Page 119 of The Other Lady Vanishes

Chapter 53

For some bizarre reason, Adelaide’s first thought was that Vera looked like the movie star she was, as if she was acting the role of a desperate woman who was prepared to kill. But the gun in her hand was all too real.

She was fashionably dressed in a pair of trousers, a snug-fitting sweater, and a pair of blue and white oxfords. For once she was not wearing her trademark monochromatic color scheme. Her hair was mostly concealed beneath a scarf that was knotted under her chin. She wore a pair of dark glasses that were probably designed to make her appear anonymous but which only called attention to the profile of the most beautiful woman in Hollywood.

Adelaide stared at the gun, transfixed for a couple of heartbeats.

“I always wondered what happened to Patient A,” she said. “Why don’t you come in and have some tea. We have a lot to talk about, don’t we?”

Vera moved through the doorway and stopped. She glanced at the hatbox.

“You found my Rushbrook files, didn’t you?” she said.

“Yes. Zolanda had them.”

“That bitch. After I drugged her, she said she wanted to tell me a secret. I asked her what that was. She laughed hysterically and said that she had my Rushbrook files. She said she had planned to hold them until my career was at its height and then demand a fortune for them. I was stunned. I had assumed the files were still safe at Rushbrook. I asked her where she kept them but by then she was no longer making sense. She told me the truth but only part of it. She said the files were in a hatbox, but she never said where the damned hatbox was located.”

“Daydream is very problematic when used as a truth serum,” Adelaide said.

Vera made a small sound of disgust. “Evidently that’s especially true when it’s combined with booze, because I sure couldn’t get a straight answer out of Zolanda that night. After she went off the roof, I searched the villa. When I didn’t find the files, I dared to hope that they had been a figment of Zolanda’s hallucinations. I was wrong, obviously.”

“Zolanda had help going off that roof, didn’t she?” Adelaide said. “You told her that an important director was in the audience and that he was looking for a fresh face to play the role of a psychic.”

“I wrote the whole damned script for her last prediction,” Vera said softly.

“How did you convince her that you were going to make her big dream come true? She had no reason to trust you. After all, she had betrayed you in the worst possible way.”

Vera smiled a humorless smile. “Zolanda was a good actress but I’m better. I allowed her to think that I was grateful to her for taking me to Rushbrook. I let her believe that I didn’t remember the rapes and the hallucinations, that I was sure the drug had actually cured me. I even convinced her that I was obsessed with Paxton. When I told Zolandathat I wanted to repay her by arranging for a famous director to see her act onstage, she bought the whole story.”

“You’re right,” Adelaide said, “you really are a brilliant actress. But you also had one big advantage, didn’t you? Zolanda desperately wanted to believe you.”

“It was pathetic, really. After the performance I called her to tell her that I had some good news but that I needed to give her the details privately because everything about Holton’s next film is a secret. I told her that she should make sure her assistant was not around.”

“When Leggett was out of the way, you went to the villa.”

“Zolanda was thrilled,” Vera said. “I told her that the director had left the theater looking for a phone. He wanted to call his secretary immediately and tell her to make an appointment for a screen test for the psychic to the stars.”

“Zolanda believed every word you said because she wanted to believe that she was going to become a star.”

“We grew up in the same small town. We traveled to Hollywood on the same train. We stayed in the same shabby boardinghouses while we tried to get those first screen tests. I made it but Zolanda didn’t. Yes, I was offering her the one thing she craved more than anything else in the world.”

“She was jealous of you.”

“You could sayinsanelyjealous.” Vera’s eyes were bleak. “But it took me a while to realize that. As I told you, she was a good actress. I’ll give her that much. She just didn’t have the look the directors want. I knew she was making money with her psychic routine. I thought she was content. I never understood the depths of her hatred and jealousy until the night she took me to the Rushbrook Sanitarium and handed me over to those two monsters, Gill and Paxton.”

“The paperwork says you signed the voluntary commitment papers.”

“I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown,” Vera said. “The gossip magazines had declared me the most beautiful woman in Hollywood.Thanks toDark RoadI was an overnight star. I should have been on top of the world. I had everything I could want, but I was more depressed and anxious than I had ever been in my life. I was contemplating suicide.”

“But you didn’t want the studio to know.”

“I didn’t dare let them think that I was mentally unstable. I couldn’t see a doctor in Los Angeles, let alone check myself into a hospital for treatment. There are no secrets in that town. So I called the woman I believed was still my best friend from the old days, the one person I thought I could trust.”

“You called Zolanda.”

“She picked me up at my home and drove me all the way to Rushbrook.”

“She knew all about the Rushbrook Sanitarium because she was dealing drugs for Paxton and Gill,” Adelaide said.

---