himself, and his head was lowered into the outer darkness. Jane felt again the quick inner twisting that had come with his betrayal back at the house; her vision blurred with anger, and her foot, almost of its own volition, pressed down on the accelerator. Centered now upon Edwin’s huddled figure, the headlights stabbed sharply forward.

At the sound of the motor, the whine of its sudden acceleration, Edwin looked around. Jane saw that even as he wheeled about his eyes were wide with alarm. He blinked furiously against the jutting glare and she wondered if he realized what was about to happen to him. His lips parted in a fruitless attempt to cry out; for the moment he was obviously paralyzed with terror.

And then he bolted into convulsive action. Lurching backward, he scrambled onto the wall, a fat, graceless child pulling away
instinctively from danger. Jane pressed her foot down even harder on the accelerator, and the car seemed to spring forward almost directly upon him. He looked back in fright and in that instant, even through the intervening glare, their eyes seemed to meet. But then another face seemed to rise before her, a face similarly drained with terror, caught in the onrushing flash of another pair of headlights. The gates were suddenly there, looming in front of her, the tall intricately designed gates—the deadly gates.… With a stifled cry, she jammed her foot down hard on the brake.

With the scream of the brakes wild in her ears, she saw Edwin scramble back still farther on the wall, his eyes staring and enormous. And then it all changed. The brakes were silent now, but the sound of screaming went on. Only now it was coming from Edwin. And he was falling, his arms thrown wide against the night. He seemed almost to hang suspended there upon the darkness for a moment, and then he plunged down and out of sight beyond the wall. After that there was a silence so complete it seemed for a moment the whole world had gone still.

She simply sat there, staring incredulously at the place in the darkness where Edwin had last been. She couldn’t believe it had really happened. She hadn’t meant for it to happen; she knew that now. No matter how angry or frightened she had been, she hadn’t really wanted to hurt him. A sound came from somewhere behind, a shout, the slam of a door. She turned looking back through the rear window, tense with alarm. A porch light went on, a figure appeared in a lighted doorway. There was the sound of voices, enquiring, concerned.

Realizing that she had killed the engine, she quickly set the gear and pressed the starter. It took three tries to get it going and by that time she could see figures beginning to materialize dimly on the street behind. She backed off, then shot the car forward and away from the wall in a tight, screaming turn. In response, a voice shouted from somewhere behind, and when she glanced into the mirror she saw a man running after her waving his hand.

The headlights, stabbing down into the dark, picked up the form of a woman hurrying up the hill. As the car hurled itself forward, the woman pressed back hastily to the curb and waited for it to pass. To Jane, in her present state of panic, the woman’s face was only a whitish, featureless blob that appeared suddenly out of the darkness and then returned to it in a streaking blur.

She made her way past the Hudson house and into the circle of light at the intersection, and hearing voices from down below, looked in that direction. She saw a man emerge onto the street a few yards ahead and start down toward the curve.

“What is it?” Mrs. Bates called out. “What’s happened?”

The man stopped and looked back. It was Mr. Junquist, the contractor who lived nearby. “Don’t know,” he replied. “An accident, from the way it sounded. Down on the bend. That’s a bad spot. We had a crack-up there just less than a year ago.”

“Oh, dear!” Mrs. Bates said, coming up beside him. “Then it must have been Miss Hudson.…”

As they started down the hill together, Mr. Junquist looked around at her. “Jane Hudson?” he asked. “How so?”

Mrs. Bates avoided his gaze in sudden embarrassment: she didn’t want him to think she spent her time spying on her neighbors. Actually it was only by the merest chance that she had seen the Hudson coupé move away across the intersection in the direction of the curve; she had gone over to Harriett’s, and finding that Harriett had already gone out for the evening, had just been returning home at the time.

“Well…” she said uncertainly, “I don’t know. I heard a car drive off from here just a little bit ago. I guess I just assumed—I don’t know.…”

Several people had already gathered at the bend before they got there. One man was playing the beam of the flashlight along a set of black tire marks on the pavement.

“Guess it was just a near thing,” he said. “A false alarm.”

“Thank heaven,” Mrs. Bates breathed.

“They sure burned their way out of here, though.”

A woman wearing an apron nodded in agreement. “Must have been someone who wasn’t familiar with the road. No one who lives up here would turn into this curve going that fast. I sure wouldn’t.” She paused, shaking her head. “It’s funny, though. Someone sure screamed like they were really hurt.”

“Kids, probably,” the man with the flashlight said gloomily. “Just some gang of crazy kids.”

“Well,” Mrs. Bates said, “just so long as nobody was hurt.”

“That’s right,” Mr. Junquist nodded. “Anyway, I needed the exercise.”

As he turned to go, Mrs. Bates followed suit. At the same time, however, a sound came faintly to her ears, and she stopped.

“Listen!” she said sharply to the others. “Shh!”

They looked around at her, their eyes reflecting the dim glow of the street lamp up above. There was a moment of silence.

“Didn’t you hear something?” Mrs. Bates looked up at Mr. Junquist. “I’m sure there was a sound.” Again she held up her hand for silence, and after a moment the sound came again, distantly, an echoing moan of pain. “There! I told you—it’s from down there somewhere!”

In a body they all crowded quickly to the wall, leaning out over it to peer down into the black ravine. The man with the flashlight turned it on again, directing its pale finger of light at the bluff directly below. The sound came again, and he turned the beam to the left. Mrs. Bates, pressed close to the wall, emitted a small cry and pointed.

“There!” she cried. “There he is!”

As the circle of light centered itself dimly on the figure down below, it turned and pushed itself up painfully into a half-sitting position. At the same time it looked up in their direction, exposing
a white face, the entire left side of which was a raw red smear. Mrs. Bates turned quickly to the others.

“We’ve got to help him!”

“I know how I can get down there.” It was the man with the flashlight. “Here, somebody hold this for me.”

Mrs. Bates turned slowly, looking back to where she knew the black tire marks were on the pavement. After a moment, her eyes, shadowed with dark speculation, lifted in the direction of the Hudson house. When she left the wall and started up the street, a voice called out behind her.

“Want me to come with you?”

It was Mr. Junquist, but Mrs. Bates shook her head. “Never mind,” she said, “you stay and see if you can help. I just thought someone ought to call the police.”

Jane pulled the car into the garage, switched off the motor and got out. By circling the hill she had been able to return by a route opposite the one that contained the curve. As she stepped out into the street and heard voices coming distantly from below, she stopped.

What had they discovered down there? Had they found him yet? She knew it was wisest to stay away but she had to know—she
had
to. Seeking the shadows next to the wall, she moved slowly toward the circle of light at the intersection.

Reaching the outer edge of the light, she stopped again and listened. Someone was shouting something, calling out instructions. From where she stood, though, it was impossible to see anything. For a moment she hesitated, telling herself that she should hide herself quickly in the house. And yet she was unable to turn away. After a moment, she started cautiously forward again, out into the light. And then she faltered as a figure detached itself rapidly from the opposite darkness and hurried toward her.

In an instant of mutual surprise and recognition, the two women stopped. For a moment they simply stood there in the dim arena of the light, staring at each other in wordless dismay. Mrs. Bates was the first to move or speak. Under the sway of the shock of the last several minutes, she raised her hand in a melodramatic gesture of accusation and pointed off down the hill.

“You did that!” she said harshly. “You’re responsible! You should be in the hands of the police!” Suddenly she paled. Appalled at her own words, she turned and hurried off into the darkness.

“No!” Jane cried, looking after her. “No!” Somewhere in the darkness, Mrs. Bates’s footsteps became uncertain, faltered, stopped. “I didn’t mean it!” Holding her hand out in a gesture of desperate supplication, Jane started forward. “You don’t understand!…”

“Stay back,” Mrs. Bates cried out suddenly from the darkness. “You stay away from me!” And her footsteps resumed, running.

Jane remained where she was, staring fixedly ahead in mute wretchedness. And then it struck her; Mrs. Bates knew. She
knew
! She was always around, snooping. The night she had taken Mrs. Stitt’s body away in the wheel chair… She looked quickly around, as with a sharp sense of tightly encircling danger. Whirling about, she started toward the house.

“Blanche!” she cried, her voice thin with fear. “Oh, Blanche!…”

T
wice since they had started out Blanche had dozed—or slipped off into unconsciousness—so she hadn’t any idea at all where they were now or how long they had been driving. Only the dampness of the air and the increased chill made her think it had grown to be very, very late.

It had all seemed a part of some serio-comic adventure, Jane’s dressing her with such frantic haste in her coat and shoes, carrying her down the stairs, leaving her there collapsed on the bottom step until she brought the folding wheel chair. Weirdly, it had all passed in silence. No explanation had been offered; there had been no exchange of words between them since.

At first she had been too dazzled by the drifting colored lights of the city, the white, stabbing ones of the onrushing cars, to notice anything else. But then, for all of her weakness and exhaustion, she realized that they had twice doubled back on their course and it came to her that they were embarked upon this curious flight into the night with no predetermined destination. Jane was fleeing blindly, evidently in the grip of some mindless fright. It had all been precipitated, of course, by the strange visit of the man to Blanche’s room. She had just begun to think about this when she first drifted off to sleep.…

Now, awaking from her second lapse from consciousness, her first awareness was of an eerie silence. She was stiff from having remained too long in the same cramped position and when she
reached to the edge of the sill to pull herself up, the movement brought a sharp stab of pain to her side. Managing to lift herself slightly she looked out into the darkness and saw what appeared dimly to be the blank wall of some small building. It was then that she realized the car was no longer in motion.

She looked around and saw with a start of surprise that she was alone. Jane had gone off and left her! The car windows were rolled up, and the doors were locked. She turned again to the window, with the first faint feelings of real alarm.

Then footsteps sounded close outside. She looked quickly around as a key touched the lock of the opposite door.

The door swung open and Jane, framed indistinctly against the night, moved forward and looked in at her. From the black distance of the night there came a sound, a softly rolling, whispering sound that seemed, at once, both strange and familiar. When Jane spoke her voice was flat, utterly devoid of any emotional coloring at all.

“You’re awake.”

Blanche did not answer. Aware of a sharp freshness coming into the car from outside, she knew they were near the ocean. The sound, then, was the rolling of the surf. Jane looked back over her shoulder into the darkness.

“I’ve been walking—on the sand.” Her voice still held a note of detachment as if she were speaking, really, to herself. “It’s nice…”

Blanche nodded, anxious, suddenly, to humor her, wondering why it so frightened her that they had come here to the sea.

“The water has lights on it in the dark,” Jane murmured.

Blanche hesitated and then, in an attitude of final supplication, leaned tensely forward. “Please, Jane,” she begged, “please take me home! I’m so tired… so tired.…”

For a long moment Jane was silent, looking off into the night, and Blanche wondered if she had even heard. Then suddenly she turned back, bringing her gaze down searchingly to Blanche’s.

“You should see the ocean, Blanche,” she said. “You used to like it…”

Already Blanche had fallen back against the seat and closed her eyes in weary, uncaring defeat. The unending wash of the surf echoed fatefully at the back of her awareness.

“Yes, Jane,” she whispered finally, “yes…”

Opening her eyes, Blanche looked out onto a world of gray unreality. Somewhere beyond the drifting mists was a soft thundering. And then she remembered. The ocean. She moved her hand beneath the blanket that covered her and felt the sand.

It was a child’s poem that she and Jane had known as little girls. Their mother had taught them to speak the lines in turn, alternating their voices smoothly so as not to break the rhythm. For years it had been a daily ritual with them to say the poem to their mother first thing in the morning when she came into their room to wake them. But that had been such a long, long time ago.… Blanche blinked her eyes, trying to clear them of the haze of sleep. Had she and Jane recited the poem just now? Or had it happened only in her mind? Sensing a movement to her right, she looked around to see Jane seated beside her, staring off into the mists through dreamily narrowed lids.

Blanche turned away; she was cold, and the blanket felt heavy and damp upon her body. How long, she wondered, could this
horror go on? How much more could she endure? These lapses of hers, she felt certain now, were not sleep but unconsciousness. Perhaps next time she would simply drift off into oblivion never to return. It might be better that way, more merciful. Tears stung her eyes, but then a new sound came dully to her ears and blinking she looked off into the grayness.

Someone was coming toward them, running. She had only just realized this, however, when a figure loomed suddenly out of the mists, a man, lean, muscular, tanned, wearing only a pair of brief white trunks. In the moment that he appeared he was nearly upon them; a spray of sand struck Blanche’s blanket as he came to an abrupt stop less than a yard away. He moved his gaze from her to Jane in startled surprise. His next expression was one of open annoyance. He flexed his legs and shoulders in an unconscious demonstration of his impatience.

“Sorry,” he said tersely. “Usually there isn’t anyone out here at this hour.”

Blanche struggled frantically to raise herself up. She must say something—anything—to detain him!

“Please——!” she managed faintly.

But the blanket defeated her; its lank weight seemed to press the very breath from her lungs as she fought against it. Before she had even gotten herself up on one elbow, the man had turned and darted off again into the mists.

Hopelessly, she sank back to the sand, and again there was the dull, pounding sound of his footsteps—fading swiftly into the sound of the surf.

Waiting for the coffee to brew, Paul Singer opened the blinds at the windows of the breakfast nook and looked out toward the beach. The soup was beginning to really lift now; you could begin to make out the deeper gray of the ocean beyond the line of the beach.

As far as he was concerned, however, it was okay if the fog stayed in all day. Fog was fine on a Sunday; it gave you a good excuse to just lie around and be lazy. Then, too, he and Kath had entertained friends from town until after three in the morning, and when you had the kind of head he had this morning, a nice dim, sunless day was just what the doctor ordered.

But it obviously wasn’t going to be that way; the Martins were due out in the afternoon for drinks. That was the only trouble with having a weekend place at the beach; you had to ask everyone out. A bubbling sound issued from the coffeepot over on the stove and he turned. But not so quickly that he missed catching a glimpse of the two women out on the sand.

He turned and looked out again. Actually, through the fog, only one of them was even slightly visible, a dumpy little character, she looked like, wearing a bright blue coat. The other one, lying down apparently, was almost totally obscured from view. There was something arresting about the sight of the two old girls out there in the mists, something bizarre. He stood for nearly two full minutes staring out at them before he moved away to the stove.

He glanced up at the clock on the shelf and saw that it was almost ten. At this rate, then, the fog should be clearing around noon. He carried his coffee back to the table and, as he sat down, glanced out again at the two huddled figures on the sand which were now almost entirely lost behind a drifting strata of mist. And then his gaze was deflected in the direction of the highway by an oblique glimpse of a gray coupé parked up by the garage. Evidently the old girls had driven out from the city under their own steam.

He wondered how they happened to come here at such a curious hour. They were tourists, probably from out of state, unfamiliar with the capricious ways of beach weather. Still, it was strange that no one had warned them. Taking up his coffee, sipping at it cautiously, he put the two old girls handily out of mind. He’d give Kath just ten more minutes sack time and then he’d go shake her out.

He didn’t mind fixing his own coffee, but breakfast—that was another matter entirely.

The sun, when it had finally burned away the last of the mists, bore down dazzlingly upon the sand with unleashed intensity. Blanche could feel the crawl of the perspiration on her scalp as it gathered there and trickled down beneath her hair. Jane had wrapped the blanket around her so tightly she couldn’t get free of it, and even behind her closed eyelids the sun burned with a fiery brightness that was rapidly becoming almost intolerable. She did not, however, want to wake Jane, who had finally succumbed to exhaustion and fallen asleep.

With the appearance of the sun on the beach there had come also the Sunday crowd—almost, it seemed, with the same miraculous suddenness. There were family groups with umbrellas and picnic hampers, groups of youngsters, noisy and laughing, dressed in scant bathing garments and fanciful straw hats. And the oily-haired, predatory strays who wandered through the crowd with sinister preoccupation, the defiant toughs, and the lonely ones looking for kindred spirits. Most of these had arrived early so as to secure a spot close to the water. Only two small groups had settled back near Blanche and Jane.

One group, a few yards to the right, was a young couple, a healthy, placid-looking pair, and their two youngsters, a little girl around two and an infant in a portable crib. Spreading out a wide, colorful blanket, the young mother gave the little girl a toy pail and shovel, then divided the Sunday paper with her husband and settled down to read. The second group, to the left, was comprised of three young girls in their early teens, dark-skinned and smiling, who, when they had arrived, had promptly stretched themselves out on enormous beach towels and turned their faces to the sun. As Jane continued to sleep, Blanche gave her attention to these two groups with close speculation.

Once, one of the girls, a pretty youngster, with huge dark
eyes and wearing a bright yellow sun suit, had looked around in Blanche’s direction. But then, meeting Blanche’s quickened gaze, she looked hurriedly away again before Blanche could make any move to secure her attention. Then, aware of a stirring at her side, Blanche turned to see Jane sitting up, stretching, blinking furiously against the sun. With a faint expression of remembered alarm, Jane looked around, bringing her arms down quickly to her sides. At the sight of Blanche she nodded, as if in joyless reassurance.

“It’s hot,” she said dully. “I’ll take the blanket off if you want.”

As she removed the blanket, Blanche watched her, trying to find in her closed expression some clue to her thoughts. At the same time Blanche resisted the impulse to plead again to be taken home; Jane, now that she had awakened, seemed in a mood of sad depression. Folding the blanket into a compact square, she fitted it under Blanche’s head for a pillow.

“You must be thirsty,” she said with a kind of weary gentleness. Surveying the length of the beach, she turned her gaze up the rise in the direction of the highway. “There’s a refreshment stand.” She got to her feet and brushed the sand absently from her coat. “I’ll get you something.”

Turning her head on the folded blanket, Blanche watched Jane’s progress as she moved off toward the rise. A sad, defeated figure, an old woman who had lived out the empty years of a life that had ended, really, almost before it had begun. A pair of youngsters, yelling shrilly, darted across Blanche’s line of vision, and she looked back toward the trio of girls. She raised her hand to signal for their attention, but as she did so one of them took a portable radio from its leather carrying case and turned it on. Under a salvo of raucous jazz, Blanche turned away.

Giving her attention to the young couple with the children, she tried to think of some way to catch their eye. She waited, watching them patiently, but they remained turned away from her, intent upon their reading. Aware that time was slipping rapidly past, she looked back to the girls. She raised her hand and waved.

“Miss!” she called, trying vainly to lift her voice above the blast of the music. “Young lady, please!…”

She continued to wave at them, centering her attention on the girl in the yellow sun suit. It occurred to her that Jane might be watching from the distance, but she didn’t care. Keeping her eyes on the girl, she struggled to bring herself up into a sitting position. Suddenly, as if forced to do so by the sheer intensity of Blanche’s gaze, the girl turned and looked squarely in her direction.

Quickly catching and holding the girl’s eye with her own, Blanche beckoned to her. The girl returned her look with one of surprised, almost frightened, uncertainty, then turned to her companions. Blanche watched, her breath coming in quick, shallow gasps of anxiety.

After a brief conversation with the other two, the girl looked back again. Blanche beckoned, more insistently. There was an exchange of glances and then, as her companions looked on with open suspicion, the girl rose reluctantly to her feet and started forward.

When she had come within a few feet she stopped and looked down at Blanche gravely, poised, it seemed, even now, for instantaneous flight. Blanche could understand the girl’s reluctance; she knew what a disheveled horror she must look to this healthy young creature. The girl made a slight motion with her head, as if in denial, but then, biting her lip in perplexity, she remained where she was. Blanche, in an effort to reassure her, attempted a smile.