The Other Side of Midnight Read online

  Demiris sat in his richly paneled library now, relaxed in a deep armchair, smoking one of the flat-shaped Egyptian cigarettes especially blended for him, thinking about the trial that would begin in the morning. The press had been trying to get to him for months, but he had simply made himself unavailable. It was enough that his mistress was going to be tried for murder, enough that his name would be dragged into the case, even indirectly. He refused to add to the furor by granting any interviews. He wondered what Noelle was feeling now, at this moment, in her cell in the Nikodemous Street Prison. Was she asleep? Awake? Filled with panic at the ordeal that lay before her? He thought of his last conversation with Napoleon Chotas. He trusted Chotas and knew that the lawyer would not fail him. Demiris had impressed upon the attorney that it did not matter to him whether Noelle was innocent or guilty. Chotas was to see to it that he earned every penny of the stupendous fee that Constantin Demiris was paying him to defend her. No, he had no reason to worry. The trial would go well. Because Constantin Demiris was a man who never forgot anything, he remembered that Catherine Douglas' favorite flowers were Triantafylias, the beautiful roses of Greece. He reached forward and picked up a note pad from his desk. He made a notation. Triantafylias. Catherine Douglas.

  It was the least he could do for her.

  Book One

  CATHERINE

  Chicago: 1919-1939

  1

  Every large city has a distinctive image, a personality that gives it its own special cachet. Chicago in the 1920's was a restless, dynamic giant, crude and without manners, one booted foot still in the ruthless era of the tycoons who helped give birth to it: William B. Ogden and John Wentworth, Cyrus McCormick and George M. Pullman. It was a kingdom that belonged to the Philip Armours and Gustavus Swifts and Marshall Fields. It was the domain of cool professional gangsters like Hymie Weiss and Scarf ace Al Capone.

  One of Catherine Alexander's earliest memories was of her father taking her into a bar with a sawdust-covered floor and swinging her up to the dizzyingly high stool. He ordered an enormous glass of beer for himself and a Green River for her. She was five years old, and she remembered how proud her father was as strangers crowded around to admire her. All the men ordered drinks and her father paid for them. She recalled how she had kept pressing her body against his arm to make sure he was still there. He had only returned to town the night before, and Catherine knew that he would soon leave again. He was a traveling salesman, and he had explained to her that his work took him to distant cities and he had to be away from her and her mother for months at a time so that he could bring back nice presents. Catherine had desperately tried to make a deal with him. If he would stay with her, she would give up the presents. Her father had laughed and said what a precocious child she was and then had left town, and it was six months before she saw him again. During those early years her mother whom she saw every day seemed a vague, shapeless personality, while her father, whom she saw only on brief occasions, was vivid and wonderfully clear. Catherine thought of him as a handsome, laughing man, full of sparkling humor and warm, generous gestures. The occasions when he came home were like holidays, full of treats and presents and surprises.

  When Catherine was seven, her father was fired from his job, and their life took on a new pattern. They left Chicago and moved to Gary, Indiana, where he went to work as a salesman in a jewelry store. Catherine was enrolled in her first school. She had a wary, arms-length relationship with the other children and was terrified of her teachers, who misinterpreted her lonely standoffishness as conceit. Her father came home to dinner every night, and for the first time in her life Catherine felt that they were a real family, like other families. On Sunday the three of them would go to Miller Beach and rent horses and ride for an hour or two along the sand dunes. Catherine enjoyed living in Gary, but six months after they moved there, her father lost his job again and they moved to Harvey, a suburb of Chicago. School was already in session, and Catherine was the new girl, shut out from the friendships that had already been formed. She became known as a loner. The children, secure in the safety of their own groups, would come up to the gangly newcomer and ridicule her cruelly.

  During the next few years Catherine donned an armor of indifference, which she wore as a shield against the attacks of the other children. When the armor was pierced, she struck back with a trenchant, caustic wit. Her intention was to alienate her tormentors so that they would leave her alone, but it had an unexpectedly different effect. She worked on the school paper, and in her first review about a musical that her classmates had staged, she wrote, "Tommy Belden had a trumpet solo in the second act, but he blew it." The line was widely quoted, and--surprise of surprises--Tommy Belden came up to her in the hall the next day and told Catherine that he thought it was funny.

  In English the students were assigned Captain Horatio Hornblower to read. Catherine hated it. Her book report consisted of one sentence: "His barque was worse than his bight," and her teacher, who was a weekend sailor, gave her an "A." Her classmates began to quote her remarks and in a short time she was known as the school wit.

  That year Catherine turned fourteen and her body was beginning to show the promise of a ripening woman. She would examine herself in the mirror for hours on end, brooding about how to change the disaster she saw reflected. Inside she was Myrna Loy, driving men mad with her beauty, but her mirror--which was her bitter enemy--showed hopelessly tangled black hair that was impossible to manage, solemn gray eyes, a mouth that seemed to grow wider by the hour and a nose that was slightly turned up. Maybe she wasn't really ugly, she told herself cautiously, but on the other hand no one was going to knock down doors to sign her up as a movie star. Sucking in her cheeks and squinting her eyes sexily she tried to visualize herself as a model. It was depressing. She struck another pose. Eyes open wide, expression eager, a big friendly smile. No use. She wasn't the All-American type either. She wasn't anything. Her body was going to be all right, she dourly supposed, but nothing special. And that, of course, was what she wanted more than anything in the world: to be something special, to be Somebody, to be Remembered, and never, never, never, never, to die.

  The summer she was fifteen, Catherine came across Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy and for the next two weeks she spent an hour a day before her mirror, willing her reflection to become beautiful. At the end of that time the only change she could detect was a new patch of acne on her chin and a pimple on her forehead. She gave up sweets, Mary Baker Eddy and looking in the mirror.

  Catherine and her family had moved back to Chicago and settled in a small, dreary apartment on the north side, in Rogers Park, where the rent was cheap. The country was moving deeper into an economic depression. Catherine's father was working less and drinking more, and he and her mother were constantly yelling at each other in a never-ending series of recriminations that drove Catherine out of the house. She would go down to the beach half a dozen blocks away and walk along the shore, letting the brisk wind give wings to her thin body. She spent long hours staring at the restless gray lake, filled with some desperate longing to which she could not put a name. She wanted something so much that at times it would engulf her in a sudden wave of unbearable pain.

  Catherine had discovered Thomas Wolfe, and his books were like a mirror image of the bittersweet nostalgia that filled her, but it was a nostalgia for a future that had not happened yet, as though somewhere, sometime, she had lived a wonderful life and was restless to live it again. She had begun to have her periods, and while she was physically changing into a woman, she knew that her needs, her longings, this aching-wanting was not physical and had nothing to do with sex. It was a fierce and urgent longing to be recognized, to lift herself above the billions of people who teemed the earth, so everyone would know who she was, so when she walked by, they would say, "There goes Catherine Alexander, the great--" The great what? There was the problem. She did not know what she wanted, only that she ached desperately for it. On Saturday afternoons whenev
er she had enough money, she would go to the State and Lake Theater or to the McVickers or the Chicago, and see movies. She would completely lose herself in the wonderful, sophisticated world of Cary Grant and Jean Arthur, laugh with Wallace Beery and Marie Dressier and agonize over Bette Davis' romantic disasters. She felt closer to Irene Dunne than to her mother.

  Catherine was in her senior year at Senn High School and her archenemy, the mirror, had finally become her friend. The girl in the mirror had a lively, interesting face. Her hair was raven black and her skin a soft, creamy white. Her features were regular and fine, with a generous, sensitive mouth and intelligent gray eyes. She had a good figure with firm, well-developed breasts, gently curving hips and shapely legs. There was an air of aloofness about her image, a hauteur that Catherine did not feel, as though her reflection possessed a characteristic that she did not. She supposed that it was part of the protective armor she had worn since her early school days.

  The Depression had clutched the nation in a tighter and tighter vise, and Catherine's father was incessantly involved in big deals that never seemed to materialize. He was constantly spinning dreams, inventing things that were going to bring in millions of dollars. He devised a set of jacks that fitted above the wheels of an automobile and could be lowered by the touch of a button on the dashboard. None of the automobile manufacturers was interested. He worked out a continuously rotating electric sign to carry advertisements inside stores. There was a brief flurry of optimistic meetings and then the idea faded away.

  He borrowed money from his younger brother, Ralph, in Omaha to outfit a shoe-repair truck to travel around the neighborhood. He spent hours discussing the scheme with Catherine and her mother. "It can't fail," he explained. "Imagine having the shoemaker coming to your door! No one's ever done it before. I have one Shoe-mobile out now, right? If it only makes twenty dollars a day, that's a hundred and twenty dollars a week. Two trucks will bring in two hundred and forty a week. Within a year I'll have twenty trucks. That's two thousand four hundred dollars a week. A hundred and twenty-five thousand a year. And that's only the beginning..." Two months later the shoemaker and the truck disappeared, and that was the end of another dream.

  Catherine had hoped to be able to go to Northwestern University. She was the top scholar in her class, but even on a scholarship college would be difficult to manage, and the day was coming, Catherine knew, when she would have to quit school and go to work full time. She would get a job as a secretary, but she was determined that she would never surrender the dream that was going to give such rich, wonderful meaning to her life; and the fact that she did not know what either the dream or the meaning was made it all the more unbearably sad and futile. She told herself that she was probably going through adolescence. Whatever it was, it was hell. Kids are too young to have to go through adolescence, she thought bitterly.

  There were two boys who thought they were in love with Catherine. One was Tony Korman who was going to join his father's law firm one day and who was a foot shorter than Catherine. He had pasty skin and myopic watery eyes that adored her. The other was Dean McDermott, who was fat and shy and wanted to be a dentist. Then of course, there was Ron Peterson, but he was in a category by himself. Ron was Senn High's football star, and everybody said he was a cinch to go to college on an athletic scholarship. He was tall and broad-shouldered, had the looks of a matinee idol and was easily the most popular boy in school.

  The only thing that kept Catherine from instantly getting engaged to Ron was the fact that he was not aware she was alive. Every time she passed him in the school corridor, her heart would begin to pound wildly. She would think up something clever and provocative to say so he would ask her for a date. But when she approached him, her tongue would stiffen, and they would pass each other in silence. Like the Queen Mary and a garbage scow, Catherine thought hopelessly.

  The financial problem was becoming acute. The rent was three months overdue, and the only reason they had not been evicted was that the landlady was captivated by Catherine's father and his grandiose plans and inventions. Listening to him, Catherine was filled with a poignant sadness. He was still his cheerful, optimistic self, but she could see behind the frayed facade. The marvelous, careless charm that had always given a patina of gaiety to everything he did had eroded. He reminded Catherine of a small boy in a middle-aged man's body spinning tales of the glorious future to hide the shabby failures of the past. More than once she had seen him give a dinner party for a dozen people at Henrici's and then cheerfully take one of his guests aside and borrow enough to cover the check plus a lavish tip, of course. Always lavish, for he had his reputation to maintain. But in spite of all these things and in spite of the fact that Catherine knew that he had been a casual and indifferent father to her, she loved this man. She loved his enthusiasm and smiling energy in a world of frowning, sullen people. This was his gift, and he had always been generous with it.

  In the end, Catherine thought, he was better off with his wonderful dreams that would never materialize, than her mother who was afraid to dream.

  In April Catherine's mother died of a heart attack. It was Catherine's first confrontation with death. Friends and neighbors filled the little apartment, offering their condolences, with the false, whispered pieties that tragedy invokes.

  Death had diminished Catherine's mother to a tiny shriveled figure without juices or vitality, or perhaps life had done that to her, Catherine thought. She tried to recall memories that she and her mother had shared, laughter that they had had together, moments when their hearts had touched; but it was Catherine's father who kept leaping into her mind, smiling and eager and gay. It was as though her mother's life was a pale shadow that retreated before the sunlight of memory. Catherine stared at the waxen figure of her mother in her casket, dressed in a simple black dress with a white collar, and thought what a wasted life it had been. What had it all been for? The feelings Catherine had had years ago came over her again, the determination to be somebody, leave a mark on the world, so she would not end up in an anonymous grave with the world neither knowing nor caring that Catherine Alexander had ever lived and died and been returned to the earth.

  Catherine's Uncle Ralph and his wife, Pauline, flew in from Omaha for the funeral. Ralph was ten years younger than Catherine's father and totally unlike his brother. He was in the vitamin mail-order business and very successful. He was a large, square man, square shoulders, square jaw, square chin, and, Catherine was sure, a square mind. His wife was a bird of a woman, all flutter and twitter. They were decent enough people, and Catherine knew that her uncle had loaned a great deal of money to his brother, but Catherine felt that she had nothing in common with them. Like Catherine's mother, they were people without dreams.

  After the funeral, Uncle Ralph said that he wanted to talk to Catherine and her father. They sat in the tiny living room of the apartment, Pauline flitting about with trays of coffee and cookies.

  "I know things have been pretty rough for you financially," Uncle Ralph said to his brother. "You're too much of a dreamer, always were. But you're my brother. I can't let you sink. Pauline and I talked it over. I want you to come to work for me."

  "In Omaha?"

  "You'll make a good, steady living and you and Catherine can live with us. We have a big house."

  Catherine's heart sank. Omaha! It was the end of all her dreams.

  "Let me think it over," her father was saying.

  "We'll be catching the six o'clock train," Uncle Ralph replied. "Let me know before we leave."

  When Catherine and her father were alone, he groaned, "Omaha! I'll bet the place doesn't even have a decent barber shop."

  But Catherine knew that the act he was putting on was for her benefit. Decent barber shop or no, he had no choice. Life had finally trapped him. She wondered what it would do to his spirit to have to settle down to a steady, dull job with regular hours. He would be like a captured wild bird beating his wings against his cage, dying of captivity. As for h
erself, she would have to forget about going to Northwestern University. She had applied for a scholarship but had heard nothing. That afternoon her father telephoned his brother to say that he would take the job.

  The next morning Catherine went to see the principal to tell him that she was going to transfer to a school in Omaha. He was standing behind his desk and before she could speak, he said, "Congratulations, Catherine, you've just won a full scholarship to Northwestern University."

  Catherine and her father discussed it thoroughly that night, and in the end it was decided that he would move to Omaha and Catherine would go to Northwestern and live in one of the dormitories on the campus. And so, ten days later, Catherine took her father down to the La Salle Street station to see him off. She was filled with a deep sense of loneliness at his departure, a sadness at saying good-bye to the person she loved the most; and yet at the same time she was eager for the train to leave, filled with a delicious excitement at the thought that she would be free, living her own life for the first time. She stood on the platform watching the face of her father pressing against the train window for a last look; a shabbily handsome man who still truly believed that one day he would own the world.

  On the way back from the station Catherine remembered something and laughed aloud. To take him to Omaha, to a desperately needed job, her father had booked a Drawing Room.

  Matriculation day at Northwestern was filled with an almost unbearable excitement. For Catherine it held a special significance that she could not put into words: It was the key that would unlock the door to all the dreams and nameless ambitions that had burned so fiercely within her for so long. She looked around the huge assembly hall where hundreds of students were lined up to register, and she thought: Someday you'll all know who I am. You'll say, "I went to school with Catherine Alexander." She signed up for the maximum number of allowed courses and was assigned to a dormitory. That same morning she found a job working afternoons as a cashier at the Roost, a popular sandwich and malt shop across from the campus. Her salary was fifteen dollars a week, and while it would not afford her any luxuries, it would take care of her school books and basic necessities.