June arrived late after a detour through the bar and up the back staircase which led to the door of Miss Clarvoe’s kitchenette. Sometimes Miss Clarvoe herself used this back staircase. June had often seen her slipping in or out like a thin, frightened ghost trying to avoid real people.
The door of the kitchenette was locked. Miss Clarvoe locked everything. It was rumored around the hotel that she kept a great deal of money hidden in her suite because she didn’t trust banks. But this was a common rumor, usually started by the bellboys, who enjoyed planning various larcenies when they were too broke to play the horses.
June didn’t believe the rumor. Miss Clarvoe locked things up because she was the kind of person who always locked things up whether they were valuable or not.
June knocked on the door and waited, swaying a little, partly because the martini had been double, and partly because a radio down the hall was playing a waltz and waltzes always made her sway. Back and forth her scrawny little body moved under the cheap plaid coat.
Miss Clarvoe’s voice cut across the music like a knife through butter. “Who’s there?”
June put her hand on the door jambs to steady herself. “It’s me. June.”
The door was unchained and unbolted. “You’re late.”
“I had an errand to do first.”
“Yes, I see.” Miss Clarvoe knew what the errand was; the kitchenette already reeked of it. “Come into the other room.”
“I can stay only a minute. My aunt will...”
“Why did you use the back stairs?”
“Well, I didn’t know exactly what you wanted me for, and I thought if it was something I’d done wrong I didn’t want the others to see me coming up here and getting nosy.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong, June. I only wanted to ask you a few questions.” Miss Clarvoe smiled, in a kindly way. She knew how to deal with June and people like her. One smiled. Even in an agony of fear and uncertainty, one smiled. “Have you ever seen my suite before, June?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“How could I? You never asked me up before, and I didn’t get my job here until after you moved in.”
“Perhaps you’d like to look around a bit?”
“No. No thanks, Miss Clarvoe. I’m in kind of a hurry.”
“A drink, then. Perhaps you’d like a drink?” One smiled. One coaxed. One offered drinks. One did anything to avoid being alone, waiting for the telephone to ring again. “I have some nice sherry. I’ve been keeping it for — well, in case of callers.”
“I guess a nip of sherry wouldn’t hurt me,” June said virtuously. “Especially as I’m coming down with flu.”
Miss Clarvoe led the way down the hall into the sitting-room and June followed, looking around curiously now that Miss Clarvoe’s back was turned. But there was very little to see. All the doors in the hall were closed, it was impossible to tell what was behind any of them, a closet or a bedroom or a bathroom.
Behind the last door was the sitting-room. Here Miss Clarvoe spent her days and nights, reading in the easy chair by the window, lying on the divan, writing letters at the walnut desk: Dear Mother: I am well... glorious weather... Christmas is coming... my best to Douglas... Dear Mr. Blackshear: Regarding those hundred shares of Atlas...
Her mother lived six miles west, in Beverly Hills, and Mr. Blackshear’s office was no more than a dozen blocks down the boulevard, but Miss Clarvoe hadn’t seen either of them for a long time.
She poured the sherry from the decanter on the coffee table. “Here you are, June.”
“Gee, thanks, Miss Clarvoe.”
“Sit down, won’t you?”
“All right. Sure.”
June sat down in the easy chair by the window and Miss Clarvoe watched her, thinking how much she resembled a bird, with her quick, hopping movements and her bright, greedy eyes and her bony little hands. A sparrow, in spite of the blonde hair and the gaudy plaid coat, a drunken sparrow feeding on sherry instead of crumbs.
And, watching June, Miss Clarvoe wondered for the first time what Evelyn Merrick looked like.
She said carefully, “I had a telephone call an hour ago, June, about nine-thirty. I’d be very — grateful for any information you can give me about the call.”
“You mean, where it came from?”
“Yes.”
“I wouldn’t know that, Miss Clarvoe, unless it was long distance. I took three, four long distance calls tonight, but none of them was for you.”
“You recall ringing my room, though, don’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think hard.”
“Well, sure, Miss Clarvoe. I am thinking hard, real hard.” The girl screwed up her face to maintain the illusion. “Only it’s like this, see. If someone calls and asks for Miss Clarvoe, then I’d remember it for sure, but if someone just asks for room 425, well, that’s different, see.”
“Whoever called me, then, knew the number of this suite.”
“I guess.”
“Why do you guess, June?”
The girl fidgeted on the edge of the chair, and her eyes kept shifting towards the door and then to Miss Clarvoe and back to the door. “I don’t know.”
“You said you guessed, June.”
“I only meant I... I can’t remember ringing 425 tonight.”
“Are you calling me a liar, June?”
“Oh no, Miss Clarvoe, I should say not, Miss Clarvoe. Only...”
“Well?”
“I don’t remember, is all.”
They were the final words of the interview. There were no thank-you’s or farewells or see-you-soon’s. Miss Clarvoe rose and unlocked the door. June darted out into the corridor. And Miss Clarvoe was alone again.
Laughter from the next room vibrated against the wall and voices floated in through the open french door of the balcony:
“Honestly, George, you’re a kick, a real kick.”
“Listen to the girl, how cute she talks.”
“Hey, for Pete’s sake, who took the opener?”
“What do you think the good Lord gave you teeth for?”
“What the Lord gaveth, the Lord tooketh away.”
“Dolly, where in hell did you put the opener?”
“I don’t remember.”
I don’t remember, is all.
Miss Clarvoe sat down at the walnut desk and picked up the gold fountain pen her father had given her for her birthday years ago.
She wrote, Dear Mother: It has been a long time since I’ve heard from you. I hope that all is hell with you and Douglas.
She stared at what she had written, subconsciously aware that a mistake had been made but not seeing it at first. It looked so right, somehow: I hope that all is hell with you and Douglas.
I meant to say well, Miss Clarvoe thought. It was a slip of the pen. I hold no resentment against her. It’s all this noise — I can’t concentrate — those awful people next door...
“Sometimes you behave like an ape, Harry.”
“Send down for some bananas, somebody. Harry’s hungry.”
“So what’s so funny?”
“Take a joke, can’t you. Can’t you take a joke?”
Miss Clarvoe closed and locked the French doors.
Perhaps that’s what the telephone call was, she thought. Just a joke. Just someone, probably someone who worked in the hotel, trying to frighten her a little because she was wealthy and because she was considered somewhat odd. Miss Clarvoe realized that these qualities made her a natural victim for jokers; she had become adjusted to that fact years ago, and behind-the-hand snickers no longer disturbed her the way they had in school.
It was settled then. The girl with the crystal ball was a joke. Evelyn Merrick didn’t exist. And yet the very name was beginning to sound so familiar that Miss Clarvoe was no longer absolutely certain she hadn’t heard it before.