What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (26 page)

“Oh, Charlotte…”

“What good will it do? What good for them to come here. Miriam, I beg you, take him away. I didn’t mean it. I’d had all those pills and everything seemed… strange.”

For a moment Miriam stared at her, and in the excitement of the moment seemed convinced. “You’ll have to help me,” said Miriam. “We’ll have to get him into the car, and… you’ll have to help.”

Charlotte nodded, “All right then.”

“You wait here,” Miriam told her, “while I get the car.”

“Must I… must I stay?”

“Go inside, then,” Miriam told her, “and come out when you hear the car. I’ll be just a minute.”

Miriam hurried off into the darkness as Charlotte went back into the hall, crying softly.

When Miriam arrived back with the car, she was forced to go to get Charlotte. Together, Charlotte weeping and frightened, they managed to get Hugh’s body into the back seat of the car and to cover him with a blanket.

“Can’t I go now?” Charlotte asked in her frightened, little girl’s voice.

“We have to get him out again,” Miriam said firmly and forced Charlotte into the car beside her. “I must be mad to be doing this for you.”

“For me,” Charlotte said, seeming more than a little disoriented.
But then, very gracefully she continued, “Yes, for me. And I’ve been wicked… so awfully wicked, Miriam.”

They drove through the night, at first with their lights out, so as not to attract attention, and then, when they got into the back roads, with them on. Charlotte, in a state of extreme shock and dazed hysteria continued to babble, and then to rave.

“I wouldn’t hurt him! I wouldn’t, you know that… I wouldn’t!”

Miriam finally was forced to stop the car and slap Charlotte hard across the face to bring her back in control.

“You’ve got to be quiet,” Miriam told her. But before they could move on, they looked around to find that they were parked almost directly next to a car in which a couple was necking. They drove away, just as the couple, only now noticing their presence, looked after them.

Finally, they pulled off the road and to a place near a shallow ravine. Miriam forced Charlotte to leave the car. To Charlotte, getting out into the darkness, every shadow, branch and leaf became a menace. With an averted gaze, she helped take hold of Hugh’s body as Miriam gave her instructions as they dragged Hugh across to the ravine.

“We must cover him with leaves,” said Miriam as Charlotte began to sob and babble.

“So much death… so much death…” babbled Charlotte.

“Come,” Miriam said to her, “we have to get back.”

She led Charlotte back to the car, and they drove away.

They entered the drive with their lights out and approached the silent, dark house. Miriam stepped out to help Charlotte out of the car in front of the veranda.

“You go in. I’ll put the car away. Go straight to your room. Don’t turn on any lights.”

“Yes,” said Charlotte in a faraway voice, “straight to my room.”

Miriam drove away, and Charlotte stood there looking after
her. As the house loomed in front of Charlotte she seemed paralyzed, but remembering Miriam’s words, clinging to her instructions, she made her way to the door, shoved it open and entered the house. She started to the stairs and then noticed a light coming from under the ballroom doors, where there wasn’t any only a moment before. Uncertain, she made her way in that direction.

At the door of the room, she stopped, afraid to look in, not wanting to see the terrible stain of blood on the floor. But she threw open the doors and looked in. There was nothing there. The floor where Hugh bled out his life was quite clean and unmarked. Somehow this was even more shattering to Charlotte than if some new horror had been waiting for her there. The senseless impossibility of it struck her like a physical blow. She turned about and ran down the hall and up the stairs.

So concentrated was Charlotte on her headlong flight that she was unaware of the light coming on just at the landing. Not until she was full upon it, did she see it. In horrifying view was the bloodied figure of Hugh. She very nearly collided with the figure, and then, seeing it, uttered a piercing scream and fell back. Just managing to catch herself against the railing, she clung, sobbing, gibbering madly as she collapsed slowly to the steps, holding her face in her hands, shielding it from the view of the terrible, impossible thing there above her, only a few feet away.

Miriam, hearing Charlotte scream, ran into the house, through the ballroom, along the lower balcony and up the stairs to where Charlotte had collapsed along the railing. Charlotte could only hold her hand out, as if in defense of something at the head of the stairs. As Miriam looked in that direction, she saw that the landing was quite deserted. Dragging Charlotte to her feet, Miriam forced her up the steps and down the hallway to her room.

Miriam helped Charlotte into bed and waited for her to fall asleep.

“It will all be better tomorrow,” she told Charlotte. “Tomorrow we will go away from here and never, never come back.”

“Yes…” Charlotte managed to breathe as she drifted off to sleep. “Yes.”

Miriam got up, very wearily, left the room and locked the door.

Miriam went to her room and changed into her negligee, but instead of going to bed she came out of her room, turned out the hallway light and made her way down to the ballroom, across it, and out on to the terrace. She stood there looking out into the night, the wash of moonlight across the drowsy landscape. From behind Miriam appeared a man’s figure—Hugh’s. Hearing a sound, Miriam turned, saw him and smiled. He handed her a drink.

“For a difficult night’s work,” he said.

“Difficult, and unpleasant. As much as I’ve hated her all these years—her and her whole monstrous family,” Miriam shrugged, “it had to be done.”

“I know,” Hugh replied. “You do feel sorry for her when you think how life might have been for her. It’s too bad Jewel ran out of money…”

“Murder can be very expensive,” said Miriam.

“When observed by such an expensive witness,” added Hugh.

Miriam nodded in agreement. “Yes. And I am expensive. Very expensive. I think you’d better keep that in mind from now on.”

“Oh, I will,” replied Hugh. “I don’t expect much… a decent allowance…”

“But don’t get any fancy notions. I fell out of love with you years ago. Your life with me isn’t going to be easy.”

“It’s going to be hell… with Charlotte’s money… and you,” Hugh lifted his glass. “Here’s to us.”

“Here’s to you,” Miriam corrected him. “And to me.”

They drank.

“You are beautiful,” said Hugh. He moved toward to touch her.

“Yes,” said Miriam, and as Hugh started to kiss her, she added, “and expensive… remember.”

“And to Charlotte,” Hugh added.

Above, Charlotte stood on the balcony, looking down on them. There were tears in her eyes, not tears of terror now, but of great sadness. She looked down on them as they embraced and a tear fell from her eye. She reached out to the remaining stone urn that stood in its moldering base.

Miriam, allowing Hugh to kiss her, was nonetheless observant enough to notice the droplet that had unaccountably splashed to the stone floor of the terrace. For a moment she couldn’t think what it meant, and then, as it dawned on her, she shoved Hugh from her and cast her gaze upward. At that moment the stone urn toppled from its base and came crashing down upon them.

From above, Charlotte looked at the ruined urn and the ruined figures below. Then she sank to her knees and the tears flowed freely.

The next morning the crowd had gathered at the front of the old Hollis place, the news of the tragedy having spread through the town. Among those gathered, being held back by the local police, were the reporter Paul Selvin and his new friend, Waldo Hopper.

“I just knew if those kids didn’t stop pestering her around out here, somebody’d get hurt,” said one woman. “Throwing things at the house and deviling that old woman…”

“And then to have it happen to the other two. They say she was in her nightgown.”

A hush fell over the crowd as the front door of the old house opened, and Charlotte, being helped by the old Judge, came out of the house. She was dressed in all her finest finery; after all, Charlotte was not a poor woman, and she would soon be still richer from the settlement of her property. She leaned on the Judge’s arm as he led her toward his car which was waiting in the drive.

Paul Selvin and Waldo Hopper started forward. Paul got ready to take a picture, and Charlotte, seeing him, far from ducking
away, paused to give him her best angle. As she moved on to the car and got inside, Waldo came up to the car. The police moved in to block him, but Charlotte raised her hand and they let him through.

“I have it on good authority that Jewel Mayhew suffered another attack this morning when she heard the news… a paralytic attack this time. Perhaps you’d be interested to know.”

“Poor, poor Jewel,” said Charlotte. “I do really feel sorry for her.”

“Sorrier, I dare say, than your cousin, Miriam, did?”

A certain quickness came into Charlotte’s face, which caused Waldo to smile. “I’ve had reason to speculate since our last meeting on the identity of that witness, and where he… or she… might have been all this time. The only thing that might have kept them silent—I would judge—would be blackmail. Would you agree with that, Miss Hollis?”

Charlotte was not able to answer, for at that moment the car pulled away. As it drove into the distance, Charlotte looked out the window, at Waldo, and very faintly, she smiled.

None of them that night would have hesitated to help him had they known of the danger. Long before showtime, however, they were all quite prepared to dismiss his behavior during the performance as simply another manifestation of his “artistic temperament.” Allowing even that the rehearsals had gone smoothly—which they had not—the incident at the end of the final run-through would have convinced them of that much. It is one of the commonest of human failings that few of us ever see in the unpleasantness of others the generative element of fear, and only Larry knew the truth.

Shielding his eyes against the incredible brightness of the light, he wheeled sharply and looked up toward the control booth. In the ragged shadow of his hand, his famous, still-handsome face clearly reflected an inner tautness. There remained, now, less than thirty minutes before showtime, and the crew, waiting in the outer dimness, was restive, sullenly despairing of the last chance for a final break. The voice of the director, sharp with accumulated impatience, barked down at him from the studio speaker.

“Larry, for Petesake remember to work into Camera
Three
on that last speech. If you don’t, you’re cooked. I wish you could see—!”

In the swift clench of quickened anger, Larry Richards turned and left the set. Holding his gaze coldly averted from the others,
he strode across to the hallway, entered his dressing room and slammed the door. He stood for a moment, gripping the doorknob, pressing his nervous excess into its hard, cold surface. These people didn’t know the difference between a real flesh-and-blood actor and the carpet sweeper in the commercial!

In disgust, he let his hand fall limp. He knew, even better than they, that he was behaving like a temperamental child. How could he expect them to guess out there what these next ninety minutes could mean to him, that they were to be the proof to Bert Fielding that, despite four years of illness and forced retirement, he was still up to playing the lead in “The Deaths of Kings”? The legend of Laurence Richards was still astonishingly bright on Broadway. Larry had worked hard to keep it that way, to keep secret his illness, his depleted finances, the poverty in which he and Lisa now lived. Producers were chary of an actor when he was desperate—and quick to forget how good he once had been. Bert Fielding had somehow learned the truth. Larry raised a hand to his forehead, then withdrew it quickly as a knock sounded at the door.

It would be Lisa, of course, come to soothe him. He closed his eyes, willing his mind, as best he could, to quietness. Poor Lisa. These last few days of reheasal had been hard on her. He wondered sometimes if there was anything he could think or feel without her knowing. Not that his recent behavior had concealed much. He opened the door, managing a wry smile.

“Don’t tell me,” he said.

She stood there, just outside, a small, mild woman in her early thirties, huddled in a practical brown coat that almost fatally submerged her subtle prettiness. Her gray eyes, seeming suddenly too large for her small, precise features, met his with deepening distress.

“Larry,” she said softly, “they don’t understand. They meant only to help.” In her voice there was still a trace of the native Austrian accent she had tried so hard to be rid of. She reached out to him but drew short of touching him. “Please, don’t let them believe you are like this.”

He looked down at her, thinking what a presumptuous romantic he had been when he had married her. That had been twelve years ago, during a Special Services tour in Europe. Then, her youth and her grave foreign manner had seemed a captive, fledgling charm needing only his touch for release and fulfillment. He had intended to change her, to transform her into some splendid Galatea, but she had steadfastly—and wisely—remained herself, letting him realize for himself that his efforts were misguided. His anxiety for tonight’s success was more for her sake, really, than his own.

“What shall I do,” he smiled, “hand out chocolate bars?”

“Please, Larry—”

“Lisa, I created this role on Broadway and played it for over five hundred performances. That’s why they signed me for it. Should I let that young genius out there tell me how to play it—with Bert Fielding watching?”

“Larry, you don’t listen. He doesn’t mean to quarrel with your interpretation. It’s the mechanics—to have you in range of the camera—he is worred about.” Her gaze softened. “When you hurt people, Larry, you make them cruel—”

Suddenly he was sorry that she had come; he felt again the quick, cold twist of uncertainty in the pit of his stomach. Following her turning gaze he saw the company makeup man hurrying toward him from the next dressing room.

“Touch-up, Mr. Richards?” the man called.

The words rushed to Larry’s lips before he could stop them. “I’ve done my own makeup for twenty years,” he said curtly. “I think I can manage it tonight.”

The man’s smile vanished. “Yes, sir,” he said quickly and hurried away.

“Larry—”

She was looking up at him, her hands shoved deep into her pockets in a gesture of retreat. “When you are an important person, Larry, you must be kind.”

Her words recalled an unwanted vision to his mind. There had been a young actor at the auditions for “The Deaths of Kings.” The boy had recognized Larry and after his dismissal, under the misapprehension that Larry was starring in the play, had waited for him in the alleyway to beg for another reading. Larry, struck with the irony of the situation after his own interview with Bert Fielding, had laughed. It had been purely a reflex, hysterical perhaps, but the boy hadn’t known that. Larry would never forget the look that had come into his eyes. When you hurt people, Lisa had said, you make them cruel.

“If I can just get through this, Lisa,” he said, begging her to understand, “if I can just get through tonight, I’ll be all right.”

Her gaze faltered and fell away. “You may never get through tonight,” she said. “Tonight may continue always if you—” She shook her head hopelessly. “I can’t help you, Larry. You are too badly frightened.”

She seemed about to go on, but then, concealing her face from his gaze, she turned and walked away, a small, erect figure in flight from the directness of her own words.

He watched her go with a growing sense of astonishment, but he made no move to follow her. And then, because there was nothing else to do, he turned back into the room and closed the door. The dry snap of the catch echoed through the room sharply. Crossing to the dressing table, he sat down and rested his head in his hands. He tried to turn his mind hopefully to the job ahead.

And yet what Lisa had said was true; he was frightened. His success in the theatre had been hard won, a hazardous journey into a desperate world of barred doors and hostile human deities in whose cold, impersonal eyes was the constant admonition that Mr. Laurence Richards, for all his remarkable talent and ambition, was hardly irreplaceable. His arrival at the top had not been a triumphant emergence onto a secure plateau, but a hesitant ascent to a precarious summit with a straight-down view of the depths that awaited him if he should slip. And now, after four years of illness,
it was like starting all over again. Perhaps, he thought, there was an end of courage; perhaps it could be used up like the other, tangible commodities of this world.

Wearily, he opened his eyes. Scanning the articles of makeup before him, he derived from their precise, familiar arrangement on the table an oblique sense of reassurance. He reached for a brush and glanced up into the mirror. His hand froze.

The boy stood directly behind him, a pale, slack figure in a cheap gray suit. He wore no necktie, and one hand was pressed deep into the pocket of his jacket. His gaze rose to meet Larry’s in the mirror, but seemed to dwell on some other image, some inner equation that could not be readily solved. Stung with surprise, Larry turned abruptly in his chair.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded. The continued withdrawal in the young face made him speak more sharply. “What do you want?”

The boy’s gaze remained steady. His lips moved, as though to smile, then fell again into stillness.

“I think you had better leave,” Larry said uneasily. “I—”

The boy frowned. His eyes became shadowed. Larry felt a queasy tightening at the back of his neck.

“You have exactly three seconds to clear out of here.”

The boy shook his head. “I’ve been waiting all afternoon,” he murmured. His tone was soft, noncommittal. “I’ve been hiding.”

Larry placed a hand flatly on the dressing table and felt a sudden dampness in the palm. Ignoring an inner warning to remain still, he stood up.

In anticipation, the boy moved instantly forward. At the same time, his hand darted from his pocket. Larry stopped short, gaping down with shocked disbelief at a small, gleaming automatic. He drew in a quick, shallow breath.

“What are you doing with that?” he blurted. The boy looked up at him, his eyes more keenly focused, more sly. “My wallet is in the drawer, there. There isn’t much—”

The boy wasn’t listening. He looked slowly from the gun to Larry, as though absorbed in some delicate relationship between the two devined only by himself. “Mr. Richards,” he murmured softly. “Mr. Laurence Richards.”

“I—” Larry stopped. Studying the boy’s face more closely, memory stirred. He was the young actor from the auditions. Remembering, he heard again the boy’s desperate plea echoing shrilly through the shadowed alleyway. He heard his own laughter and saw the young face contort with deadly hatred. In an agony of embarrassment and self-recognition, he had spoken, he had said something.

“Young man,” he had said, “You’ll never convince anyone that way. You sound like a fictional character.”

It had been an abortive attempt at lightness, aimed more at himself, really, than the boy, but the boy couldn’t have understood that. Hopelessly, Larry had turned and walked away, leaving the boy behind, alone and mute in that narrow, littered arena of humiliation and failure.

“Am I convincing now, Mr. Richards?” the boy asked suddenly. “I’d hate to waste your time.”

Larry’s gaze returned swiftly to the gun. There was no use trying to explain; the boy would never believe him now. “You’d better forget this and leave,” he said. “If I just yell—”

“If you do,” the boy said, “I might kill you.”

Larry’s mind recoiled sharply from the word. “I—I’ve got a show to do,” he said foolishly. He took a step backward and collided with the chair. “You’re insane.”

The boy nodded. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe you get kind of crazy when people laugh at you and treat you like nothing.” His pale eyes narrowed. “Have you got time to listen to me, Mr. Richards? I’m not very important.”

Larry caught a fleeting glimpse of himself in the mirror and put a hand to his glistening brow. He felt a quick rise of panic. Where the devil was everybody?

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

The boy shrugged. “Maybe nothing, Mr. Richards. Maybe you could rush me, and I wouldn’t do a thing.” He smiled at Larry’s uncertainty. “I honestly don’t know. Do you?”

“If this is supposed to be a joke—”

“You owe me a laugh, Mr. Richards. You had one on me.”

“I’ve got a show to do.”

“Sure, I know.”

They both turned as a knock sounded briskly at the door. “Five minutes, Mr. Richards!” a voice called. “Places!” There was a pause, then the sound of retreating footsteps. Larry started forward, but checked himself.

The boy nodded, smiling. “I guess you’d better go do your show, Mr. Richards.”

“Go?” Larry looked up hopefully.

“Sure. Go on.”

“Then, you—?”

“Oh, I’m going along with you.” Lowering the gun into his pocket, he motioned toward the door. “Come on, Mr. Richards.”

Larry wet his lips. The metallic taste of fear, sharp in his mouth, gave rise to a sudden wave of nausea. With a numbing sense of unreality, he moved forward to the door.

When they entered the studio, it was a dark hive of activity. Stage hands, actors, technicians, moved in all directions, intent, concentrated. Larry and the boy were just another part of the moving pattern as they crossed to the more densely shadowed area at the back of the set. Larry’s gaze darted to the chair beside the set which had been Lisa’s during rehearsals. It was empty. He turned back, desperately.

“What do you want?” he begged. “If—”

The door of the set jerked suddenly open, and the floor manager, a solemn, shirt-sleeved young man wearing a throat mike, looked out in a dazzling, diagonal fall of light.

“Luck, Mr. Richards,” he nodded gravely. His gaze moved in a
questioning, sidelong glance at the boy. Larry stared back at him dumbly, lost in a sea of indecision.

“I’m a friend of Larry’s,” the boy said easily.

The floor manager looked back at Larry, his expression stormy. “This is your responsibility, not mine, Mr. Richards,” he said shortly. “Keep him out of the way.” He stepped back inside and slammed the door. “Places, everybody!” he yelled.

Larry swung about, his heart pounding. “Get out of here!” he rasped. “If you don’t—” A threatening move from the boy stopped him.

Footsteps approached rapidly from behind, and Edith Gates, Larry’s leading lady, took her place beside the door. She was a tall, handsome girl, an intelligent actress. Straightening her skirt, she cast Larry a hurried glance.

“Luck, Mr. Richards,” she said.

Larry and the boy exchanged glances. “Good luck,” Larry said tiredly.

The boy smiled. “Places, Mr. Richards,” he murmured.

Entering the set, the lights burst upon Larry’s vision in a blinding, white explosion. He stood for a moment, dazed. Hazily, the floor manager appeared beside one of the cameras.

“Two minutes!” he yelled.

Larry stared, his thoughts in chaos, his head throbbing. The lights were a solid, emcompassing wall. The boy could be anywhere, watching, waiting…

“One minute!” the floor manager waved to him. “You open over at the desk, Mr. Richards!” He raised his hand and started calling off the seconds.

Incredulously, Larry crossed to the desk. His mind groped desperately for reality, for something—A hush fell over the studio.