Laura (Femmes Fatales) by Vera Caspary Page B

slanted, dark hair, and tanned skin. Nothing wrong about her ankles either.
    “What are you doing here?” she said.
    I couldn’t answer.
    “What are you doing here?”
    I remembered the wine and looked around to see if she’d brought any pink elephants.
    “If you don’t get out this moment,” she said, and her voice trembled, “I’ll call the police.”
    “I am the police,” I said.
    My voice told me that I was alive. I jerked myself out of the chair. The girl backed away. The picture of Laura Hunt was just behind her.
    I had a voice. I spoke with authority. “You’re dead.”
    My wild stare and the strange accusation convinced her that she was facing a dangerous lunatic. She edged toward the door.
    “Are you . . .” But I couldn’t say the name. She had spoken, she was wet with rain, she had been frightened and had tried to escape. Were these real evidences of life just another set of contradictions?
    I don’t know how long we stood, facing each other and awaiting revelation. For a crazy half-second I remembered what my grandmother used to tell me about meeting in heaven those whom we had lost on earth. Peal after peal of thunder shook the house. Lightning flashed past the window. The ground seemed to be trembling below us and the skies splitting overhead. This was Laura Hunt’s apartment; I felt in my pocket for my pipe.
    I had bought a paper. As I unfolded it, I said: “Have you seen any newspapers lately? Don’t you know what’s happened?” The questions made me feel sane again.
    She shrank away, clinging with both hands to the table.
    I said: “Please don’t be frightened; there must be an explanation, if you haven’t seen the papers . . .”
    “I haven’t. I’ve been in the country. My radio’s broken.” And then slowly, as if she were fitting the pieces together, she said: “Why? Do the papers say I’m . . .”
    I nodded. She took the paper. There was nothing on Page One. A new battle on the Eastern Front and a speech by Churchill had pushed her off the front pages. I turned to Page Four. There was her picture.
    Wind howled through the narrow court between the houses. Rain spattered the windowpanes. The only sound inside the house was the rhythm of her breathing. Then she looked over the paper into my face and her eyes were filled with tears.
    “The poor thing,” she said. “The poor, poor kid.”
    “Who?”
    “Diane Redfern. A girl I knew. I’d lent her the apartment.”

Chapter 2
    We sat on the couch while I told her about the discovery of the body, the destruction of the face by BB shot, and the identification at the morgue by her aunt and Bessie Clary.
    She said: “Yes, of course. We were about the same size and she had my robe on. We wore the same size; I’d given her a few of my dresses. Her hair was a little lighter, but if there was a lot of blood . . .”
    She groped for her purse. I gave her my handkerchief.
    After she had dried her eyes, she read the rest of the story in the paper. “Are you Mark McPherson?”
    I nodded.
    “You haven’t found the murderer?”
    “Nope.”
    “Did he want to murder her or me?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “What are you going to do now that I’m alive?”
    “Find out who murdered the other girl.”
    She sighed and sank back against the cushions. “You’d better have a drink,” I said, and went to the corner cabinet. “Scotch, gin, or Bourbon?”
    There was the bottle of Three Horses. I should have asked her about it then, before she had time to think. But I was thinking less about the job than the girl, and still so dazed that I wasn’t even sure I was alive, awake and in my right mind.
    “How do you know my house so well, Mr. McPherson?”
    “There isn’t much about you I don’t know.”
    “Gosh,” she said; and after a little while, she laughed and asked: “Do you realize that you’re the only person in New York who knows I’m alive? The only one of six million people?”
    Thunder and lightning had ceased,