Laura (Femmes Fatales) Read online

  A far-off church clock struck five. This is the way one waits, I thought, for the doctor when he is coming to say that the sickness is fatal.

  “You’re thinking of that detective, you’re waiting for him to come and arrest you! You want him to come, don’t you?”

  I was caught by his hands, pinioned by his eyes.

  “You’re in love with him, Laura. I saw it yesterday. You looked away from us, you shrank from your old friends, Shelby and I, we had ceased to matter. Your eyes were on him all the time; you fluttered like a moth; you rolled your eyes and smirked like a schoolgirl before the matinee idol.”

  His damp hands increased their cold pressure.

  My voice, small and weak, denied his charges. He laughed.

  “Don’t lie, woman. I’ve got the eye of a fluoroscope. I perceive now the strange quiverings of the female heart. How romantic!” He shouted the word hideously. “The detective and the lady. Have you given yourself yet; has he won your confession?”

  I pulled away. “Please don’t talk like that, Waldo. We’ve only known each other since Wednesday night.”

  “He works fast.”

  “Do, do be serious, Waldo. I need help so badly.”

  “This, my pet, is the most serious and important help that I can give you. To put you on your guard against the most dangerous man you’ve ever known.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Mark’s done nothing.”

  “Nothing, darling, except seduce you. Nothing but win your heart, my girl. He’s engaged your warm and ready affection for the honor and glory of the Detective Bureau.”

  “That’s what Shelby said. He said that Mark was trying to make me confess.”

  “For once Shelby and I agree.”

  I went to the couch and sat on the edge, hugging a pillow. Rough linen scratched my cheek. Waldo came toward me gently and offered his scented handkerchief. Then I giggled and said, “When there’s a crisis, I can never find my handkerchief.”

  “Depend upon me, child, I shan’t desert you. Let them accuse you; we’ll fight them.” He stood above me, his legs spread apart, his head high, his hand thrust in his coat like Napoleon in the picture. “I’ve every weapon, money, connections, prestige, my column, Laura. From this day forth, every day, eighty syndicated essays will be devoted to the case of Laura Hunt.”

  “Please, Waldo,” I begged. “Please tell me. Do you believe me guilty, too?”

  He held my hand between cold, perspiring palms. Softly, as if I were a sick, fractious child, Waldo said, “Why should I care whether you’re guilty or not guilty as long as I love you, my dear?”

  It was unreal; it was scene from a Victorian novel. I sat with my hand locked in his hands, a frail creature, possessed, like a gentle, fading, troubled woman of long ago. And he, by contrast, had become strong and masterful, the protector.

  “Do you think I’d condemn you for it, Laura? Or even blame you? On the contrary—” he pressed my hand “—on the contrary, I adore you as I’ve never adored you before. You shall be my heroine, Laura, my greatest creation; millions will read about you, will love you. I’ll make you greater—” the words rolled on his tongue “—than Lizzie Borden.”

  He said it mischievously as if he had been asked in some parlor game, “What would you do if Laura were accused of murder?”

  “Please,” I begged him, “please be serious.”

  “Serious!” He caught my word and tossed it back, mocking me. “You’ve read enough of Waldo Lydecker to know how seriously I regard murder. It is,” he said, “my favorite crime.”

  I leaped up, jerked my hand away; I put the room between us.

  “Come back, my precious. You must rest. You’re very nervous. And no wonder, darling, with those vultures feeding on you. Shelby, with his precious gallantry; the other one, that detective fellow scheming to raise himself to front-page glory; they would destroy your self-esteem and corrupt the courage of your passion.”

  “Then you do believe me guilty.”

  Phosphorescent light gave green tints to Waldo’s skin. I felt that my face, too, must reflect the sickly tint of fear. With an almost surreptitious movement, I pulled the cord of the lamp. Out of the shadows my room grew real. I saw familiar shapes and the solidity of furniture. On the table, red against the pale wall, were Auntie Sue’s roses. I pulled one from the vase, touched the cool petal to my cheek.

  “Say it, Waldo. You believe me guilty.”

  “I adore you for it. I see before me a great woman. We live in an unreal, a castrate world, you and I. Among us, there are few souls strong enough for violence. Violence—” he spoke it like a love-word, his voice was the voice of a lover on a pillow “—violence gives conviction to passion, my loveliest of love. You are not dead, Laura; you are a violent, living, bloodthirsty woman.”

  Red petals lay scattered at my feet on the figured rug. My hands, cold and nervous, pulled the last petal from the rose.

  Chapter 6

  This is no way to write the story. I should be simple and coherent, listing fact after fact, giving order to the chaos of my mind. When they ask me, “Did you return on Friday night to kill her, Laura?” I shall answer, “He hasn’t the face of a man who would lie and flirt to get a confession”: and when they ask me about ringing the bell and waiting at the door for her to come and be killed, I shall tell them that I wish, more than anything in the world, that I had met him before this happened.

  That’s how my mind is now. For two hours I’ve been shivering in my slip, unable to go through the movements of undressing. Once, long ago, when I was twenty and my heart was broken, I used to sit like this at night on the edge of the bed in a room with stained walls. I’d think of the novel I was writing about a young girl and a man. The novel was bad; I never finished it; but the writing thickens the dust. Now that Shelby has turned against me and Mark shown the nature of his trickery, I am afraid of facts in orderly sequence.

  Shelby’s treachery was served to us with dinner, accompanied by the raspings and groanings of rainy-weather static. I could not pretend to eat; my leaden hands refused to lift the fork; but Waldo ate as greedily as he listened to every morsel of news.

  Shelby had gone to the police and sworn to the truth of his having been in the apartment with Diane on Friday night. He had told them, as he told me, how the doorbell rang and how Diane had clattered across the room in my silver mules, and how she had been shot when she opened my front door. Shelby said that Diane had summoned him to the apartment because she was afraid of violence. Diane had been threatened, Shelby said, and although he had not liked the idea of seeing her in Laura’s house, she had begged so pitifully that he could not deny her.

  Shelby’s attorney was N.T. Salsbury, Jr. He explained that Shelby had not confessed earlier because he was shielding someone. The name of the suspect was not included in the broadcasts. Deputy Commissioner Preble had refused to tell reporters whether or not the police knew whom Shelby was shielding. Shelby’s confession had turned him into a witness for the State.

  In every broadcast Deputy Commissioner Preble’s name was mentioned three times a minute. Mark’s name was not used at all.

  “Poor McPherson,” Waldo said as he dropped two saccharine pills into his coffee cup; “between Shelby and the Deputy Commissioner, he’s been crowded out of the limelight.”

  I left the table.

  Waldo followed me to the couch again, the coffee cup in his hands.

  “He’s not that sort at all,” I said. “Mark isn’t like that, he’d never sacrifice . . . anyone for the sake of notoriety and his own career.”

  “You poor dear child,” Waldo said. The coffee cup rang against the wood of the table, and Waldo’s free hands reached again for my hand.

  “He’s playing a game, Laura; the fellow’s devilishly clever. Preble is enjoying his little victory now, but the plum in this pudding will be pul
led out by our own little Jack Horner. Heed my warning, sweet, before you’re lost. He’s after you; he’ll be here soon enough with some scheme to worm that confession out of you.”

  The shadow of hysteria returned. I pulled my hand away, stretched on the couch, closed my eyes and shivered.

  “You’re cool,” Waldo said, and went into the bedroom to fetch my afghan. He spread it over my legs, smoothing out the wrinkled surface, tucking it under my feet, and then standing above the couch again, content and possessive.

  “I must protect my sweet child.”

  “I can’t believe he’s only been trying to get a confession. Mark liked me. And he’s sincere,” I said.

  “I know him better than you do, Laura.”

  “That’s what you think,” I said.

  “I’ve dined with the fellow practically every night since this affair began, Laura. He’s courted me strangely, why I cannot say, but I’ve had a rare chance to observe his nature and his methods.”

  “Then he must be interesting,” I said. “In all the years I’ve known you, I’ve never seen you dine with a dull person.”

  “My dear babe, you must always justify your bad taste, mustn’t you?” Waldo laughed. “I spend a few hours with the fellow; ergo, he becomes a man of wit and profundity.”

  “He’s a lot more intelligent than a lot of people who go around calling themselves intellectuals.”

  “What a die-hard you are, once you’re interested in a man! Very well, if it will please you I’ll plead guilty to a certain shabby interest in the fellow. I must confess, though, that my curiosity was roused by observation of the blossoming of his love for you.”

  “For me!”

  “Don’t sing so high, sweet canary. You were dead. There was dignity in that frustrate passion. He could make no use of you, he could destroy you no further, you were unattainable and thus desirable beyond all desire.”

  “How you twist things, Waldo! You don’t understand Mark. There’s something about him,” I insisted, “something that’s alive. If he’d been wallowing in frustrated romance, he’d never have been so glad when I came back.”

  “Trickery.”

  “You and your words,” I said. “You always have words, but they don’t always tell meanings.”

  “The man’s a Scot, child, as parsimonious with emotion as with shillings. Have you ever analyzed that particular form of romanticism which burgeons on the dead, the lost, the doomed? Mary of the Wild Moor and Sweet Alice With Hair So Brown, their heroines are always dead or tubercular, death is the leitmotif of all their love songs. A most convenient rationale for the thriftiness of their passion toward living females. Mark’s future unrolls as upon a screen.” Waldo’s plump hand unrolled the future. “I see him now, romanticizing frustration, asking poor cheated females to sigh with him over the dead love.”

  “But he was glad, glad when I came alive. There was a special quality about his gladness as if—” I flung the words bravely “—as if he’d been waiting for me.”

  “Ah!” said Waldo. “When you came alive!” His voice bubbled. “When Laura became reality within his grasp, the other side of sentiment was revealed. The basic parsimony, the need to make profit of the living Laura.”

  “You mean that all of his kindness and sincerity were tricks to get a confession? That’s silly,” I said.

  “Had he merely been trying to get a confession, the thing would have been simple. But consider the contradiction in the case. Compensation as well as confession, Laura. You had become reality, you came within the man’s reach, a woman of your sort, cultivated, fastidious, clearly his superior; he was seized with the need to possess you. Possess and revenge and destroy.”

  He had seated himself on the couch, balancing his fat buttocks on the edge, holding my hand for support!

  “Do you know Mark’s words for women? Dolls. Dames.” His tongue clicked out the words like a telegraph instrument clattering out the dots and dashes of a code. “What further evidence do you need of a man’s vulgarity and insolence? There’s a doll in Washington Heights who got a fox fur out of him—got it out, my dear, his very words. And a dame in Long Island whom he boasted of deserting after she’d waited faithfully for years.”

  “I don’t believe a word.”

  “Remember the catalogue of your suitors, darling. Consider the past,” Waldo said. “Your defense is always so earnest, you blush in that same delightful way and rebuke me for intolerance.”

  I saw shadows on the carpet. A procession passed through my mind of those friends and lovers whose manliness had dwindled as Waldo’s critical sense showed me their weaknesses. I remembered his laughter, fatherly and indulgent, the first time he had taken me to the theatre and I had admired a handsome actor’s bad peformance.

  “I hope it’s not too tactless of me to mention the name of Shelby Carpenter. How much abuse I’ve endured because I failed to discern the manliness, the integrity, the hidden strength of that gallant poop! I humored you, I allowed you to enjoy self-deceit because I knew you’d ultimately find out for yourself. And look, today.” He spread his hands in a gesture that included the rueful present.

  “Mark’s a man,” I said.

  Waldo’s pale eyes took color; on his forehead the veins rose fat and blue; the waxen color of the skin deepened to an umber flush. He tried to laugh. Each note was separate and painful. “Always the same pattern, isn’t it? A lean, lithe body is the measure of masculinity. A chiseled profile indicates a delicate nature. Let a man be hard and spare and you clothe him in the garments of Romeo, Superman, and Jupiter disguised as a bull.

  “To say nothing,” he added after a moment’s dreadful silence, “of the Marquis de Sade. That need is in your nature, too.”

  “You can’t hurt me,” I said. “No man’s ever going to hurt me again.”

  “I’m not speaking of myself,” Waldo said reproachfully. “We were discussing your frustrated friend.”

  “But you’re mad,” I said. “He’s not frustrated. He’s a strong man; he’s not afraid.”

  Waldo smiled as if he were bestowing some rare confidence. “That incurable female optimism has, I dare say, blinded you to the fellow’s most distinguishing defect. He guards it zealously, my dear, but watch the next time you see him. When you observe that wary, tortured gait, you’ll remember Waldo’s warnings.”

  “I don’t understand you,” I said. “You’re making things up.” I heard my voice as something outside of me, shrill and ugly, the voice of a sullen schoolgirl. Auntie Sue’s red roses threw purple shadows on the green wall. There were calla lilies and water lilies in the design of the chintz curtains. I thought of colors and fabrics and names because I was trying to turn my mind from Waldo and his warnings.

  “A man who distrusts his body, my love, seeks weakness and impotence in every other living creature. Beware, my dear. He’ll find your weakness and there plant his seeds of destruction.”

  I felt sorry for myself; I had become disappointed in people and in living. I closed my eyes, I sought darkness; I felt my blood chill and my bones soften.

  “You’ll be hurt, Laura, because the need for pain is part of your nature. You’ll be hurt because you’re a woman who’s attracted by a man’s strength and held by his weakness.”

  Whether he knew it or not, this was the very history of our relationship, mine and Waldo’s. In the beginning it had been the steely strength of his mind, but the ripeness of my affection had grown with my knowledge of his childlike, uncertain heart. It was not a lover that Waldo needed, but love itself. With this great fat man I had learned to be patient and careful as a woman is patient and careful with a sickly, sensitive child.

  “The mother,” Waldo said slowly, “the mother is always destroyed by her young.”

  I pulled my hand away quickly. I rose, I put the room between us; I retreated from lamplight and stood shivering in shadow
s.

  Waldo spoke softly, a man speaking to shadows. “A clean blow,” Waldo said, “a clean blow destroys quickly and without pain.” His hands, it seems as I grope for clear recollection, were showing the precise shape of destruction.

  He came toward me and I shrank deeper into the corner. This was strange. I had never felt anything but respect and tenderness for this brilliant, unhappy friend. And I made myself think of Waldo dutifully; I thought of the years we had known each other and of his kindness. I felt sick within myself, ashamed of hysteria and weak shrinking. I made myself stand firm; I did not pull away; I accepted the embrace as women accept the caresses of men they dare not hurt. I did not yield, I submitted. I did not soften, I endured.

  “You are mine,” he said. “My love and my own.”

  Dimly, beyond his murmuring, I heard footsteps. Waldo’s lips were pressed against my hair, his voice buzzed in my ears. Then there were three raps at the door, the grating of the key in the lock, and his embrace relaxed.

  Mark had climbed the stairs slowly, he was slow to open the door. I backed away from Waldo, I straightened my dress, pulled at my sleeves, and as I sat down, jerked my skirt over my knees.

  “He enters with a latchkey,” Waldo said.

  “The doorbell was the murderer’s signal,” Mark said. “I don’t like to remind her.”

  “The manners of the executioner are known to be excellent,” Waldo said. “It was thoughtful of you to knock.”

  Waldo’s warning had posted signals in my mind. Seeing Mark with his eyes, I became aware of the taut, vigilant erectness of his shoulders, the careful balance, the wary gait. It was not so much the quality of movement as the look on his face that told me Waldo had been right in saying that Mark guarded himself. He caught my curiosity and threw back a challenge as if he were saying that he could match scrutiny with scrutiny, and, as mercilessly, expose my most cherished weakness.