Omit Flowers

by Stuart Palmer

  Uncle Alger jumped up. “You’re not going back to San Francisco, Mr Cohen? Not right away?”

  “I’m afraid I must,” he said. “After the inquest, anyway. Perhaps in the meantime the sheriff will be able to convince the coroner that there has been a death. In the meantime I’ll be at the Oceanside Hotel.”

  And that was that. Mr Fortesque Cohen took his departure in the taxicab which had brought him, leaving the family to a somewhat hysterical council of war.

  “This all reminds me of the recipe for jugged hare in the old English cookbook,” Dorothy pointed out. “It began ‘First catch your hare…’”

  “That’s not the way to speak of the dead,” Fay Waldron corrected her, in a tight and nervous voice.

  “We don’t know anybody is dead yet,” Aunt Evelyn pointed out. “It just struck me that all this must be a rather good joke on the murderer. His fire burned so much hotter than he knew that he destroyed the body, the very thing we must have to establish our claims to the money.”

  “Anyway, it’s time that somebody went straight down to the village and told that coroner a thing or two,” Fay Waldron said. “Ely, hadn’t you better…”

  “I’ll go,” Uncle Alger offered. “I know how to handle these people.”

  But it was Oviedo who had the last word. He stuck his head in the door. “Lunch,” he said.

  It was, perhaps, the worst lunch I ever ate. Partly because of the events of the morning and the general feeling of tension, I suppose—but also to a large extent caused by the fact that the food was execrably cooked.

  So startling was the change that upon completion of the main course, which consisted of unhappy salmon creamed and poured over dingy toast, I went out to the kitchen to see what was up. I found Oviedo alone with a burned finger, and a coffeepot, grounds and all, spilled on the floor.

  He blurted out that Pia had gone to bed in their room in the basement, and refused to get up. “She say spirits live in kitchen,” he confided. “My wife very ignorant woman. She think Indian spirits come rattle pans, eat up food, throw things at night.”

  It was the first time I had ever heard of a poltergeist myth among Amerindians. I had thought that spirit existed only in Germanic countries.

  “Tell me, Oviedo,” I said to him as he knelt, scooping up the damp coffee grounds, “what is it that you go out at night to feed?”

  “I go?” he repeated wonderingly.

  “Yes,” I said. “I saw you, two of us saw you. Carrying a pan in your hand and crying ‘Tito, Tito…’”

  All expression faded from that aquiline face, and the eyes grew muddy. “I no go,” he said.

  “Is it the hound that howled the night we came here?” I demanded.

  But Oviedo would not say. “No hound here,” he grunted. “No sabe.”

  “Whatever the beast, you haven’t seen it since the fire, have you?” I gave him a casual glance. “The doctor finds bones, maybe those of a man, maybe not,” I told him. “Your hound might have been in the garage?”

  He gave a shrug, and muttered something that might have been “Quien sabe?” But his eyes were dark now, with black pin pupils.

  I nodded. “You tell Pia that either she comes back to her cooking or she will go to white-man’s jail forever,” was my parting thrust. Unkind, perhaps, but I had no intentions of eating Oviedo’s cooking for the rest of my stay at Prospice.

  I started back toward the dining room and then stopped as I heard the sound of an auto outside. At once the thought struck me that here was the sheriff, come to tell us the truth at last.

  I rushed to the front door and found, instead of Sheriff Bates, none other than Todd Cameron. His black hair was blown and tangled by the wind, and his eyes were red-rimmed and excited.

  He caught my arm, drawing me outside before the others saw him. “Is Mildred all right?”

  “Of course,” I told him, “except that she is tight-lipped about what she saw, or thought she saw, last night. The family has agreed that she walks in her sleep.” But I didn’t want to talk to him about Mildred. “I have news for you,” I said excitedly. “Dorothy and I…”

  He seized my hand. “Congratulations, old man! I’ve suspected it from the first.”

  I tried to tell him that he had leaped at the wrong conclusion, but Todd wasn’t listening. “I have news for you, too,” he said, his voice bubbling with excitement. “I’ve been up to Los Angeles, Alan.”

  “Well?”

  “I pulled a lot of wires and got them to trace those telegrams—the ones that called us here. I haven’t been able to get the idea out of my mind that they tied up somehow with what happened yesterday morning.”

  “Nor I,” I chimed in. “But get to it, man.”

  “They couldn’t tell me much about the sender, the man who signed himself Gilbert Ely. It was raining, and he was all wrapped up in a big slicker and a scarf around his throat. Even the handwriting was a scratchy scrawl, probably disguised.”

  “Of course it was!” I put in. “Don’t you see? Not knowing that Gilbert Ely was dead, someone disguised himself and tried to assume Gilbert’s identity. And that someone was the man for whom we’re looking!”

  “Possibly,” admitted Todd, pulling off his gloves finger by finger. “Just possibly he was. But, Alan, I’m afraid you’re wrong in thinking that the mysterious Mr X didn’t know that Gilbert was dead.”

  “What makes you think that?” I demanded.

  “I know it,” said Todd Cameron simply. “When he filed the messages they told him in the telegraph office that he had to put down his address. Well, he scribbled something and rushed out of the place. It wasn’t until the messages were put on the wire that they found the address he’d given was simply ‘Potter’s Field’!”

  VII

  The law hath not been dead, THOUGH IT HATH SLEPT…

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  DOROTHY FOUND US IN THE DOORWAY. “For heaven’s sake, come in or stay out,” she begged. “You’re freezing the whole house. What’s up?” She pulled us inside, demanding to know what it was all about.

  Todd told her, and Dorothy shook her head dubiously. “But who could have known about Gilbert besides me and Uncle Joel? I didn’t tell anybody but Mildred.”

  “Somebody knew it—somebody who went out in masquerade to send those telegrams,” I put in. “And I’ve got a pretty good idea of who it may be!”

  “Sh-sh!” said Dorothy quickly. “We can’t talk here.” Then I saw Alger Ely come sauntering along the hall, his long apelike arms swinging and an expression of serene innocence on his face.

  “Anybody want to play checkers?” he asked hopefully. Nobody did.

  “We have fish to fry,” Dorothy told him. She lowered her voice. “Let’s go upstairs and have a real council of war. We’re on the track of something.”

  Todd nodded. “Where’s Mildred?”

  Dorothy hesitated imperceptibly. “Why—I don’t know, exactly. Little sister seems to prefer her own company today.”

  “Never mind,” said Todd. “You two go up to the room and I’ll find her. We’ve got to stick together, we four—”

  “—or be stuck separately,” Dorothy finished for him. She put her arm through mine. “Lead on—the four musketeers are on the trail. All for one and two for five.”

  Upstairs she headed directly for my room, turning to look at me with a certain amount of amusement when I carefully left the door open. “Observing the proprieties, cousin?”

  I told her that, on the contrary, I was not thinking of such trivialities. She wandered idly about the room, straightening the framed army discharge which hung on the wall, trying the door of the big cabinet between the windows.

  “What’s in here?” she wanted to know.

  But I couldn’t tell her. “It was locked when I came.”

  “Hmm,” Dorothy murmured. “Wouldn’t it be funny if—”

  “You aren’t hinting at a secret passage?” I demanded.

  “No, I suppose not,�
�� said she. Dorothy dropped on the edge of the bed, her long straight legs crossed. “Todd seems to be having a time finding little sister. Or else she’s unwilling to come. Personally, I can’t do a thing with her today. She avoids me as if I had the plague.”

  “Bother Mildred,” I interrupted. “Listen, Dorothy, I want to ask you something very important.”

  “Yes?”

  I floundered a little, ill at ease in front of her cool level gaze. “Do you—do you like dogs?” I finished.

  “What?” she burst out incredulously.

  “Dogs!” I repeated. “You know—canines, quadrupeds that wag tails and bark and have fleas.”

  “Heavens, yes,” Dorothy came back, laughing. “I’ve always wanted to own all the airedales and wires and kerries in the world, with a few collies and Danes thrown in—and go for long hikes with them over rough country for miles and miles and miles…” She stopped short, eyeing me suspiciously. “What made you ask that?”

  I fumbled for an answer, and then Todd and Mildred came in. He had his arm around her shoulders and she was either laughing or crying or both. He kicked the door shut behind them.

  “Well!” said Dorothy.

  Mildred, ruffled as a kitten who has been shooed out of a favorite chair, crossed to the window and stared out at the dismal remains of the garage.

  “I don’t want to play detective,” she said after a moment.

  “Rather play house, wouldn’t you?” inquired Dorothy sweetly. “Todd, you ought to wipe that lipstick off your cheek.”

  There was no lipstick there, but Todd wiped furiously at it anyway, and Dorothy gave me a wink. Then she turned suddenly upon her sister. “Listen, you’re among friends. You’ll have to break down sooner or later and tell who or what you saw last night. Why not now?”

  Mildred whirled, her face like chalk. “I didn’t see anybody! I told you that. Something scared me, that’s all! I’m so frightened by all this talk about—about murder that I don’t know what I’m doing!”

  “Now…” Todd began.

  Mildred shook her head. “Oh, why can’t you let the police do their own dirty work? It’s their business to snoop, not ours.”

  “If you ask me, I think that you saw the murderer last night,” Dorothy put in. “And you’re scared silly for fear he’ll pick you as number two—which is silly, because your fair white skin is in no danger.”

  Mildred’s mouth drew into a thin line. “There isn’t any murderer! You’re building a whole house of cards out of—out of soap bubbles!”

  “Neat idea,” murmured Dorothy.

  “All right,” said Todd. “If Mildred won’t tell us what she saw last night we’ll have to get at the truth some other way. Lend me your pencil, Alan.”

  Tearing the flyleaf from the novel which lay at the head of my bed, he began to write. For ten minutes there was no sound in the room but the squeak of the pencil, and then Todd shoved this outline before us:

  Possibilities

  A. That Joel Cameron was accidentally burned to death

  1. Fire caused by defect in lighting system

  2. Electric heater set fire to bedclothes

  3. Cigarette or cigar ditto

  4. Alan’s overheated car fired garage

  5. Spontaneous combustion, lightning, etc.

  B. That J. C. was murdered

  1. Fire set by malicious firebug, a stranger

  2. Incendiary machine in Waldron’s car

  3. Shot through window, then fire set afterwards

  4. Any other method undisclosed as yet

  C. That J. C. is alive

  1. Kidnapped, and fire set to conceal it

  2. Hiding out so relatives can inherit trust

  3. Hiding out to escape attacker (s)

  4. Wandering, mentally unbalanced by shock

  D. That J. C. took his own life

  1. Shot himself, fire arose accidentally from powder burns

  2. Mentally unbalanced, chose horrible way to die

  3. Died by fire hoping body would be destroyed and relatives’ hopes thus dashed as far as trust funds go.

  “Well?” Todd demanded.

  “Well enough,” I admitted. “You seem to have everything down.”

  “Too much,” Dorothy put in. “You can cross out a lot of these possibilities. First off, Uncle Joel did not smoke, so he didn’t set himself afire that way.”

  “Right,” said Todd, and crossed that line off.

  “It wasn’t my car, overheated or not,” I put in. “Because it was taken to the garage at least six or seven hours before the fire broke out. And an overheated engine cools down long before that.”

  “Right,” said Todd, and dashed a line through that one.

  “Spontaneous combustion—that would be coincidence, wouldn’t it?” Dorothy asked thoughtfully. “And as for lightning, there isn’t any in California in the winter.”

  “There’s no firebug involved,” I added. “That would be too great a coincidence, to happen on the one night Uncle Joel slept in the garage.” I couldn’t quite swallow that.

  Todd said he’d put down everything. He crossed two more lines off.

  “Here’s another that I’ll agree to erase,” he said. “Anybody here believe that Uncle Joel is hiding out in order to do his relatives a great big favor, so we can inherit those trust funds?”

  Mildred suddenly turned from the window. “What makes you think that?” she demanded wonderingly.

  “But I don’t!” Todd reminded her. “Do you?”

  She shook her head slowly. “He’s dead, I tell you. I know that. He’s dead!”

  “You said that before,” Dorothy reminded her. “All right, Todd, dash that out. And I don’t think Uncle Joel was kidnapped, either. Kidnappers leave notes and things,” she pointed out. “Besides, who would want Uncle Joel? Anybody who kidnapped him would have brought him back by now.”

  “He’s dead,” Mildred said again, staring out of the window.

  “I don’t believe it,” I put in. “In spite of what Mildred says. There’s a good chance that Uncle Joel isn’t dead at all. If you ask me, I think that he escaped from the fire but that the experience so unsettled his mind that he is wandering somewhere over the hills.”

  “He’s got to be dead, don’t you see that?” Mildred cut in, her voice slow and somber. “He wasn’t any good to anybody, not even himself. And now that he’s dead there’s almost a dozen people who can start to live—have the things we want, and take trips, and…”

  “Trips!” said Dorothy. “Don’t think I haven’t spent most of my lunch hours along the water front where the ships from the Alaska line and the big Maru boats dock! Seattle is tantalizing to anyone with an itching foot.” She was staring dreamily at the ceiling.

  “He’s got to be dead,” Mildred went on, “so we can all be happy.”

  “But I still don’t think he is!” I told her.

  Said Dorothy—“You forget that the room over the garage was locked on the inside.”

  Todd said that I was also forgetting the ladder marks outside the window. “No, Alan, Uncle Joel was murdered. And strangely enough, it’s up to us to prove, not only who did it, but how it was done. Indeed, we’ve got to prove that it was done at all!”

  “Before we can get any money out of this,” Dorothy put in, “I imagine that you’ll have lots of willing co-operation, Todd.” She smiled. “Alan here has an original system for finding the murderer. He goes around asking people if they like dogs. If they are crazy about dogs they can’t be nasty old murderers…”

  “That was not what I meant!” I tried to explain.

  But nobody listened to me. Mildred had suddenly made up her mind. She spoke softly, but her voice was hard as an icicle.

  “Go on, you fools!” she said. “If you’ve got to mind everybody’s business, go on and snoop. But count me out. I don’t want any part of it.” She turned suddenly and almost ran to the door. As she pulled it open she stopped short, staring down.

/>   There was Ely Waldron, on his hands and knees. Followed a strained moment of silence.

  Ely began to sweat. “Dropped a dime somewhere,” he mumbled.

  Nobody answered him. We just stood there and looked. Finally Ely couldn’t stand it any longer. He rose to his feet. “She made me!” he protested. “Fay did. She told me to come.”

  “Why?” Todd demanded.

  “Well,” Ely faltered, “I guess she heard you when you went to get Mildred to come up, and she got an idea that maybe you—that it might be—”

  “Ely!” came a harsh voice. His jaw closed like a trap.

  Fay Waldron came hurrying down the hall from their room, her eyes looking daggers at her husband. Then she managed a weak smile of apology. “Forgive our attempts at sleuthing,” she said. “But something happened a little while ago that got me so worked up that I had to start it in self-protection. Our baggage has been searched!”

  “No!” Dorothy exclaimed, in innocent wonder.

  “I’m not going to take things lying down,” Fay Waldron went on. “I know you’re all against me! But if you think that Ely or me—I mean I—had anything to do with Joel Cameron’s accident!…”

  “We don’t think that!” I hastily assured her.

  “We were only wondering,” Dorothy rushed in sweetly, “just how it was that your husband noticed the garage fire from the window when your bedroom faces in the opposite direction!”

  Fay Waldron’s mouth opened, and she took a quick breath, but she did not speak. She was staring at her husband. We all stared at him, as the blood mounted along his throat and cheeks, so that his forehead and even his ears flamed red.

  “Oh,” mumbled Ely, “that’s—that’s very er—very simple. You see, we—I mean—” He writhed in slow, embarrassed torment.

  Fay Waldron seemed a firm believer in the old adage that he who fights and runs away will live to fight another day. She took her husband’s arm, spoke to him as one might to a child.

  “Come and lie down, Ely,” she ordered. She looked back at us with one last flickering effort. “It’s his stomach; he often gets these sudden attacks.” And she led him away.