Dram of Poison

by Charlotte Armstrong

  Everyone’s doom was his own.

  Mr. Gibson sat in a dream.

  At twelve o’clock he was dressed and ready to go downtown, and Mrs. Violette was finished. So he paid her.

  “Mr. Gibson, could I have this old string?” she asked him, and showed him what she had fished from the kitchen wastebasket.

  “Of course,” he said. “Do you need any more?”

  “I got a lot of stuff to tie up,” she admitted. “We’re going to take ’most everything in the back of the truck”

  “How about this?” He gave her a ball of mustard-colored twine.

  “That’s Miss Gibson’s.” Mrs. Violette’s small but ripe-lipped mouth made a hiss of the appellation.

  “Well?” he bridled. “Surely I may present you with a bit of string.”

  Mrs. Violette said, “I don’t like to take her stuff. Never mind, anyhow. I got to go to the bank and I can pick some up …”

  “Take it,” he said urgently. “I’d like you to take this.”

  “Well, then …” Mrs. Violette seemed to understand his need. She began to wind twine upon her spread fingers.

  “No, take it all,” he said. “Please do.”

  “I don’t like to take more than I’ll use.”

  “I know that,” he told her. This was, he fancied, a rather silly, very trivial rebellion. He just wanted something to be as it used to be. He wanted to feel—generous. (Or … for all he knew, he wanted, in some ridiculous revenge, to do his sister Ethel out of the price of a ball of twine.)

  Mrs. Violette took the whole ball. “I’m sorry to leave you and Mrs. Gibson,” said she.

  “I’m sorry if my sister has upset you,” he said tiredly

  “Me and Joe are going up to the mountains,” said Mrs. Violette. He perceived that this was an answer. “And I got to be ready by five o’clock …” She stopped speaking and looked at him. He had the strange conviction that she knew what he proposed to do.

  “That’s all right,” he said soothingly.

  Mrs. Violette’s face lit in a rare smile. “Well, then, goodbye,” she said. “They say that means ‘God be with you.’”

  “Goodbye,” said Mr. Gibson rather fondly.

  She went out the kitchen door with the ball of twine in her pocket. Now he was all alone.

  At 12:10 o’clock he left the cottage and walked … doing quite well without his cane, although he lurched when he came down upon the shortened leg and could not help it … went two blocks west, crossed the boulevard there and caught a bus for downtown. Paul Townsend he had left safe at home behind him, working away in his herb garden this morning. So Mr. Gibson knew how to get what he wanted.

  He did not see the people on the bus. He did not notice the familiar scenery as the vehicle proceeded on the boulevard, then went threading around residential corners until it came upon a business street and thicker traffic. Mr. Gibson, in a mood both bitter and dangerously sweet, was composing a letter.

  There was a temptation to be pathetic, and he must resist it. He must make Rosemary understand the cold choice. He must in no way seem to reproach her … A difficult letter. What words would do this?

  He came out of his absorption in time to get off the bus on a downtown corner. This little city had grown, like all California towns, as a wild weed grows. It had left the college here, and in its own park, close to the town’s old center … and had sent tentacles romping out into valleys and lowlands on all sides. But Mr. Gibson would not go there, to the college—to walk on a campus path and be spoken to by name … not again. They would not miss him very much, he thought. Some younger man would come in.…

  Paul Townsend’s place of business was a block and a half in the opposite direction, and Mr. Gibson turned his uneven steps that way. He began to imagine his next moves … and, as he did so, he realized that he ought to have brought a container. He stopped in at a delicatessen and purchased the first small bottle he saw on the shelf. It happened to be a two-ounce bottle of imported olive oil, and quite expensive.

  “I am Kenneth Gibson. Mr. Townsend’s neighbor. He asked me to stop by and fetch a letter out of his desk,” said Mr. Gibson with cool nerves.

  “Oh yes. Can I get it for you, Mr. Gibson?”

  “He told me exactly where to put my hand on it … if you don’t mind …”

  “Not at all,” the girl said. “This way, Mr. Gibson.” She knew who he was … Mr. Gibson of the English Department … a trustworthy man. “In here,” she said with a smile, and ushered him into the laboratory.

  He did not look at the cupboards but went to Paul’s desk and opened the left top drawer and took, at random, an old letter out of a pile. “This seems to be the one.”

  “Good,” she said.

  “Er …” Mr. Gibson looked distressed and embarrassed. “Is there by any chance a … er … men’s room …?”

  “Oh yes,” she said becoming at once crisp and remote. “Right over there, sir.” She indicated a door.

  “Thank you.”

  As he had calculated, she left for the outer regions.

  He went into the small washroom and turned the cap upon the bottle of olive oil and gravely poured the contents away into the sink.

  He came out. Now the laboratory was his alone. He found the key with no trouble. He took down No. 333. His hands were steady as he poured its liquid content into his own container. It was a delicate task, from one small opening into another, but he was cold and clearheaded. He scarcely spilled a drop.

  He did not take it all. As he put No. 333 back in place he thought the depletion of the supply would not be noticed for some time. He made no attempt to wipe off fingerprints or anything of that sort. He had elected not to take the whole bottle from the cupboard away with him, only because he needed time. Time to get home. Time to write his letter. He did not want the fact of some missing poison noted too soon and the girl asked and his name given and he interrupted.

  Mr. Gibson put the poison he had stolen into the green paper bag, relocked the cupboard, hid the key, left the premises. He thought he might have made a cool and successful thief: he might as well have been a thief all his life for all the difference.…

  He stood on the downtown corner, waiting for a bus, feeling absolutely numb for the moment. Just as one came, just as he got on, he thought he heard his name spoken. But he wasn’t certain, didn’t really care whether anyone had called his name or not.… so he moved on and sat down by a window.

  I have a tree, a graft of love

  That in my heart has taken root

  Sad are the buds and blooms thereof

  And bitter sorrow is its fruit—

  Oh, stop! Stop this senseless jingling of old words. Villon was long dead.

  Looking blindly out, the thought crossed his veering mind capriciously that perhaps he’d had, just now, a supernatural warning. But he knew what he was doing. Death. Well? He was simply going to step out of his doom. To him it seemed not an unintelligent thing to do. A just God would understand.

  How could he put this in a letter? “… Very tired …” he would write. No. No. It was possible that he would have to lie. What matter if he did or did not lie? “… I am not as well as I appear. I have known for a long time …” Should he him that he had begun to doubt his sanity? Yes, that … Rosemary should understand. And perhaps he was insane. In fact, he did not and could not know himself, really, why he was doing this deed. Not even this could he know. Doom. In the iceberg of his subconscious the motive lay and worked.

  Mr. Gibson, sunk in icy gloom, saw nothing out the windows, nothing inside the bus which went its doomed way on the streets of the town carrying all the doomed people. If he could have done anything for Rosemary, or for any living soul … he might have stayed. But all, all were doomed, and to help each other or even to love each other was only another illusion.

  Some sense of time and space prodded him to notice the stop that would let him off at the corner where the market was. So he got up and, filled with such
pain that he was nearly blinded, he went toward the door. As he stepped off, he thought he heard his name called again.

  Angels? Well, if he was about to damn himself through eternity, then he was going to do so. All his life he had done all the duty he had been given to see, made his apparent choices, and if he still had an illusion of choice, this deed appeared to him to be as much his duty as his pleasure … and he would do it.

  And one duty besides … a promise to keep … the marketing he had said he would do for Ethel. Then he would come (with what relief) to the end of his duties.

  So Mr. Gibson went into the big market and took a wheeled basket and pushed it along the aisles. He selected lettuce, he took cocoa, he took a loaf of thin-sliced white bread … he took cheese (the kind Ethel preferred). And he took tea for Rosemary. (It might comfort her.)

  He stood at the check stand, dumb and lost in utter helplessness, while the girl fingered the buttons and rang the prices. He lifted the big brown bag in his arms. He walked two blocks east, and one north.…

  The roses at the far side of the cottage were not blooming now.

  Old Mrs. Pyne was sitting in her wheel chair on the Townsend’s porch. She waved cheerily at him.

  Mr. Gibson staggered his course to bring himself near enough to speak to her. (He could ask her. He could inquire about Paul and what the Church might say about marriage and divorcées.… But why? He didn’t want to divorce Rosemary and be, for God knew how many years, her and her husband’s friend. No, he didn’t want that loophole into life. He would rather pretend it wasn’t there. Kid himself, he thought bitterly, that the deed would be done for Rosemary’s sake.)

  He said, “Hello …” weakly.

  “Goodness!” said the old lady leaning forward, “isn’t that too heavy for you, Mr. Gibson?”

  “Not too heavy.” (But it was. It was heavy, his bag of food and death.) “How are you, Mrs. Pyne?” He smiled falsely.

  “I’m all right,” she said. “Isn’t this a glorious day?” Her voice took on a special and almost shocking vigor. “It’s so marvelous to be able to sit out in the sun.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes … well …”

  He stumbled across the double driveways. He heard Paul’s voice calling, “Hi! How goes it?” Mr. Gibson pretended not to hear.

  Marvelous to be able to sit in the sun? It was! Yes, it was! He unlocked his door and went in, beginning to know that, quite possibly, he could not do what he had planned to do. So in a night and a morning of acute depression—he had only made a fool of himself once more. He, Kenneth Gibson, was not cut out to be a suicide. No. He was fated to set Rosemary free and be her and her husband’s good friend for his natural life and limp on in time and bear all. It was not his doom to die today. He couldn’t change his doom. Doom is not doom if there is any way out of it. And he was doomed … to go on being the neat, decent, too thin-skinned little man he had been born to be.

  Because it was marvelous to be able to sit in the sun! And this was enough to keep a man alive!

  Mr. Gibson began to feel a bit hysterical. No, no, he would do it! One second of resolution—that was all he needed. Surely he could manage to lift hand to mouth—one quick gesture—without thought …

  But if he waited to write a letter. No, no! His whole decision was running away, running out of him. But couldn’t the doomed of God ask a little kindness of the devil? Quick, then! Or suffer the tragicomedy out, be a spectator in his own skull and watch his own acts with what bitter amusement could be salvaged.

  He was in the kitchen. He did not have—he did not even want—that kind of courage. Not any more.

  He put the big brown bag on the counter. He took out the head of lettuce, the piece of cheese, loaf of bread, the box of tea, and, heavy at the bottom of the bag, the can of cocoa. And now he groped for the bottle of death. He would do it at once!

  The big bag was absolutely empty.

  Yes, quickly.

  His hand met nothing.

  His death would be a mystery: death always was. Where—?

  But surely he had put the small green paper bag, twisted up around the little bottle, into the market basket, and the checker girl would have put it in with his purchases. She hadn’t. It wasn’t here.

  Where was it? The terrible quick poison he had gone so far to steal?

  He searched his jacket pockets. Not there!

  Had he dreamed the whole thing? No, surely he remembered pouring the olive oil into the sink far too vividly to have done it in a dream. He had lost it? But the poison was now in a bottle labeled “olive oil.” Nobody would have any way of knowing it was poison! Colorless, odorless, instant …

  What had he done?

  Oh, what wicked error had he made this time?

  Where had he left a bottle of poison that looked so innocent? In what public place where innocent people came and went?

  The shock nearly caused him to fall down. Then his blood raced and cried no no no in perfect revulsion.

  Well, it was the end of him. The end of Kenneth Gibson. The end of all respect for him, forever. But somebody else was going to get the poison and die of it unless he could prevent this.

  The lightning change of all his purposes sent him stumbling to the telephone. He dialed. He said, “Police.” His voice did not sound like his own. Every bit of any kind of courage he had, stiffened his spine. Face it. All right. No nonsense, now. A sickness seemed to fall off him.

  The front door of the cottage opened. His wife Rosemary was standing there.

  “I came,” she said, intent upon herself and her own thoughts, “because I have got to talk to you. I can’t—be such a rabbit—” Her face changed. “Kenneth, what’s the matter?”

  He had held up his hand for her to be silent. He thrust away every thought but one.

  “Police? This is Kenneth Gibson. I have mislaid a small bottle filled with deadly poison.” He articulated very clearly and spoke forcefully. “The bottle is labeled olive oil. It is roughly a pyramid, about five inches high, and it’s inside a green paper bag. Nobody is going to know that it is poison. Can you do anything? Can you find it? Can you put out a warning?”

  Rosemary shrank back against the door.

  “I stole it. From a laboratory.… Can’t give you the name of the stuff. It is odorless, tasteless … fatal.… Yes, sir. I took a Number Five bus at the corner of Main and Cabrillo at about a quarter after one o’clock. Got off at Lambert and the Boulevard … must have been one forty-five. I was in the market there possibly ten or fifteen minutes. It’s just after two o’clock now.… Yes. Walked to my house … and just now discovered I haven’t got it.… No, I am absolutely sure.… I put it in the olive-oil bottle.… Brand? King somebody-or-other.…Yes, I did that.… Why? Because I was going to use it myself,” he told the barking questioner on the line. “I intended to kill myself.”

  Rosemary whimpered. He did not look at her.

  “Yes, I know it may kill somebody else. That’s why I’m calling.…” The voice raged in a controlled way. “Yes, I am criminal,” said Mr. Gibson. “Anything you say. Find it. Please, do all you can to find it.”

  He gave his name again. His address. His phone number.

  He put the phone upon the cradle.

  “Why?” said Rosemary.

  He had thought never to see her again.

  “Kenneth, I didn’t. I didn’t. Forgive me. I didn’t—”

  He scarcely heard what she said. He spoke harshly. “Go back to your shop. Know nothing about this. Don’t get into it. Leave me. I may have caused someone to die. I may be a murderer. No good to you now. Leave me.” He willed her to vanish.

  Rosemary shoved herself away from the slab of the door, and stood on her feet. She said, “No. I will not leave you. It isn’t going to happen. Nobody will be poisoned. We will go and find it.”

  He made a gesture of despair. “Oh no, mouse, no use to dream …”

  “That’s wrong,” said Rosemary. “That’s untrue. We can find the poiso
n. I can—and I will. And you’ll come too. Paul will help us!” she cried and whirled and opened the door. “Come …” she said imperiously.

  “All right,” said Mr. Gibson. “We can try, I suppose.”

  He walked out into the sunshine. He was very cold. He was as good as dead. He was so ruined a man—by this stroke of fate or whatever it was—it seemed to him that he had most unfortunately survived himself.

  Rosemary ran, calling, “Paul! Paul!”

  Paul bobbed up from behind a hedge. “What’s up?” he said cheerfully.

  “Help us. Kenneth had some poison.… He’s left it someplace. We have to find it.”

  “Poison! What’s this!”

  “Your car. Please. Please, Paul. It’s in a bottle labeled olive oil. Anybody might get it. He’s left it at the market. Or on a bus. We have to go there.”

  Paul tossed her some keys. “Get out the car,” he said. His hand clenched around Mr. Gibson’s forearm. “What’s she talking …?”

  “It is Number Three thirty-three,” Mr. Gibson said perfectly distinctly, “I went downtown and stole it from your cupboard.”

  “What in hell—!”

  “I was going to kill myself,” said Mr. Gibson without apology. “Now I may kill somebody else.”

  Paul stepped back and withdrew his hand as if from contamination. He turned and yelled at Rosemary. “Did you call the police?”

  She was vanishing into Paul’s garage. “Yes! Yes! Hurry! Hurry!” she shouted.

  Paul said, “Got to tell Mama—get a shirt—” He leaped up on his porch. “Don’t go without me,” he yelled back over his shoulder. Mr. Gibson stood still. Rosemary was in the garage trying to start a strange car.

  But the quiet neighborhood was still quiet. This crisis was like a dagger plunged into flesh that did not yet feel any wound. He, the cause, stood still and could smell lavender and feel the weight of the sun’s heat. He experienced a moment out of time. He might as well have killed himself, for he knew he was lost. But also he was being born again. He closed his eyes and turned his face to the caress of the light.

  Then Paul’s De Soto came bucking and plunging backward. It stopped and Rosemary swung the door and leaned out “Get in.”