Peyton Place (56 page)

The doctor put the last remaining photograph of Emily away carefully. He was, he realized, getting maudlin indeed when he expected help from a faded picture.

First the child, he thought, destroyed because it had no choice, and then Mary Kelley destroyed by a knowledge and a guilt which I had no right to press on her. And then Nellie, destroyed because I could control neither my temper nor my tongue and now Lucas, destroyed by Selena because I had not the courage to destroy him myself. And that's the way the world ends, thought the doctor, drunkenly trying to remember the last part of the quotation. Something about a whimper, or a whine, or something.

The night before the day when Selena was to go to trial, Matthew Swain went through his house picking up empty bottles. He soaked for an hour in a hot tub and followed this with a cold shower. He shaved and shampooed his beautiful white hair and he telephoned to Isobel Crosby.

“Where the hell have you been?” he roared when she answered. “It's summer and my white suit hasn't been pressed and I have to be in court at nine in the morning.”

Isobel, who had tried unsuccessfully to get into the doctor's house morning after morning, hung up angrily.

“What do you think of that?” she asked her sister in an injured tone.

On this same evening Allison MacKenzie returned to Peyton Place. She stepped off the train at eight-thirty and decided to walk home.

“Hello, Mr. Rhodes,” she said to the stationmaster as she went into the station.

“‘Lo, Allison,” he said in exactly the same tone he would have employed had she been returning from a day of shopping in Manchester. “Get sick of the big city?”

“A little,” she admitted and thought, Oh, if you knew how sick, Mr. Rhodes. How sick and tired and fed up and ready to die I am.

“Ain't a bad place to visit, New York ain't,” said Rhodes. “You want a ride home? I'm ready to close up.”

“I thought I'd walk,” said Allison. “It's been a long time since I walked in Peyton Place.”

Rhodes glanced at her sharply. “The town'll be here in the mornin’. You better let me ride you home. Look a little tired.”

Allison was too tired to argue. “All right,” she said. “My bags are outside.”

As they drove up Depot Street Allison stared absently out the car window. It doesn't change, she thought wearily. Not a stick or a stone, a tree or a house changes. It stands still.

“Hear about Selena Cross?” asked Rhodes.

‘Yes,” replied Allison. “That's the main reason I came home. I thought it might make a good story.”

“Oh?” asked Rhodes. “You still writin’ them stories for the magazines? The wife always reads ’em. Say's they're good, too.”

“Yes, I'm
still
writing for the magazines,” said Allison and thought, Mr. Rhodes doesn't change either. He's still as nosy as ever. She wondered what he would say if she told him of the novel she had worked on for over a year which turned out to be no good. He'd be glad. Mr. Rhodes was always glad when someone failed at something.

“How'd you hear about Selena?” he asked. “Your mother call you up?”

“No. I read it in a newspaper.”

Mr. Rhodes stalled his car. “You mean to tell me it made the New York papers? They know all about it down there to New York?”

“No, of course not. There is a man in New York who traffics in homesickness. He runs a newsstand on Broadway where he sells copies of out of town newspapers. I was walking by there one day and I saw the headline on a four-day-old
Concord Monitor.”

Mr. Rhodes chuckled. “Musta give you a turn, seein’ somethin’ about Peyton Place right in the middle of New York.”

No, not really Mr. Rhodes, said Allison silently. I was too busy thinking of something else at the time to be overly concerned with Peyton Place. You see, I had just spent the week end in bed with a man whom I love and it turned out that he was married.

“Yes,” she said aloud. “It gave me quite a turn.”

“Well, it's sure raised hell here,” said Mr. Rhodes. “The streets ain't fit to walk on these days. Full of newspaper reporters and tourists and just plain nosy people from over to White River. The trial's tomorrow. You goin’?”

“I imagine so,” said Allison. “Selena will probably need every friend she ever had tomorrow.”

Mr. Rhodes chuckled and it occurred to Allison that there was something obscene in the old man's laughter. “Ain't nobody really thinks she done it. Leastways, not by herself. Well, here's your house. Hold a minute and I'll give you a hand with your things.”

“Don't bother,” said Allison stepping out of the car. “Tom will come out for them.”

“Yep. Tom,” said Rhodes and chuckled again. “That Greek feller your mother married. How do you like having him for a father?”

Allison looked at him coldly. “My father is dead,” she said and walked up the walk in front of her house.

Constance and Tom jumped up in surprise as Allison walked through the front door and into the living room.

“Hello,” she said and stood there, pulling off her gloves.

They surrounded her and kissed her and asked her if she had eaten dinner.

“But darling, why didn't you let us know you were coming? Tom would have gone down to the station to pick you up.”

“Mr. Rhodes drove me home,” said Allison. “I had a sandwich on the train.”

“What's wrong?” cried Constance. “You're so white and you look exhausted. Are you ill?”

“Oh, for Heaven's sake, Mother,” said Allison impatiently. “I'm just tired. It's a long trip and it was hot on the train.”

“Would you like a drink?” asked Tom.

“Yes,” said Allison gratefully.

Something is wrong, thought Tom as he mixed a Tom Collins for Allison. Something has happened. She has the same look that she always had whenever she was running away from a disagreeable experience. A man?

“I tried to telephone you about Selena,” Constance was saying, “but that girl you share your apartment with said you were visiting someone in Brooklyn. What's that girl's name? I never can remember it.”

“Steve Wallace,” said Allison, “and I don't share my apartment with her. She shares her apartment with me.”

“Steve,” said Constance, “that's the name. Didn't you tell me that her actual name is Stephanie?”

“Yes,” replied Allison, “but no one ever calls her that. She hates it. Poor Steve. I hope she can find someone else to share her place. I'm not going back.”

“Is something wrong?” asked Constance at once.

“I told you, Mother. Nothing is wrong,” said Allison and burst into tears. “I'm just tired, and sick of New York. I just want to be left alone!”

“I'll go up and fix your bed,” said Constance who had never been able to cope with Allison's moods.

Tom sat down and lit a cigarette. “Can I help?” he asked.

Allison wiped her eyes and blew her nose; then she picked up her drink and gulped half of it down.

‘Yes,” she said in a tightly controlled voice. “You can help me. You can leave me the hell alone. Both of you. Or is that too much to ask?”

Tom stood up. “No,” he said gently, “that's not too much to ask. But try to remember that we love you, and we'd be glad to listen if you wanted to talk.”

“I'm going to bed,” said Allison and ran upstairs before she started to cry again.

But later Constance and Tom could hear her muffled sobs as they lay in bed.

“What's wrong?” asked Constance, frightened. “I should go to her.”

“Leave her alone,” said Tom putting a hand on his wife's arm.

But Constance could not sleep. Long after Tom slept she went silently to Allison's room.

“What's wrong?” she asked in a whisper. “Are you in trouble, dear?”

“Oh, Mother, don't be so stupid!” said Allison. “I'm not you. I'd never be so stupid as to let a man get me in trouble. Just leave me alone!”

And Constance, who had not meant pregnancy when she spoke of trouble, crept back to her bed and tried to warm herself against Tom's back.

The trial of Selena Cross began at nine o'clock on a warm June morning. It was held in a courtroom packed with townspeople and farmers, and it was presided over by Judge Anthony Aldridge. A stranger to Peyton Place might have looked around in panic on that particular morning, wondering if he could have miscalculated the day or month of the year, for Elm Street was as closed and deserted looking as it might have been on a Sunday or holiday. All the shops were closed, and the benches in front of the courthouse were empty of the old men who would usually have appeared as if rooted there, now that it was June. Selena's trial opened with what Thomas Delaney, of the Boston
Daily Record,
later described as “a bang.”

The “bang” to which Delaney referred came when Selena Cross repudiated her earlier confession and pleaded not guilty.

A girl who called herself Virginia Voorhees leaned toward Thomas Delaney. “Damn it,” she whispered hoarsely, “they're going to try to get away with temporary insanity.” Her name was not Virginia Voorhees, it was Stella Orbach, but she wrote articles for the Boston
American
Sunday supplement under the name of Virginia Voorhees. Her articles always bore the same title: “Was Justice Done?” She sighed dejectedly as Selena Cross sat down after pleading innocent to first degree murder. “Damn it,” she muttered, “there goes a good story.”

“Shut up, will you?” requested Delaney in a whisper, but Virginia Voorhees did not hear him above the surprised buzzing which filled the courtroom.

“Not guilty?” whispered Peyton Place.

“But she said she did it!”

“She knew where the body was buried!”

Charles Partridge, in his capacity as county attorney, was speaking against the noise. “It is not the duty of this office,” he was saying, “to prosecute the innocent, but to bring the guilty to justice.”

The lawyer's voice was soft, and his manner clearly apologetic for his presence in the courtroom at all. His words left no doubts in the minds of anyone that he was on Selena's side and that he hoped to help Peter Drake prove the girl's innocence.

“For Christ's sake,” mumbled the girl who called herself Virginia Voorhees, “this is turning into a fiasco. Have you ever heard anything like this?”

Behind Partridge, in a seat two rows from the front, Marion Partridge stirred restively, not listening to her husband's words.

It certainly showed ingratitude on Selena's part, thought Marion, when the girl deliberately set out to make Charles look foolish by changing her plea like that. Charles had worked hard on this case, it was his first murder trial, and he had spent a lot of time on it. Not that he had wanted to be the one to prosecute Selena; he definitely had not. In fact, thought Marion pursing her lips, it looked to her as if Charles had tried harder to find a loophole for Selena than Peter Drake had. But even so, Charles was the county attorney, and there was no excuse for murder, so he had to prosecute. Oh, Marion had tried to tell him. A murder trial which drew the publicity that this one had was bound to be the making of the county attorney. Especially when he had an airtight case. Selena had done it, and Selena had confessed, and the little ingrate needn't think that Charles Partridge was going to be taken in by an about-face at this late hour. It just went to show, thought Marion grimly, that the more you did for shack people, the less they appreciated it. The fact that Selena and Joey no longer lived in a place which could be termed a shack did not matter to Marion. Put people like the Crosses in Buckingham Palace, and they would still be shack people. Just look at that girl! All rigged up as if she were going to a dance.

Marion Partridge sniffed a little, for she had the beginnings of a summer cold, and she hated to keep using her handkerchief. She passed a casual forefinger under her nostrils and stared at Selena.

The girl was wearing a dress of lavender linen, which Marion was willing to bet cost at least twenty-five dollars, and a pair of sheer stockings which Marion immediately classified as black market nylon. Selena's shoes were new, and Marion wondered if the girl had used a wartime ration coupon to buy them, or whether Constance Makris had got them from a friendly salesman.

I always told Charles that Connie MacKenzie was no better than she should be, but he wouldn't listen. I guess he saw what was what when she began to carry on with that Makris fellow. Why, Anita Titus told me that the goings-on in that house were something terrible. I'll bet they had to get married. Connie must of had a miscarriage later. She and Selena were always too friendly to suit me. Well, what can you expect? Birds of a feather. Look at that girl! Earrings in court! Selena is the type who will cross her legs and hoist her skirts when she gets on the stand. The little ingrate, trying to make a fool of Charles. After all, I've been good to Selena. I hired her for odd jobs when she didn't have a cent, and I always tried to keep Nellie busy when Selena and Joey were younger. And look what we paid Lucas, God rest his soul, to build our kitchen cabinets. Outrageous, but we paid what he asked. You'd think that Selena would remember favors like that. Well, Charles will fix her. He'll see to it that she doesn't get away with murder. Charles will see her hanged before he lets her get away with anything like that!

”—To prove that Selena Cross struck down Lucas Cross in self-defense, and that her act, therefore, was one of justifiable homicide.”

Marion Partridge sat up straight in her seat as if someone had stuck a pin in her. It was Charles Partridge speaking, talking now of saving the state's money by foregoing a lengthy trial now that new evidence had come to light. Marion was bathed in the sweat of a hot flash.

But this is impossible, she thought frantically. He is throwing away his big chance. There is no new evidence. He would have told me beforehand. He's making it all up to save Selena's neck.

Marion took out her handkerchief and wiped her wet temples, and in that moment it came over her that Charles was in the throes of a violent love affair with his pretty young prisoner. She glanced around surreptitiously, and it seemed to her that people were smiling and casting sly looks in her direction. Feeling sorry for her because Charles had thrown away his chance to be written up in the law books because of his lust for Selena.