Let's All Kill Constance

"The basement dressing rooms," I said. "Snatch the pictures from upstairs, sure, but then wipe out the evidence of her former selves on the mirrors. Scrape, erase, eliminate, name by name, year by year."

I finished and sipped my drink and shut up.

"Is the train in Murder on the Orient Express pulling into the station?" said Fritz, lying back full-length like Caesar in his bath.

"Yes."

"Furthermore," said Fritz Wong in his fine Germanic guttural, "are you free to accept work on a screenplay titled The Many Deaths of Rattigan, starting Monday, five hundred a week, ten weeks, twenty thousand bonus if we finally shoot the goddamn film?"

"Take the money and run," said Henry.

"Crumley, you want me to take his offer?" I said.

"It's dumb thinking but a great film," said Crumley.

"You don't believe me?" I cried.

"Nobody could be as nuts as you just said," said Crumley.

"Good God, why have I stood here upchucking my guts?" I sank in my chair.

"I don't want to live," I said.

"Yes, you do." Fritz leaned forward, scribbling on a pad.

Five hundred a week was there.

He threw a five-dollar bill on top.

"Your first ten minutes' salary!"

"Then you almost believe? No." I pushed the paper away. "Got to be one of you here gets my idea."

"Me," a voice said.

We all looked at Blind Henry.

"Sign the contract," he said, "but make him sign saying he really believes every word you say!"

I hesitated, then scribbled my own manifesto.

Rumbling, Fritz signed.

"That Constance," he growled. "Damn! She shows up at your door, flings herself on you like a goddamn snake. Hell! Who cares if she kills herself? Why should she run scared of her own phone books and look up all the stupid people who led her down the garden path? Would phone books scare you? Christ, no! There had to be a reason for her setting out to run, to seek. Motivation. Why, goddammit, why all that work, to get what? Hold on."

Fritz stopped, his face suddenly pale, then slowly suffusing with color. "No. Yes. No, couldn't be. No. Yes. Is!"

"Is what, Fritz?"

"I'm glad I talk to myself," said Fritz. "I'm glad I listen. Did anyone hear?"

"You haven't said, Fritz."

"I'll talk to myself, and you eavesdrop, ja?"

"Ja," I said.

Fritz shot me through the heart with one glare. He doused his irritation with a swallow of his martini and said, "A month ago, two months, she threw herself across my desk, with heavy breaths. Was it true, she cried, I was starting some new film? A movie yet nameless? 'Ja,' I said. 'Yes, maybe.' And is there a part for me?' she said, on my shoulder, in my lap. 'No, no,' I said. 'Yes, there must be. There has to be. Tell me, Fritz, what is it?' I should have never told her. But I did, God help me!"

"What was the film, Fritz?"

"'What I'm pla

"Yes, but for God's sake, Fritz. Name the film!"

Fritz ignored me, staring through that monocle into the starry sky, still talking to himself while we eavesdropped.

"'You can't do it,' I said. She wept. 'Please,' she begged. ' Try me.' I said, 'Constance, it's something you can never be, something you never were.'" Fritz took another swig from his glass. "The Maid of Orleans."

"Joan of Arc!"

"'Oh, my God,' she cried. 'Joan! If it's the only thing I ever do, I must do that!'"

Must do that! came the echo.

Joan!

A voice cried in my ears. Rain fell. Water ran.

A dozen lighters took fire and were thrust out toward the sad, weeping woman.

"Only for my voices, I would lose all heart! The bells came down from heaven and their echoes linger in the fields. Through the quiet of the countryside, my voices!"

The subterranean audience gasped with: Joan.

Joan of Arc.

"Ohmigod, Fritz," I cried. "Say that again!"

"Saint Joan?"

I leaped back, my chair fell.

Fritz went on: "I said, 'Constance, it's too late.' She said, 'It's never too late.' And I said, 'Listen, I'll give you a test. If you pass, if you can do the scene from Shaw's Saint Joan… impossible, but if you can, you get the job.' She fell apart. She cried, 'Wait! I'm dying! Wait, I'll be back.' And she ran away."

I said, "Fritz, do you know what you've just said?"

"Gottdammit, yes! Saint Joan!"

"Oh, Christ, Fritz, don't you see? We've been thrown off by what she said to Father Rattigan. 'I've killed, I've murdered! Help me bury them,' she cried. We thought she meant old Rattigan up on Mount Lowe, Queen Califia on Bunker Hill, but no, dammit, she didn't murder them, she was out to get help to murder Constance!"

"How's that again?" said Crumley.

'"Help me kill Constance,' said Constance. Why? For Joan of Arc! That's the answer. She has to have that role. All this month she's been preparing for it. Isn't that it, Fritz?"

"Just a moment while I take my monocle out and put it back in." Fritz stared at me.

"Fritz, look! She's not right for the part. But there is one way she can be Saint Joan!"

"Dammit to hell, say it!"

"Dammit, Fritz, she had to get away from you, fall back, take a long, hard look at her life. She had to, one by one, kill all her selves, lay all the ghosts, so that when all those Constances were dead, she could come for her test, and maybe, just maybe, land the part. She hasn't had a role like that ever in her life. This was her big chance. And the only way she could do it was to kill the past. Don't you see, Fritz? That must be the answer to what's been going on during the last week, with all these people, with Constance appearing, disappearing, and reappearing again."

Fritz said, "No, no!"

I said, "Yes, yes. The answer's been lying right in front of us, but it's only when you said the name. Saint Joan is the motive for every woman who ever lived. Impossible dream. Can't be attained."

"I'll be gottdammed."

"Oh, no, Fritz!" I said. "Blessed! You've solved it! Now, if we find Constance and say to her, maybe, just maybe, she has a chance. Maybe, maybe-" I broke off. "Fritz," I said. "Answer me."

"What?"

"If Constance should suddenly appear as the Maid of Orleans, if she were incredibly young, changed in some strange way, would you give her the job?"

Fritz scowled. "Don't push me, dammit!"

I said, "I'm not. Look. Was there ever a time when she could have played the Maid?"

"Yes," he said after a moment. "But that was then and this is now!"

"Hear me out. What if, by some miracle, she should show up? When you think of her, just standing there, don't think of her past at all. When you remember the woman you once knew, if she asked, would you give her the role?"

Fritz pondered, took his glass, downed it, refilled it from a frosted crystal pitcher, and then said, "God help me, I think I might. Don't press me, don't press!"

"Fritz," I said, "if we could find that Constance and she asked you, would you at least consider taking a chance on her?"

"Oh, God," Fritz rumbled. "Jesus! Yes! No! I don't know!"