“How did you get into the house?”
“Walked in. I had a key to the back door.”
“How did you get into the bedroom?”
“Same way. Walked. The door wasn’t locked.”
“Mrs. Goodfield was sleeping?”
“Mrs. Goodfield,” Lora said dryly, “was gone.”
The big plane was taking off, rising slowly into the air like a gull heading out to sea.
“Maybe you don’t believe that, eh, Captain?”
“I don’t.”
“I knew you wouldn’t. But it happens to be true. She was gone when I got there.”
“How did the room look?”
“Look?”
“The windows, for instance.”
“They were closed. Locked, in fact.”
“Your story’s full of holes,” Greer said.
“I can plug them.”
“What with?”
“Just paper.” She took a folded piece of stationery out of her purse and handed it to him. “When I went into the bedroom, the old lady was gone and this was on her desk. There was another paper there, too, all crumpled up as if she’d been practicing what to say. I smoothed it out to read it but I left it there and took this instead.”
Greer unfolded the paper and read Mrs. Goodfield’s last message to her son: Willett, can’t stand this kind of life so am leaving. Don’t worry, everything will be all right, you can trust me. Will let you know later where I am but don’t look for me and I mean it.
22
No one believed her, but Lora Dalloway stuck to her story for the rest of the afternoon. At five-thirty she was served a light supper in the cell adjoining Greer’s office, which was reserved for special prisoners. Greer had a pot of coffee and a canvas chair brought in for himself. He had questioned Lora at the airport, in the car, in his office, and he thought this rather drastic change of atmosphere might affect her veracity.
It didn’t. She seemed quite at ease in the cell, ate with good appetite, and repeated her version of the facts.
No, she did not know where Mrs. Goodfield was or why or how she had left. She had bought the ether in a fit of despondency but had changed her mind when the idea occurred to her of borrowing money from old Mrs. Goodfield so she could leave town.
“What kind of jam were you in?” Greer asked.
“Oh, you know, personal troubles.”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
“Well, in the first place there was Ortega breathing down my neck, wanting to get married and start raising children. Children, yet. Makes me sick to think of it. Ortega’s all right, he has a nice build, but he’s just a boy. Anyway he was getting hard to handle. I thought it was the strategic moment to disappear. You can’t always trust these Mexicans — they don’t put as much value on human life as we do.”
Even though he thought he was beginning to understand Lora, Greer was startled by the inconsistency of her mind. She seemed to consider it logical to run away from Ortega’s possible violence, yet at the same time plan violence against herself; to speak of the value of human life and yet to ignore its value. Her words and her emotions had little connection. They flowed separately and in opposite directions, and only occasionally did they touch as they had during the meeting with her father in the airport waiting room.
He said, “Ortega’s a nice boy. I think you could have handled him all right. He’s very fond of you.”
“He adores me,” Lora said sharply. “So what? I hate being adored. I hate that feeling of responsibility. It makes me want to hit out at people.”
And at yourself, Greer thought. But he didn’t say it. Instead, he sipped at his coffee and waited for her to continue.
“The second reason was my father. Naturally I knew he was in town, but I had no idea he was so close on my trail until yesterday. I looked out of the window and there he was in the garden talking to Ortega. I was furious. All my life he’s been doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Hovering over me, treating me as if I were a four- year-old, trying to make me stay home and live his kind of life. I can’t stand his kind of life. I need excitement, change, fun.”
“Is that your idea of fun and excitement, taking a job as an ordinary servant?”
“It wasn’t ordinary. And yes, it was fun, in a way, watching Ethel swallow that milady stuff and Willett inflate like a balloon when I called him sir. I got some laughs out of it. Talk about a pair of dimwits, those two really deserve a prize.”
Greer glanced pointedly at the barred window. “Your own mammoth intellect has managed to land you in jail.”
“It will get me out.”
“You’re confident.”
“Just wait until Willett comes. He’ll explain, arrange the necessary bail and so on. He is coming? You gave him my message?”
“Yes.”
She leaned forward eagerly, like a child about to hear a favorite story. “What did you tell him?”
“What you asked me to — that you wanted to see him and that your real name was Lora Dalloway and you were Rose’s daughter.”
“How did he react?”
“He seemed startled, genuinely startled.”
“Oh, it was genuine, all right,” she said, smiling, pleased with herself. “He had no idea who I was. I played my role to the hilt.”
“Beyond the hilt.”
“I don’t consider you an authority on acting.”
“You don’t have to be an authority to recognize schmalz,” Greer said. “You’re like your mother in that respect. I saw one of her old movies on TV last week — she couldn’t ask the time of day without flinging herself all over the screen.”
“That’s not true. My mother was a wonderful actress. I could have been, too, if I’d had any chance.”
“That’s the story of your life, is it? You never had any chances.”
“Not real ones. Dalloway hemmed me in.”
“So you decided to come west and find your mother. Where did you go first?”
“I’ve told you all this.”
“Tell me again.”
“I landed in L.A. I was broke, so I took a job for a couple of weeks to earn some money for clothes. I’d left most of my clothes behind and I didn’t want to meet my mother looking like a bum. I thought — I was under the impression that she was quite wealthy.”
“You must have had a shock.”
“I did. That awful boarding house — that slatternly Mrs. Cushman — I could hardly believe it. And mother looked terrible, old and haggard and half-starved.”
“Was she glad to see you?”
“Glad enough. I didn’t expect her to dissolve with joy. We got along all right, not as mother and daughter but as two people with something in common — we both needed money.”
“You only paid one visit to the boarding house?”
“Just one — the first. After that we met other places, in cafés or on the breakwater.”
“Why?”
“Rose wasn’t keen on acknowledging me as her long-lost daughter; it put her in too bad a light. And frankly, I wasn’t very keen on being acknowledged. I kept on using the name Ada Murphy. It’s such an earthy, ugly name, no one would ever think it wasn’t real.”
“What did you and your mother talk about when you met?”
“Oh, things in general,” she said with a vague wave of one hand.
“Nothing in particular?”
“No.”
“She didn’t tell you about a job she was offered?”
“No.”
“She was apparently on her way to start that job when she died. In fact, she may have decided to stop in at the Goodfields’ to say goodbye to you.”
Lora blinked. “Yes, I’ve thought of that. It seems likely. She knew where I was working.”