Beast in View
Margaret Millar
for
BETTY AND JOHN MERSEREAU
best friends and
unseverest critics
Chapter 1
The voice was quiet, smiling. “Is that Miss Clarvoe?”
“Yes.”
“You know who this is?”
“No.”
“A friend.”
“I have a great many friends,” Miss Clarvoe lied.
In the mirror above the telephone stand she saw her mouth repeating the lie, enjoying it, and she saw her head nod in quick affirmation — this lie is true, yes, this is a very true lie. Only her eyes refused to be convinced. Embarrassed, they blinked and glanced away.
“We haven’t seen each other for a long time,” the girl’s voice said. “But I’ve kept track of you, this way and that. I have a crystal ball.”
“I... beg your pardon?”
“A crystal ball that you look into the future with. I’ve got one. All my old friends pop up in it once in a while. Tonight it was you.”
“Me.” Helen Clarvoe turned back to the mirror. It was round, like a crystal ball, and her face popped up in it, an old friend, familiar but unloved; the mouth thin and tight as if there was nothing but a ridge of bone under the skin, the light brown hair clipped short like a man’s, revealing ears that always had a tinge of mauve as if they were forever cold, the lashes and brows so pale that the eyes themselves looked naked and afraid. An old friend in a crystal ball.
She said carefully, “Who is this, please?”
“Evelyn. Remember? Evelyn Merrick.”
“Oh, yes.”
“You remember now?”
“Yes.” It was another lie, easier than the first. The name meant nothing to her. It was only a sound, and she could not separate or identify it any more than she could separate the noise of one car from another in the roar of traffic from the Boulevard three floors down. They all sounded alike, Fords and Austins and Cadillacs and Evelyn Merrick.
“You still there, Miss Clarvoe?”
“Yes.”
“I heard your old man died.”
“Yes.”
“I heard he left you a lot of money.”
“That’s my business.”
“Money is a great responsibility. I might be able to help you.”
“Thank you, I don’t require any help.”
“You may soon.”
“Then I shall deal with the problem myself, without the help from any stranger.”
“Stranger?” There was a rasp of annoyance in the repetition. “You said you remembered me.”
“I was merely trying to be polite.”
“Polite. Always the lady, eh, Clarvoe? Or pretending to be. Well, one of these days you’ll remember me with a bang. One of these days I’ll be famous, my body will be in every art museum in the country. Everyone will get a chance to admire me. Does that make you jealous, Clarvoe?”
“I think you’re — mad.”
“Mad? Oh no. I’m not the one who’s mad. It’s you, Clarvoe. You’re the one who can’t remember. And I know why you can’t remember. Because you’re jealous of me, you’re so jealous you’ve blacked me out.”
“That’s not true,” Miss Clarvoe said shrilly. “I don’t know you. I’ve never heard of you. You’re making a mistake.”
“I don’t make mistakes. What you need, Clarvoe, is a crystal ball so you could remember your old friends. Maybe I should send you mine. Then you could see yourself in it, too. Would you like that? Or would you be afraid? You’ve always been such a coward, my crystal ball might scare you out of your poor little wits. I have it right here with me. Shall I tell you what I see?”
“No — stop this...”
“I see you, Clarvoe.”
“No...”
“Your face is right in front of me, real bright and clear. But there’s something wrong with it. Ah, I see now. You’ve been in an accident. You are mutilated. Your forehead is slashed open, your mouth is bleeding, blood, blood all over, blood all over...”
Miss Clarvoe’s arm reached out and swept the telephone off the stand. It lay on its side on the floor, unbroken, purring.
Miss Clarvoe sat, stiff with terror. In the crystal ball of the mirror her face was unchanged, unmutilated. The forehead was smooth, the mouth prim and self-contained, the skin paper-white, as if there was no blood left to bleed. Miss Clarvoe’s bleeding had been done, over the years, in silence, internally.
When the rigidity of shock began to recede, she leaned down and picked up the telephone and placed it back on the stand.
She could hear the switchboard operator saying, “Number please. This is the operator. Number please. Did you wish to call a number, pullease?”
She wanted to say, Give me the police, the way people did in plays, very casually, as if they were in the habit of calling the police two or three times a week. Miss Clarvoe had never called the police in her life, had never, in all her thirty years, even talked to a policeman. She was not afraid of them, it was simply a fact that she had nothing in common with them. She did not commit crimes, or have anything to do with people who did, or have any crimes committed against her.
“Your number, please.”
“Is that — is that you, June?”
“Why, yes, Miss Clarvoe. Gee, when you didn’t answer, I thought maybe you’d fainted or something.”
“I never faint.” Another lie. It was becoming a habit, a hobby, like stringing beads. A necklace of lies. “What time is it, June?”
“About nine-thirty.”
“Are you very busy?”
“Well, I’m practically alone at the switchboard. Dora’s got flu. I’m warding off an attack of it myself.”
Miss Clarvoe suspected from the note of self-pity in her voice and the slight slurring of her words that June had been warding off the flu in a manner not approved by the management or by Miss Clarvoe herself. She said, “Will you be going off duty soon?”
“In about half an hour.”
“Would you — that is, I’d appreciate it very much if you’d come up to my suite before you go home.”
“Why, is there anything wrong, Miss Clarvoe?”
“Yes.”
“Well, gee whiz, I didn’t do any...”
“I shall expect you here shortly after ten, June.”
“Well, all right, but I still don’t see what I...”
Miss Clarvoe hung up. She knew how to deal with June and others like her. One hung up. One severed connections. What Miss Clarvoe did not realize was that she had severed too many connections in her life, she had hung up too often, too easily, on too many people. Now, at thirty, she was alone. The telephone no longer rang, and when someone knocked on her door, it was the waiter bringing up her dinner, or the woman from the beauty parlor to cut her hair, or the bellboy, with the morning paper. There was no longer anyone to hang up on except a switchboard operator who used to work in her father’s office, and a lunatic stranger with a crystal ball.
She had hung up on the stranger, yes, but not quickly enough. It was as if her loneliness had compelled her to listen, even words of evil were better than no words at all.
She crossed the sitting-room and opened the French door that led on to the little balcony. There was room on the balcony for just one chair, and here Miss Clarvoe sat and watched the boulevard three flights down. It was jammed with cars and alive with lights. The sidewalks swarmed with people, the night was full of the noises of living. They struck Miss Clarvoe’s ears strangely, like sounds from another planet.
A star appeared in the sky, a first star, to wish on. But Miss Clarvoe made no wish. The three flights of steps that separated her from the people on the boulevard were as infinite as the distance to the star.