Chocolate Cobweb

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “Gene? It’s Mandy. I have to talk very fast and you must listen. Remember the test you made for me?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Something like that … up here. Will you be what you said, if ever I needed …”

  “Bodyguard!” His voice was suddenly louder and alarmed.

  “Tonight, by eight o’clock, be in the lower road below this house. Abermarle Road, it is. Off Linda Vista. Almost all the way to the end there is a garage in the hillside, on the left. Gene, please be there to watch what happens. It may—catch somebody. Do you understand?”

  “The one who fixed it before?” He was cautious.

  “Yes. Don’t be seen. It has to go far enough. Will you believe me, Gene, and do what I say?”

  “Sure, Mandy.”

  “Notice everything. Don’t—do anything, unless the doors stay closed or are closed again and the car is running inside. If it gets that far, then raise a row and get in.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “Who am I likely to find in there? This son? This attractive chocolate drinker?”

  “That’s it,” said Mandy.

  “And where will you be?”

  “I’ll be watching from here,” she murmured.

  “Does the guy know what he’s in for?”

  “Yes, yes, and he’ll be careful. But something might go wrong. Gene, will you promise?”

  “You don’t make much sense. You know that?”

  “I can’t make sense,” she wailed. “I haven’t got time. Quick, say you will!”

  “Anything you say.”

  “Oh, Gene, you’re—”

  “Yeah,” he said, “sure I am. How are you, honey?”

  “Fine. I’m fine.” She steadied her voice, raised it to cheerfulness.

  “Coming home—lessee—tomorrow?”

  “Yes, tomorrow.”

  “See you,” said Gene, “anyhow, then.”

  “But tonight—you surely will?” she whispered.

  “Surely. Surely. Don’t worry. So if nothing happens?”

  “Then tomorrow I’ll try to thank you.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “O.K.”

  She put up the phone, rested her mouth on her wrist. If he knew it was her danger, he’d interfere. He’d bust the pattern, if it was a pattern, wide-open. He’d have none of it. Therefore, she had lied.

  “What a delicate web it was! Cobweb and countercobweb. Now, in this misty morning, with the vacuum humming in the quiet house, it was a cobweb of fantasy, spun out of nothing, unreal, impossible, a phantom structure. So tenuous and subtle, so unlinked to the earth, to that which was solid, to the flesh or the fact …

  She moved her mouth on the skin of her hand. Her mind went down around the path again. Belle was dead. In a web of strange construction, she’d been caught and she had died. If mere blind chance had woven it, could blind chance duplicate? Or had there been a spider, after all?

  Now, here, one thought one saw all these duplicating threads, repeating the pattern. But perhaps it was a cobweb that drifted in air, silken, invisible, spun in the mind.…

  Yet it was anchored! It did swing from one point. In one place, it was glued to reality. There had been poison in the chocolate. A chocolate cobweb, she thought, half hysterically. It’s a chocolate cobweb.…

  CHAPTER 19.

  THONE SWUNG DOWN THE STAIRS. He traveled fast, one hand on the banister, one on the crutch. His right foot throbbed a little as it swung free, but it didn’t impede him. He went out the lower door into the air.

  On the slope he moved more slowly. Half his mind revolved, thinking what to say, how to explain, if he should meet her. The rest of it was a blur of anxiety, a blind urge to do something, to push at the subtle threads, either to touch and realize them or to brush them away as nothing. He could not—could not—any longer sit on that sofa and watch the girl’s face. Watch her drift with dumb courage, with that look of singularly sweet, dumb, passive, unprotesting courage.

  Burt, at the far end of the first terrace, looked up and exclaimed.

  “Tired of the damn house.” Thone threw him this and it was enough. Burt’s face wrinkled in a grin. He saluted. Thone went on down. Burt, trimming edges, worked on and up around the corner of the house.

  Alone, unseen, Thone descended. Toward this place, this small dug-in building of unimportant stone and stucco. This shrine! Ah, if Belle had been murdered, then it was no shrine. It was evil’s altar, and she the sacrifice.

  He drew nearer the door. The workshop hadn’t been there in his mother’s day. It was part of his father’s new wall. This new door was the true gate of the fortress that kept his father’s privacy.

  He stood on his good left foot. Close to the door and staring at it, he could see that it was not quite shut all the way. It rested on the tongue of the lock. It looked closed but it was not.

  Then, as he stood there, it began to move.

  Down in the workshop, Ione nudged the key with the toe of her shoe, a little closer to the heap of burlap sacks Burt saved there in the corner. She looked at it, tilting her white head thoughtfully. No, it would gleam. It would catch light. Especially a flashlight’s beams. She moved it with her toe until it slid under a fold of the burlap. Only a little way under, of course. The metal fastener on which the key still hung made a tiny sound on the metal of the key itself. The fastener would seem to have slipped out of the groove in her key case. (It could happen, she thought. It has happened.) There. Quite hidden, but not too well.

  Detail.

  She glanced around the small dusty place. Footprints? Ah, no bother. Everyone came through here, often. Especially herself. Fingerprints? No, none, except on the doorknobs, where they were quite natural.

  None at all, no trace of fingers on the little button in the edge of the middle door. The little button one had only to push to set the old lock working. The little button that was never set so, for reasons of convenience. But that was set so now.

  Before the days of the workshop and the wall, this middle door had functioned as a barrier. It could, still. Although the key to it was hanging there on a nail, where it had hung for years, inside the workshop, lest one be trapped.

  Lest one be trapped.

  She would not touch it. Not that key. Let it hang there, representing safety. If one knew of it. If one did not know of it, why, it was hidden well enough.

  No fingerprints. Quite so.

  She had rubbed the ax handle with one of the sacks. The ax was lying on the floor now, as if it had fallen over. It was covered with dirt. Burt hadn’t used it for a long time. It would seem that no one had.

  The gas pipe was worked loose at its fittings, there near the floor in the far corner. It hadn’t taken many blows. She’d muffled the ax head in burlap to pound at it. First, to deaden sound. Although Burt would not hear. He was a trifle deaf. And sound was deceptive in the canyon. It bounced and echoed from the steep banks and its place of origin was never clear. Second, she’d muffled it so there would be no marks. And there were none that she could see.

  The pipe, coming in here, from outside, had moved in the wall, and in the earth beyond, she supposed. Where she had directed Burt to dig this morning. His spade would have glanced on the metal of the pipe, perhaps. Indeed, she hoped it had. For, of course, it would seem that he had dislodged this old unused gas outlet, which was too dangerous to use here in the small room, not easily ventilated any more, since the glass brick band had been put across the wall.

  How fortunate that she’d found the sight of all this junk distressing from the garden, and only three months ago had taken steps.…

  The gas, of course, was turned off up above. From the house. She’d attended to that. It could be made to flow again, so simply.

  However, she thought complacently, if matters did not fall out as she expected and hoped, if all did not go quite smoothly, why, the gas would never flow at all. No one would ever know of these preparations.

  Ah, but if it went well, it would be a mystery! Of the human hea
rt, the human mind.… The romantic story of a young girl, all lost in her dream of this beautiful and unknown mother, so tragically dead. And a young girl, furthermore, hopelessly in love with inscrutable, cool, polite, and distant Thone. Who was so charming. So famously charming. (For it could happen. It had happened. That other girl had died, had done it, and on Thone’s innocent account. This was a fact, and known. So convincing, history.)

  So it would be part explained, part mystery. Amanda would take the drug herself, of course, under the spell of the old story. A single dose, as Belle had done. Not a lethal dose, no, it might be too violent, too soon. She was afraid of violence and of company. This must happen apart, afar, in loneliness and mystery, shrouded and guessed at.… No, it would seem she had planned to be found exactly as the mother had been found. The mother whose painted likeness made her weep.

  And if Fate stepped in and trapped her a little differently, if there was an accidental variation … Ah, who would guess or even begin to guess that it was only because the trick had to be worked from the house this time. And there was no way, no way Ione could think of, although she’d tried so hard, to work it quite the same.

  Still, she felt satisfied. She felt, in fact, a pleasant excitement. There was no need to hate Amanda now. Indeed, she’d forgotten to hate, forgotten to suffer with it, in the quite absorbing business of making these little arrangements.

  Ah, no need to suffer. She shrugged, smiling. Yes, it would go along, much as before, with a way open to change one’s mind and back out at every point. Since her plan seized and used so much pure chance, no one would ever see a plan at all. In this lay her safety. In this, her great cleverness! She was not much concerned about the police. They would, of course, appear.

  She thought, since Tobias would be grieving, she would devote herself to his comforting. So she would be occupied. Let the police come and go. She would be nursing him and have little to say. Unless it were necessary to touch and guide them to an appreciation of the tragic dream in the silly young head. Still, Fanny would tell them about that. And Thone … And even those girls at the party.

  She sighed. No, she was not much concerned about the police. They had come and gone before. She had not even been at the inquest. As far as she knew, it had never entered their heads to consider …

  She had no name for what she did.

  One more detail, she thought. To go through the garden door, which lay gently poised on the tongue of the lock so that she could get through from this side, and yet leave her key where it nestled under the sacks; go through and close the garden door behind her and take Burt off, out of the gardens now, lest he discover, in some rambling aimless manner, that the lock was on the middle door. No, he must go away with Elsie, now, to wherever servants went on their day.

  She turned to the garden door and pulled it open. And saw Thone’s back, as there he stood, leaning on his crutch, not four feet away.

  “Thone, dear! How you startled me! Good heavens!” She gasped to breathe.

  He turned his face. He looked startled, too. “Sorry, Ione.”

  “How long—a way you’ve come, dear! How could you have walked all this way down? Is there something you wanted? You might have sent Burt. Were you coming in here, dear?” She revised all her plans, undid them in a second. “What is it? Can I help you?”

  “Oh, no,” he said, “there wasn’t anything.”

  “But Thone.” Her breath was a little easier. Her mind buzzed craftily. “If you came all this way down, surely it was for something?”

  He said wearily, “Were you out, Ione? I didn’t know where you were.”

  Had he heard anything?

  “I ran to the drugstore,” she lied. “How I must have startled you!”

  “You sure did,” he murmured.

  No, no, he hadn’t heard anything. She let the door move, cautiously, tentatively. If he went in—and if he tried the middle door … She must not seem to mind whether he went in. If he did … But if he did not … The plan alternately swelled and faded. It wavered, all unsure.

  Thone said, letting his voice show violence, absorbed in his own scheme to deceive, “I had to get away from that girl!”

  “Oh, Thone.” She let the door slip shut, very gently. She peered at his face. “Why, dear? What has she done?”

  “Nothing,” he said painfully. “Dad’s writing letters. We were left—alone.”

  “Poor boy,” she murmured. “It must be so distressing, her feeling for you.”

  “Don’t talk about it.” He slashed at a shrub with his crutch.

  “No, dear.” Now the door was shut. “We must have Burt to help you up. You will go, since I’m back?”

  “I suppose so.” He hobbled a little way on the path.

  “Try to be patient,” said Ione softly behind him. “I don’t think Amanda will be here much longer.”

  “I—know.” He straightened his shoulders.

  Ione was quite pleased. He felt as she wished him to feel. It fitted in well. She made as if to firm the door. A little gesture of finality. All here was left as she wished it to be left. The plan would hold. So far. And all was tidy.

  She called out rather merrily to Burt and he came around the corner of the house and hurried down. Thone went up between them less easily than he had descended. As they entered the house, he was speaking, rather loudly. (Mandy must not be on the telephone. Mandy must hang up.) “I can’t bear the way she looks at me!” he cried. “God knows I try to be polite …”

  “Ah, hush,” said Ione.

  Mandy was curled in a chair with a book. She lifted her head. Tobias was coming out of his room into the hall. She couldn’t hear the words but she heard voices and saw Tobias freeze for a moment. She knew they were coming.

  She took air into her lungs. And let it go slowly and shakily. Ah, but now, she thought, this part of the time, these hours are the worst. I’m in the thick of the worst of it. Now is the time to be steady.

  And she put the book down and smiled greeting, as a pretty guest should, just before lunch, on a lazy, peaceful, quite unremarkable Thursday morning.

  CHAPTER 20.

  THE DINING ROOM OF THE CANYONSIDE house was on the northwest, with a semicircle of glass for the outer wall. There they supped, by candlelight. But the curtains were not drawn and they saw the day die, far off on the mountaintops, where it had lingered later than here. Thursday was slipping to the west. It would be over the ocean. Soon gone to sea.

  The meal was very informal, since there was no Elsie to cook or serve it. Ione, at the foot of the table, filled their plates from a huge casserole and an even larger salad bowl. She handled the serving spoons with dainty pride. Bolt upright she sat, in a dull lavender silk frock, crisply set off by a little white ruching. Her white hair was heaped high, showing her small ears, which wore tonight tiny amethyst buttons in the lobes. Amethyst beads, in an old-fashioned design, lay close around her soft neck, on the soft, pale, delicately wrinkled flesh that would be clean and scented. Her cheeks were pink, doll pink, on the round of the bones. Her dark eyes were pleased and sparkling in the candlelight.

  So cute, she looked! Cute, adorable little old Mrs. Santa Claus, with such pink, clean, brisk, and busy little hands!

  Fanny, like a raddled old parrot who had fought age to a draw and now ignored the whole matter with a kind of brilliant indifference, was in shining black. She wore her diamonds.

  Amanda’s dress was a simple, soft thing, with nothing remarkable about it except its color. It was crimson, rich red, a jewel color, so brilliant, lush, and startling in itself that she was less a girl than a, flame to the eye. It hid her. It picked her up and put her so brazenly in view, so flamboyantly and conspicuously burning there, that, in a sense, she was not seen. Tobias couldn’t keep his eyes off it. He could not look away. The color seemed to brace him. He was not quite so weary and spent in its reflected glow.

  Thone, at her left, as the two of them faced Fanny, was shut off and closed away. He’d hardly turned
his eyes toward Mandy. Communication was dead between them, as if all wires were cut. As they must be, she knew.

  There had been one code message, however. A question asked and answered, before supper, when Thone, glancing casually at the evening paper, had muttered what seemed an aimless comment. “These chemists! What’ll they do next?”

  And Mandy had murmured, as carelessly as she could, “Oh, they’ll discover something startling. They’re always working. Night and day.”

  He hadn’t replied, as if he snubbed this friendly response. Fanny had picked it up. “I hope they get around to rejuvenation before it’s too late. I would be spitting mad, let me tell you, if I missed it by one generation. I’d like to be Amanda’s age again. By gum, I would!”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Fanny,” Ione had said piously. “I think we forgot how youth can suffer.”

  “Good for ’em,” snapped Fanny. “Did you ever read—”

  Fanny did most of the talking.

  That made it easier to sit here now, with supper nearly over and the evening upon them. To sit here in a crimson frock, listening, nodding, smiling, eating, playing the pretty young guest at the table. But really waiting. And certain, now, quite finally certain now, what it was she waited for.

  Ione had spoken, in the kitchen, as Mandy, in one of Elsie’s big aprons, had helped as a young guest should. Mandy, breaking lettuce with her fingers, had received the expected and been braced for it. Thone didn’t know yet, but she knew. She was proud to think that her hands had gone right on. Nothing had happened to her breathing. Something had happened deep inside, a little click of the mind, and then a flowing relief, as if to know, for sure, was going to be easier and even heartening. As if the courage that had been strained, waiting to be used, was released to function, to exist, to take hold now, and let her smile … go headlong the way she was being pushed to go, and make it easy.

  Ione had begun, “Oh, my dear! I’m afraid I’m supposed to be at the airport! I shouldn’t … But it would be such a shame … Oh, what a pity,” Ione had mourned, “to let those lovely cuttings die!”