What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (25 page)

From above, Miriam looked down in frightened horror, and crying Charlotte’s name, hurled the box from her and started running down the stairs.

As Charlotte woke up in her darkened bedroom, she felt an instantaneous sense of panic, of half-memory of the shocking experience she had downstairs.

“Don’t be frightened,” a voice said, and she looked around and saw Miriam sitting beside the bed in the dim lamplight. And then, her gaze moved past and beyond Miriam and fastened on something else in the deeper shadows. She rose up in the bed in terror for the severed head seemed to be here on the bureau, grinning back at her.

Miriam, realizing what was frightening her, hastened to assure her. “No, no,” she said, “it’s all right,” as she reached behind her and brought the “head” into the light as it materialized as an old hat form. “This is all it is, Charlotte. I know how it must have frightened you…”

Charlotte turned her head to the pillow, crying softly.

“It was that idiot, exploding that flash bulb in your face. You couldn’t be sure of anything.”

Miriam took a pill from a bottle and along with some water from a glass, offered it to Charlotte. At first Charlotte refused, but when Miriam insisted that Hugh said for her to take it if she woke up, she hesitantly swallowed it down.

Charlotte looked at Miriam with a curious expression, as if seeing her for the first time, and then, giving up the struggle to stay awake, drifted off into sleep again.

Miriam, making sure that Charlotte was resting comfortably, left the room and went back to her own room, took out the gun from the nightstand and thoughtfully checked it to make certain it was loaded.

In the morning Charlotte was awakened by Miriam coming into the room with her breakfast tray. At first she unquestionably allowed Miriam to arrange her position in the bed and put the tray out for her. Then finally, now fully awake, she asked, “Didn’t Velma come this morning?”

“I called her and told her not to last night,” Miriam told her. And at her questioning glance added, “If it hadn’t been for her that reporter wouldn’t have been here last night. And you wouldn’t be in this condition this morning.”

Charlotte watched Miriam with a curious kind of thoughtfulness, and then when Miriam started to leave, called out to stop her. “Miriam,” called Charlotte, and in her indisputable look of illness was a new kind of softness, “I know you weren’t happy in this house. I wasn’t very kind to you.”

“You were very wrapped up with yourself and all your beaux,” replied Miriam.

“Yes. I believed all the things Daddy told me… about how beautiful I was. And charming…”

“You were beautiful,” said Miriam. “Yes… and charming, too.”

“But not quite legendary… I know… I did terrible wicked things. Stealing another woman’s husband…”

“Undoubtedly, he wanted to be stolen.”

“Yes, yes, I suppose so. Still I was wrong. But I’ve paid for it. It’s been my sense of guilt that’s kept me here so much as anything.”

“Guilt?” questioned Miriam.

“For causing it all.”

“You mustn’t think about it… not now.”

“But Miriam, I didn’t do it. I’ve never said that to anyone
before, not to any other living soul. I started to say it to Daddy, but he wouldn’t let me. He said I mustn’t say it. And I mustn’t let them drive me off.”

“But now,” started Miriam.

“But now it’s all gone. We’re old, all of us grown old… Jewel… and me. But you… you escaped.”

“I ran,” said Miriam. “It’s a very good policy. I’ve learned to run when your life’s threatened.”

For a moment the two women were silent, looking at each other. Finally Charlotte held out her hand. “I’m trying to say I’m sorry, Miriam,” she said.

Miriam nodded, “Yes, I know.”

“You won’t leave me here alone will you?”

Miriam shook her head. “No, I won’t do that.”

Charlotte smiled, rather wanly, and turned to her breakfast.

“You’ll see everything differently,” Miriam said, “once you’re away from here.”

Hugh visited Charlotte later that day and gave her another shot to help her rest, coming into the room to speak to Miriam.

“There is no question about it,” he said. “She’s very affected by what’s happened. She is in very deep shock.”

“I was so certain she was going to leave,” Miriam said with resignation.

Charlotte in the grip of the sedative babbled about the past, talked to John and spoke of her love for him all that day. In the evening she was roused by Miriam to take some soup, and then was left alone as Miriam went on to her own bedroom. Late in the night Charlotte woke up hearing the music, the song that John wrote for her. At first, confident that she was dreaming, she only smiled, but then, becoming more awake, the music still sounding dimly
against her awareness, she boosted herself up in bed. Her door was open and there was a faint light outside. The music seemed to be getting louder.

Still dazed with drugged sleep, Charlotte managed to get herself out of bed. Half fearfully, she made her way toward the open doorway and looked outside. The music was still playing somewhere below, but as she moved out to the landing, it stopped. She started to move away but the music started again.

Charlotte looked back in the direction of Miriam’s room, saw the lamp burning beside the bed and moved toward it. She went to the room and softly called Miriam’s name, but the room was empty. She started away and then, seeing the gun in the circle of light beneath the lamp, she stood staring at it, seeing it as a glittering and a marvelous thing. Slowly, she went across to the bedside table and picked up the gun. She stood for a moment longer looking at it, and then, hearing the music again from downstairs, she carried it with her, forgotten, in her hand, from the room and out in the direction of the stairs.

In the moment after she left, Miriam appeared in the doorway of the adjoining bath, looked into the room, and seeing nothing and hearing nothing went back inside.

As Charlotte descended the stairs, she seemed to do so in a haze of confused fantasy. Her nightmares swirling around her, she seemed almost to become younger with every step. Only the revolver in her hand robbed the scene of an atmosphere of almost playful innocence.

The music seemed to come from inside the drawing room. As she stood there, she saw a soft rectangle of light falling across the floor, containing an indefinite silhouette—one of a man. As she moved toward the doorway, the light fell away, and, as she entered the room, the music stopped. She stood there for a moment listening.

“John?” she whispered.

But there was no answer.

She heard the music once more, this time from somewhere else. She went back to the hallway and decided the music was coming from the library. The door was shut but there seemed to be a light shining under it, broken by the movement of a shadow from inside. She hastened to the door and hurled it open. The music momentarily became a bit louder, then stopped. The room was dark and deserted.

“John?” she whispered again.

And again, there was no answer.

As Charlotte moved into the deeper shadows at the rear of the hallway, there seemed to be ominous shadows everywhere. She thought she saw the severed hand there on top of another packing box, or was it another glove? Was that a severed head there in the shadows, or was it just a hat? Beckoned by the music and the moving shadows while calling out John’s name intermittently, she moved from room to room. Was she merely doped into a state of delusion or was she really mad?

In a small sun room, Charlotte found her carved box standing in a flood of moonlight on the table. And at last she found the source of the music. Or had she? She was hesitant as she approached the box and touched its lid.

She stood there for a long while, the music tinkling improbably from the closed box, and then with a sudden resolution, she hurled back the lid. There was only the scene painted inside with flowers and birds. The music, maddeningly, stopped. A shadow moved quietly behind her as she whirled around. The doorway behind her stood black and vacant. She stood now shivering with fright, not certain of what she was really afraid.

At last she moved forward determined to return to the protection of her room, but vacant, silent darkness loomed before her as she started toward the stairs.

Upstairs Miriam returned to bed, never looking toward the table or noticing the gun was missing. She lay down and closed her eyes.

Below, Charlotte had reached the foot of the stairs when she heard the music once more, very, very softly from somewhere behind her. She turned. The light now seemed to come from beneath the ballroom doors, and there were broken, darting shadows to suggest people silently dancing inside. Blinking hard, she tried to clear her mind and perhaps her sight as well as she was irresistibly drawn back in that direction.

At the door she stopped in the grip of some faintly realized warning. Then she heard a voice very faintly whispering her name… “Charlotte.” She put out her hand to the door, turned the latch and opened it. As before, moonlight flooded the room, reflecting from the glittering remains of the mirrors as the open French window welcomed the balmy summer night.

“John,” Charlotte whispered, a bit more loudly than before and in answer the music swelled. For a moment Charlotte stood there caught up in the beauty of the moment, growing younger, younger, and hearing the far off laughter of her coming-out ball, remembering…

Slowly, she began to sway to the music, first this way and that, smiling softly. And then she held out her hands as if to a favored partner, and with the gun dangling incongruously from her hand, she began to dance. She was very graceful and very young, and as the music swelled about her, her smile of pleasure widened and her eyes grew bright.

As she whirled around the ballroom floor, she saw other ghost figures dancing about her. Suddenly the mirrors became whole again, and the room bright and real, just as it was when she had her first ball there.

There was laughter and joy and the fulsome music of the orchestra. But as she dipped and glided the room dimmed and returned to moonlight, the mirrors returned to shattered fragments, and the music faded to the thin tinkling sound of the music box.

Then Charlotte caught a glimpse of someone… or what
appeared to be someone… standing in one of the open French windows. Charlotte stopped dancing but still with a small laugh of gaiety and greeting—but the laugh broke off and her face grew stiff with horror. She found herself facing, not the French windows, but one of the shattered mirrored panels. But unmistakably outlined in its interrupted surface was the figure of a man—a headless figure. As Charlotte stood transfixed with horror, the figure raised its arms to her, as if in invitation to the now broken dance, and she saw that he had no hands. Charlotte screamed and her scream echoed into the night. The figure moved toward her and out of the moonlight. In automatic defense, Charlotte grasped the gun with both hands and pointed it in the direction of the approaching figure. With a sob, she fired.

Upstairs, aroused by the deafening sound, Miriam rose up sharply in her bed and threw back the covers. At the same time several more shots came resoundingly from the floor below. Miriam turned to the nightstand, saw that the revolver was missing, and, getting up swiftly, hurried from the room. Running down the hall, she glanced into Charlotte’s room briefly, just long enough to know that Charlotte was not there, and then she ran down the stairs.

“Charlotte!” she cried. “Charlotte!” And when there was no answer, she hurried on, headlong, down the hall. Stopping, she looked wildly around and, seeing the doors of the ballroom ajar, she ran toward them. As she entered the room she saw Charlotte silhouetted against the flood of moonlight, quite still and silent. When Miriam called out to her, Charlotte made no move to answer. Miriam switched on the lights and saw that Charlotte was standing over a fallen figure.

“What have you done?” Miriam demanded as she ran forward. Charlotte, too deeply in shock to respond, simply stood there staring down at the figure. Miriam looked down to see the man had fallen so his face was hidden. She looked at Charlotte. “Who is it?” she demanded to know.

But Charlotte still made no move or sound.

Reluctantly, Miriam knelt down to touch the man’s shoulder, and, forcing herself, turned him over. Slowly, the bloodied head of Hugh was revealed.

“Hugh!” Miriam screamed, looking up at Charlotte. “But why…?”

Charlotte began to moan. Dropping the gun, she covered her face with her hands and turned away. Miriam looked at her for a moment in stunned disbelief.

“I’ll have to call the police,” she said as she started from the room.

But then she hesitated and forcefully headed to the phone. Again she stopped and looked toward the ballroom. Should she go back and look after Charlotte before making the call? Charlotte, swift, suddenly, like a wraith, appeared from the ballroom, came to Miriam and stopped her hand as she dialed the phone.

“You can’t call them!” Charlotte babbled breathlessly. “You can’t do it, Miriam. Oh, Miriam, if you’ve got any feelin’ at all for me, if you’ve got any feelin’, don’t, oh, don’t…”

“But I have to,” Miriam replied. “There isn’t anything else I can do.”

“But it will be like it was then. They’ll all come and ask all sorts of terrible, personal questions. Why do you think I’ve stayed alone here all these years? I can’t stand it. They shamed me. They killed Daddy and Mama. You can’t let them kill me too!”

“Charlotte, please stop.”

“No, listen, listen. I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was Hugh. Why would I? He was just about the only one to pay me any mind all these last few years. I was so scared. It was dark, and when I looked and saw him there, it was just like…”

“Just like what?”

“Like a dream. A dream I’ve had over and over again for years and years… ever since that night when Daddy came here into this
house and told me. Ever since they found John’s poor hand. Oh, Miriam, Miriam, I can’t stand it. I can’t!”

“But what can we do?”

“Take him away. Take him back to his own place and leave him there… where they’ll find him and take care of him… do what needs to be done…”