The Innocent Flower

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “When Miss Brown, then, showed him the baby picture of himself which she had filched from Eve’s album and told him that she had discovered the relationship, do you see his immediate reaction? He desperately wanted to prevent Miss Brown from telling Miss Avery. It was the sort of thing Miss Brown would enjoy doing. She would not, I imagine, respond to any appeal.”

  The doctor shook his head, involuntarily agreeing.

  “Well, he tried, first,” Duff went on, “to telephone Miss Avery and cancel the meeting of the two women that was due to take place that evening. But he couldn’t reach Miss Avery by phone,”

  Constance’s eyes-were lifted, now, with something like hope in them.

  “It is too bad that he misunderstood,” said Duff blandly. “Too bad that his … passion for Miss Avery and his panic lest he lose her conspired to deceive him. He forgot or, at least, did not consider, that a theoretical judgment passed on people in the mass is not always the same judgment that the theorist will make when she considers the individual. Especially,” said Duff slyly, “when the individual is herself.” Then he was generous. “Miss Avery, of course, would not have thrown him over. She would not have been quite so—shall we say—cold-blooded as that.”

  A soft sigh escaped Constance. Her eyes fixed on Duff’s face were enigmatic. She was not, at least, looking at him as if he were a doorman.

  “Well, that was his motive. Miss Brown was quite capable of spilling those beans, would have enjoyed spilling them. And he believed, absolutely, that the spilling of the beans would, ruin the rest of his life and take away from him what he most wanted. He was in a panic. Is that clear?”

  “O.K.” said Pring. “He had a motive, all right I follow you.”

  The doctor rubbed his left finger with his right hand, but he did not speak.

  “Now, of course, we must try to figure out how he did it. Motive, means, opportunity, the formula goes and must go.” Duff settled on has heels. “We have been pretty badly confused about those wine bottles.”

  “Yeah,” muttered Pring.

  “By the fingerprints on them, the fact that there were two alike, the evidence of various Moriaritys on the subject. We have been wondering which of them told lies.” The Moriarity phalanx bristled perceptibly, all together. “However”—Duff smiled at them as if he gave them each a quick reassuring pat of his hand—”let us, for a moment, proceed on the basis that none of the Moriaritys told any lies at all. We have no reason to think that they are liars. We have, instead, the right to assume that they are tellers of the truth, honest and decent and intelligent. And, therefore, able to give evidence that ought to be extremely reliable.”

  “Yeah, but kids …” said Pring. “Kids,” said Duff. “Yes, Davey is a baby; but kids, as you put it, see as clearly as we old fogeys, hear as well. Their eyes and ears are as sharp if not sharper. And their minds are not crusted over with all of our set ideas, either. I, myself, am ready and willing to rely on the sworn evidence of such kids as these. So let us proceed. Suppose we look at the evidence as it has been given and see what it tells us, as is.

  “Now, the doctor talked to Brownie, again, in the hall, downstairs. First he had tried to telephone his fiancée. Then Brownie joined him in the hall. She offered him a sip of her wine from the glass she had carried along with her. He did sip it. Dinny saw him do it. He was not harmed. Dinny saw him sip the wine just as she went by on her way upstairs with a tray for her mother. Let us believe that he did so sample it, at that time, and at that time it was merely wine.

  “Now, in the next moment, Mary Moriarity called down to Brownie, did she not? To ask about some bacon?”

  Dinny nodded. “Yes,” said Mary calmly, “I did.” “Miss Brown looked up to where you were and answered?” “Of course.”

  “Dinny was upstairs then?” “Yes.”

  “I believe it was at that moment, when Miss Brown’s attention was directed above her—it was then and there that Dr. Christenson put nicotine sulphate into Brownie’s glass.”

  Eve had uncovered her face to listen better. But no one spoke or moved until the doctor said, as if he were amused, “I see. But how do you figure I had such a thing so handy?”

  “I figure you had nicotine sulphate in your pocket because it was nicotine sulphate that killed her,” said Duff flatly.

  The doctor raised his brows as if to say this was not reasoning.

  Duff said, “And I can, of course, imagine how you came to have it in your pocket What I really believe is that you had bought some nicotine sulphate for Constance Avery, who uses it in connection with her chicken raising. She had none on hand that week end, meant to get some, must have said so. You, doctor, are in the habit of picking up little purchases for her. Aren’t you? You bought her some bobby pins, I notice. Where did you buy them? In the dime store?”

  The doctor’s head nodded, yes, as if it did so in spite of himself.

  “Then I guess and, in fact, believe, that you picked up the nicotine at the same time, happened to see it on a counter going by. Now, it is not used in medicine. It would not point to a doctor. It is used by gardeners. You knew Mary would have it about the place. It was your choice, rather than any other drug you may have been carrying, for these reasons. It seemed to you an inspiration, eh? It came in very handy.”

  “Yeah, but you’re saying it wasn’t in the wine bottle,” Robin said, “but listen, Mr. Duff, one of them bottles was poisoned, all right.”

  “Certainly,” said Duff. “Let me go on. Brownie, now holding a glass of poison, walks back to the dining room, tips in a little more wine, drinks it off, and screams in agony. The doctor turns back; Mrs. Moriarity is called down and remains with him until Miss Brown is dead. However—suddenly he insists that Taffy must be rushed to the hospital. Therefore, Mary rushes away upstairs to get her ready. Dinny and the small children have already been sent up there.” He turned abruptly and shot out a question. “When did the doctor send you boys outdoors?”

  “We were kinda … in the hall,” said Alfie. “We didn’t know what to do. We—”

  “I heard him say, ‘Mary, I’m afraid she’s gone, my dear.’ It was right after that. He stuck his head out and said, ‘Run outside awhile, you kids.’” One could see Paul’s mind going back, accurately remembering. “Mom was running upstairs as we went”

  Duff nodded. “Alfie, did you go to the back porch through the dining room?”

  “No, sir. Uh-uh. We weren’t supposed to go in there. So I went out the back door and around.”

  Duff nodded again, as if everything were tumbling nicely into place. “The back door of this house,” he said, “is on the side, and going around means quite a little journey. I believe that in that minute or two, the doctor, who was supposed to be speaking on the phone, slipped into the pantry, poured the rest of his poison into the wine bottle, suddenly noticed that another wine bottle stood on the table. Picked up the poisoned one with a handkerchief or a towel or whatever, swiftly changed them. And I think he snapped off the toaster quite automatically, as he did this. Someone did, you know, although he had to deny it”

  “I lied,” said the doctor bitterly.

  “Those who commit murder often do,” said Duff, unperturbed. “Yes, I believe that the poison was in the bottle before ever Alfie got around the house.

  “Now, do you understand those fingerprints? Eve’s were on the bottle because it was the bottle that had belonged to her. Brownie’s were on it because she brought it into this house and put it in the pantry. Dinny’s were on it because she poured some wine from this bottle to take up to her mother. The doctor’s were not on it, because he saw to it that they didn’t get there. He had a reason. “There were no fingerprints on the other bottle because Mitch wiped them off. There would have been Brownie’s and Davey’s, at least.

  “We will believe that Davey did drink some wine. Mitch did wash his glass and wipe off the bottle, as she says. Mitch did not exchange bottles. She could not have erased only her own prints, you know.
Nor did she carry it with gloves. She says she didn’t, and we believe her. Dinny did pour wine for her mother from the bottle in the pantry. Mary did drink it when it came up on the tray. If we do believe all these things and what the boys have just told us, we find my reconstruction fitting the facts, do we not? Was there any other moment or any other person in which or by whom the thing could have been done? According to evidence?”

  The doctor said, “It fits the facts because you’ve made it up to fit the facts, or what you call the facts, Mr. Duff. You can’t prove a single thing you say. Except, of course, that I actually am Eve’s cousin. And perhaps that Brownie took the picture. That’s all. The rest is fancy guessing. Where is the poison container now? The nicotine sulphate bottle? And why isn’t it the one the police have in their possession, the one we know was on the premises because it came from Mary’s stable?”

  “Because that particular little bottle has only Paul’s prints on it, and Paul doesn’t lie, either. Nor has he falsified evidence.” Duff spoke calmly. “I believe you took your little bottle out to your car with you. While you were caught there in the rain, perhaps you washed it out. Perhaps you left it in your car, a clean labelless bottle, and disposed of it later. Oh, you were there in your car, all during the deluge. You hadn’t got wet enough. I noticed. You didn’t want to be alone downstairs in the Moriarity house, because you knew the wine was poisoned. You wished to seem to have had no chance to get at that bottle of wine.”

  “You can’t prove that. You can’t—”

  “No,” said Duff, “that’s true. I can’t prove very much. I am telling you what I think.”

  The doctor said, “I simply do not understand this thing at all. Why do you pick on me? What …?”

  “Ah, but I had a dream.” Duff leaned on the back of an armchair. He sounded conversational. “I don’t mean I dreamed you did it Not at all. But I have recently made a most interesting psychological discovery. Make a note of it, doctor. When an amateur attempts to interpret a dream, he does not so much analyze the dreamer as he analyzes himself. Try it sometime. Tell three or four people a dream and see what they say. You, doctor, were the only one of four people who thought that the speaker in my dream was a menace because, mind you, he could tell or make public or betray something about me. You were the only one who thought that I had locked him up to save myself. And to get a beautiful lady, as a reward. It fits your case so well, doesn’t it? Someone was going to tell, had to be shut up. Yes.

  “Now, your analyses made no contact with any fears of mine. It seemed to me an outlandish interpretation. I tried it on Mr. Haggerty, here. He analyzed the dream again. He put the whole thing in terms of ambition, of making a scoop. Well, he himself is ambitious. I began to catch on. I asked Dinny, who was more objective. A younger and fresher mind, of course. She took it to be a dream of protection, as, indeed, seemed fairly obvious to me.”

  “Ah,” said the doctor. Duff ignored that.

  “And Paul,” he continued, “was off on another tack. He was very logical and matter of fact, as he is. He put it in terms of my business.”

  The doctor laughed. “Do you think you are going to dream me into jail for a crime I did not do?”

  “There is a little more yet,” Duff said. “We must remember the poison you put in Eve’s icebox, in her coffee-flavored ice cubes which Alfie and Paul so luckily stole before they could damage anyone. And why you did that? You meant to murder Eve, I think.”

  “You’re crazy,” said the doctor in disgust “Coffee-flavored ice …” He flapped his hands.

  Mary was looking very pale. She hugged her chicks tight.

  “Out there on the terrace, yesterday, Miss Avery made quite a clear statement of her views, in front of your cousin Eve, who was offended. It would be almost inhuman for her not to toy with the thought of the revenge she could take on your Constance, would it not? Didn’t you fear that she would now be the one to tell Constance about your poor mad mother? Or even wait until you were married and then tell. A nice revenge. And disastrous for you.”

  Mary leaned forward. “Oh, no!” she said. “No! She did think of it. You were toying with it, weren’t you, Eve? But she never would have told … don’t you see? Because of Ralph.”

  “There, again, we nearly had a tragedy,” said Duff sadly, “of misunderstanding. You didn’t realize that, did you, Doctor? Her son and his welfare are far more important to Mrs. Meredith than a little revenge for an uncomfortable few moments on a summer afternoon. But you were panicky. You’d killed once. You couldn’t bear the thought of having done it in vain. So you poisoned the ice.”

  “But nobody—nothing happened! What do you mean?”

  “Oh, no, you didn’t succeed, this time. Did you realize,” Duff’s voice was thin and hard, “that if you had, Mary would have been among your victims? Or didn’t you care?” His anger was like iron.

  “He suggested that I—come right back,” said Mary weakly.

  Duff bent his head. “Suggested?” he said quietly. The word fell heavily on their ears.

  The doctor said, “You’re making all this up, too.”

  “No,” said Duff. “You wouldn’t risk letting Constance go. Then I prodded you into a state of hysteria. You told me this yourself. You told me there was danger in the tea party. That’s how I knew.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “No, no, not at all.” The doctor stammered eagerly. “I only meant that Constance … why, if she wasn’t going to mind … to mind knowing about my mother … she might as well have gone and heard Eve tell about it. Don’t you see? Don’t you see?”

  Pring looked at Duff and rubbed the inside of his cheek with his tongue. Robin smoothed his chin with a big pink hand.

  The doctor took heart. “Besides,” he cried, “if you think it was Eve they wanted to poison, there’s another motive for that And a better one, I think.”

  “Indeed?” drawled Duff as if he were bored. He wasn’t. He was terrified.

  “This is your own fault, Duff,” said the doctor. “You know perfectly well that I wouldn’t have mentioned any of this, but you’ll have to have it now. I’ve got to fight this—this attack of yours any way I can. With the truth, if necessary.”

  “Please proceed with the truth,” said Duff dryly. No one guessed the fear that closed around and squeezed his heart.

  The doctor leaned toward the detectives. They were the jury here. His anxious eyes implored them. “Duff and I both thought and I still think—that little Taffy, the little girl …”

  Mary put her hands over Taffy’s ears and pulled her close. The detectives looked startled. Mr. Haggerty stirred in his corner.

  “Now see here,” the doctor marked his points with his fingers. “Brownie held the mortgage here, and she wanted money that Mary didn’t have. Mary made some remarks at the breakfast table in front of all the kids to the effect that it would be nice if Brownie were dead. Didn’t she? You … truth-tellers?”

  Dinny and the boys nodded their heads and then kept their chins up.

  Mary said, “To that effect, perhaps. That’s not exactly what I said.” She had let go of Taffy’s head and was facing this with blazing eyes.

  “But Taffy actually said she wished so too?” Mary nodded, a quick sharp nod. “Well,” said the doctor, “I think the little girl simply knew no better. Of course she knew about the poison. She had been warned often enough. She knew how to get it She knew about Brownie and her wine. I think she just did it, because she wished to help her mother and didn’t know right from wrong. Also, I’m sure the rest of the family covered up for her. Furthermore, I think Mr. Duff is covering up for her. I know it. Why, he admitted as much to me. A friend of mine, a Mr. O’Leary was in the room. He may remember.” Duff said nothing.

  “Now, my point is,” continued the doctor, “Eve knows something they can’t afford to have told. That’s my point. Therefore, I think some one of them”—the Moriariry phalanx seemed to melt into an even firmer unit at
his furious gesture—”or … who knows?… maybe even the famous Mac Duff, in person.… I think they wanted Eve to die. Put her out of her misery and save the little one.”

  “Say, listen,’” said Pring, “if a kid did it, a kid as young as that …”

  “Oh, I know, accident, manslaughter—whatever it would be called. But they were frantic!” insisted the doctor.

  Duff said softly, swallowing the dread that was like a stone in his gullet, “Would you want your child to go on living with such a brand? Certainly we were frantic.”

  “Yeah, but murder …” Pring looked at him in astonishment.

  “They were determined it would never come out!” cried the doctor. “Why, Duff questioned me very closely on what I knew. Fortunately, I didn’t admit anything, or I might have had a little nicotine in my breakfast food.”

  “What is this thing you know?” said Duff in what sounded like frank curiosity.

  “Why, Taffy had nicotine on her hands,” said the doctor. “It can make one ill, you know. I’m sorry. Ask Eve,” He fell back. He’d shot his bolt Eve was shuddering as if she had been seized by a chill. “It’s true!” she moaned. “Oh, Mary, God help you … it’s true. We found it on her in the hospital. You were talking to the superintendent I washed it away myself. Norry said not to mention it I wouldn’t have.… Mary, forgive me?”

  But Mary had no intention of forgiving anybody. She stood up on her two feet. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous!” she cried. “I washed Taffy’s hands. Do you think I don’t keep my children clean? Do you think I’d put her to bed …?”

  “You can’t get it off,” gasped Eve, “so easily … You mightn’t have.… It was there!”

  But Duff stood beside Mary.

  “I do thank you, doctor,” he said quietly. “You’ve convinced me, now, and convicted yourself.”

  “What …?”

  “Didn’t I tell you I fell in love with Taffy? I carried her into that hospital room. She was my love, and I kissed her hands. Do you think I would have missed the presence of nicotine? On these little hands?” Duff went down on his knees before Taffy, who looked bewildered almost to tears. He kissed her hands again. “It’s all right, sweetheart,” he said, and put his head on her warm little knees for a second. “We’ve got him now.”