The Innocent Flower Read online

  Duff’s were just as steady. “Nevertheless,” he said, “you know the rumor, and the rumor is what I want. You have scruples about telling because, I suspect, although she says not, the story was true. And the rumor is the story. You say it’s none of your business. If and when I show you that it is your business, you will tell me, won’t you?”

  Mary looked startled and a good deal less sure of herself. “Why,” she said, “how could it be my business?”

  But Duff looked away and gloomily down at his well-shod feet. “Other people’s business,” he muttered. “I daresay it would be very pleasant to mind only your own. And yet, since it is my business to poke and pry and snoop—”

  Mary said quickly, “I know.”

  “I ask questions,” said Duff, “that I must ask. There are times when I don’t enjoy it”

  “Please ask me anything you’d like,” said Mary in distress, “Anything I can tell you, about my own business, you know I will. You know I want—”

  “I don’t want to ask you any questions at all,” Duff said. “Not you.”

  His long hands were lying still on the arms of the chair, still from old habit But he thought: If this goes on, I’ll be twisting them like Eve. Aside from that, his mind felt vacant, as if. the conversation had come to a jumping-off-place. There wasn’t any solid ground on which to proceed. The silence seemed to quiver.

  Mary said dreamily, “Do you see that rosebush, over there? The pink and white striped roses? Those quaint little old-fashioned ones? That’s Taffy’s rose. I put it in the year she was bom. Rosa Mundi.”

  “It’s not like Taffy,” Duff said. “Too fussy. Taffy’s got a pure line, like those—what do you call them?—those real roses.”

  “Hybrid teas,” said Mary. “Mr. Duff, what can I tell you that will help us?”

  Duff felt his heart jump. He pushed this remarkable sensation down in his consciousness, to be considered later. He ground his teeth.

  “Had your husband,” he said, between them, “what is known as a sense of humor?”

  Mary looked bewildered. Her face puckered up to laugh, and then she didn’t laugh. “Oh, yes,” she said solemnly, “Yes, he had.”

  “He was, I suppose, one of those handsome rascals,” growled MacDougal Duff.

  Mary looked very queer. Then her face settled into a sober mask. “That’s about right,” she said quietly.

  Duff stared at a red, red rose. A black pall seemed to have settled over the garden. If Mortality was in the house, or had been, did she know it yet? Had the kids told her, just now? How would she react? What, in God’s name, did the fellow mean to her?

  Duff made a mighty effort. He smiled. “Was Brownie worried about growing old? Did she mind gray hair?”

  Mary simply stared.

  “Oh, never mind,” he said. “Do you know, I’m afraid this business of mine leads to all kinds of lurid speculation. I think of the darnest things. Forgive me.”

  Mary looked very demure, somehow.

  “But we’ve got to get down to it,” Duff said sadly. “Tell me about breakfast yesterday morning and what you said to the kids, Mary.”

  Mary gasped. She put her hand over her eyes.

  “Your kids are wonderful,” Duff said, “but we’ve got to know what we are afraid of. Will it help you to trust me if I tell you I’ve fallen pretty hard far your children? They have my affection … friendship … love,” he said.

  Mary looked at him with frightened eyes. “But you know,” she wailed, “you just don’t say to your children, ‘Now, darlings, remember we ought not to go around killing people. Mind you don’t commit any murders or Mama s-spank.’” Her voice broke. “Oh, I don’t believe it!” she cried. “I don’t really believe it, you know.”

  “Of course you don’t believe it,” said Duff stoutly.

  “But you bear them and you raise them, and all of a sudden they’re people. They’ve got their own differences. They’re not little copies of you. They aren’t your duplicates, your children aren’t The chromosomes or whatever they are have been shuffled. It’s a new deal, a new creature. You can’t prophesy. You can’t know. And if I—”

  “Hush,” said Duff. “Naturally, you’re worried. Tell me what you said yesterday morning.”

  Mary sniffed loudly and tried to smile. “Oh, Brownie was in one of her stern moods. You know she has our mortgage, my mortgage?” Duff nodded. “Well, she just all of a sudden began to complain about the high cost of living and all that, and she wanted quite a lot of money. Some of it I owed her, and some I didn’t owe her yet. But what can you say? I said I’d do the best I could, but we live, too, and it costs us more. I was upset She’d said all this Saturday night I worried all night long. She didn’t come down early to breakfast, and I’m afraid I passed my worry on to the children.

  “It’s something I … sometimes do,” said Mary. “They know how we live. The money is partly a settlement from Denis, partly my own. It’s not much, either. They know all about it so that they’ll understand when they can’t have things they want And they do understand. They’re wonderful.

  “What I said was, ‘Brownie’s cracking down. Lord, I wish she wouldn’t, right now.’” Mary was quoting herself, trying to be accurate. “The boys thought that was being mean. I said, ‘Maybe she can’t help it, but I can’t help it, either. I haven’t got the money.’ Taffy said, ‘What money, Mommy?’ I said, ‘Money Brownie wants, dear. Maybe we’ll have to go away from this house.’ Mitch yowled. Davey was all ready to yowl, too. So I said, ‘Maybe not. Maybe she’ll up and die and leave us her fortune. Pass the sugar.’” Mary stopped. Then she added with painful honesty. “One of them said, ‘I wish she would.’”

  “Which one?”

  “T-taffy.” Mary swallowed hard. “But then I made light of the whole thing. I thought I’d erased it.”

  Duff said, “That’s not very significant. You worry most about Taffy, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know why,” Mary wailed. “But she’s so exquisite … that pure line, you said. She’s so serious and precise and h-happy. We … we all adore her so. I mean, we’ve never had to scold her. So I wonder if she’d know … b-better? How could she know better? I keep wondering … And besides, she was so sick … she was feverish … maybe—”

  “Don’t cry,” Duff said. “My God, I know how you want to cry. It’s terrifying. I’ve never been so frightened at anything in my life. But if that’s all … and it is all?”

  She looked at him wonderingly.

  “Then cheer up,” he said. “Nothing’s going to happen to Taffy. I’ll see that it doesn’t. I promise you.”

  Mary didn’t say, “You’re so good, you’re so kind.” She threw herself on his mercy, into his heart. She said, “Oh, please see that it doesn’t, Mr. Duff. Please do.”

  “Have you … asked her, Mary?”

  Mary put her face in her hands. “I can’t.”

  “Hey, Mom …” It was Alfie, singing out through the living-room window. “Somebody to see-ee you.” They could see his pale hair close to the screen. He made a megaphone out of his hands and added in a hoarse romantic whisper, “It’s the cops.”

  Mary blew her nose hard in a scrap of handkerchief. She said clearly, “Bring them out here, dear.”

  Duff sat back and watched her stiffen herself, become a gracious lady, and handle them. She seemed to him to be just right—straightforward, definite but not too definite, friendly, neither cheerful nor sad, she answered their questions. He felt that the starch must go out of them as she spoke. He thought he could feel them relaxing. He, himself, sat quietly by, and it was not until later that he realized what he might have seemed to be doing.

  Actually, he was watching Mary’s face, thinking that her nose was definitely too long, her face a little too narrow, her dark hair not very neat, her eyebrows too level and unarched, and yet she was a fine-looking woman, a very attractive woman, a woman of great charm. And if Paul was fifteen, then Mary must be between thirty-five an
d forty, perhaps …

  Yes, Mary was saying, the little girl had been taken sick in the afternoon, about three or a little after, and she had asked Miss Brown to go next door for the ice collar. Yes, Miss Brown had gone and returned with it, and if she had also brought back a bottle of wine, Mary had not known that. She, herself, had been busy with the little girl. Yes, all the time. Until she had heard screaming, and her oldest daughter had come running up to tell her.

  She had been with the stricken woman and the doctor, of course, until she had died. Then the doctor had suggested the hospital. Mary had gone upstairs to reassure the children, get the little one ready. Yes, certainly, she had drunk the wine on her tray.

  No, she had not gone into the dining room at any time. Nor turned off any toaster.

  It was Pring who remembered to ask that. It was Robin who added, aside to Duff, that he had found no one among the technicians who knew anything about turning off the toaster.

  Mary went on. Yes, Miss Brown had held her mortgage. She was an old friend and, of course, friends with Mary’s friends, here in New Rochelle. No, she knew of no enemies. Mrs. Meredith? Well, that was a longstanding thing. They hadn’t liked each other as girls. Mrs. Meredith was an intense kind of person. Very much worried just now about her boy. In Mary’s opinion, she would hardly …

  The poison? Oh, no, the garden chemicals and poisons were never brought into the house. She had tried to be careful. They were kept locked out of anyone’s careless reach. As far as she could remember, there had been only one container of nicotine sulphate out there.

  It was a dreadful thing to have happened. Mary couldn’t explain it She said she hoped very much that they would be able to explain it. She didn’t like people dying of poison in her house.

  Pring pretty near patted her hand. “Now,” he said, “don’t worry.” He thanked her. Robin thanked her.

  They got up to go and brought Duff out of his chair to show them back through the house, to the door.

  “How did you make out with Mrs. Meredith?” he asked them.

  “We took it easy.” Pring shrugged. He looked a bit resentful. “She’s on wires, all right But I don’t think she did it Just didn’t like the dame. Never had liked her. Well, what would she up and poison her for? Hell, she laid herself right open if she did. How could she know we’d get balled up with the wine bottles?”

  “True,” Duff said. “I’m beginning to wonder if anyone did it.”

  Robin shifted his cud of gum. “Accident What I say … The bottle the Meredith dame had … Listen, it was standing open around her house for days She’s had two, three different cleaning women in and out Who knows what mighta happened?” His shrug was massive.

  “Yeah, only Mrs. Moriarity says she drark some of that wine,” said Pring irritably. “Well,”—his somber gaze searched Duff’s face—”they’re gonna bury her tomorrow. The inquest’s put off till Friday. You got anything?”

  Duff, whose heart was heavy, did his best He said, “I haven’t got a damn’ thing. You know more about these people than I do.” He kicked the carpet and looked annoyed and glum and a bit hostile. He was trying to look like a baffled man.

  He sensed that they did not, now, wish to suspect Mary. Certainly they were not much impressed with the case against Mrs. Meredith. The thought of the children had not crossed their minds. He hoped grimly it never would. Actually, he realized, they were willing to go along with an accident theory if they could find one. They had a piece of an accident theory all ready.

  The trouble, the hitch, the obstacle to this comfortable solution was their suspicion of himself. Not as a murderer, but as one who turned up where murder was … He had, so far, done more harm than good. Much more.

  Probably if he had not walked in and announced that he was going to handle this case for Mrs. Moriarity, the accident theory would have unrolled smoothly, as the obvious thing. After all, it was the devil to prove one of these poison cases when the poison was so easy to get hold of. They would have shrugged it off. Accident. Too bad. The leader of the Boy Scouts would have made speeches to his troops re carelessness in the home. Maybe the Mayor would proclaim a Safety Week. Dreadful thing. Just goes to show. Did you hear about that woman …?

  Oh, they would have buried Brownie.

  Also, if Duff had not held forth to the kids about these wine bottles, would Paul have presented his careful “either, or” to his mother this morning? Would Mary have seen, so clearly, the significance of the wine on her tray?

  Then would she have said she drank it?

  Duff didn’t dare point out to Pring the possibility that she had lied. Nor the fact of the time, the very short time, in which she claimed to have gulped it down. For Dinny went up while the doctor and Miss Brown stood in the hall. Dinny was on her way down when the scream came. How long was that? Had Dinny lingered upstairs? No, Alfie’s evidence made the time short. Mary was claiming to have taken the wine in one gulp. Had Mary eaten what was on her tray? “The toast was bitten …”

  Duff groaned to himself.

  He couldn’t tell them Mary might have lied. To make Taffy safe. Of course. If she had lied, that was why. But he couldn’t undermine their faith in her evidence, even to clear the way, now, for the accident theory.

  And he couldn’t, now, erase the scene on the terrace or the impression he must have made, staring at Mary so, as if he, with his damned reputation, had been doubting her.

  His damned reputation. And he, standing here like a fool, trying to look baffled, thought to undermine that in this moment.

  He said he would run down to headquarters after lunch and look at the toxicologist’s report, if they didn’t mind. They said they didn’t mind, and went away.

  Committed to saving Taffy, no matter what, even if it meant obscuring the truth, wretched in the conviction that he was standing, instead, squarely in the way of the easy way out, Duff drifted into the little music room and stood, staring down at the piano keys. This room was dim and quiet But all around, behind him and above, ran the life of the house, the sunny life, the cheerful sounds. Perhaps he ought to go away, back to his own place. He was a bird of ill omen, a raven, a croaker. They would have been all right.

  Duff shook himself. He let out his tension, let his worries go. Long, limp, he pulled his trick of letting himself fall apart, to come to rest in a safer place. He listened. He waited. All that came was the conviction that he, himself, must know what the truth was before he could do anything about it, even suppress it.

  They called him to lunch, and he went.

  But he had done himself good, after all. His mind seemed to have recovered its equilibrium, and he found himself able to study these children, out here on the terrace among the sandwiches and the lemonade, with a semblance of objectivity. Everyone was there except Taffy and Davey, who had refused to leave the bedside. Those two were having a picnic upstairs.

  Duff considered Dinny, the actress, the taker of roles, the dark-eyed one. But there could be no possible doubt about Dinny. Never in the world would she have done it Duff could well imagine her brushing aside the letter of the truth if she thought it would help protect Taffy, or anyone she loved. That she was capable of doing and doing well. A romantic role. Oh, yes. This role she might even play without there being any need for her to play it anyone she loved. That she was capable of doing and doing.

  But not the deed itself. Not murder. She was too … too what? Too essentially sweet and unviolent Too—he groped for words to express his feeling—too important Too dedicated a child to smear up her life with the death of so unimportant a person as Miss Emily Brown.

  Paul? There was a clear head, an organizing intelligence. Duff tried not to wince at the conviction that if Paul wished to commit a murder he would do it very efficiently indeed. But he, too, was not violent. Not even impulsive. He especially adored his little sister Taffy. True, he had resented something Brownie had done to her. He had not cared for Brownie. But the boy was grown, was solid, reliable, and of all
of them the most committed to civilization and order.

  Duff looked at Alfie, whose cheerful face was so deceptively happy-go-lucky. Alfie was alert, liked excitement, adventure. Alfie was stuffed with yarns about detectives and, no doubt, G-men and modern Robin Hoods. Could he have mixed up fantasy and reality? He was younger than Paul, and in a way younger than Dinny, his twin. Could he have committed murder for romantic reasons, to save the old homestead? Nonsense! No. Alfie was up to something, all right He wasn’t as smooth as Dinny was about hiding it. Or as Paul, who hid it by not being excited about it at all. They were all up to something. Still, he couldn’t think that what they were up to was the murder itself.

  Mitch? Well, now, Mitch. One didn’t get at Mitch. Eleven years old. Changing under your eyes from child to girl to woman. A bundle of contradictions. A fastidious tomboy. An aesthetic glutton. What was Mitch? Quicksilver. She ran out of your hands. She was motion. Going to be a dancer. That was the only key. Could there be enough sheer mischief … or some dream, not known, behind those pale brown eyes? A little riddle, and as smart, he thought, as a treeful of little old owls.

  None of them were stupid.

  Taffy? He skipped on.

  Davey, the baby. Well, hardly. Not the quick skill to use in pouring poison from one small bottleneck into another. Or in moving about, snatching the chance. Unless, of course, he had done it earlier in the day, slowly and laboriously, as clumsy as might be, unobserved and unhurried.

  Duff winced again. That would be Taffy. The grave, sweet, unhurried precision of Taffy. Medicine for her dolls. Mustn’t touch, that’s poison. But Mommy said … And Brownie was mean.

  No.

  Davey didn’t know truth from poetry. Davey couldn’t, he guessed, reach the key in the stable, even standing on a box.

  And if—if it had been any of these who’d used the key, Paul had covered up. And if—if it had been any of these who touched the poisoned wine bottle, had Dinny wiped it off? And …? No, she couldn’t have put Eve’s prints back on it.