Chocolate Cobweb

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “Oh, I didn’t mean …”

  “You couldn’t know how many wives there’d been or in what order, my dear. I realize. Nor did you look the fool you felt.”

  Mandy’s eyes filled with tears.

  “Now, there,” said Fanny. “I thought I’d tell you. Tobias is pleased, I assure you. He feels a bond. You made him remember a very high point in his life. That’s all that ailed him. My girl will stir us up a little food, right here. We can be comfortable.”

  Mandy mopped her eyes. She said, muffled in the handkerchief, “I think you’re wonderful!”

  “Well, say it loud!” crowed Fanny. “Of course I’m wonderful! And I’m getting old and I like to hear it. I shan’t hear through the sod, you know, or smell my pretty flowers.” She patted Mandy’s knee. “Who buys your clothes?”

  “I do.” Mandy was wearing a rosy pink dress, cut simply from thin wool, trimmed with silver buttons, and over it a paler pink short belted fuzzy coat. Black kid round-toed, flat-heeled shoes on her feet and a black kid bag swung on her shoulder.

  “You’re very clever,” said Fanny. She herself was in emerald green, like a parrot.

  “I’m going to be a designer,” Mandy told her. “Not clothes. Fabrics.”

  “Mmmm.” Fanny’s eyes dimmed. She was looking into the past. “Dearest Belle, when I first knew her, wore such dull things. Always beige or gray or black. Then, after she married Toby, how she blossomed! I remember her clothes. When I saw her last, in New York, there was an outfit of forest green with red-brown, perfect to the last detail. She wore it like a costume. Always the hat, the shoes, the scarf. She never varied it. She had a rosy ball gown, rose and gold, and a golden rose for her hair. And there was a slate-blue dress with a purple jacket, impossible! But just right. I can see her gloves. I asked her once. A woman in a shop did those things for her. Belle herself didn’t care, but Toby liked it, so she wore what he liked. Always just so, the same necklace with the same gown, designed together.” Her eyes came back. “You want to hear about Belle, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yes! About all of them.”

  “Tobias married Ione long, long ago, when they were both young. Her name was Philips. He had a little money, so he could afford to paint, and he worked very hard, I think. When at last he began to be known, they bought that canyon house. It was nearly alone on the mountain, then. I forget who built it. Some mad soul. And they lived along.

  “I’ve known them since 1919. Tobias painted my picture. We liked each other heartily. I introduced him to Belle in 1922. Belle Thone.”

  “What did she do?” asked Mandy.

  “Do? Belle? She toiled not, neither did she spin.” Fanny swayed in the chair. “She didn’t do. She was. I wish I could show you Belle. She was a rare creature. Something she was made it enough just to be with her. Beauty? Yes, she was lovely to see. Many a movie chap thought he’d put her on the screen and reap his millions. But she didn’t photograph, they found. Actually, it wasn’t her looks at all. It wasn’t her mind, although she had a mind that ranged and wondered and responded, magically. You could say anything to Belle. Anything at all! And you knew that, immediately. I suppose,” mused Fanny, “it was what we call spirit, because that’s the only word there is and it’s sufficiently vague.

  “Anyhow, I loved her. Everybody was drawn to her. And she never seemed to try, or even to close her hand to hold you. It wasn’t that she pulled. It was as if something pushed you from behind and you went helplessly toward Belle, though she herself was free. Free even from the responsibility of having pulled at you. I’m being very obscure, my dear. I like to try to say it. However, to descend a little, she was quite rich. She was an heiress and an orphan. Such an advantage!

  “Oh, young men in droves wanted to marry her. But she was twenty-eight before she married.

  “Tobias had a wife already and it wasn’t that he didn’t care for Ione. He did and he does. But Ione … isn’t careable-about.… Now, there’s a phrase for you!” Fanny stopped and frowned. “Of course,” she went on in a moment, “I worshiped Belle. So did Toby. He fell on his knees. The worst thing about it, Belle did the same thing. Something magically deep and close, I think, began to flow between them, instantly. It happened like lightning. He painted ‘Belle in the Doorway’.”

  “I understand,” said Mandy.

  “Yes.” Fanny conceded that she understood. “So that’s the way it was. So he and Ione were divorced. There were no children. Oh, it was very, very tough for Ione, you know. I do admire the way she took it.”

  Mandy said, puzzled, “She just stepped out?”

  Fanny looked thoughtful. “Now, Ione is a possessive woman,” she said. “You’ll notice that. What’s hers is hers.”

  I have noticed, thought Mandy. She remembered the catalogue, the fountain pen.

  “And that must have made it even harder,” Fanny went on, “for her to do what she did. They let me know the trouble they were in, of course. I loved them all. So I was—in it. I was here on the coast that winter. Oh, she felt it bitterly, I know. And so did Toby. It nearly killed him. And so did Belle. Yet, of three anguished people, Ione seemed the least distressed. Perhaps she was stunned.

  “There was only once I thought she’d split—I thought she’d burst with her hurt and her pain. It was one afternoon. But, do you know, she—Something happened that day. She clamped down, as if the iron entered her soul. I saw it … lock. I will always remember.”

  Fanny’s face was changing. It was wild and anguished for a moment and then it closed. The mimicry was exquisite. Amanda, in one vivid glimpse, saw Ione’s face that day.

  “So she let him go,” said Fanny, “not without grace, either. The divorce went through. Ione had an accident about this time. An auto struck her in the street. Tobias poured out every cent he had; he gave her all of it. She lay in a hospital for months. Lay quietly. I saw her. I was so sorry. But Tobias and Belle, with Belle’s money, I suppose, went East.”

  “That’s why they were there when—in 1924—”

  “Yes, when Thone was born. When you were born, my dear.”

  “Isn’t Thone … like his mother?” asked Mandy painfully.

  “Not in looks at all,” said Fanny judiciously. “In charm? Whatever it was? Yes, maybe. But it’s not Belle! Not her own! Oh, you don’t know. You never saw her alive.”

  Fanny drew her little body out of the chair. “She would stand,” said Fanny, and suddenly she was taller and all grace, “she would turn her foot …” The actress turned her foot and then her arm swung over until her Tight hand rested on the left side of her neck. She nestled her chin against it. “She would do this,” said Fanny, “all dreamy-eyed, and everybody would wait, while Belle remembered. It’s a corny gesture, isn’t it?”

  “No. No, I see!” said Mandy.

  Fanny’s eyes kindled. “And when she didn’t follow what you were saying, when she didn’t understand your thought, she’d drop her head and close her eyes and put her hands flat along her cheeks.” Fanny was doing what she described. Finger tips at her temples. “And you’d wait. Then Belle would lift her face and drop her hands and open her smiling eyes and say, ‘I see!’ And you’d be delighted! Delighted!

  “She would sit in a chair,” said Fanny, sitting. “She was always lithe and young to the day she died. She would sit and clasp her hands around her knees with her ankles crossed, and her feet wouldn’t touch the floor. Alert, back straight, balanced. You see?”

  Fanny dropped the pose. “I think skirts were longer.” She brooded a minute. “Sometimes she would laugh without a sound.” The marvelous old face wreathed in a smile, the chin tipped slowly up, and the head went back. Belle’s ghost, in Fanny’s chair, laughed without sound.

  “Oh, my bag of tricks,” said Fanny, suddenly sullen, “won’t bring her back.”

  “But you—you do,” gasped Mandy. “Mr. Garrison must have painted her often.”

  “Oh, he did, and he didn’t. Most of those things he did in the islands
have been sold. He only cares for one, you see. ‘Belle in the Doorway’.”

  “But she … Is it true that Belle didn’t like it?” Mandy squeaked with surprise. “Thone said …”

  “I think that is true. She liked the one Thone keeps. That’s why he keeps it. Belle wasn’t awfully keen on painting. She let it alone. It was her husband’s business. I never heard her criticize or praise. He never asked her to, that I heard.”

  “Does—is Thone a painter?”

  “No. No, he’s not. No interest, as far as I know. He’s studying with an architect. Thone has Belle’s money, you see, my dear. Belle made no will.” Fanny’s lips writhed. “She had no time. But Toby kept it all in trust for him. Quite a lot of money it is, still.”

  Fanny’s glance became both shrewd and kind. “Also, he is a very attractive young man, especially to girls. He had a most unfortunate experience. I think perhaps if I tell you … Once, a year ago, some little fool he’d taken around jumped from her father’s office window. It was a pretty dreadful thing.”

  “How terrible!” gasped Mandy.

  “Yes, too bad. Too bad. It’s made him unnaturally wary and suspicious. He knows, of course—he concedes that although she died, poor little soul, and the worms are eating her, it was not for love. But, you see, she wrote a letter to his father. She left a note. Poor miserable, confused little fool!” Fanny exploded. “I suppose it was a blind revenge. Somebody else was going to have to feel bad … made no difference who. Oh, people, people! I do despair!” Fanny clasped her hands.

  “Poor Thone. It changed him. Now he doesn’t dare be as friendly and gay as he might want to be with his own generation. He didn’t care for that girl, but she wrapped up all her woes and put them on his head. So he can’t help wondering if, as he took her around, just playfully, just for fun, he somehow allowed her to expect too much. It’s what she wrote. The little idiot! It hurt him and it frightened him. He can’t entirely absolve himself. And, besides, quite naturally, he does wonder what goes on inside the mysterious heads of silly young girls.”

  “He isn’t m-married?” stammered Mandy.

  “Heavens, no. Furthermore, I should venture to say,” said Fanny boldly, “he’ll do no experimenting with friendship for a while yet. There’ll be nothing tentative, no feelers out for love. He’ll take no chances, Amanda. No girl will know if Thone cares for her company until, suddenly, when he’s certain, there he’ll be.”

  Mandy felt the color in her face. She said simply, “I’m glad you told me. I was all ready to experiment with friendship. He is very attractive.”

  “Of course he is. Of course you were. Naturally,” said Fanny, beaming and nodding. “Ah, our lunch is coming in.”

  Mandy woke out of the spell the old lady had woven and remembered suddenly why she’d come. They sat at a little round table and Fanny served a salad daintily.

  Amanda said uneasily, “Everybody likes Thone?”

  “Oh, yes, indeed,” said Fanny, twinkling at her. “Elsie and Burt idolize him. His father worships him. I’m head over heels in love with the boy myself. I don’t know how they felt about him in the Army, of course.” She made a face, laughing.

  “Who are Elsie and Burt?”

  “The couple up there. The servants.”

  “You’ve left out Ione.”

  “So I have,” said Fanny, frowning a little. “But of course, she likes him. After all, she hardly knows him. You see, Belle died, and Thone and Tobias were heartsick. They had to plunge into some kind of life, and not the same kind, either. One young, only seventeen. The other getting old. Well, Ione rallied around and Toby needed her badly, badly.…

  “I’m sure Thone saw the lay of the land. He was at school. He nipped off and wiggled into the service. He’s been away from home nearly all the time since they’ve remarried.”

  “When did Belle die?”

  “She died out here, after they came back. They went off to the islands and foreign parts when Thone was four. It was rumors of war that brought them back again. Let’s see. In 1941 they were in New York and so was I. In 1941, that fall, before our war, they came back to the canyon house. Thone was seventeen. Tobias was fifty-nine. Belle was forty-seven when she died.”

  “In the canyon house!” gasped Mandy.

  “Oh, yes, my dear. When I think,” said Fanny, “of Belle’s death in that particularly stupid accident, I am like whoever it was who put it in a poem. I am not reconciled. At least I wasn’t,” she went on. “I was enraged with Providence for years. Now … well, we can remember her alive. She rests and we remember. And all goes well enough without her.” The actress brooded.

  Amanda said, “Accident?”

  Fanny whipped herself to attention. “And I shan’t enjoy telling you this part,” she snapped, “but I intend to tell you all of it. Tobias has a stupid habit. He gets himself wound up periodically. Mind and imagination will not stop. He cannot sleep. He gets more tired and more tense. It spins up like a spiral. So he takes to chloral hydrate. After his dinner, every evening, a moderate dose. Nothing in the least dangerous. His heart is strong. He goes to bed early, then, and in a week or so he has broken up the tension and then he we ns himself from the drug.

  “Well, one night somebody telephoned the house with news of a lost picture. Tobias wanted it back most desperately. Whoever called had it, would give it up. I don’t know.… Anyhow, it so happened that only Belle was fit to go on this errand. Tobias had a mean cold. Elsie and Burt were off. It was a Thursday. Thone, poor kid, had a busted bone in his foot and was in a cast.

  “So Belle would go. She was never afraid. Nobody thought she should be afraid.

  “They called her a cab.

  “Now, this is the maddening stupid thing. Belle never drove their car if she could help it. She didn’t even have a driver’s license. If she had gone in the cab, then the fact that somehow, some way—nobody knows—she’d got a dose of Toby’s chloral wouldn’t have mattered. She’d have passed out in the cab. But she wouldn’t have died!

  “No,” said Fanny bitterly, “on this night, this wicked night, for some reason we can’t even guess, Belle chose to drive herself. To change her mind, dismiss the cab, and go down alone, down the terraces in back to the garage, the only one they had then. The single garage at the bottom of the canyon on the lower road.

  “So she opened the doors and started the car, and the tricky hooks on the doors weren’t good. The doors blew closed. She must have got out, leaving the motor running, to jam the doors open again. But the chloral …

  “She slumped down, she was on the floor, right under the exhaust. The doors stayed closed or blew again, who knows? They began to worry hours later. They didn’t find her until almost morning.”

  “Oh …” moaned Mandy.

  “He never got the stupid picture back, either,” said Fanny viciously and clicked her teeth.

  “Well,” she went on in a minute, “I came as fast as I could. Ione was around.”

  “She … was?”

  “Oh, yes. She’d been here all these years. I saw her now and again as I flitted through. She went into real estate and was a very successful businesswoman. You wouldn’t think so, but she was. Still with that iron determination not to break. But when Belle was gone she came straight to Toby and he leaned on her. And she took care of everything.”

  And got him back, got her own back, thought Mandy. She said aloud, fearfully, “I suppose they were always … sure it was an accident?”

  “Yes, yes.” Fanny was not shocked. She herself had once taken this line of thought.

  “But … Ione couldn’t have … liked Belle.”

  “No,” said Fanny. “Yet, it isn’t that that keeps us from speaking of Belle before her. You must know this. Ione would listen calmly enough. But Toby knows what he did to her, you see, and there is his guilt, which makes him uncomfortable. Besides,” she added impatiently, “though she might be willing, Ione can’t talk about Belle. She never knew her. And hers is such a little
tense and limited mind. It’s small and full of details. If Toby stays within her bounds too much, why, that’s the price he pays because he needs her.”

  “I don’t understand her,” Amanda said tremulously. “She—”

  But Fanny looked stern. “My dear, Ione behaved admirably. And believe me, she had nothing to do with the accident to Belle. That’s sure. She wasn’t there. Not in the house, you see. Oh, she had called on them, I think. After they came home. Being very sporting. But, my dear, all those years! Oh, no, no. She’s too little, Amanda, for so grand a passion. Besides, it wasn’t possible.”

  Amanda stared into her tea. She thought, Who knew there was poison in the chocolate? Ione knew it! How did she know? Because she put it there. Not his father, not the servants, not Fanny, but Ione had a reason. Ione must have at least disliked Belle, and this was Belle’s son. Oh, yes, it must be that she knew it was there because she’d put it there. She didn’t want it found, not even on the handkerchief. It’s plain she knew the poison was there. She didn’t want it … used.

  She must have changed her mind.

  Why did she change her mind? A rocket burst in Mandy’s head. On account of me! Because, suddenly, I appear! Maybe Thone isn’t Belle’s child! Maybe I am! She begins to wonder!

  Mandy began to tremble.

  “You haven’t enjoyed hearing it, either,” said Fanny grimly. “Come, come away from the table. My dear, are you going to see Tobias again?”

  “Yes,” gasped Mandy. “Tomorrow.”

  “They fascinate you.” Fanny was kind. “But why do you feel afraid?”

  “He might be my father. Belle might have been my mother,” said Mandy whitely.

  “Ah, no,” said Fanny, still not unkindly. “You were very cute last night. It was very appealing. But you mustn’t be fantastic. You mustn’t be serious. And you mustn’t meddle or cause confusion.”