The Innocent Flower

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “Get the coffee, Eve. Ralph’s all right Edgar was a pretty stolid fellow. It might not even do Ralph any harm if he did find out Remember that”

  “Oh, Edgar … he was so damn’ stolid he nearly drove me wild!” Eve cried. “But Ralph mustn’t find out,” she muttered.

  She went off to the kitchen again and came back in a minute with a bowl of brown ice cubes and the coffeepot.

  Mary nibbled a cake. “What makes you think of your Aunt Edie?”

  “Oh, what she said.”

  “Constance?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t pay her any mind.”

  “I could …” began Eve darkly. She rattled ice cubes into the glasses and poured the hot coffee over them. “One of these days …”She stopped herself again. “It’s Ralph, though,” she muttered. “I worry so.”

  “Of course you do,” said Mary. “What did Mr. Duff say?”

  “He didn’t say much. Why did he want to see a picture of Denis?”

  “I don’t know,” said Mary.

  “Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he just wanted …”

  “What?”

  “That Brownie!” said Eve. “She couldn’t even die. Oh, Mary, I’m so sorry about it all. Oh, God, why is life such a damn mess?”

  “I don’t know that it is,” said Mary calmly. “Sometimes I think it’s a pretty fine thing, as far as it goes.”

  “It doesn’t go very far,” said Eve bitterly. “That’s a comfort It ends, I guess. Don’t you like iced coffee, Mary? Have you had sugar? Cream?”

  “It’s fine, thanks.” Mary took the glass. Eve rattled the cubes in hers. Her eyes glittered. Mary, wondered if she were going to cry.

  “You’re doing too much, Eve. Please don’t keep on at the hospital. I think it’s too much for you.”

  “Good thing I was there, just the same,” said Eve darkly.

  “What do you mean?” Mary felt frightened. She lifted her glass.

  “No. No, nothing. I—Who’s that!”

  Duff came over the gate as if it were a hurdle, sailing across in a leap like a dancer’s, scarcely breaking his long running stride.

  “What’s happened now!” Eve’s claw went for hex own throat.

  “Heaven knows!” Mary took a long swig of iced coffee as if to fortify herself.

  Eve’s teeth rattled on the glass. She, too, drank some.

  Duff leaped to the porch and knocked her glass out of Mary’s hand. It broke on the floor. The brown ice slid and left a glistening trail. His fingers hurt her shoulders. She cried out He was looking into her face with the most terrible anxiety.

  “Mr. Duff!” she gasped.

  “Mary, darling, have they killed you? How do you feel? How do you feel!”…“I’d feel fine,” said Mary, “if you’d let me go, please.”

  Duff took his hands away and they were shaking. He looked at Eve.

  He said, “Are you sure?” in a dead voice.

  “What on earth’s the matter?” Eve Meredith cried. “Of course she’s all right Why wouldn’t she be?”

  Duff gave her a weary look and collapsed on the steps. He said nothing. His long hands hung off his wrists. He was like a big dog.

  In a moment Mary leaned over and said gently. “What did you think was wrong?” Her voice forgave and understood. She felt sorry.

  “I thought …” he panted. He rubbed a hand over his face for a moment.

  “You must have been mistaken,” said Mary. “There’s nothing wrong here.”

  Duff made no answer.

  The kids came pouring through the gate, even Davey. Duff got up and stood over the tray. He examined the cakes. “You’ve eaten some of these?” He poked at the ice cubes. “Why are they brown?”

  “I always do that in the summer,” explained Eve in a rapid patter. “I just put the leftover coffee from breakfast in the ice tray. So then I have them all ready. It makes iced coffee so much better. Otherwise, it gets diluted.”

  “I see.”

  “I got the idea out of a magazine, years ago. I …”

  “Yes. Yes.” Duff put his finger in the sugar, tasted it “You take sugar?”

  “Of course. We both did. There’s nothing wrong with the …”

  Duff tasted the cream. He looked at the bowl of ice again. “You put coffee in the ice tray early?”

  “Right after breakfast”

  “Mommy,” said Mitch.

  “Mother—”

  Duff smiled at last, down into the six worried faces. “She’s all right,” he said cheerfully. “I made a mistake, I guess. That’s all.”

  “Boy, boy, oh, boy,” said Alfie in a moment “Can you move!”

  “Can you run!” said Paul. “Jeepers.”

  “Come on home,” said Dinny. “Mother, please come home.” The little ones looked frightened, and all their round eyes implored her. So Mary went, convoyed by her young, walking slowly among them as if she were a little dazed.

  Duff stood a minute. Then he looked at Eve.

  “Why don’t you come, too?” he said. “You don’t want to be alone, do you?”

  “No,” said Eve. “No.”

  The doctor held Constance in his arms. “It’s all right, all right!” he said. His eyes could see, through the window, the procession that was coming. “It’s all right, darling. Don’t cry.”

  Constance wasn’t crying. She could see through the window, too. “We needn’t stay here,” she said.

  “We’d better.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t worry, Connie,” he soothed. “Duff’s only using me to trap somebody else, I think. Wait …”

  She moved and looked up at him. “It’s all right,” he said. “Why, my darling, it will have to be all right, now!”

  “But I’d like to go,” she said a little coldly.

  “No,” he smiled at her. “We’ll stay.”

  She said no more. She got out her compact. On the hand holding it, her knuckles were white.

  The front doorbell rang.

  Paul swept through the hall to the front door before the doctor could get there. Pring and Robin stood outside and behind them, looking as if he were about to make a deep bow, was Mr. F. X. Haggerty.

  “Looking for Mr. Duff …”

  “He’s here.”

  “Mr. Duff?”

  “Sure. Come in.”

  Duff faced them all. The kids and Mary, the doctor, Constance, the two detectives, and Haggerty, and Eve.

  “Well, what goes on?” said Pring stolidly. “Anything happen?”

  “No,” said MacDougal Duff. “Nothing happened.”

  Somewhere, upstairs, there was a distant crash.

  CHAPTER 16

  What was that!”

  “Something fall?”

  “Who’s up there?”

  “Nobody,” cried Mary. “There can’t be anybody. We’re all here!”

  Eye met eye.

  Duff said smoothly, “Suppose we go see who is up there? Come on, Pring. You, too, Robin. And you, boys, if you please. Alfie and Paul. Doctor, will you watch these stairs? Dinny, show Mr. Haggerty the back stairs, please.”

  “Oh, I know,” said Haggerty. “I happen …”

  But the boys had snapped into action. They started up, and Duff and the detectives followed fast.

  “The third floor, I imagine,” Duff said. “It usually is.”

  Robin shifted his gum, and they went on. But there was nobody on the third floor. It slept in dusty warmth, all of it, empty, still innocent.

  “What the deuce?” Pring shoved his hat back on his head.

  “Sounded like a window,” said Duff. “These windows have to be propped up. No sash weights. Isn’t that so?”

  The boys murmured yes. They hadn’t done any boyish chattering. They were very silent boys.

  Duff peered about some more.

  “Hey,” said Robin from the front storeroom. “Look here.”

  They gathered around the window, which was closed. Robin pushed it u
p. It opened to the street front Outside, on a little flare of shingles that crossed the face of the house, there was a splash of water. The western sun was still hot, and it slanted this way. Water on those shingles should have dried quickly.

  Duff leaned out There were, he noticed, two nails standing out from the shingles, about an inch apart, and all around them the shingles were wet. He felt a wriggling body hanging out beside him. Paul had Alfie by the heels. Alfie was reaching down to feel of the wetness. His finger started toward his mouth.

  Suddenly Duff slapped him hard, on the hand. “Don’t taste it!” Alfie let out a howl of surprise, and Paul hauled indignantly at his legs.

  “Don’t touch it again.” Duff bent a stern glance on Alfie’s red astonished face. “What did you do with the rest of them?”

  “Huh?”

  “Give up. I know All, see.” Duff included Paul. “Come on.” Alfie was goggling. Paul looked a little red, too. “Where are those other coffee-flavored ice cubes? Speak up, my lads, because they’re poisoned, you know.”

  “P-poisoned!”

  “Listen,” said Paul, “we didn’t …”

  “I know. I know. You didn’t But where are they? Quick.”

  “We put them down the toilet,” Alfie confessed.

  “And the tray?”

  “We washed it and put it back.”

  “In your mother’s icebox?”

  “Yeah, sure.” -

  “But you got it from Eve’s? Didn’t you?”

  “They fit, all right,” said Paul. “Same kind of icebox.”

  Duff turned to Pring. “Soak up some of that moisture on a handkerchief. Here’s a clean one. See if we can get enough to have analyzed. All we need is a trace. Try it”

  Robin was all ready half out the window.

  “Why? What is it?” said Pring flatly.

  “Nicotine, I imagine.”

  Pring whistled.

  “The Moriariry kids,” said Duff, “have been hoaxing me. At least four of them have. Maybe five. I think these boys heard you say it must have been an inside job … Nobody here but the family. So they were going to have us hunting a mysterious somebody who must be hiding in this house. They had me doing it, too. For a while. We’ve had a lot of fun. Ghost stories, and everything. Fun’s fun. Still …” Duff staggered a little.

  “You saved your mother’s life, today,” he said to the boys, “when, I would have been too late. So all is forgiven.” With an effort, he smiled at them. “Please believe me …”

  The boys murmured and shifted their feet “Listen,” said Pring, “what is this? Do you mind?”

  Duff told him, “There was a coffee ice cube, such as Mrs. Meredith always has handy for making iced coffee. One of the kids got the inspiration—”

  “Alfie,” murmured Paul. It was his sense of justice. Alfie had been smart and must have the credit.

  “Put it between those nails,” said Duff. “Look. See them? Brace a stick there, on a long slant to the window, holding it up. Everybody goes downstairs, hangs around in full sight. The sun shines. The ice melts. The stick slips. Bang! The stick goes over, down among the bushes. It seems as if somebody up here has closed a window.

  “But that’s not all,” he continued. “We arrive. If we see the wet spot, we might be bright enough to think of ice. But—it tastes like black coffee! Ah-ha, we deduce, so the mysterious dweller in the attic was just getting rid of a little leftover coffee after his snack and the window slipped out of his hand. Oh, yes, we’d have noticed it was coffee. Alfie wasn’t taking any chances. He was going to make that discovery for us, in case we were too dumb.”

  “You’re not so dumb,” said Alfie cheerfully.

  “But how come? Whatdaya mean, poison?” Pring and Paul demanded. Paul looked angry, as if evil had no right to intrude upon a merry prank, and Pring looked both grim and doubtful.

  “I believe it’s poisoned.” Duff said. “I ran my legs off, believing that. I can be wrong.”

  Robin pulled his head in at the window and rolled up the handkerchief. “We can find out, I guess.”

  “You kids stole Mrs. Meredith’s ice tray?” Pring asked them as if he needed to start over again.

  “Yeah,” said Paul rapidly, standing up to the question. It was obvious he felt no guilt but sought the truth as they did. “We didn’t think of it until too late to make our own, and anyhow, Mr. Duff mighta got into our icebox. So we took Mom’s coffeepot and fixed another tray and changed them.”

  “When?” Duff asked.

  “About two-thirty.”

  “You turned Eve’s icebox up, I suppose?”

  “All the way.”

  “Yeah, we hadda,” chimed Alfie. “Paul figgered …”

  “But listen, it took all that time to melt?” Pring looked doubtful still.

  “It’s four-thirty,” said Robin with a fat frown. “We got here early.”

  “Naturally,” said Paul, “we didn’t fix the window and the stick until Mr. Duff went back downstairs a little while ago. Of course, the coffee ice was melted some already. But we had some other ice in a pail. We’d kept it cool. We’d figgered it out roughly.”

  “Say, listen,” cried Alfie, “it worked, didn’t it? It would have been good!”

  “It was good,” Duff said. “I assure you, it could have fooled me. It would have fooled me all to pieces. Thank God you fooled somebody else. Well, shall we go down now?”

  They all obeyed his suggestion like puppets or people who moved in a daze.

  “Yeah, but who put the poison in Mrs. Meredith’s ice tray?” said Pring, abruptly, halfway down, as if he’d just remembered that this was the question.

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” Duff said, “when we get downstairs. It will be only what I think.”

  “You think good,” said Alfie.

  “Yeah,” said Paul.

  CHAPTER 17

  There is no one in the house,” Duff made his announcement to them all, “except those of us here in this room now. Won’t you all sit down somewhere?”

  Mary was already seated, there in her living room, on the red couch where Brownie had died. She had Davey under one wing and Taffy under the other. Mitch, who leaned over behind them, kept one hand on Mary’s shoulder to which, now and then, Mary bent her cheek. She hadn’t enough wings to go around. Dinny, too, was curled up like a spring the other side of her littlest brother, and the big boys, marching as one, went directly across and joined the family portrait.

  Seven Moriaritys made a quiet phalanx. Solid and indivisible. It was clear that they stood for each other against the world.

  Dr. Christenson and Constance sat down across the room.

  Eve Meredith, lonely and tense, crouched in a chair by the cold fireplace and watched on all sides, as if she were an animal at bay.

  Pring and Robin arranged themselves, by some instinct, between the rest and the hall. Mr. Haggerty put himself, with a meek and humble air, into a corner where he remained, quiet as a mouse, with his notebook handy.

  Duff let the silence settle, like dust.

  “I am going to tell you what I have been thinking,” he said at last, “and we shall see where it leads us. This is what I believe—part guess, part intuition, part logic, part faith. And not proven. I must give it to you as I see it, now. I believe that Miss Emily Brown was murdered. Someone saw to it that she drank a poison, and she died. I do not believe it was an accident.”

  A rustle of alarm blew around the room. People braced themselves.

  “As a beginning,” Duff continued in a quiet voice, “I would like to tell you all why Dr. Norris Christenson thought he had to kill Miss Brown.”

  No one looked at the doctor. All eyes kept hold ofDuff’s face, as if they dared not look away. The doctor,’himself, shook his head, just a quiver, as if to say unhap pily that he still didn’t understand.

  “The doctor is engaged to Miss Constance Avery” —Duff bowed in that lady’s direction—”with whom he is very much in love.
Miss Brown had never met Miss Avery. On Sunday evening, last, they were to meet for the first time. During the afternoon, young Taffy, here, took sick, and Miss Brown went across to Mrs. Meredith’s house to fetch an ice collar. Waiting there, she stumbled upon a fact she had not known before. She found it out, quite accidentally, I believe, by glancing through an old photograph album, which album I have and can show you. She found out that Dr. Christenson is really Mrs. Meredith’s first cousin and the son of Mrs. Meredith’s aunt”

  Eve covered her face with her hands, suddenly, and fell against the back of her chair. Duff- went inexorably on.

  “Miss Brown already knew quite well that Mrs. Meredith’s aunt had been committed to an asylum, years ago. She died there. I think you can all see, as Miss Brown did, why the doctor went to the trouble of changing his name around a little, and why he hasn’t advertised being Eve’s cousin. Mrs. Meredith, of course, must have known who he was and kept his secret.”

  “Of course,” groaned Eve. “What did it matter …?”

  “Why did he come here, to this town?”

  “Because,” said Eve, “I helped him. I told my friends he was a good up-and-coming young doctor.”

  Duff said, “Thank you. Now, Miss Avery, interested as she is in the problems of animal breeding, and therefore in the problems of human heredity, has, from time to time, been quite outspoken in her opinions.” Constance’s lids trembled.

  “The doctor believed, having heard her say so many times, that if she were to be told about his mother’s weakness, she would refuse to marry him.” Duff let a little pause go by. Miss Avery’s breathing was shallow and fast. The doctor sat like a lump. Eve still cowered with a hidden face.