Miss Withers Regrets (26 page)

Without in the least realizing it, Harriet Bascom took her ideas from things she had read, just as she took her tastes in package form from the advertisements. Now she repeated the words again, looking critically into the mirror over the dressing-table. Thanks to her natural buoyancy, and to the hours spent in the Cathedral de Beauté down in the mezzanine, this morning’s avalanche of emotion had passed without leaving a trace. In fact, her face looked becomingly pale and interesting. Harriet practiced expressions before the glass, and found several that she must remember to use.

As for the rest of it, there was nothing much more that she could do to make the setting perfect. The luxuriously furnished rooms with their blond wood and pistachio and rose-red upholstery held just a few touches of her own personality—a few new bright-jacketed books that she’d dipped into enough to discuss, a couple of framed impressionist prints above the divan, a great vase of crimson-black Nigrette hybrid tea-roses, the portable automatic radio-phonograph in its alligator case.

For mood-music she chose Erik Satie’s odd
Pieces in the Form of a Pear,
and set it ready on the turntable. Now the stage was completely set, the lights almost as soft and flattering as candles. She decided not to worry any more about what to say; she would have to find just the right words when the time came. The big scene would go off as she planned. Even now she didn’t dare to think about the curtain.

At a quarter of seven she ordered cocktails sent up in a shaker from downstairs, on a tray with one glass because she wanted to make it clear that she wasn’t drinking with him. That would be another psychological advantage.

The bellboy fought hard to live up to his rigorous training when he entered with the tray, but he could not resist a flash of appreciation when he saw her in the topless crimson, clinging gown that accentuated her generous curves in just the right places. The look in his eyes was something that Harriet needed very much at the moment; reassurance from a man, especially a young man, went to her head like wine. She could not resist tipping him five dollars.

“Gee, thank you, Miss Bascom!” he said fervently, and might have said more had she not turned casually away to start the music, keeping the volume turned ’way down. After the door closed she looked longingly at the cocktails. Then she went into the bedroom and took a good pull at the flask of brandy. Not of course that she needed it.

At ten minutes past seven—trust him to be just that late and no later—there was a knock at the door. Harriet took a quick last look in the mirror and then set her face in the proud, enigmatic smile that she liked best. Then she let him in. It added somehow to her annoyance that in spite of her hints about full-dress tonight, he was still only wearing black-tie.

It was the first time he had been in her rooms—somehow before this they had always met in some convenient cocktail lounge—but he had eyes only for her. They kissed, and then with a conscious effort she twisted out of his arms.

“Daiquiri?”

He just stood there, looking at her curiously. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Why—why nothing at all. My dear boy, there’s a time and a place for everything. But I think that now we should have a little talk, you and I—”

“Answer me!”

She tried again: “By the way, my dear, did you really think you were fooling me?”

“Harriet, I said, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ and I mean to have an answer.” Her name sounded strange on his lips, for like most lovers who have spent their hours together without other people around, there had never been need for anything but “you” or “darling.” Nor had she ever before felt this whiplash in his voice.

“I’m sorry,” she went on breathlessly, “but you see I have another engagement, I mean some literary friends are picking me up at Twenty-One, you wouldn’t know them, and I—” The rest of it died in her throat, for he wasn’t listening. He had put the black hat back on his head, as if he didn’t realize where he was or else didn’t care. Now he was putting on his gloves again. He was going to walk out on her, that was what he was going to do, leaving her with everything pent-up inside, everything unspoken. So Harriet took a deep breath and blurted, “All right! I know all about you, that’s what’s wrong! You lousy, stinking cheat and liar—you
fake!
”

Then she saw the look in his eyes—no, somehow she saw through his eyes as if they were windows opening into the murky horror that was his mind. Harriet was still stiffly holding out her arm to offer him the cocktail, though a moment ago the glass had dropped unnoticed to shatter on the floor.

Now he was coming toward her. And suddenly all her armor was gone, the courage and self-assurance were stripped from Harriet, melted like Cellophane before the flames of his eyes. She was naked and helpless, she was just foolish, gullible Hattie Bascom trapped in a hotel room with a man she had loved but never known until this moment. The Moment of Truth.

There was no use to scream, no use at all. One of the proudest boasts of the Grandee was that its thousand rooms were all of completely soundproof construction, so that no guest could ever be troubled by the sound of radio or piano or late party. She could shriek until she was blue in the face, but nobody would hear her. Nobody but the man she called Gavin, the man who blocked her way to the door, to the phone.

And always, Harriet realized sickeningly, up until this moment she had been counting somehow on his having an explanation, an excuse that she could accept. She had always expected that she could eventually forgive him for his lies, had visualized a scene where after a long, delicious interval of suspense he would kneel crying beside her, begging another chance and saying that he could not live without her. So they would be back together again, closer than ever. And she would have her dream, almost as good as new.

But now with all defenses gone the illusions were stripped away from her too. She had never been a woman of the world, she had never belonged here in this setting. She was only Hattie Bascom from Poughkeepsie, a lonely, love-starved librarian trying to pretend to herself that the man she had let pick her up in a cocktail bar was Prince Charming on a white steed.

“Why are you afraid of me,” he was saying to her, in a voice that was only a hoarse whisper. It startled Harriet out of the paralysis that had held her helpless for those few interminable moments, and sanity came back with a rush. After all, it wasn’t as if she were alone with him in the jungle or on a desert island. She was in the midst of the largest city in the world, in a hotel with a thousand rooms filled with people who would rush to help her. She had only to raise the window and call.

Harriet turned and ran to the nearest window, tugged at it savagely, and finally raised it to the top. He was very close to her now, but he made no move to prevent her. He only said, “Poor Harriet!” and she felt the warmth of his cheek on her naked shoulder, his arm at her waist. Betrayed by her own body, her own nerves, she felt a rush of blind unreasoning relief sweep over her. She relaxed limply in his arms, eyes closed, lips waiting with parched impatience for the kiss that would make an end of their first quarrel and give her back her soap-bubble dream again.

“Out of sight
…
out of mind.”

—Thomas à Kempis.

B
Y THIS TIME INSPECTOR OSCAR PIPER
was resigned to the fact that a policeman’s lot is not a happy one. Moreover it seemed to the grizzled little Irishman that nowadays he was continually running into added proof that things weren’t what they used to be. Except Manhattan’s climate, of course. For the second straight day snow was falling heavily upon the city, great soft flakes that threatened to surpass the blizzard of ’47, and as usual during storms the crime index had taken a sharp rise.

Just to add to his burdens he found himself forced into the rocky and unfamiliar paths of literary endeavor, and had spent most of the afternoon composing on his ancient upright a memorandum which began:
Departmental Bureaus, Realignment of, Objections Thereto
in various equally unsatisfactory versions. By six o’clock, when the Homicide Bureau was quieting down for the day, he was rattling along at a great rate. Then the whirlwind struck.

The door of his sanctum-sanctorum burst open and in sailed an angular figure in a damp blue cape, carrying a dripping umbrella and crowned with a headpiece which resembled a model of Bikini Island complete with palm trees, just after the detonation of the atomic bomb.

“Oh,
no!
” he cried, wincing like a startled leprechaun. “Take it away—the hat, I mean. It
is
a hat, isn’t it?”

Miss Hildegarde Withers sniffed disdainfully. “I suppose you’re annoyed because I’m late, but in this weather—”

“
Late?
” He looked blank.

“Surely you haven’t forgotten that we’re having a bite to eat together and then going to hear the Don Cossack Chorus at Carnegie Hall?”

“Why—why of course not! It’s right here on my desk-pad.” He dug down beneath several layers of discarded memoranda, and showed her the note. “Be with you in a jiffy, just let me finish this thing—it’s got to get over to the Commissioner’s office first thing in the morning.”

“Of course.” The maiden schoolteacher perched herself in a chair, watching while he hammered out the last paragraph, signed his name, and stuffed the memo in a big brown envelope. Then she cocked her head and asked, “Been busy, Oscar?”

“Yes and no. A lot of homicides reported, but all dull routine stuff that can be just as well handled by the precinct men and usually is. ‘Two blockheads to kill and be killed—’”

“Why, you’ve taken up
reading!
” she gasped.

“Now and then, though I don’t let it get generally known through the Department. Shall we go?” He grabbed his hat and coat. “I know a little place over on Broome Street where they dish a pretty fair plate of minestrone.”

The oddly assorted couple came out into the storm, facing into the feathery flakes that poured endlessly down. They walked on for several blocks, and then the Inspector turned toward her. “You’re very quiet tonight—for you.”

“I was thinking,” said the schoolteacher. “About the snowflakes. Oscar, isn’t it a little frightening to realize that a human being can slip away like one of these snowflakes, to disappear forever?”

“Judas priest in a bathtub!” the Inspector exploded. “What makes you think they disappear? They pile up in the streets and cost the City millions of dollars to haul away. Those snowflakes you’re talking about are practically indestructible!”

“You know what I mean,” she told him.

“I do not,” said Piper. “But you can tell me—after we’ve ordered. Here’s the place, watch yourself on those steps.”

They came into a dark, steamy little basement, fragrant with the odors of spices and olive oil and Chianti, and managed to tuck themselves into a vacant booth in the rear. Miss Withers barely looked at the menu. “You order,” she said. “Anything at all.”

“Okay, what is this?” he demanded when the waiter had left them. “What’s biting you?”

“I was thinking of the line from Burns,” she said. “‘Or like the snow falls in the river, a moment white, then gone forever.’” Miss Withers began absently to fold and refold her napkin. “Oscar, do you happen to know just how many lonely, middle-aged, unattached women disappear right here in this city every year?”

“Not nearly enough,” Piper answered promptly.

She let that one go by. “More than three thousand, according to recent estimates by the YWCA and the Travelers Aid Society.”

“Why don’t you drop down to Centre Street tomorrow morning and break the news to Missing Persons? Tell Captain Mastik I sent you.”

She sniffed. “I might have known you’d say that. But there’s a possibility that you, as head of Homicide, should be interested. Isn’t it more than likely that some of those who drop out of sight are victims of foul play, only because they haven’t any influence—?”

Now the Inspector had to grin. “So who
has
influence when they’re dead?”

“You know very well what I mean. They haven’t importance enough to be missed, they haven’t any close friends or near relatives, so nothing is ever done about it.”

He put a bread-stick in his mouth and chewed it as if it had been one of his favorite panatelas. “Relax, Hildegarde. Why do you always have to go around appointing yourself a citizens’ committee of one? Believe me, we make quite a commotion down at Centre Street when a dead body shows up under suspicious circumstances. Only we don’t get three thousand unidentified female stiffs in the city morgues in the course of a year—no, nor a tenth that number. Almost all the ones we do get are victims of accident, disease, or suicide. No, you’re barking up the wrong tree again. Those women you’re so worried about, they probably just got bored with the big city and went home. Or else they wanted to skip out on a husband or boy-friend, or beat some bills.”

Miss Withers shook her head. “It would be a different thing, wouldn’t it, if three thousand children disappeared? It happened over in Hamelin, Germany, long ago and they’re still talking about it. Yet think—each of those missing women was a child once, somebody’s fair-headed baby daughter!”

But trying to get the Inspector excited about statistics was uphill going at the best of times. “Look, Hildegarde, as an old friend and admirer I advise you to quit worrying your head about all this. Stick to your three R’s and your goldfish.”

“They were
tropical
fish,” she corrected indignantly. “And I finally had to give them up. Also you know very well that I retired from teaching when the spring term ended, though I do substitute sometimes when somebody is ill. But—”

“But there isn’t really very much for a retired schoolma’am to do with herself, is that it?” The Inspector’s voice was for him surprisingly gentle. “There haven’t been any important murder cases for you to kibitz on like you used to, so you’re trying to drum up trade.”

“What would you expect me to do, sit home and crochet?”

He shook his head. “Hildegarde, I’ve got to hand it to you. You’re unique. The guides on the rubberneck busses ought to point you out as a landmark, the way they do Grant’s Tomb and Radio City. See the woman who wanted to solve three thousand murders all at once! But seriously, down at the Department we’re realistic. We have to start from autopsies and reports and complaints and things like that. Now if we had a nice fresh corpse—”