Chocolate Cobweb

by Charlotte Armstrong

  She wiggled forward to bring her dangling little feet to the floor. She rose. “I’m afraid Thone’s accident upset you.”

  “I guess it did.” Amanda let her head fall against the chair. She looked up passively, contritely. “I wonder if I’d better stay,” she said, eyes smoky with self-blame.

  Something stiffened on the jolly round-cheeked little face. “Now, now,” chided Ione, “of course you’ll stay.” She pattered the length of the room to the bar in the corner. “Come here, my dear.” Mandy got up obediently and walked after her. “See what there is here that strikes your fancy.” Ione’s voice was chipper and a little false, as if she poked up a mood of gaiety. “Something to cheer you up a little.”

  To cheer me up, thought Mandy. She felt on her head the coals of fire. She was seeing Ione from another angle, as if she were perfectly innocent. If it were so, Amanda was ashamed.

  Ione held open the doors of the liquor cabinet, revealing bottles. “I don’t much care about drinking …” Amanda began. She was offering, in some way, her apologies. She was feeling there was much to be paid for, wrong done that must be undone. And since it had never been directly stated to this woman’s face, it could not be denied, except in an attitude, an inner difference.

  The little brisk right hand darted among the bottles and pulled one forth. One certain bottle. “Some of this, perhaps?” she asked brightly.

  Amanda read the label. “Legendre … Herb-saint …” Her skin pricked. Her face, she knew, was giving away her recognition. This was Belle’s drink. The very stuff! The drink she’d been so fond of—Belle’s firewater! Her breath drew in, making a sound. Dark eyes were on her. Ione knew what she offered. She had a purpose.

  Why? Why? What was the purpose? The whole structure of apology collapsed in Mandy’s mind. Wild speculations rushed in and filled its place. Could this be the very bottle? Was chloral in there? Now? Still? Was it possible? Had the bottle itself been doped? Was that how Belle got it?

  Oh, no, no, no. Impossible! Surely El Kelly would have checked such a simple, obvious thought. It could not be that Ione was offering, here, now, after six years, a dose of chloral! Giving the trick away! Or didn’t she know? Was it an innocent choice?

  No, not innocent, no accident. She offered Herbsaint and she watched. But why did she offer it and what was she watching for? What was in her mind? What was she up to? Mandy braced herself. Whatever it meant, she knew she must play out the part, all the way. Belle’s favorite, was it? Very well.

  “That I love!” said Mandy boldly. “That I adore!”

  “Then you shall have some.” The white head seemed to tremble, as if it wanted to nod, “I thought so,” and was trying not to nod. The face twinkled. The hands were brisk, quick, unhesitating. “And there you are!” said Ione, almost triumphantly.

  Amanda went back and sat down. She sipped. It was firewater, all right. She struggled not to gasp and choke. It was horrid, she thought. Resolutely she sipped it. Eyes staring ahead, she seemed to be dreaming, brooding.… Ione was quiet as a mouse. She was picking at the bit of string on the workshop key.

  Amanda thought, If there is any of that stuff in here, I shall pass out, presently. She followed the burning warmth down her throat, down to where it might slowly, mysteriously enter her blood, rise to her brain, perhaps … touch, alter, destroy the conscious self. She thought, how frail we are in our ignorance! What potions there are in the world whose magic we so little understand!

  Ione thought, It’s true, after all. She does dramatize. Look at her, look at her now. So it will be quite plausible, when she follows Belle.

  Fanny came up alone. “Ah, there you are, my dearie! Hi, Amanda Garth. How is it going?”

  “F-fine,” said Amanda. She got up, wondering if she’d fall.

  Fanny’s quick eye took in the tiny glass in her hand. “What’s that you’re drinking?”

  “Herbsaint,” said Amanda, stammering.

  “God’s grief!” said Fanny softly. The bright friendship in her face went glimmering. Cold disappointment took its place. The change of her expression was as sharp as a slap. Amanda staggered.

  “Cab’s coming,” said Fanny. “Good-by, Ione.” She put her arm affectionately across that little lady’s shoulder. They moved off toward the hall. Mandy, abandoned, stared after them. Fanny turned her head and-looked-baek—as if it were the prick of her manners that made her fling it over her shoulder. “Oh, good-by.”

  “Ione, why don’t you kick her out!” In the hall, Fanny took her arm away.

  Ione said softly, “Oh, now, Fan. She’s thinking of herself all glamorous, like poor dead Belle.”

  “I would kick her out,” said Fanny viciously, “for just that reason. By the way, I’m coming to dinner Thursday. They said to ask you. I’m telling you, of course.”

  “Thursday?” said Ione doubtfully.

  “Cook’s night out. I would. But it’s all I’ve got. Potluck, Ione. You won’t mind me. I won’t make any difference.”

  “I won’t mind, of course not,” said Ione pleasantly. “You won’t make any difference, Fanny. On the contrary,” she twinkled archly, “perhaps you’ll help.”

  “Not with the dishes. Don’t bank on that.” Fanny pinched her and grinned and went away.

  Ione stood, hands lightly clasped, and over her lip she slowly ran her tongue. She hadn’t been thinking of the dishes.

  CHAPTER 15.

  IT WAS VERY QUIET IN THE CANYON at night. Few cars ran on the mountain roads. Only now and then someone who lived in the hills came home, or a guest departed. There was no real traffic. No street noises. No pedestrians, naturally. The hills slept. Birds called intermittently. Sometimes, in the wild dry chaparral that coated all slopes not cleared and kept clear by a man, there was a rustle of small wild life, going about its ancient business, near the ground.

  Moonlight touched the high places, but not this part of the slope, west of the house, where Mandy was climbing, soft as an animal herself in the dark. Barefoot, because she had brought no rubber soles, she felt carefully for each step, keeping her finger tips lightly on the wall, crouching past Burt’s and Elsie’s window, going up.

  Thone’s west window had a little railed platform outside. Underneath the ground pitched. If she climbed far enough, the inner edge of the balcony would be only shoulder high. Her hands were on the white-painted bars. She found a firm spot for her feet.

  “Mandy.” He was there. It was so small a balcony that only part of his body was out the window. He half lay on the floor. His cheek was flat on the wood. His breath was on her forehead. His whisper was not even sibilant. It was so nearly not a sound at all she might almost have heard him think her name.

  “Thone?” She tried to swallow sound, as he did. She brought her head a little higher, rested her cheek on a bar. “I don’t think we’ll be heard,” he said. “She has no windows on this side.”

  “I was quiet. No one heard me.”

  “Burt’s a little deaf.”

  She clung there silently a moment. They listened to the night.

  “What about Kelly? Did you …?”

  “I saw him,” she said. “There was nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No.” The cold bar felt strong. The edge of it cut her face with welcome pain. “He was very nice. But there was nothing.”

  “I made Burt find my crutch,” he said irrelevantly. “It was still in the storeroom.”

  “Is the pain bad?”

  “No, no, not now. Unless I put my weight on it.”

  “Thone, what does Fanny think?”

  “I told her you had a delusion. I told her I thought it was wise to have you up here; said I was afraid of what you’d do. But Fanny’s all for you.”

  Not any more, she thought.

  “What is it, Mandy? Are you frightened?”

  “No.”

  “There’s something exhausted about you. What’s the matter?”

  “I’m all right.”

  H
e moved his head. “You’ve had something to drink.”

  “Just a liqueur.” She felt helpless. No use. He’d caught it on her breath. He would have to be told about it, right away.

  “When?” he asked.

  “Once, before dinner. After dinner she offered me some more.”

  “She did?”

  “It’s been hours,” said Mandy defensively. “I haven’t passed out. Nothing happened.” She knew that if he hadn’t felt he must be quiet, he’d have said something sharp and probably profane. “It was Herbsaint,” she confessed. “I thought I’d better be fond of it.”

  It took him a while before he answered. He said slowly, “Something’s cooking, all right.”

  “Yes,” she said simply.

  “Sure as hell, something. Mandy, I’m convinced. There is too much, too much like it was before. Dad’s taking chloral. As he was then. I’ve got a bum foot. Now you’re drinking Herbsaint after dinner. Do you notice—every one of those three facts started with Ione?”

  “Not your father’s chloral.”

  “She suggested it. You heard her. He used to fight it a lot longer. Mandy, I know.”

  “Oh.”

  “Pattern,” he said. “Maybe it’s not so plain to you. But I was here.”

  “It’s pretty plain,” she said.

  He moved, it seemed, closer. “Has it occurred to you, you’ve done what you set out to do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve got me believing, and I’m watching out. I’m on my guard. Now, go home.”

  “Go home?”

  “Yes. You go home.”

  “But—”

  “Tonight. Or early tomorrow,” he insisted.

  She said, “Wouldn’t that bust up the pattern?”

  “Yes.”

  Mandy said, “No.”

  “For God’s sake, you don’t think I’m really going to pull up a chair and watch you—get hurt!”

  “Oh, no, not really, but—”

  “There’s no ‘but.’ I believe you, even about the damn poison. So now you get out of here.”

  “But if I do—”

  “I can convince her there’s nothing in this baby mixing. You know damn well I can. So could you, if you tried. You’ll be right out of it. We’ve got as far as we can get with that foolishness.”

  “Wait,” said Mandy. “What is it? What is the pattern?”

  “The pattern of my mother’s death,” he said.

  “You mean, for me?”

  “For you.”

  “Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe …”

  He read her mind. What she couldn’t phrase, he got without phrases. “Let me tell you something. If she’s repeating that pattern, she’s not copying nature.”

  “That’s what I wondered,” she said gratefully.

  “No, it means there was a pattern then, too. It wouldn’t drift into her head, that design, unless she’d done some work on it before. I’m sure of that.”

  Her fingers ached on the bars. She agreed, deeply. She was sure of it, too. “But then,” she said, “we’ll have to know the whole pattern.”

  “What?”

  “We don’t know how she did it before.”

  “No.”

  “But if this is the same pattern over again, why, she’s going to show us how she did it. Isn’t she? All we have to do is watch her.”

  “Not if its you,” he said in a kind of horror.

  “It’s too late,” said Mandy, “to change that part of it. The way it’s working out, it has to be me.”

  “I won’t have—”

  “Ssh.”

  He squirmed in the dark. “It’s my risk. I won’t have you or anybody else taking it.”

  “But I’ve got it!” said Mandy. Her heart lightened. “I don’t intend to die,” she said almost gaily.

  “I don’t intend to let you come even close.” His whisper was fierce. She felt happy. “Your mother would skin me alive,” he added.

  “Then she’d better not know a thing about it,” said Mandy rather testily. “But we are watching, we are aware. And Ione doesn’t have any idea that we are. You’ll be outside the—plot. You can step in and stop it in time.”

  “Too dangerous,” he muttered.

  “It’s not so very, as long as you’re looking out for me.”

  “My God!” said Thone. He rolled on his back.

  She squirmed even nearer, shifting her cramped bare toes. “You know something’s cooking. And so do I. Well, that’s good! It’s giving us a chance. It’s the only kind of chance we could have against her. What else can you do, Thone? If you send me away, then you’ll have to wait until she starts a new plan. Against you, maybe. You’d be all alone—nobody to help, the way I have you.” She hurried on. “And suppose it didn’t follow the pattern? Even if you caught her at it, how could you prove anything about six years ago? Or suppose she just never tried anything again? Then you’d think all your life about her and Belle. Don’t you see? Now, there’s me, and I fit right into the same pattern. So let her keep going. You’ll be ready. Nothing will happen to me. And you’ll know. You’ll know.”

  She thought to herself, And Tobias will know! That Belle never wanted to leave him at all. There’s some good in that. Anyhow, he can’t be left living with a murderer. She said, “Oh, please, Thone. Do it this way? I’m not afraid!”

  “Yes, you are,” he said flatly.

  “Well, what of it?” she defied.

  “I’m afraid,” he said, “God knows.”

  “What about the—pattern? What else do you think?”

  “Probably her car. You’ve taken it out yourself once now. You know the way down. Maybe that fits, too.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “I’ll be asked to drive it again, you think?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Because you wouldn’t drive, with your foot. No one would ask you to. Your father wouldn’t be asked, either.”

  “Burt will have to be out, though. He was out before. It was a Thursday.”

  The night breeze was chilly.

  “Then, Thursday?” she breathed.

  “Thursday.”

  The iron bar was cold on her face. She moved her cheek against it. “But how can she …?”

  “We don’t know how.”

  “That’s what we’ll have to know. Thone, it’s too close. Thursday! We can’t give up!”

  “You can.”

  “No.”

  She felt him move restlessly in the dark. “Mandy, why do you want to do this? Is it because you think you’re in love with me?” All nuance of feeling was lost in the flat muted whisper.

  “Certainly, I am in love with you,” she said in the same way. “I know how you feel. It’s O.K. It has nothing to do with it.” He was still.

  “Listen,” she said. “You’ve got to know how your mother died. I’ve got to help you find out, because I started the whole business, kind of. That’s all. That’s the only way you and I are together. I know that.”

  He made no answer.

  “If I were a male, you’d be tickled to death,” she accused. “Your pal, I’d be. You’d think it was all right to let me take a chance. You’d grant that.” He stirred, but didn’t speak. “All right,” she went on, “let me make it perfectly clear. I’d be awfully pleased, naturally, if you should fall in love with me. But I realize probably you aren’t going to, and I can take it if you don’t. And we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, anyhow.”

  “God damn it!” he said aloud. Then whispered, angrily, “What do you think I’m afraid of?”

  “Oh, being hurt again,” she said bluntly. “By a dumb loving female.” She clung there. She smiled in the dark.

  He lay flat on his back. He started to say, “Fanny talks too much.” Then he said no more. The night sky wheeled over their heads. Small creatures stirred. A eucalyptus tree bent its tall ragged head in a passing current of air. She could feel the paralyzed knot in his throat. Maybe it was cruel to keep quiet.r />
  “My feet hurt,” said Mandy suddenly. “I haven’t got any shoes on. Please say we’ll go ahead on a common-sense basis.”

  He said, “You win,” in a queer choked way. She took one hand off the bar, reached in, and patted blindly. She hit him half in the eye. His fingers caught hers. “I swear to God,” he whispered, “I don’t know what else to do, you being the character you are.”

  “That’s fine.” She ripped her hand away. She was afraid he’d hear the tear that was slipping out of her eye. She let herself down.

  Thone lay on his back in the dark. All her cautious way down, she knew he was lying there. She thought, Well, anyhow, I was honest! She thought, So my pride was hanging around my heels in rags and tatters, anyway. She thought, Well, anyhow, it’s got to be this way. I had to hit him over the head with it. I can’t go home. She thought, But I hope it’s over quickly. I hope to goodness it’s this Thursday I’m supposed to die! She thought, But that’s ridiculous! Die?

  Her body was lithe and moved, alive, in the dark. Her breath used the air. Her cold toes felt of the earth. Her hand, that marvelous thing, a living hand, was sentient on the wall.

  CHAPTER 16.

  IN THE MORNING, AT THE BREAKFAST table, Ione said, “Toby, I’ve called the repair man to come fetch your car. It needs going over. It’ll only be a day or two, he says. Perhaps by Friday or Saturday … You’ll want to be with Thone, of course, just now, and there’s always mine.”

  “Of course, my dear,” said Tobias mildly.

  Of course, thought Mandy, of course. It clicked right down. It fitted in snugly. There is always my car! Ah, but what she meant to say was, There will be only mine. As before. As there had been only one car available to the household six years ago, and it down in the canyon!

  “Do you take sugar, Mandy?” she heard Thone say politely.

  “Yes, I do. Thank you.” The turn of her head was miraculously gracious and controlled.