Dream of Fair Woman Read online

  Afterwards, Peg seemed to have taken heart. She said that Tony couldn’t be the cynic he pretended. She said that they must not think of the girl in the hospital as being torn limb from limb in a contest to claim her. There had been a mistake and it would appear soon, who was mistaken. Truth must out, said Peg, and went off to her own room, enjoining them not to worry.

  So Matt and Betty sat on in the kitchen. Betty was wearing a dress; a bracelet slid on her arm. It occurred to Matt that good old Betts was a female and one he dared question.

  ‘Maybe I get a little steamed. Maybe I was wrong. But you tell me, would you care to have your teeth, for instance, discussed in the newspapers?’

  ‘She wouldn’t like it,’ said Betty softly. ‘I agree. The whole thing should be done more … well … more reticently.’

  Matt felt as if he had been blessedly understood. He sighed and stretched, relaxing. ‘Poor Tony, he means well, I suppose. It’s just the way he goes at it … The way he … I’m glad you see what I mean.’

  Betty began to play with her bracelet. ‘You know, Matt,’ she said in a moment, with an air of quiet reason, ‘since Peg feels the way she does and since you have to go along with that …’

  ‘I sure do. I’m glad you see that.’

  ‘And I do, too. You know how I feel about Peg.’

  ‘Why sure.’ Now Matt included her, generously.

  ‘Don’t you think,’ she continued, ‘that it might be up to us? Why should we let Tony and his ilk take over and do it? Why shouldn’t we try to dig up the truth about her?’

  He stared at her. What she had said clicked down into his whole sense of things as they should be.

  ‘Because,’ she added, ‘Peg is the one who will have to be satisfied. She’ll want to be as sure as she can be that you turn the girl over to her own people and the right people. That’s the way Peg is.’

  ‘Right.’ Matt stared at the refrigerator.

  ‘And if there are just going to be more witnesses, swearing they know her, but on both sides, then Tony’s right. There’ll have to be some other kind of proof, somewhere, somehow.’

  ‘Somebody has got to find it and check it out with a little objectivity,’ he declared.

  ‘I’d help. I’m kind of free. I’ve got a car.’

  ‘Maybe I can get free.’ He turned and beamed on her. ‘You’re a good kid, old Betts. I hope you know that.’

  ‘Sure I am,’ she said, ‘and smart, too.’ But she thought to herself, Well, if you can’t fight it, join it. That’s what they say. Doesn’t he know why he can’t stand to think of any invasion of her rights to the privacy of her own body? Or am I wrong? No, I’m not wrong.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘if she wakes up she can just plain tell us who she is. Will she?’ He didn’t answer. ‘Will she die?’

  ‘She doesn’t change,’ he said. ‘There’s no deterioration. Why should she die?’

  ‘These things can just last, you mean?’

  ‘They’ve been known to last.’ He stirred restlessly. ‘Tony thinks she’s Dorothy Daw. I have a feeling that Dr Jon leans that way too. For one thing there’s plenty of money there to take care of her. I don’t mean to say he’s going to go by a hunch or a wish. That won’t do.’ Matt frowned at the kitchen sink. ‘Just for the hell of it, what would you bet?’

  Betty’s intuition knew what answer he wanted. But she tried to think it over honestly. ‘Nothing tips me off that she has to be Dorothy Daw,’ she said at last. ‘In fact, I don’t care what Mr Daw says about this poor-but-honest kick. She wasn’t living in a hut, obviously. Also, we are a long way from Africa and it seems darned odd to me that a girl with all those millions of dollars wouldn’t have stopped off between planes somewhere and had her hair done, or a professional manicure.’

  Matt said, ‘The female angle. Humph. I wouldn’t have thought of that. You could be right. You know what bothers me? Say she isn’t his precious Dorothy Daw. Then why is Mr Leon Daw so busy saying she is? Is he just making a mistake?’

  ‘I can think of another question. Whichever girl your …’ Betty coughed … ‘our girl is, where is the other one?’

  They looked at each other, Betty with her head down sending her look up to him, Matt with a gleam of admiration.

  ‘That is a very good question,’ he said judiciously. ‘If we could just find the other one, that would settle it. Hey, it’s a deal.’ He put out his right hand and she gave him hers. ‘One for all and all for one,’ he pronounced, as they solemnly shook their clasped hands up and down.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do, tomorrow,’ he said, ‘about getting time off. After all, I signed her in. I’m legally responsible. For that matter, the hospital ought to be glad if somebody goes about this whole mess with a little intelligence.’

  But afterwards, getting ready for bed, Matt wondered briefly about that echo from an old book. The Three Musketeers, he remembered now. How come he kept bringing up stuff he had read in some old book, long ago? Never mind. Consider the pleasure it was going to be to bend his brain towards an orderly investigation, a hunt for firm evidence, to a logical conclusion. He would have to be, he knew, especially careful and fair-minded, because he had a prejudice. He was not disposed to be crazy about Mrs Bobbie Hopkins, but he fiercely, and unreasonably, disliked Mr Leon Daw.

  Betty, brushing her hair in the room upstairs, was thinking a little bitterly of her role as henchwoman. Matt was going to be the hero. Betty was going to be girl-aide and confidante. Maybe she ought to practise her dialogue, use a lively tongue, make quips, provide the comedy relief.

  That was one way to look at it.

  The other way was to believe that this alliance rested upon duty and reason in which they were joined dutifully in a reasonable fashion.

  ‘Oh, boy’, she said aloud, and crawled into her bed and lay in the dark and thought about the weird illogic of being in love and its devious compulsions.

  CHAPTER SIX

  About nine-thirty o’clock on Saturday morning, Matt took himself to the hospital and, passing through what seemed to be an unusually crowded lobby, came upon Dr Prentiss in the hall, pounced on him and explained his project. The doctor approved, with immediate grim enthusiasm, and went with him to talk to Dr Parkes of Pathology, Matt’s boss. Dr Parkes took the semi-humorous attitude that Matt wasn’t going to have his mind on his work anyway, so he had better take off—providing he spoke with Atwood first.

  Matt was anxious to speak to Atwood and found that gentleman just about to face up to his desk. When Matt proposed that he investigate, as best he could, on behalf of the hospital, as well as for himself, the Administrator’s folds of skin hung down sadly while he thought it over.

  Then he pulled them into a smile. ‘You should qualify to sort this business out, Cuneen, being personally involved. So I am going to put another chore on you. You’ll be just the fellow to deal with the rest of the claimants.’

  ‘Who, sir?’

  ‘I am told that we have four, in the lobby right now and surrounded by newsmen. The Police Department has just sent us a man to keep them in the lobby and in order. We cannot have our routines disrupted. There has to be some system set up whereby these people—and there’ll be more of them, judging from the ruckus in the papers this morning—can be tested out or got rid of, whichever is right. Right, in the interests of our patient first. And, of course, right in the interests of the hospital. We can’t turn anyone away carelessly yet, since we do not know who the girl really is. But neither can we have the place overrun.

  ‘I suggest to you, now, that only people who seem to be reasonably possible, as connections, be allowed to see her and those only during regular visiting hours. And be made to keep their distance when they do. I suggest the mask-and-gown routine for everybody. And no newsmen at all. Now, will you take this on?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ said Matt promptly. ‘I’ll go talk to them. I’ll take care to be here during visiting hours. Sir, has anyone come who was sent by Leon Daw or Mrs Hopkins
?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Atwood wearily. ‘Oh, yes. Two men from some restaurant. They say that, to the best of their knowledge, she is the Dorothy Daw who lunched with Leon Daw and another lady on Tuesday. A man and a woman who live next door to the Hopkins ménage say she looks like Alison Hopkins to them. They, and the Press, were all here by eight o’clock and I cannot allow another such scene.’

  Matt said he wished he hadn’t missed it.

  Atwood said he wished he had, and shook his head until his wattles waved. He said bluntly that he didn’t know what to believe and therefore suspended belief. He had other matters to attend to. ‘We harbour a great many people who do not feel well,’ he said quaintly and then he shook hands with Matt, wished him luck in a mournful way, and turned to his paper work.

  Matt went out into the lobby, which was a small one made to appear larger by the use of wall mirrors. Ten people seemed to be a mighty throng. There was a man in a police uniform standing quietly between the lobby and the main corridor. He wore a gun and, for a moment, Matt thought the whole thing was simply mad.

  Dr Prentiss came up behind him and growled in his throat, ‘Leave this to me.’ He marched into the crowd and bellowed for all newspaper people to come to him. Then he led the pack out the front door. Matt almost laughed aloud at such Pied Piper simplicity. He quickly placed the guard on the entrance to the building and turned back into the lobby.

  There were now only four people waiting there.

  One was a tall woman of majestic proportions who was draped in a long white robe tied at her ample waist with a purple cord. She sat like Patience, meditating. One was a woman in mannish garb who looked hostile. A young man, very nervous, thin, and wiry, jumped up and demanded to be allowed to see his beloved, but errant, wife. The fourth was a mumbling old man in a dirty rumpled suit who seemed totally confused.

  A pack of nuts! Matt quailed within, but he shut up the agitated husband and made them all a little speech. Surely they would not wish to endanger the patient in any way, or interfere with the work of the hospital or its rules. Therefore, they could not possibly be permitted to see the sleeping girl until two o’clock this afternoon. Meantime, he would speak to each in turn, right now. His name was Cuneen, and he was in charge.

  The young man protested in shrill tones that his name was Martin Reed, and he had a wife named Eloise, and she was here and he must see her, right now.

  So Matt took him, first, into a small office the other side of the entrance where they could not be overheard. ‘Has your wife a scar of any kind?’ he asked.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ the young man squealed. ‘She was only bluffing, anyway. The blade was dull. She hardly bled at all.’

  Matt ducked whatever tragedy was here by saying quietly, and repeatedly, that since the girl could not possibly be his wife Eloise, he could not see her at all. At last the tormented man burst into tears and went away.

  The old man, accustomed to defeat perhaps, was already leaving, mumbling that he had hoped his daughter would forgive him, after all this time. He’d be back. Oh yes, he certainly would, because she would surely want to be good to her poor old daddy who hadn’t meant a bit of harm and it was twenty years ago, now, and he was tired.

  Matt didn’t expect him back.

  The mannish woman showed her long teeth in a wolfish smile and said archly that she thought the picture in the paper resembled someone she knew very well indeed. A scar? Yes, poor Sybil had that burst appendix, a year and a half ago. So Matt told her she must seek elsewhere. The woman seemed to think she had been tricked and went, muttering maledictions from convictions of persecution.

  The woman in the white robe stood almost as tall as Matt himself. ‘I telephoned yesterday,’ she boomed, ‘and told someone here that the girl’s name is Kraus. She is my protégée. I had to be in court on an important matter, so I have come the soonest that I could. I cannot come back this afternoon. I have an important conference. May I see her now?’

  Matt asked her about a scar.

  ‘A scar where?’

  ‘You tell me,’ he challenged, and to his surprise, she nodded sagely.

  ‘I see that you are being careful,’ she boomed.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question, ma’am.’

  ‘I’ve noticed no scar,’ she said rather impatiently, ‘which is not to say there may not be one.’ She fixed her large soft eyes upon his. ‘Her name is Lilianne Kraus,’ she said with perfect assurance. ‘I phoned and said so, yesterday. Now, since I cannot return today and since I have nowhere to take her at the moment, will you tell her, please, that Alfreda will come by, very soon?’

  ‘Since she is unconscious,’ Matt said, struggling against her combination of steam-roller personality and what sounded like woolly-mindedness, ‘I can’t tell her anything. I don’t think it is a question of taking her anywhere. She is very ill.’

  ‘I’m sure you think so,’ the woman said with great pity. ‘I shall come and heal her—not on the Sabbath, but in a day or so.’

  She bowed her head gravely and marched away.

  A nut! They were all nuts of one variety or another. Matt sighed. He briefed the guard, who had been assigned to remain on guard for this day at least. He briefed the switchboard girl and the receptionist. As a further precaution, he went to the wing where the patient lay sleeping, gathered the nurses, and enjoined them seriously to speak to nobody—nobody at all—about any possible scars. He said it was very important. He was in charge of an investigation into the patient’s identity and they must not answer any questions, because in so doing they might make his job more difficult.

  He went away, butting through the clamouring pack of reporters who milled before the entrance, and hurried home.

  But when he took off with Betty in her saucy little Chevy, he was feeling sheepish. Peg had sent them on their way with such innocent good cheer, with so touching a faith in their inevitable success, that she had made him feel like a Boy Scout.

  He was driving. Betty held a book of street maps. They were armed with addresses from the morning paper. Betty began to be crisp. They must begin with the last time each girl was (so far) known to have been seen and try to trace her path from then on. This ought to lead them either to Peg Cuneen’s front door, or to a girl who would be the other one.

  So were they going to the restaurant?

  Matt relaxed against this clarity and told her about this device of asking for news of a scar. He wanted to see Leon Daw first. ‘We can ask him. We can run the question in,’ he explained, ‘among others. Might settle it, then and there. Suppose he says Dorothy Daw should have such a scar. And that would do it.’

  ‘That would prove she isn’t Dorothy Daw. Um hum. Did you see her this morning?’

  ‘There’s no point in my seeing her,’ he said, a little harshly.

  Leon Daw lived no more than three miles distant, in a large Spanish house partway up a fashionable hill. The trim was freshly painted; the grounds were neat. They parked in his curving driveway. This was a prosperous-looking establishment, but not in terms of millions. ‘Doesn’t he have Daw Money?’ Matt wondered.

  ‘He manages it. He’s hired to do it. That’s what he said. He works for a living.’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  They rang, and, after a while, a drapery moved at a window. Leon Daw himself opened the door. He was wearing a red silk robe over shirt and trousers and made almost a caricature of wealthy-bachelor-at-home. There seemed to be no servants in the place. He greeted them grudgingly, having recognised them both, and led them into a spacious living-room, well appointed but airless, as if it were never used.

  ‘I am in a state of siege,’ he told them. Then he smiled his fishy smile. ‘And how is Dorothy this morning?’

  Matt told him patiently that there had been no change in the girl’s condition and went on to say that he proposed to ask questions, on his mother’s behalf and also on the hospital’s authority. To this Leon nodded gloomy approval. So Matt began.
r />   ‘How old is your niece, sir?’

  ‘Twenty-four, about to be twenty-five in July.’

  ‘Has she ever married?’

  ‘No.’ Daw had adopted brevity.

  ‘When was she last in this country?’

  ‘Three years ago, in April. Not here. I flew east to see her at that time.’

  ‘Where had she been living in Uganda?’

  Leon gave them a mailing address. ‘A small place, I believe. Just the place name, Mengo. But she gave up her house,’ he added.

  ‘What was she doing there?’ asked Betty, breaking in because she couldn’t help wondering.

  Leon Daw gave her a bleak eye. ‘She was living there.’

  ‘But did she live alone, Mr Daw? Does she travel all alone? No maid or companion?’

  ‘Sometimes. Sometimes not.’

  ‘This time?’ Betty insisted.

  ‘Alone, as far as I know. She certainly arrived alone last Sunday.’

  Now Matt took breath, but feeling that he was about to fumble the important question he shifted to another.

  ‘When and where did you see her the very last time?’

  ‘In front of a restaurant named Nickey’s, on Wilshire Boulevard, last Tuesday, at one-thirty in the afternoon, when I put her into a taxi-cab.’ This sounded well practised.

  ‘She went off alone?’

  ‘She did. I told the driver to take her to International Airport. She had a reservation for San Francisco.’ Leon looked at them sourly and then volunteered something. ‘By the way, I phoned the airline and she had cancelled that reservation.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘On Tuesday morning,’ said Leon Daw, rather angrily.

  ‘But you lunched with her that day,’ said Betty quickly ‘and she didn’t tell you she had cancelled?’

  ‘She did not. She didn’t tell me she intended to disappear, either.’

  ‘And you don’t know why she would want to do that?’ Betty had taken over for the moment. Matt thought she was doing fine.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know,’ said Leon Daw. ‘I know she dreads publicity. She’ll love this.’ The man was irritable. He shifted in his seat. ‘There’s another thing. Dorothy had called for an appointment with our … that is, the estate’s … lawyer, St John Cotter, on Monday, at about noon. It was set up for Tuesday morning. She cancelled that, by phone, late on Monday, telling Cotter she was going to San Francisco for ten days and would see him when she returned. I did not know she had wanted to see him. I don’t know what about. Nor does he.’