Omit Flowers

by Stuart Palmer

  Sheriff Bates started. “Oh—I didn’t hear you drive up! Well, young man, I’ve got to give you credit. Your scheme worked—though not just the way we thought it might.”

  “Scheme?” echoed Todd blankly.

  “Sure,” went on the sheriff. “Your psycho-what-you-call-it plan to smoke out the murderer. Funny that we both counted on the killer trying to make a getaway instead of committing suicide like this! Of course, for a murderer it’s the best getaway of all—just curtains, and you never need to worry about anything again. She beat the chair.”

  He nodded sagely, and then I saw that Todd Cameron wasn’t listening.

  “May I see the note?” he asked through stiff lips.

  “What note?”

  Todd looked at him. “The note she left, of course.”

  Then the sheriff understood. “Oh, there wasn’t any suicide note. I guess she didn’t have time for that. It would have made things easier for us, I admit, if she’d put down a nice complete confession in her own handwriting.”

  Todd said, “And the door wasn’t locked?”

  “Not quite closed,” admitted Sheriff Bates. “But what of it?”

  “This is what of it,” said Todd Cameron coldly. “She didn’t commit suicide.”

  Sheriff Bates stared at him incredulously, and then almost laughed. “Come, come! Don’t try to tell me that this is another accident. First an old man burns up by accident and then a young girl falls out of a window by accident, and…”

  “I didn’t say anything about accident,” Todd told him. “Whatever happened to Mildred was the thing she’d been fearing for two days—the thing which has kept her half-paralyzed with fear! Why, her every sentence, her every movement, spelt abject fear!”

  “Fear of getting caught,” put in the sheriff.

  Todd shook his head, but the sheriff went on: “When she thought she would have to face the lie detector, and probably give herself away, she took the other way out. Why, it’s clear as day!”

  Todd Cameron came toward the bureau, pushed the filled ash tray with his finger. Then he turned suddenly on the sheriff.

  “It wasn’t herself she feared to give away, Sheriff. Not on your life. That poor little bedevilled kid was afraid that she’d have to spill, in spite of herself, the truth about somebody else. And she knew what she’d get afterwards…”

  Sheriff Bates was openmouthed. “What?”

  “She knew the answer to this whole mystery,” Todd said slowly. “I did my best to get her to talk, but she wouldn’t. She didn’t dare. But she knew that the lie detector, about which like everybody else she probably had a lot of fantastic ideas, would force the secret out of her. She knew that…”

  “And she took her own life to keep from incriminating someone else?” I burst in.

  Todd almost snarled. “Don’t be a fool. Except in books people don’t go to the electric chair, or ruin their lives, or commit suicide to save somebody else. She died for just one reason—because much as she feared the lie detector and another interrogation, somebody else feared it more. Somebody knew that she would inevitably give everything away, blurt out the secret that she must somehow have stumbled upon in the night. And that,” said Todd Cameron evenly, his voice quiet and too calm, “and that is why she was murdered!”

  Sheriff Bates drew back. “Now look here! Do you know what you’re saying? Why do you have to go and figure up a complicated explanation? If two and two make four—”

  “I’m sick of hearing about two and two!” Todd came back. “Don’t you know that criminologists agree that many falls from high buildings are murders, in spite of….”

  “Criminologists!” spat out the sheriff. “Look here, how could anybody have killed that girl? Here was a houseful of people, some of them in the next room! Don’t you suppose they would have heard a struggle? Even if the murderer had been strong enough to overpower the girl and throw her out of the window, wouldn’t she have fought? Wouldn’t she have screamed bloody murder?”

  “A scream, perhaps,” Todd admitted. He walked slowly toward the window. Suddenly his body tensed.

  “Sheriff!” he whispered, “what—what’s that?” He was pointing outside, into the darkness.

  In an instant Sheriff Bates was beside him, leaning far out of the window.

  Then, as I watched incredulously, I saw Todd Cameron stoop suddenly, catch the sheriff’s ankles one in each hand, and lift.

  There was a bellow of rage and fear as the bulky peace officer felt himself hanging over nowhere, and then Todd let go one ankle and seized his collar, dragging the man back in over the sill.

  “Why, you…”

  But Todd was smiling, a strange, hard smile. “That, my dear sheriff, is quite possibly how it was done. Without difficulty I could have sent you crashing down into the bushes, where Mildred went. There would have been no marks upon your ankles, no wound, no sign. You would have died—by accident!”

  Sheriff Bates took out a blue cotton handkerchief, mopped his face and neck.

  “All right,” he said slowly, as if breath were precious to him. “She was murdered, then.” His face brightened. “Say, that means I ought to have a better chance with that true-detective magazine! They like to get some—what do you call it?—sex appeal into their stuff. And while a murdered old man is all right, a murdered girl…”

  Sheriff Bates moved out into the hall, his face wearing an expression of eager anticipation.

  “I should have let him go out of the window,” said Todd Cameron. He gave a last look around the room, shook his head. “You know, Alan,” he told me soberly, “one never knows, when he starts something, just where it is going to lead him. I didn’t dream…”

  He shook his head again, as if to clear it. “Let’s go downstairs,” he said.

  The lower hall was full of men in uniform, who eyed us suspiciously and shunted us forward to the little sitting room under the stair, where the rest of the family had been confined during the past thirty minutes or so.

  They waited there—the same everyday faces as they had always worn, but somehow there was a new atmosphere, a tense, strained, suspicious atmosphere. No one sat or stood very close to anyone else.

  Dorothy was talking to the sheriff. “At least”—she was saying, her voice dry and brittle—“at least let this put an end to it! She’s gone, and we can’t do anything for her, and you can’t do anything to her. Can’t you let her rest now? Can’t you have decency enough to keep from dragging her memory through the mud? Whatever she did…”

  The sheriff looked uneasy. “Well, now—your cousin here doesn’t think she killed herself as a confession of guilt.”

  Dorothy looked, for some reason, at me. “I think Todd’s right,” I said. “Suicides always lock the door so they won’t be disturbed, and then usually leave a note. Mildred was the type to explain herself, I know she was!”

  Dorothy looked at Todd, but he was silent. The rest of the family fidgeted and stirred, speechlessly staring.

  “He thinks she was murdered to keep her from talking,” the sheriff went on. “Demonstrated pretty neatly how it was done, too. Only I can’t hardly believe that would be motive enough.”

  “Murdered!” gasped Cousin Mabel suddenly. “She was murdered! I can see it now! But it wasn’t because she knew anything, no, that wasn’t it. Don’t you see? Are you all blind ? Are you all going to wait here, like sheep in a pen, waiting…”

  Her voice rose higher and higher, until the sheriff raised his hand. “Shut her up, somebody!”

  “You won’t shut me up!” Mabel screamed. “This morning there were eight of us to share that trust fund—everybody here in this room except the sheriff and Fay and you!” She pointed at Eustace, who cringed a little. “This morning there were eight—tonight there are seven!”

  We all of us thought of that. “Tomorrow—God knows how many of us there may be left tomorrow to share it!” Mabel went on. “Every time one of us goes, the other shares are just that much larger! That’s wh
y people kill—for money! That’s why Uncle Joel was murdered, and that’s why Mildred was murdered, and that’s why maybe you—or you—or me—

  Her voice trailed away, and the sheriff rubbed his chin. “There might be something in it,” he said sagely. “Just like every one of you had a motive for killing the old man, each and every one of you has plenty to gain by wiping out most of the others. Thirty thousand dollars a year isn’t so much to split eight ways, but if there were only three or four of you…”

  Aunt Evelyn suddenly rose to her feet. “I’m convinced!” she announced. “I started to leave this house twice, but this time I’m going and nothing short of hell and high water is going to stop me!”

  The sheriff looked toward her, his face suddenly worried. “Sorry, ma’am, but there isn’t any train tonight—no, nor bus either.”

  “I’ll hire a car, then—or walk, if need be!”

  “I know how you feel,” said Sheriff Bates. “I don’t feel so happy here myself, particularly after a little demonstration that Mr Todd Cameron gave me up at the window. But it’s my duty to stay, and my duty to keep you within the jurisdiction of this county.”

  “You can’t stop me, and you know it!”

  Sheriff Bates stared at his shoe. “I can fix it so you’re booked as a material witness, on five thousand dollars bail. I asked the county judge about it this morning. Could you raise five thousand dollars right off—could any of you?” He stared at the circle.

  Aunt Evelyn slowly subsided in her chair.

  “Wild horses couldn’t drag me out of this place until Ely gets what’s coming to him,” put in Fay Waldron. “Besides, we’re all on our guard now, and I don’t think anyone would dare…”

  Uncle Alger took the floor. “The sheriff is right,” he announced. “Suppose we all run away now, don’t you see that we’d go to our graves under suspicion of these murders?”

  Aunt Evelyn said dryly that she’d rather go to her grave in twenty or thirty years under suspicion than to be murdered right here and now.

  “Lock your doors tonight, folks,” advised the sheriff. “I’m leaving a man stationed just inside the front door and that ought to put a stop to the monkey-business.” He went to the door, turned suddenly. “None of you’s been much help to me tonight, but you think it over. When I come out tomorrow morning, if there’s any little thing—anything at all—”

  He looked around the circle of wary, suspicious faces. “Well, g’night, folks.”

  Dorothy hurried after him. “Wait! Is there—may I go to my sister now?”

  He stopped, patted her arm. “Nothing you can do, I’m afraid. You better go to bed. They’ve already taken her away.”

  Dorothy stared at him. “Autopsy?”

  He nodded.

  “Is—is that really necessary?” Again he nodded, and Dorothy went slowly to the stair. I wanted to rush to her side, act the strong and comforting male. But somehow it didn’t seem just the time.

  The family faded away rather than retired. Nobody said good night, in fact nobody seemed to want to say anything. They all stared with frightened, suspicious eyes.

  Who would be the next?

  Mabel had certainly started something, she and Aunt Evelyn. When Todd and I were alone in the room he threw himself into a chair, lit one cigarette after another without really tasting the smoke.

  He looked so demon-haunted that I tried to say the right thing, and failed. “I know how hard this is on you,” I fumbled. “You loved her, didn’t you?”

  Todd turned and stared at me. “Loved her? Loved her? That’s just the trouble—I didn’t, and she didn’t. Not yet. We might have. We might have been the sun and moon and stars and the frosting on the cake to each other. But it never came true. Mildred never existed. She never lived, she never did anything she wanted to do. What might have happened to us—nobody knows. Uncle Joel died—and ended Mildred’s life. Maybe ruined a dozen others—like toy soldiers toppling over in a line.”

  He didn’t notice whether I was listening or not. His voice ran on and on:

  “Murder is a sin, Alan. You know why? Because it breaks the rhythm of life. It is a discord that ends the tune and makes everything run off to a whistling cacophony, like Chinese music. It isn’t just that somebody dies violently who would have died anyway a few years later. That’s nothing. It’s what it does to other people, innocent people, people who get all entangled and can’t—can’t see a way out.”

  Then somebody knocked softly on the door. He sprang to open it, and Dorothy Ely came in. She was wrapped up in some sort of many-colored coolie coat, and her hair was uncombed, but I realized that I had never seen her so beautiful as now.

  Sometimes sorrow and trouble can do that to a face, give it life and strength and identity. More often they dig lines and darken shadows, but Dorothy looked like a tragic actress.

  “Dorothy!” Todd said. “I must talk to you.”

  She held out her hand. “I—I must talk to you.”

  I burst in with—“We know how you must be feeling.”

  But she shook her head. “It’s not how I feel that matters. Mildred is dead. I’ve taken care of her and kept her out of scrapes for so long that I—I feel altogether lost and lonely. But…” Her hand made a wide, helpless gesture.

  “I came here to ask just one thing,” Dorothy continued simply. “You killed my sister. Oh—I know you didn’t mean to. If you’d been driving your car hell-bent up the driveway and she’d stepped in front of it, you wouldn’t have meant that, either. But she’d have been dead, and you’d have been to blame.”

  Todd didn’t say anything. “That isn’t fair!” I put in.

  “I know,” she said. Her voice was even, almost without a trace of bitterness. “All this was just to show up the murderer of Uncle Joel. You meant well. When this is over you can go on remembering just how well you meant, both of you. You can realize, when you think it over, just how little it mattered who killed Uncle Joel. Nobody loved him, did they? He loved nobody. He hated us all, we knew that. His death brought happiness and a chance for life to—to all of us. You could have let the police do their job!”

  “That sheriff!” Todd interposed. “He couldn’t find a picture card in a pinochle deck.”

  Dorothy’s smile was faint and hard. “Would that have mattered so much? Thousands of murderers go free every year. Police let them slip through their fingers, lawyers pull strings and juries disagree. Some murderers come out into the sunlight and sign vaudeville contracts and sell their life stories to the movies. This murderer—if it really was a murder!—could have gone free for all of us. Mildred was going to keep her lips sealed until you trapped her. She knew she’d have to talk, and so did someone else. Someone who—who had to go on, then, and kill her, too. So instead of helping justice, you’ve just complicated everything. And my sister, my poor little featherbrained love of a sister, is dead. I saw her, before they took her away.”

  Dorothy drew in her lips. “That’s why I want you to promise me something, both of you. I want you to promise to stop!”

  Todd started to speak, but she held up her hand. “I’m begging you, for Mildred’s sake—and because if you go on interfering and meddling I know—I feel—”

  She stopped, searching for words. “I feel that somebody else will go as Mildred went—and I can’t stand any more!”

  There was a long silence. Somehow I waited for Todd to answer, and Dorothy, too, was looking at him. He stood there, with an inch-long ash depending from his cigarette.

  “Will you promise?” Dorothy demanded.

  Silently the gray ash fell to the floor, Todd staring after it thoughtfully. Then he smiled. “Why not?” he said. “As you say, Alan and I haven’t been markedly successful as detectives.”

  “That’s all I want to know!” Dorothy said, her voice softer. She looked at me. “You, too, Alan.”

  I was unhappy about it. “Why, of course if Todd says so—he’s been the leader of this.”

  She smiled
. “Good night—and remember, you’ve promised not to go making targets of yourselves any more.” The door closed behind her.

  Todd threw himself into a chair, lit another cigarette and ground it savagely out. I hadn’t anything to say to him, being rather disappointed in him for quitting so easily. Perhaps somewhere in the back of my mind was a faint suspicion that Dorothy’s prayer was based upon a fear that we—particularly Todd—might walk into personal danger.

  I undressed and sank into bed. Todd was stalking up and down the room. Then suddenly he came over to me. “Alan, didn’t you say once that you had some brandy in your suitcase?”

  Surprised, I told him where it was. He poured three fingers into a tumbler, and then, as I watched to see him down it, he brought it over to me. “It’ll help you sleep,” he suggested. “Go on, Alan, you look haunted.”

  I took it, and under the dominance of Todd’s gaze I tossed it off. “I’m turning in, too,” he told me. “Got to get up early in the morning.” I remember vaguely his turning out the light.

  Then dreams, interminable dreams….

  The last and worst of these was one in which I found myself being hunted across the moors of Devon by a great black hound. The huntsmen of hell were whistling him on…

  I woke with the sound of a faint and eerie whistle in my ears. The whistle was real. Todd did not seem to hear it, nor did he move on his pillow across the room as I softly slipped out of bed and tiptoed to the window.

  The whistling was ended now, and a bright and swirling mist made everything strange outside. For a long minute, in spite of the chill, I remained at the open window. I could see nothing, hear nothing. Then, as I was about to climb back into bed, I caught a glimpse of something moving high on the hillside. The wind whipped the fog into tatters and I saw it again. Instantly I was reminded of an illustration in one of my boyhood books—Mowgli, of course! Mowgli at the Council Rock… “Look well, oh wolves!”

  I saw the figure of a man, with a wolf facing him. The man moved forward, appeared to speak.

  I was in a state of mind to hear the wolf answer him, but I did not wait for that. “Todd!” I whispered thickly, “wake up!”