Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 35, No. 10, October 1990

By Night Disguised by Donald Olson

With its chandeliers, blood-red carpeting, and ageless, dignified furnishings, the lobby of the Kerbridge Residential Hotel creates much the same effect as the East Side mortuary where Eric had worked as an attendant before taking the job of night clerk at the Kerbridge; a similar atmosphere as well, an impression of hushed, genteel regard for the amenities of the living as tastefully unobtrusive as those for the dead at the mortuary.

“Mostly old duffers, retired professionals,” Eric’s predecessor had explained. “You’ll rarely see a living soul between midnight and dawn — except Miss Beaujean.”

“Miss Beaujean?”

“Miss Leda Beaujean, a lady of the theater who’s been ‘resting’ for years. Or should I say nesting?” he’d added with a leer. Like Eric, this young man was also an aspiring actor who, failing to make any headway in New York, had decided to try his luck on the Coast. “You know what I mean, kid. Love-nesting. She has this mysterious gentleman friend who pays her rent and visits her twice a week. Once a week lately, which I think has Miss Leda worried — the reek of eau de cognac’s been growing stronger.”

From this Eric pictures a gabby showgirl type, all glitz and giggles, and is therefore quite unprepared for the reality when a couple of nights later the elevator doors open and a woman wearing what might easily pass for a garment of the bedchamber glides across the lobby to where Eric leans on the desk studying the script of an off-Broadway play for which he hopes to audition. A cloud of streaky blonde hair frames a squarish face which betrays its age in those areas of the jaw and neck where makeup, liberally applied elsewhere, cannot disguise the process. Yet something of the unsoiled innocence of childhood lingers in the melting softness of her smile as she reaches out and taps Eric’s wrist with a playful spanking gesture.

“You’re the new young man. And an actor, Jimmy told me. Welcome to the Kerbridge, darling. I’m Leda Beaujean, in 351.” The contralto voice, huskily intimate, breathes the faintest whiff of brandy across the desk. “Please don’t tell me the pharmacy hasn’t yet delivered an itsy-bitsy package for me.”

Eric smiles and reaches under the counter. “It came a few minutes ago.”

She takes it with another airy flick of her wrist. “Divine of the drugstore, isn’t it, to provide us with these sweet little nuggets of slumber.”

Eric politely inquires if she has trouble sleeping, trying to recall if he’s ever seen her face before, which isn’t likely, as Jimmy had said her career had never progressed beyond the fringes of the legitimate theater.

“Only recently,” she murmurs. “Not that I ever try to sleep before dawn.” Her luminous gray eyes range around the lobby with a cozily approving smile. “That’s what I adore about the Kerbridge. I can waltz down and while away the small hours quite as if I’m the lady of the manor and this my drawing room. While the gentlemen enjoy their brandy and cigars. Do you like brandy and cigars, darling?”

“My budget won’t let me, I’m afraid.”

“My friend likes brandy and cigars.” She drifts across the lobby, peers through the etched-glass doors beyond which the sounds of traffic are already muted. “Don’t you adore Manhattan when it snows?”

“Snow’s no novelty to me. I’m from Minnesota.”

She whirls gracefully. “I played summer stock in Minnesota back in the Dark Ages. Be nice to me and I’ll do my Blanche Dubois for you one of these nights. Have you done any Williams?”

“Only in class.”

Her searching gaze seems to weigh his potential as an actor. “Yes, I see you as Tom in Menagerie. Remember? ‘I didn’t go to the moon, I went much further, for time is the longest distance between two places.’ Give me that line, darling.”

Ruefully amused, Eric straightens, clears his throat, and speaks the words.

Miss Beaujean claps her hands. “Yes! Yes! You’ve got that quality. Oh, how I envy you, darling, just starting out. I’m resting, you know. The parts simply aren’t there any more. We have no Inge, no Williams. The contemporary theater is all—” she flutters her hands, searching for the word “—all vibration now. No resonance.”

Eric nods agreement, with no idea what she means by this. She crosses to a velvet-covered sofa between two columns, picks up a copy of the Times, gives it a restless glance, flings it down and moves toward the elevator, tossing Eric a smile over her shoulder. “Sweet dreams, darling. I must tell my friend about you when he returns from his trip. Mr. Swann is a V.I.P., you know, and I do not mean Very Important Person.”

With this enigmatic remark she vanishes behind the sliding doors. An even deeper silence settles upon the deserted lobby, as if the faintest noise from the world outside is muffled by the fat white butterfly flakes of snow that fall soundlessly against the windows.

“ ‘They told me to take the streetcar named Desire.’ ”

With this or some other line from one of her favorite dramatist’s plays Leda would appear after midnight, rescuing Eric from the dragging monotony of seemingly endless nights by doing bits and pieces of scenes from these plays. Leda’s southern accent was a shade too ripe, but her performance was flawless, at least to Eric’s still untutored ears; he could only assume that her career might have suffered from her limitations, of her being inescapably typecast in the lost lady roles of those mid-century plays of a certain character which she held in such high esteem. Infatuated as he was by the theater and its glittering promises, Eric could not believe anyone would give it up for love, and he was eager for his first glimpse of the mysterious gentleman friend for whom Leda had exchanged such an exciting life, for what seemed to him a narrow and confined existence. He wondered if she had any social life whatsoever, as she never went out while he was on duty and presumably slept away most of the daylight hours. “Our resident Garbo,” Jimmy had called her.

One night, when she seemed in too restless a mood to venture a Blanche or an Alma or a Mrs. Venable and drifted about the lobby in an especially pungent cloud of eau de cognac, Leda suddenly interrupted one of her rambling excursions into the past to cry, “But it’s all in my trunk of memories, darling. I say, do let’s sneak upstairs and I’ll show you. No one will know you’re playing hooky from the morgue.”

True enough, yet Eric hesitated, not out of any fear of impropriety but from some vague reluctance to share in closer quarters that air of secret desperation Leda’s determined gaiety failed to conceal.

“Humor me, darling,” she entreated, and he hadn’t the heart to refuse.

The decor was not at all what he would associate with a “love nest,” unless it was in the boudoir lamps with their twining cupids and frilly pink shades that cast a romantic rosy glow over the cluttered room. The impression was of a permanent disarray, a carefree untidiness, of a tarnished revelry suggesting some ancient party with its debris uncollected. There was a profusion of photographs and theater posters and colored bottles. It reminded Eric of an oversized dressing room in some once opulent theater. Only the rows of books on unpainted shelves seemed out of place: theatrical memoirs, collections of plays, romantic novels.

Leda darted across the room to a big colorfully labeled trunk, motioning Eric to join her on the floor as she began hauling out stacks of playbills, more photographs, scrapbooks, wigs, and odds and ends of costumes.

After everything had been displayed and commented upon, Leda made a sweeping gesture as if the room were as spacious as all Manhattan. “This is my world now, darling. Safer, less hurtful than the world out there.”

That she could be satisfied, even happy, in such a world, a world apparently made possible by Mr. Swann, seemed terribly sad to Eric as he rose to leave, eager to escape that claustrophobic atmosphere. “I’d better get back to my post,” he said.

“Stay for a brandy,” she urged. “It’s the very best. Mr. Swann is a connoisseur.”

“Another time,” he promised, edging toward the door.

A sudden depression seemed to dampen her gaiety. “Do you know that beastly man hasn’t sent me a single postcard. I sometimes think he must be getting a trifle absentminded. When he comes on Friday I shall be very severe with him.”

Friday arrived, but much to Eric’s disappointment it did not bring the long-awaited glimpse of Leda’s gentleman friend. It was past three in the morning when Leda herself came down to the lobby dressed in white satin and pearls as if on her way to a ball in some far grander hotel, yet she might have been trailing widow’s weeds from the dismal air with which she made her unsteady progress across the lobby.

“My friend is late, darling. I don’t suppose he left a message...”

“No, sorry. Maybe the weather held him up.” It still amused Eric that what Minnesota would consider a moderate snowfall could paralyze New York.

“Darling, he only has to come across town.”

“Have you tried to call him?”

“Don’t be droll, darling. That’s quite against the rules. We agreed years ago to play by very strict rules. Well, if you don’t have rules it can be risky — for a man in Mr. Swann’s position, I mean.” Eric caught a strong aroma of brandy as Leda sighed deeply. “I’ll tell you a secret, darling, now that we’re such friends. I told you Mr. Swann is a V.I.P., remember? That means Very Important Producer. Or did you already guess, you’re such a smart boy. You’d know him if I told you his real name. Swann is a nom de theatre. One of his little amusements. Remember your mythology? How Jupiter visited Leda in the guise of a swan? My friend was an actor once. It amuses him to come to me by night, disguised. I mean, darling, he wears this adorable false beard and mustache and dark glasses and looks like a Russian spy or Mafia don. He said in the beginning it was to protect his public image. Frankly, darling, I think he still misses the greasepaint. Once an actor... It was all such fun.” Her smile dimmed, another sigh. “It doesn’t seem to amuse him the way it once did.” She glanced worriedly at the clock over the desk. “Where on earth can he be? I don’t know what I’d do if he ever — no, I do know what I’d do. I’ve squirreled away more than enough of those little nuggets of slumber to do it with. Don’t look at me like that, darling, it’ll never happen. He would never be that cruel.”

Eric didn’t doubt the genuineness of her distress, yet there was something in all this verbal extravagance of despair that left him with the uncomfortable feeling that she might at any moment lapse into her southern accent, betray by some too familiar gesture that she was acting out one of those scenes from a Williams play. Presently, in fact, as if suddenly finding the role too demanding, she flashed Eric a smile of self-reproach. “You’re an angel, darling, letting me cry on your shoulder. I’m sure there’s some perfectly good reason for his absence. He’ll probably send me roses in the morning. He used to send me flowers, now and again. I think I’ll go up now. I suddenly feel quite exhausted.”

“You’ll be all right?” This mood of tragic resignation worried Eric, and what she’d said about the “nuggets of slumber.”

A brave smile now, a faint ghost of laughter. “Funny, isn’t it? When things couldn’t possibly be more wrong one is always asked if one is all right. Sweet dreams, darling.”

The implications of Mr. Swann’s behavior proved ominous. Eric found a note from Leda awaiting him when he arrived at the hotel the following night. E., darling, please knock on my door when you have a minute. Something terrible has happened.

At the very deadest hour of the night Eric slipped away from the desk and went up to Room 351, which he found in an even wilder state of disarray. Clothing was draped across the bed and chairs, and Leda, looking more like a harassed charwoman than a faded actress, knelt beside the trunk of memories, its contents strewn across the floor as she packed books into the emptied trunk.

“Bless you for coming, darling. I have an enormous favor to beg of you.”

“Leda! What on earth has happened?”

She struggled somewhat tipsily to her feet and wiped the dust from her hands. “The play is over, darling. Curtain’s down.” She crossed to the dressing table and waved a letter at him. “From him. Goodbye and good luck and fond regards. Finished. Ended. Best for both of us, he says.” She seemed to have second thoughts about handing him the letter. “No. Don’t read it. It’s too craven. Too shaming. He’s told his wife everything and she’s forgiven him. I’m still in a daze. He’s coming here tomorrow night, a final visit, the Big Kiss-Off. And to propose a settlement. His very words. Can you believe it? Oh, God, I should have seen it coming. After I read it, I couldn’t bear to be alone. I made a date for lunch with my old friend Angela Fordyce. I told you about her. We used to be so close in the old days, but you know, I couldn’t tell her a thing. I just couldn’t. You’re the only one who knows. You and his wife, may she rot in hell.”

Eric made appropriate sympathetic noises which she seemed not to hear, as if by some immense effort of will she had already distanced herself from the catastrophe and was forcing herself to be practical, the abandoned lovebird flying from the nest. Eric asked her where she would go and she said, “I came from the South and to the South I shall return. Anywhere out of this city. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, darling. I’m shipping my books on ahead. I can’t live without my books, but I wanted to ask you to store my memories for me. I’ve talked to the manager, and it’ll be all right, until I send for them. If you’ll just carry them down to the basement when I have them packed. Will you do that for me?”

“Yes, of course, anything.” But was she sure she was doing the right thing, not acting hastily?

“Darling, what else can I do? When the play is ended one makes one’s exit, with as much dignity as possible. A settlement! I’d rather starve in the street. Nor do I want any consolation prizes. I’ve packed all the little presents he ever gave me into my overnight bag and I shall insist he take them back.”

Shortly after twelve the following night the door from the street opened and a slight figure dressed all in black stood for a moment stamping the snow from his shoes before approaching the desk.

“Good evening,” he said in a voice as cold as the air outside. “Will you please ring Miss Beaujean’s room and tell her Mr. Swann is here.”

Eric regarded the pompous little man with a resentment equally as frigid, wishing he could reach out and rudely strip off that hairy mask of hypocrisy. Swann, or whatever his real name might be, stood very erectly with his head thrown back, the lid of a black fedora almost resting on darkly tinted glasses. As if rooted below the false black underbrush, the stub of a cigar added a sinister, gangster touch to the disguised features. He turned his back and stood tapping a foot impatiently on the carpet as Eric dialed Leda’s room, then with a hasty, military step the little V.I.P. marched to the elevator and pressed the button.

The reunion lasted far longer than Eric might have expected; it was past two when Leda called down to the desk. “Mr. Swann will be leaving in five minutes. Will you fetch a cab for him, darling?”

Eric went out into the street, which was a whirling mass of snowflakes and quite deserted. He hugged his arms to his chest and walked to the end of the block before finding a cab and directing it to the Kerbridge.

Presently Mr. Swann emerged from the elevator carrying an overnight bag in one hand, a fresh cigar clamped between his teeth. He did not bestow so much as a glance or word of thanks on Eric as he strode across the lobby to the door.

Eric debated whether to ring Leda’s room, or even to pop up and offer a perhaps much needed word of comfort, but the memory of that room and the fear of intruding upon Leda in what would likely be a state of emotional devastation restrained him.

The following night he did go up to remove the cartons of memorabilia he’d promised to store in the basement. The room looked bare and desolate, as if finally the remnants of that endless party had been swept away. Yet Leda herself appeared far less visibly distraught than Eric had feared as she insisted on their sharing a drink from the last of Mr. Swann’s bottles of Napoleon brandy.

“You’re really going, then?” he asked.

“Of course, darling. I shall embrace the sun and read my books and dream beside the sea.”

“But how will you live? Or did you accept—”

“Don’t be crass, darling. And as you may have noticed I made him carry away all his little love tokens. How shall I live? ‘As birds do, mother.’ Remember your Macbeth? I never did much Shakespeare. I rather think I’d make a fairly credible Lady Macbeth, don’t you?”

Eric laughed. “Frankly, I can’t quite see you in the role.”

“Ah, you don’t really know me. Any more than Mr. Swann did, the beast.”

“You’ll write and tell me where you are,” he said.

“Oh, darling, first thing. You’ll have to know where to send my memories.”

Smiling, she raised her glass.

Monday was Eric’s night off and on Tuesday two police detectives from the precinct arrived at the hotel to question him. They were investigating the disappearance of Mr. Oscar Browning, a name Eric instantly recognized as that of a fairly prominent Broadway producer.

“The gentleman was last seen getting out of a taxi at Grand Central around two o’clock Monday morning.” He exchanged a sly glance with his companion. “Somewhat disguised.”

“Then you know—”

“Oh, yes. We talked to Miss Beaujean before she left the hotel. Browning’s wife had reported he never arrived at his home in Greenwich. She gave us the name of a lady here at the Kerbridge whom she’d only recently learned her husband had been in the habit of visiting. Miss Beaujean told us all about... er, ‘Mr. Swann.’ We’d just like you to confirm Miss Beaujean’s statement that the gentleman left the hotel at around two in the morning, and that he was alone.”

“That’s right, I found a cab for him.”

“We’ve talked to the cabby. He said the gentleman was carrying an overnight bag. You saw him arrive that night? Was he carrying any luggage?”

“When he arrived? No. Didn’t Miss Beaujean explain—”

“Miss Beaujean’s statement was somewhat — ambiguous.”

The other detective made a rude noise. “What’d I tell you? The guy disappears. His lady friend leaves town. Add it up, Charlie.” Eric opened his mouth, then shut it, amused that Leda must have given the impression she and “Mr. Swann” were running away together. Or... good Lord, could it be true? Could Leda’s entire performance as the betrayed lover have been an act? Eric felt rather hurt that she might deliberately have hoodwinked him as well.

The story hit the news next morning. POLICE PROBE DISAPPEARANCE OF BROADWAY PRODUCER. Leda’s name was not mentioned, yet there was no speculation about possible foul play.

It was a month later when Eric landed a small role in an off-Broadway play. The role of his mother was played by Angela Fordyce. Eric ventured to mention to her one day at rehearsal that he’d known Leda Beaujean and asked if Angela had heard from her.

“Not a word,” she said. “But I’m not surprised. Leda and I hadn’t been close for years, not since she holed up in the Kerbridge and turned into a recluse. Odd, you know, she invited me to lunch before she left town. I had the feeling she wanted to tell me something but couldn’t bring herself to talk about it. Strange woman, Leda. A trifle mad, I always thought. Funny thing, she later called me and asked me to do her a favor. Said she was moving and asked me to hold her books for her. I hadn’t the room, actually, but she was so insistent I agreed.”

“She’s never told you where to send the trunk?”

“No trunk. They were sent over in packing cases.”

Eric said nothing but continued to puzzle over this apparently pointless fib Leda had told him. If he’d been entrusted with her “memories” and Angela with her books, what had she shipped away in the trunk? He clearly remembered her packing it with books. It was all very odd.

The enigma nagged at his mind until finally, thinking impossible thoughts, he called Jerry Burrows, his daytime counterpart at the Kerbridge. Eric asked him if he recalled the day Leda moved out of the hotel. Burrows grinned. “Oh, sure. She gave me a bottle of Napoleon brandy for being ‘such an angel.’ ”

“Recall when you first saw her that day?”

Burrows wrinkled his brow. “Lemme see. Yeah, when she came in about eight that morning.”

“She’d gone out early?”

“No. She said she’d spent the night with a friend.”

Eric felt a tiny ripple of disquiet as he asked casually, “She wasn’t carrying an overnight bag, by any chance?”

“Yeah. Matter of fact, she was. Why?”

“Oh, nothing.” A picture was coming into focus. “Mr. Swann” stepping out of a taxi at Grand Central in the wee hours. Disappearing into a restroom. Moments later a woman slips out carrying that same overnight bag. Crazy. Eric laughed at the bizarre workings of his imagination. Even if the idea were not preposterous, how could she have done it? Brandy and “nuggets of slumber”? But how utterly absurd. Leda as a murderess? He tried to shake the idea from his head. But what was it she’d said, with that funny little smile? “I rather think I’d make a fairly credible Lady Macbeth. Don’t you, darling?”

This time he laughed out loud, telling himself he’d worked at that mortuary too long. As for the fib about the books, there had to be another explanation.