In the silence that followed Beth lay where she was, nailed to the bed.
She had neither the courage nor the physical strength nor the desire to
sit up and look at Vega. What happened afterward remained forever in her
memory as a weird and warped nightmare.
Moments later an elevator boy and two maids rushed into the room, with a
couple of guests following them, and found the two women—one dead, the
other in a state of near-shock. At first glimpse they took Beth for dead
too, and one of the maids gave a little scream when she stirred.
“This one’s alive!” she cried.
They helped her to sit up and besieged her with questions, and though
she heard them and understood them she was unable to answer coherently.
She began to giggle morbidly when one of the guests referred to Vega as
“the poor stiff” and her awful uncontrollable choking laughter struck
them all aghast. It changed, as suddenly as it had started, into sobs.
Someone forced her back down on the bed and put a cold cloth on her head
and she heard a coarse hearty female voice somewhere in the room remark,
“Don’t know why we’re taking such fine care of her. She probably did
it!”
Very shortly the room was crowded and everyone in the crowd was firing
questions at Beth, who had not even the small comfort of her clothes in
which to face them. No one touched the body. It was grotesquely dead.
There was much murmurous comment about the arrival of the police,
mingled with pleas from hotel officials for clearing the room. Beth
struggled to her feet, climbing off the bed on the side opposite that
where Vega lay. She collected her clothes from the chair where she had
thrown them the night before and went into the bathroom. They made way
for her as if none of them wanted to touch her, though they continued to
ask her, “Why’d you do it, sister?” “Hey, you did it, didn’t you?” “Look
at her face. You can tell she did it.”
In the bathroom she was momentarily alone, and desperately sick for the
first few minutes. She wept sobs that were torn from the depths of her.
She mourned Vega. Vega had anticipated her curses, her fury, her
despair, everything but her pity. And yet pity was all Beth had to give,
all she could feel.
When she emerged, washed and dressed, the police were there.
Methodically and quickly they emptied the room. Notes were made on the
disposition of the body and it was photographed from several sides. The
gun had been tenderly separated from Vega’s index finger which had
curled around the trigger guard, and rested in a handkerchief on the bed
table.
Beth looked high and haughty into the face of the Law. She was not able
to look down at the floor. They led her to a chair—the one where Vega
had sat all night—and asked her what happened. She was quaking with
exhaustion but not with fear. It seemed she had felt all the fear she
would ever feel for the rest of her life in the night just past. She
answered them with the confidence of truth. She only hesitated once, and
that was when a Lieutenant Scopa, who was doing most of the questioning,
asked her why Vega would want to kill her.
“Well—she—she was a mental patient. She had gotten it into her head that
I hurt her, that I hated her. She thought I was responsible for all her
troubles, and she wanted revenge. That’s all I can tell you.”
* * * * *
They held her for two days and she sat in a bare orderly cell with
another, fortunately taciturn, woman, and cried most of the time, except
when they were interrogating her. Then she made it a point of pride to
maintain her composure. She was prepared to have them disbelieve her,
finally. At first she thought they would let her go at once, just
because she was truthful as far as she went with her story. When they
continued to hold her she began to realize that they doubted her. They
didn’t understand, they wouldn’t accept her words. The thing looked odd
to them. She expected to be told outright that she shot Vega in the head
and then wiped the gun clean and put it in the hand of the corpse. They
had even intimated this.
“We know she was a mental patient,” Lieutenant Scopa told her. “We’ve
checked up on her. Now if you want to plead self-defense and tell us
what really happened it’ll go easier on you, Mrs. Ayers. Nobody’ll blame
you for saving your own life. Vega had threatened other people with the
same gun.”
“What?” Beth cried, startled.
“A couple of people,” he said briefly. “We know it was her gun. It’s
registered in her name in South Pasadena. Of course, she didn’t shoot
the other people. But she might have scared you into thinking she
_would_ shoot you. If I had been you and I had a chance to grab that
thing, I would have done it myself.”
“If I’d had a chance to grab it, Lieutenant, don’t you think I would
have done something with it, too? I could have scared her at least. But
I couldn’t have killed her. It’s true, she did threaten my life, and I
had to wait there all night thinking she was going to kill me—”
“Without doing anything about it?”
“Doing _what_?” Beth said. “Every time I moved she aimed that damned gun
at me and told me to stay still.”
“Okay, okay,” he said.
“And finally, at dawn, she got up and came to the bed and told me what
she did she was doing ‘all for me.’ And I waited to die. But she shot
herself instead.” She could never talk about it without breaking up at
that point and they had to hold off the questions for a while to let her
recover herself.
They allowed her one phone call when they took her in and she made it to
Beebo. She didn’t think about this or weigh the sense of it. She simply
called. Beebo would understand and she’d do the right things. Beth
didn’t feel that way about anybody else.
“You’ve been in every scrape there is,” she said brokenly into the
receiver. “Help me out of this, Beebo.”
“God, Beth. I—I couldn’t believe it when I read—” Beebo began, but Beth
interrupted her.
“Call my uncle in Chicago,” she said and gave her the number. “He’ll get
me a lawyer. And, Beebo, I didn’t do it.”
“I know, baby, I believe you. Who was she?”
“She was the one I ran off and left.”
“Jesus,” Beebo breathed. “She took it pretty hard, didn’t she?”
“Will you help me?” Beth said.
“I’ll do anything, everything I can,” Beebo said. “Don’t worry,
sweetheart, if you’re innocent you’ll get off.”
“I’m not so sure. Nobody saw it. I can’t prove a damn thing.”
“Worrying won’t change things, Beth,” Beebo said, and Beth hung up
somewhat reassured.
But after two nights in a jail cell she was almost unstrung with
anxiety, nerves, even the fear she thought had been exhausted in her.
The truth, unsubstantiated, simply wasn’t enough. They were going to
hold her. They thought she did it, and it was her word against the word
of a dead woman. She wondered miserably what Cleve and Mrs. Purvis
thought of her now, who had liked her so well in the past. Cleve was
probably dead drunk and cursing the both of them, and Mrs. Purvis,
majestic in her infirmities, was probably dying quietly of the knowledge
that her daughter was a Lesbian.
Abruptly, the morning after the second night in jail, they released her.
A matron came and opened her door and said, “You’re free, Mrs. Ayers.”
Beth sat up on her cot, struck dumb for a moment with surprise. Her cell
mate grunted at her, gave her one envious glance, and went back to
sleep.
“On bail?” Beth asked at last through a dry throat, staring
incredulously at the woman. “Do I have a lawyer? My uncle—”
“No bail. You’re free. No strings attached. Except we’d like you to stay
in town until the last details of the case are straightened out.”
“How did it happen? Why?” she cried, collecting her things with hasty
hands, almost afraid to believe in her luck.
“They’ll explain it to you up front,” the woman told her and Beth
followed her down the clanging corridor and out the barred doors to the
elevator. The matron took her to an office on the first floor and
returned her coat and purse. They made her sign some release papers and
then they led her into a waiting room.
Charlie stood up to greet her.
Beth stopped in her tracks, speechless at the sight of him. His presence
struck her in the heart like a physical blow.
“Hello, Beth,” he said softly, his face heavy and serious.
“Charlie,” she whispered. And then she went to him and put her arms
around him and cried. “I never thought I’d see you again,” she said.
“Least of all here.”
“I wouldn’t desert you, Beth,” he said, holding her. “You’re still my
wife. I love you.” It was awkward but determined, stubborn and proud and
hopeless.
“Oh, no, please don’t say it,” she pleaded. “Please. I can’t take it.”
After all she had been through to escape him she was wary even of the
words that might entangle her again. She was glad, grateful, infinitely
relieved to see him there. But she was not in love with him and her
gratitude did not extend to a reconciliation.
“The children?” she asked before he let her go, and he nodded.
“Fine. Both fine. But they miss you.” She started to ask him more but he
interrupted, “I’ve got a room at the Blackwell. Let’s get out of here,
we can’t talk here.”
Beth clutched his sleeve. “Am I free?” she begged. “Am I really free?
Did she tell me the truth?”
“Yes,” he said.
“But how—”
“Come on, I’ll explain.”
He hailed a cab outside and as soon as they were in it Beth asked, “Are
Uncle John and Aunt Elsa here?”
“No,” he said. “They were going to come but I talked them out of it.
There wasn’t any need, and it would only have been painful.”
“It must have been a terrible shock for them.”
“Yes. It was pretty rough.”
They sat side by side, Charlie in his lightweight blue summer suit,
solemn and handsome and preoccupied, Beth in her rumpled clothes, the
same she had worn on her Village spree. They seemed by now to be the
only clothes she had ever worn. She sensed that he wanted to take her
hand, even to kiss her, but also that he had a stern lecture saved up, a
couple of months worth of grievances and loneliness and resentment to
get off his chest. But still, he was not harsh with her or
short-tempered, and she knew without his having to say it that he wanted
her back. That he could, after what had just happened, warmed her heart
and touched her, even though she understood that he was using her
troubles to suit his own ends. He was taking advantage of her fear and
confusion, using them as a lever to prod her out of New York. But she
could not go back and start over with him, however she might have
botched her efforts to find a new life here. She dreaded hurting him
with her decision.
“My things,” she said. “They’re all at the Beaton.”
“They were. I picked them up,” he said.
“There wasn’t much.”
“No.”
Between their short exchanges hung a thousand things unsaid, a thousand
things not for the ears of cabbies, things better left unsaid even to
each other. But they would say them anyway, Beth thought with a shudder.