Chocolate Cobweb

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “Oh, no,” cried Thone in pain, “never would she leave you! Ah, Dad, why didn’t you tell me, why did you keep it from me, what you thought? I could have told you.”

  “This will not do!” snapped the doctor.

  But Mandy, as they collected themselves and rose, thought privately that it did very well.

  Something about Tobias was at peace.

  Not once did he glance at Ione.

  Kelly’s grasp was on that little lady’s arm. She let him draw her away. There was nothing in here that belonged to her. All here was Belle’s.

  CHAPTER 30.

  HUBBUB ROSE IN THE STUDIO. FANNY was wild. Gene was asking questions and she declaimed the answers as they came to her. Her fury rose with her understanding. Kate followed the story, exclaiming her horror, as Fanny worked it out. How Ione could have taken the spare keys from the drawer, the whole hideous design. Kelly listened and helped speculate aloud about the blue scarf around Belle’s neck and how it had got there. How she could get chloral without a prescription. A determined woman …

  But Thone and Mandy moved silently, side by side, away from the others, down the long room to the far end. Mandy raised her eyes to the folds of concealing drapery. Thone pulled the cord that caused the folds to part and show “Belle in the Doorway.” There she was, in all the glow and rapture of the artist’s adoration. Thone climbed up to take it off the wall and Mandy was unsurprised. She said, agreeing, knowing what he meant to do, “Yes, he’ll want to look at it now.”

  Thone went alone to carry it back into his father’s room.

  Mandy skirted the group. She walked past Ione, who was sitting in the armless chair, where she had sat before, who was silent with her hands clasped in her lap and her head bent, as she looked down and did not seem to listen to the wild and bitter words that flew around her.

  Mandy climbed into a chair, sitting on her stockinged feet, resting her head on the wing. She felt as if she’d been walking and talking and living in a spotlight, on view, center stage, for a long, long, time. And now, at last, her turn was over. The time had come for her to creep off to the wings, to a quiet corner, and be still.

  The enormity of her whole performance, the brassiness, the aggressiveness of it, now overwhelmed her. She felt ashamed. She blushed for her temerity. How could she meet Thone’s eye when he returned? She had shouted the state of her heart to him and the whole world. She had even claimed boldly to believe he loved her. How had she dared say such a thing! What had she said and done! Now that the pressure on her was relieved, she could scarcely understand how it had seemed necessary or even possible to come with such flaming purpose into this house. What had sustained her, the fright that had been pushing her into such a role, she was already forgetting in a flood of belated shyness.

  El Kelly was not entirely comfortable. He kept, even as he maintained his share in the excited talk, taking little glances at this woman who sat there so quietly, with her soft little hands folded on the lavender lap. He couldn’t help but visualize that neat white head, that rosy little face, that soft rounded bosom, in a courtroom. An inner groaning followed his vision. No pair of nylon legs in the world could call up such powerful sympathy as a dear little old lady, a sweet-faced, clean, white-haired old lady, all fragrant with folk reverence, with the undefeatable power of nostalgia on her side. Everybody had a grandmother! Take the smell of ginger cookies. That was his own association, just when he looked at her.

  What chance did the law have, did logic or justice or reason or probability or anything have, against the loved, lost smell of ginger cookies!

  Nor was she going to break. It didn’t look like it. Never would that soft clean hair come down out of the pins and be disheveled. Or that spine slump and cringe. Or the cute little face contort, haglike. Or those little hands lose the firm serenity of then present pose. Those velvet paws unsheath cruel purpose. At least, not yet.

  He clicked his tongue. The voices hushed, as though, if he’d thought of something, they waited to hear what it was.

  Then Ione said, “Everyone’s against me.” It was not a whine. It was more like a challenge. As if she read his mind, she added, “I think there will be some difficulty.”

  Fanny cried, “Ah, no! Not so! Lieutenant!”

  Kelly chewed on his lip.

  Thone had come back. He stood looking down at her now. Looming very large and tall, strangely poised and calm and unroiled by all that had happened.

  “There can’t be!” Fanny beat her fists together. “Belle … It is proved! Isn’t it!”

  “Well,” said Kelly, “Belle wasn’t the woman in the road. We might prove that much.” He thought to himself it was doubtful. The cab driver had quoted the word “green” in his first interview with the police. It was on that paper in the files. But he hadn’t repeated it at the inquest. Couldn’t have. These people would have spotted it then, the father and the son. So how would the cab driver swear, how would he quote himself, now, six years later?

  “Even if we prove it wasn’t Belle, we don’t prove the positive.” Thone spoke without apparent anxiety. “Not to the legal mind can we prove it was Ione. Although we know.”

  “At least we can prove she tried to kill Mandy!”

  “We know,” said Kelly gloomily.

  “Toby told us!”

  “He’s a sick man. And eyelids … what I mean …”

  “God’s grief!” cried Fanny. “You’ll arrest her, won’t you? You’re not going to let her get off!”

  “Sure, sure, I’ll take her in. Probably stand trial.”

  Ione smoothed her skirt with one little hand. “I must have my glasses,” she said. “And my knitting, Lieutenant?”

  Kelly groaned inside.

  Thone came and sat down. He stretched out his legs as if he wearily relaxed the muscles after long strain. “It doesn’t really matter,” he said easily.

  “Not matter!” Fanny was athirst for revenge. Fanny was outraged.

  But Mandy lay low. Her heart throbbed with an increasing foreboding. She held her breath, watching Thone.

  “Why, no,” said Thone. “Do you think the only punishment is jail?”

  Ione’s head tilted.

  “If there is a trial,” said Thone, “it will be a nasty one. Not very pleasant for any of us.”

  Kelly started to speak but changed his mind. Thone smiled with sudden sweetness at Kate. “Anyone in your family color-blind?”

  “Mine! No, indeed not.” Kate looked as if he’d accused her of something foul.

  “It comes through the female. But just for fun, was your husband color-blind?”

  “Heavens, no.”

  “So we could have proved at any minute, and beyond a doubt, whose child is whose. Since I could not be yours.” He looked at Ione. His face was lit with some mocking, taunting touch of triumph, subtle and sly. “I shan’t stand trial,” he said. “Not me. Not Belle’s child.”

  She folded her lips inward.

  “She has her reward,” said Thone to the rest, almost joyfully. “What’s her life worth? Or even her freedom? She’s been made a fool of, and she’s failed.”

  Ione’s mouth went slack again. She stared straight before her. The hands were still.

  “Mandy fooled her. I fooled her. She put a lot of time and effort against the wrong child, and failed, at that. Even the wrong child’s still alive.” Thone chuckled. “And Belle! Why, Belle’s all around us. Not in her grave, at all. Can’t you feel it? She’s here, in this house, just as radiant as in her doorway. She’s with my father.”

  Ione moved her brow as if to say, What of that?

  “This poor little thing,” said Thone, and his voice went down almost to a whisper. “Look at those small hands, small as her soul. That tried to hold and squeeze and own—like a car, like a house, like a toy—another soul. So little she knows.… So little she understands.… She doesn’t even know, now, that what she tried to do can’t be done. Belle always knew that. She, never. Why, she was doomed to
fail from the beginning. In the whole scheme of the world, which she so pitifully misunderstands, she had to fail.”

  “I didn’t fail,” said Ione shrilly. “I had him back, for years. Six years.”

  “Oh, no,” said Thone sharply.

  “Oh, yes!” Her hand curled in, grasping. “I got rid of her, I tell you! I got her out of my house! Didn’t I? I tell you, she’s dead! I left her on the floor! I—”

  “—failed,” said Thone, and sagged. “Lieutenant …”

  “Thanks a lot,” said El Kelly. “Thanks very much. That’s going to help. Hey, Joe, you get that down?”

  Ione stood up. She looked wildly about her. Her eyes were sick, and then they were crafty once more. “My knitting …” she mumbled. “My pretty yarn … The worms … The flowers will be very gay this spring. They will not stay in the flower beds. They will stroll in the garden. Nothing will stay in its grave this spring. Sunday is Easter. I must have violets.…” She pulled off one amethyst earring and threw it, violently.

  It stung Amanda’s cheek. Both Kelly and the doctor went into action.

  CHAPTER 31.

  AT DAWN, TOBIAS CLOSED HIS TIRED EYES, which had gazed sometimes with sight, sometimes without, at his masterpiece. Belle from her doorway looked down while he died. He would never finish Amanda in her satin.

  Mandy thought her heart would break. Thone’s face was so drawn, so tired, and so luminous with his love for the departing spirit of his father. She sobbed in Kate’s arms.

  “We had better go home,” murmured Kate for the hundredth time. “Won’t you come now, Mandy? It’s been all night long. Honey, it’s morning.”

  No time for love, thought Mandy. Someday. But not now. She sobbed, “Oh, Mother, yes. Let’s go home. Fanny is here. He’ll want to be quiet and she’ll know …”

  The sober duties that follow death were in train already.

  Thone came to them as he sensed their decision to leave. They, all three, moved, without speech, out of doors and stood in the courtyard. The morning had a bloom on it, like a dark plum. Soft haze veiled it all, the mountains, the folds and creases in their flanks, the habitations of men and man’s geometrically straight lines and squares drawn on the land below. The air held a promise of warmth but was yet cool and sweet.

  Thone looked down at the girl’s wan, tear-marked face. He smiled. He said teasingly, “You needn’t think, just because you’re exactly as old as I am, that I won’t be the boss in the family.”

  “Wh-what!”

  “I want the wedding,” he said to Kate—to Kate!—“just as soon as it’s legally possible.”

  Kate’s long face was comical with amazement.

  “And speaking of gaining a son,” said Thone, “you’re getting twins.” He laughed and kissed Kate. And Kate—Kate!—began to cry and put her arm around his neck and smacked him, hard, on the cheek, and went out the gate to the car, bawling like a baby.

  Mandy reeled and he caught her. “This is no time …” she stammered.

  “Oh, isn’t it?” The gay, sweet look went off his face, but the gravity that succeeded was as sweet and endearing. She put her hands on his lapels and looked up with utter trust, waiting for him to speak.

  “Dad’s death was—kind of holy, Mandy.…”

  “Yes,” she sobbed.

  “She really was there, with him.”

  “Belle? Oh, Thone …”

  “He had no time—to think about Ione.”

  “No … no.”

  “And I drank no chocolate, because you came.” She clung to him. “So, it’s sad, it hurts—but …”

  “He wasn’t hurt—so much,” she whispered. “No, no he wasn’t.”

  “Help me think so?” His eyes were clear, clear and blue. Then they wrinkled at the corners, softening, smiling. “What do you think love’s for?” he asked.

  She leaned against him, her whole body sighing. He held her lightly. His lips were on her hair.

  “For a time of trouble. For now. For always,” she murmured. Now is the time for love, her thought repeated with utter conviction.

  “Besides,” words rushed against her temple, “I have to tell you—I’ve got such a lot to tell you. What an absolute darling—Amanda Garth—Can’t let you go.…”

  “There’s plenty of time,” said Mandy. “There’s years. There’s now.”

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyright © 1948 by Charlotte Armstrong

  copyright renewed 1976 by Jack Lewi

  ISBN: 978-1-4532-4567-5

  This edition published in 2012 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media

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