The Innocent Flower Read online

  Duff raised a brow.

  “Not possibly!” the doctor shouted.

  “Did you think I was accusing her?”

  “You couldn’t do that,” the doctor said heavily. He pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket, and a cardboard pierced with bobby pins came out and fell to the flagstones. Duff made a little gesture to indicate them, and the doctor picked them up. Brass, they were. For butter-colored hair.

  Duff said, raising his hand as if to apologize before he spoke.

  “How old is Miss Avery, doctor?”

  “Miss Avery is thirty-five,” the doctor told him defiantly. “She wouldn’t mind your knowing that, since she doesn’t mind its being known, or I wouldn’t tell you.”

  “My dear fellow,” said Duff gently, “what are you defending so fiercely? It occurred to me to wonder, that’s all. Has she been marrried before?”

  “No,” the doctor said, seeming mollified. “No.”

  “Surely she’s had many suitors?”

  “Many. But her standards are very high. That’s why,” the doctor added simply, taking all the vanity out of his previous remark, “I can’t believe, sometimes, that she has chosen me.”

  Duff was muttering something about happiness when Mary came out with the coffee.

  It was good coffee, and the garden was very lovely. Duff hated to strike at the peace and the beauty of this place. The doctor struck first.

  “So it was nicotine,” he said. “I wish I’d known. Something might have been done for her if I had known. Though it was pretty fast, pretty quickly too late.”

  “You had the results of the tests this morning?”

  “Yes. I spoke to Dr. Surf. He … they don’t seem to—er—” The doctor dropped his remark in the middle again.

  “No,” said Duff, “they don’t seem to have come to any conclusion about what happened. Neither have I.”

  Mary put her cup down. “Do they think that the poison came from here, from my things in the stable?”

  “They don’t know,” Duff told her. “Nicotine is not used in medicine, is it doctor?”

  “No,” the doctor said, “no.”

  “But it is not difficult to buy? No obstacles?”

  “I shouldn’t think so.”

  “Where do you get yours, Mary?”

  “From the place where I get my fertilizers,” she said. “You can order it from garden catalogues, too. You can get it in hardware stores, even the dime store. Of course, there’s a skull and crossbones on it.” Her shoulders shook.

  “Is it good for roses?”

  “For lots of things. Roses? Yes.” Mary swallowed. “Paul was using some yesterday. Very much diluted.”

  “So I understand,” said Duff casually.

  Sun was on the doctor’s glasses again. He put his cup down and rose to leave. “Not Paul,” he said firmly. “Don’t think of it. Must have been an accident, of course. Don’t you think so, Mr. Duff? Really?”

  “Perhaps,” Duff said. “We certainly do not know that it wasn’t an accident … do we?”

  The doctor didn’t answer. He stood still a moment, and then started abruptly off. Mary followed him as far as the garden door.

  When she came drifting back, Duff assumed by his manner that they would go on sitting here. He hoped they would. He said, “The good doctor is pretty rapturous about his fiancée, isn’t he? She was here last night, you know.”

  “Oh, she did come?” Mary sat down. “How did you like her?”

  Duff said very carefully. “I’m not sure. For one thing, she struck me as the real thing in a snob.”

  “Oh, well, she can’t help that,” Mary said, twinkling. “Old family, old money, blue blood, you know. Her mother was one of the Van der Hoorsts.”

  “Whereas, my mother was one of the Mulligans,” Duff said.

  Mary began to laugh. When she laughed she looked a little like Taffy. There was a fleeting impression of that laughing little girl.

  “I’ll tell you,” she said. “It’s one of those family things. And it’s about Constance. You see, when she and Norry got engaged, I threw them a party. That was last March. Well, we have a nice fat lady who comes and does for us when there’s too much for me to handle. She’s Irish. We’ve known her for ages—ever since servants went out of the world, anyhow. But I think she only comes to us.

  “Anyway, she was passing trays, hors d’oeuvres and sandwiches. She was in and around, and all the while Constance was holding forth about family. It was a little bit thick, too. Everyone had to trot out a pedigree for Constance to inspect and hear that her mother was one of the Van der Hoorsts. It got to be a refrain. Of course, that’s Constance, and I didn’t think much about it. But what happened! When Constance was about to take her —uh—royal departure”—Mary had a thin dimple— “she took it into her head to say gracious words to Maggie. She said … something like …‘You served that very nicely.’”

  Mary was a good mimic. Duff could hear the “my good woman” air of it.

  “And Maggie! Maggie reared back and said”—Mary rolled out the brogue—”‘And why wouldn’t I, Miss Avery? Me mother was one of the Mulligans!’”

  Mirth belonged in this garden; the sun and the dirty coffee cups and the laughter were all part of its delight. How delightful it was to him, MacDougal Duff, stretched out long in the chair, laughing like a boy, didn’t dare admit.

  But Paul, mooching along out of the house with a bun in his hand, demanding to know what the joke was, sobered them. Mary told-him what the joke was, old stuff to Paul, and he put a pillow on the flagstones, sat down there, and leaned his back against a tree. He ate his bun, while Duff and Mary Moriarity looked off across the garden and remembered how MacDougal Duff came to be here.

  Mary said, “Tell me what they think, will you?” So Duff told her about the poison and the wine and the fingerprints and about Eve.

  She drew in her breath at that, but made no comment.

  When he had finished, Paul, who had been listening with his head bowed over his knees, sat up straight and began to talk.

  “The thing is, Mom, don’t you see, whether or not you drank that wine Dinny put on your tray.”

  “Why?” she said. She looked at her big son as if she were willing to let him lead.

  “You haven’t asked her yet?” Paul said to Duff.

  “I haven’t asked her anything.”

  “Well, then, that’s going to be the thing. Because, the way it is now, it’s this way. If you didn’t drink the wine, then maybe that bottle was poisoned all the time. Nobody else had any wine out of it—or anyhow not since earlier in the afternoon.”

  “Not even then,” said Duff. “Or at least not necessarily.”

  “Yeah, I mean, so far as we know. So, if you didn’t drink it, then that throws the thing wide open. The poison could have been put in there any time, and all we have to do is figure out how it got on the table when it did. And maybe Mitch did that, no matter what she says. Of course, she didn’t know it was poisoned.” Paul stopped and looked at Duff, who nodded.

  “O.K.” Paul went on. “But if you did drink it, then the only way it could have happened was that somebody put the poison in there later, in just that little while when Brownie was gone and Alfie was gone and Dinny was upstairs and Mitch was in the kitchen. So it couldn’t have been, for instance, Taffy.”

  Mary bit her lip suddenly.

  “Or … or you.” Paul said. “Or Dinny, I guess.”

  “Not so,” Duff said. “You may as well keep it perfectly straight. It could have been Dinny.”

  “Well, anyhow.… Whoever put the poison in could have changed the places of the bottles, too. For instance, maybe he put it in the one in the pantry, just because it was in the pantry and he couldn’t be seen fooling around with it in there. Then he could have switched them, quick. It wouldn’t take a minute.”

  “Under Davey’s nose?” Duff asked.

  “Sure. Davey’s pretty small.” Paul scratched his ankles vigorous
ly. “So you see, Mom?” Then to Duff, “Aren’t you going to ask her?”

  “I think she’ll tell us,” Duff said.

  Mary’s eyes flickered. Then she looked up across the roses. “But I did drink it,” she said. “I was worried about Taffy and tired. I even thought maybe the doctor had sent it up for me. So, of course, I drank it.” Her eyes settled on Paul, and she smiled.

  He didn’t smile back, although the understanding between them was almost tangible. “You didn’t have two bottles of that stuff, did you, Mom?” he said. “Only my fingerprints are on the one that was out there.”

  “Proving?” Duff asked.

  “Well, probably the poison never belonged to us,” Paul said. “Because, naturally, I didn’t do it.”

  The white gate at the end of the lawn flew open, and Eve Meredith’s thin, hurrying figure came, in her anxious hobble, toward them.

  “Mary, you’re home! Is Taffy all right then?” She gave Duff a jerk of her head. She looked a little less raddled today in a green summer dress, with red sandals on her thin feet.

  “Taffy’s fine,” said Mary.

  “Oh, Lord!” Eve dumped herself into a chair. “Those detectives! Those men! They’ve been in my house for hours. I think they think I did it.”

  Duff studied her. She didn’t seem horrified by her own conclusions. She had an air of considering this preposterous.

  “They took my fingerprints,” said Eve with a snort that might have meant amusement, “and it seems my fingerprints are on that poisoned wine bottle.”

  Duff met Paul’s eyes.

  “Of all things!” Eve rattled. “I told them, of course they were. It was my wine. And I gave it to her. Naturally, I touched it! But it wasn’t poisoned when I gave it to her. I’m sure of that.”

  Paul said aside to Duff, “Dinny’s too, weren’t they?”

  Duff nodded. “Yes, so it would seem. We conclude that it was Mrs. Meredith’s wine standing in the pantry. Mrs. Meredith’s wine poured out by Dinny for her mother. Mrs. Meredith’s wine subsequently got poisoned and transported to the dining room and into Brownie’s glass. It was not,” he said to Eve, “poisoned when you gave it to her.”

  “That’s what I said,” she said.

  Paul squirmed. “Unless Dinny might’ve messed around with both bottles …”

  “Or unless your mother didn’t drink her wine, after all.”

  “But I did!” said Mary.

  “And Dinny didn’t!” said Dinny indignantly behind them. “What goes on out here? Mother, what’s for lunch?”

  Mary started to get out of her chair, but Paul was up and pushed her back. “I’ll help Dinny,” he said very gruffly. “Come on, Din. We’ll dig up something.”

  “Yeah, sandwiches!” Dinny jeered.

  “What’s the matter with sandwiches?”

  “Nothing’s the matter with sandwiches except they’re practically all bread!”

  “What’s the matter with bread?”

  The children disappeared. Mary was smiling. She gave Duff a little glance well tinged with pride.

  CHAPTER 10

  Just the same,” said Eve, quite as if no one had spoken in between, “I’m going to go in for rotenone after this. They asked me if I had any of the stuff. Well, of course I have. But I don’t think, I honestly don’t think I can bear to use nicotine any more.”

  “Have you heard from Ralph?” asked Mary.

  “No, no, nothing. But it’s terrifying!” Eve, apparently, was not diverted. “I knew it was a poison, but not like I know it now. To think we’ve been fooling around with that stuff for years and thinking nothing of it!”

  Mary said, “How is the war, anyhow? Was there any news in the paper this morning?”

  But Eve was deep in local horrors and would not be turned away. “Bad enough to think of swallowing it!” She cried. “But worse than that, it can go right through your skin! Did you know that? Did you know it can make you sick just if it gets on you?” Her reddish-brown eyes went down to her hands, and her fingers writhed.

  “Oh, Eve, don’t,” begged Mary. “Don’t keep it in your mind. Besides, you know perfectly well that if you get aphis …”

  “No. I’ll try rotenone,” Eve said stubbornly.

  “Mommy … Mommy …” Out of the window in the wing above them came Mitch’s black head. “Taffy wants to go to the bathroom.” Davey’s head popped out beside her. “Taffy wants …”

  “Pull that screen down,” said Maty. She got up and whisked into the house.

  Eve’s fingers were still writhing. Thin white hands, she had. “I’m so glad Taffy’s all right again. Isn’t it amazing how quickly they get well, those little things? But I’m so glad. Mr. Duff, you are a detective, aren’t you?”

  “I am,” he said. He added nothing, but sat very quietly waiting. He felt she was winding up for an explosion. He hoped it would be a bombshell of information. He lay low, because he didn’t know how to guide her toward it. His silence might do best.

  Eve said, “I’m so sorry for Mary. So awfully sorry.” She squirmed in her chair. “Such a terrible thing!” She clutched her own throat. “In her house, like that! I should think it would just make them want to move out.”

  She was slipping off. Duff gave a little push. He said, “At least Taffy’s better.” He wanted to turn her back to Taffy.

  “I wonder what made her sick?” Eve said in a thick voice, as if it were being forced out of her by interior pressure. “What made Taffy sick, I wonder?”

  Duff said, “Doesn’t the doctor know?” But this was wrong. He knew he had made a mistake as soon as the words were out. Eve boiled over into a spate of explanation with the effect of having found a safety valve.

  “Oh, it’s almost impossible to know about little children. I mean, you can’t possibly be sure. They play. Who knows what they get into? Why, it could be any one of a dozen things. Who knows what they pick up and put in their mouths? Or what germs other children might be carrying? Sometimes you never find out. All you can do is be glad when they’re better. I can remember …”

  Duff said, “I understand you have a son, Mrs. Meredith. In the service? Would that be Ralph?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, that’s my boy. Nineteen years old. It’s too young, Mr. Duff. Too young!.” She pounded the chair with her fist.

  “If you were nineteen, you wouldn’t think so,” Duff told her. “We forget, I think.”

  “I suppose that’s true.” She looked surprised.

  “When you were nineteen, did you think of yourself as a child? I’m sure you didn’t That is, if you can really remember.”

  “I was … Oh, my God, I was married and pregnant …” Eve looked, for the first time, thoughtful and therefore nearly serene.

  “Your husband died?” Duff wondered.

  “He could be dead now,” she said roughly, “for all I know.”

  “Divorce?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “He divorced me, finally.” Her fingers were twisting again. One hand gripped the other until the knuckles cracked. “So he’s my boy,” she said. “Because Edgar gave him up. Afterwards, ha never had any right to him. He was afraid. Well, I wasn’t afraid. But if they”—she sobbed a dry sob as if her heart tore—”if they hurt him now, well, it’s all I’ve lived for. Ralph. If they hurt him, that’s the end of me. The end! The end!”

  She pounded again. Duff leaned over and stopped her frantic hand. “It’s very hard,” he said, “but you can’t hold him safe by stretching your nerves until they break. Give him up a little. It might be better for him.”

  He felt her hand loosen. “You mean, what I fear will come upon me?” she whispered superstitiously. “Do you believe that?”

  Duff said, rather lightly, “You wouldn’t walk under a ladder, would you? Just in case …” He leaned back. “Tell me what your husband was afraid of.”

  Eve’s face, that had been loosened and wondering, tightened up again. “You ought to stick with what’s your own,” she s
aid bitterly. “I don’t blame her. Oh, of course, I do blame her. Did blame her. She had no business telling him things. No business, no excuse at all. Even if she thought he knew it.” Her thick voice poured scorn. “But she never thought he knew it. She knew he didn’t know it. She knew damn’ well. Oh, I blamed her, all right. Just for fun, just to stick her oar in, just to make an effect … What did it mean to her? Not a thing. It meant plenty to me, but she never thought of that. She wouldn’t.

  “But I blame him. I blame him more. All it proves is that he was no good. Cowardly. He couldn’t stick. Well, good riddance! I thank God it meant he never wanted Ralph. Ralph’s been all mine.”

  Duff said craftily, “How did Miss Brown know?”

  “I’ve got a cousin in California,” Eve said viciously. “Or had.”

  “This cousin told Miss Brown. Miss Brown told your husband.” Duff seemed to be musing aloud. “It was something about your family.”

  Eve made a gesture of finality. “Just a story,” she said.

  “Not even true?”

  Her auburn eyes had narrowed in. “Of course it wasn’t true,” she said in another voice, a voice that was no longer strangled and tortured as it came from her throat. A lighter, shrill, metallic voice. “Anyhow, that was years ago.” Her laugh clanged. “Why,’I’ve been a grass widow longer than Mary …”

  Mary was coming back. “I think,” she said, “that the kids are about to produce food. You’ll stay, won’t you, Eve?”

  “No,” said Eve. “No, I can’t, Mary. I shouldn’t, really. I’ve got to go downtown. I’ll be over later. Later.” She got up and took herself away with that nervous awkwardness of hers. Duff watched her across the grass, her huddled posture, her quick cramped step, the way she drove her heels.

  “Poor Eve,” said Mary, echoing his thought “Poor Eve.”

  “Tell me the story of her life,” Duff said. “Please. What was it Brownie did? What was it she told?”

  Mary looked straight at him with her very blue eyes. “I don’t know anything about it but a rumor,” she said frankly. “Eve dodges away from telling me, and I’ve never directly asked her. Brownie never said, and I never asked her, either. It wasn’t any of my business. It’s not my business now.” She stopped speaking but kept her eyes steady.