Chocolate Cobweb Read online

  “Oh, yes. And then, again, I’m convinced that she’s crazy.”

  “What makes you think she’s crazy?”

  “She says somebody wants to poison me.”

  “Thone!”

  “That’s what she said, unless I failed to hear properly. Did she mention that little item to you?”

  “God’s grief! No!”

  “Also,” said Thone, “does she think she’s my father’s daughter? Or doesn’t she?”

  “There I can’t help, because I can’t tell. Thone, dear, I think she’s tempted.”

  “You talked it over?”

  “Not exactly. This is how it was. You see, I told her a good bit about all of you. I’m frank to say, I liked the girl. I felt she took quite a beating the other night, what with Ione being so grim and cryptic, and Toby having a spell. She’s terribly interested, Thone. That’s natural. She listens well. Perhaps,” she made a face, “I let myself go”

  “You told her about my mother and—the divorce from Ione. All that?”

  “Yes. All that. Do you mind?”

  “No,” he said. “Ione is asking her up for a week.” His hands fell a little helplessly.

  “Um-hum,” Fanny prodded.

  “Dad fell for her. And you know Ione. Anything Dad wants.”

  “Is she coming?”

  “I don’t know. If she does, Fanny, after yesterday—I am confused.”

  “What about yesterday?”

  He rubbed his hand through his hair. “She was at the house in the afternoon. First, of course, I was afraid she’d upset Dad. You know how it struck him the other night.”

  “Belle’s death, dear. It always does.”

  “Yes, I know. I didn’t want anything like it to happen again. I made it a point to be around.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, Dad fell for her, as I said. They—it was fine. But the minute he turned his back, she was at me with this wild poison business.” Fanny shook her head in bewilderment.

  “I don’t know what that was all about, nor do I much care,” said Thone impatiently. “I don’t know what to think. The part that’s really got me going in circles … Yesterday she did some things—in Belle’s image!” Fanny moved her lashes. “It was damned queer! Dad and I both … Now how the hell? You can’t inherit, for instance, a way to sit, a habit of closing her eyes to think …”

  “Or,” said Fanny, “for instance, a laugh!” She rose. She towered in anger. “Or a way of standing!” she cried. “Or a gesture like this?”

  His scalp seemed to move as he stared at her.

  “My little tricks! My memories!” she shrilled. “Oh, the sly! The cruel! The devil!”

  “She got them from you!”

  “Of course she did! Of course she did!”

  “I’ll wring her neck,” said Thone simply. He was halfway to the door. “Where does she live? Where can I find her?”

  “Wait.”

  “Do you know?”

  “I know. I’ll tell you, directly. Wait a minute.” Fanny was calmer. She came toward him. Her old face was filled with her love for him. “Don’t wring any necks, Thone. Please wait. Subside! Subside!” She flailed at him with her hands. “She’s a nice girl, Thone. I couldn’t be so fooled.”

  “She’s not a nice girl. She fooled me, too.”

  “What do you think?”

  “She’s trying to make us believe she is Belle’s daughter. She wants to be. Prestige. Maybe it’s money.”

  “Oh,” said Fanny, “not money.”

  “Don’t be naive, Fanny.”

  “Thone, honey, go there. Find out. But easy, easy,” she crooned. “You must do exactly what your impulse is. Get to the bottom of it. But do it some easy way, please, for Fanny.”

  “You fell for her too,” he accused.

  “She’s a darling,” said Fanny. “So help me, God and all my experience. Besides, you’re bigger than she is. She’s not your size.”

  “I won’t beat her,” said Thone, with a smile struggling for his mouth. “You’re an old incorrigible darling yourself. I’ll go easy.” His jaw hardened. “Where?”

  She got him a piece of paper. “There,” she said. Her head followed him out the door. “And you’ll let me know?” said Fanny, big-eyed, brilliant with curiosity.

  Kate opened the door. She wore a house dress. Her fair hair, streaked with gray, was bound back in a plain fashion from her plain face. There was a heaviness around her eyes.

  “Does Amanda Garth live here?”

  “She does. She’s not here at the moment.”

  “Where can I find her?” he asked sternly.

  “She’s just gone to market. It’s her Easter vacation. Will you wait?”

  “Are you Mrs. Garth?”

  “I am.”

  “My name is Garrison.”

  Kate’s eyes winced at the name. “Come in,” she said. The living room of this little cottage was cool and yet bright. The furnishings were informal and inexpensive, but the lines were good and the arrangement spoke of taste. Kate said, “Sit down, won’t you? I’m not normally at home on Wednesdays myself. I—had a bad night.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, more gently than he had intended. “I think my stepmother came to see you yesterday.”

  “Yes.” Kate didn’t pick up that subject to carry it further. She was distressed by it. She hadn’t liked talking to Ione at her office yesterday. She hadn’t enjoyed having to say, or as much as say, that she was ashamed of Mandy. She wasn’t going to like having to say it again to this very good-looking young man, who was pretty angry, although not with her. He was excepting Kate from his anger with fine control. He sat down. He had fine blue eyes, as blue as Mandy’s, as blue as her own.

  “My stepmother called here last evening. Does Amanda intend to accept that invitation?”

  Kate drew in a quick breath. Her eyes went out of focus as she looked past him. Ione had been so generous with cordial patter on the telephone last evening. “Dear Mrs. Garth, you will let her come.…” But there hadn’t been a right feel to the whole incident. And nothing had seemed right, either, about Mandy’s face, when she had taken the phone herself.

  Mandy saying. “It’s so sweet of you. It would be lovely.… Why, I’d love to, Mrs. Garrison, if you’re sure … Of course, it would be.… You’re kind.…” Mandy’s lips curved but not smiling. Mandy’s eyes very wide and staring. Mandy’s voice gushing just a little too much, saying, “May I call you tomorrow, please, Mrs. Garrison? I would so love to come, but I’m not quite sure …” Mandy saying, “Oh, thank you. Yes, I will. Yes, indeed, I will.” Mandy closing her eyes, as the phone went to its cradle, with that odd, odd curve on her mouth.

  Kate had asked, “Are you going?”

  “Oh, I’ll think about it.”

  Kate still heard that false flip answer, the tap of Mandy’s heels off to the kitchen, where she had finished the dishes.

  And in the muscles of her back she could still feel the stiff silence of last evening. For although they had chatted, they had said no more.

  “Does she?” repeated Thone.

  Kate’s eyes came back, full of pain. “I don’t really know,” she said. “I can’t tell you.”

  But Thone was looking at her now as if he had lost his place in the conversation. “Do you realize,” he said irrelevantly, and almost impishly, “that if there had been a switch of infants, you’d be my mother?”

  The little smile lines around Kate’s eyes cut into her fair skin. Her long droll face expressed a comical consternation. He grinned. “What a horrible thought!” He trusted her to know he didn’t mean it. “Seriously, Mrs. Garth …”

  She was quickly serious. She looked down at her big strong hands. “Mandy is mine,” she said quietly, “and knows that.”

  “Does she, though?”

  “Of course she does.”

  “O.K. She knows.” His anger was close to the surface again. “Then what is she trying to do?”

  “I don�
��t know,” said Kate. “I’m very much upset about it. I do not know. She—evades me. She never has, until now. So I can’t … You must talk to Mandy.”

  “That’s what I intend to do,” he said, gentled again by her unhappiness.

  Kate turned her hand in rather a helpless gesture. “She wants to paint.…”

  “I understand that much.”

  Kate lifted her head. “I think there must be a reason. I’m beginning to be sure of that. Mandy wouldn’t do this sort of thing unless she had a reason.”

  “Because,” said Thone oddly, “she’s such a darling?”

  Kate looked startled. “Yes,” she said, rather snappishly.

  “And everybody loves her?” he drawled.

  “Everybody should,” said Kate. Disloyalty was a bad taste in her mouth. She had the sensation of spitting it out.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Garth,” said Thone, wilting into plain bewilderment. “I’m upset, too. I don’t understand what’s in her mind. Is it just, do you think, that she’s young and silly?”

  “Your age,” said Kate, tossing it back at him. Thone kept his eyes on hers. Suddenly they liked each other enormously.

  Amanda whirled in like a small dusty tornado. She wore the old blue pants and old huaraches and a plaid shirt, and she had a big brown paper bag of stuff in her arms, which she balanced, in part, by the use of her chin. She said, “Oh!” She was gone into the kitchen and back again, without the bag, in another whirl. She looked like a fairly ragged little boy. She stood in the middle of the room and stared at Thone with stormy eyes.

  “I’m glad you came,” she said. “I have a few things to say to you.”

  He got out of the chair in which the speed of her entrance had surprised him. He got up, now, very slowly, rather ominously. He loomed very large. Mandy’s head went back to follow him up, but she stood her ground. The space between them was sultry. Thin currents of antagonism seemed to eddy and threaten in the heated air.

  Kate said sharply, “I think I’ll leave you.”

  “No, Mother. It’s hot,” said Mandy quickly. “We’ll go out back. Come on.” She yanked her head at Thone. Her eyes were like lightning.

  “I’m coming,” he said, as mild as the dull distant promise of thunder on the horizon.

  It was hot in the back yard. Mandy marched all the way back to the olive tree and faced him in the shade. But he stole the advantage. His voice was crisp and clear, not muddied with his anger, but the deep anger lashed like a whip, just the same.

  “Why did you imitate my mother, as Fanny taught you?”

  She put her hands behind her back. “Go on,” she said. “Ask all the questions and then I’ll tell you the answers.”

  “What are you trying to do to my father? If you know you are not his child, why do you pretend you are, with your hands and feet and eyes, while your mouth says, ‘Oh, no’? Part of you is a liarl Why?”

  “Go on,” she said saucily.

  “Do you intend to come and stay in that house?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On you.”

  “I’m glad you have some pride.”

  “Pride!” said Mandy.

  “What kind of—”

  “Why don’t you ask me,” she interrupted, “about the poison?”

  “I don’t believe in any poison,” he said contemptuously.

  She sighed. “That’s why.”

  “Why what?”

  “Why everything.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Because you won’t believe in any poison, I had to copy Fanny.”

  “This makes it clear?” he mocked.

  “To me it does. If you’re ready, I’ll try to explain.”

  “Explain,” he said.

  “When I went up the first time,” she fluttered, “it was just what I said.…” She flopped down cross-legged on the grass and put her face in her hands. “Now it’s a mess,” she moaned.

  He sat down and leaned, half lying on his elbow. He plucked a grass stem. He waited with cold patience.

  “You remember that we went down to your room? I happened to be looking into the window glass. It was like a mirror. She didn’t know I could see her, but I did see her, perfectly. Your stepmother, Ione, knocked your thermos jug off onto the floor. I wondered, because she pretended that it was an accident. So I happened to get some of the chocolate on my handkerchief. I—I know a boy …”

  “Naturally,” said Thone rather dryly while she hesitated.

  “I kept puzzling, you see? And he happens to be a chemist.”

  “So you had it analyzed,” he said flatly.

  “And it was loaded with sleeping dope.”

  “But you can’t, now, produce the handkerchief,” he said in the same tone.

  “I can produce the man who analyzed it,” she snapped.

  “Who, no doubt, considers you a darling.”

  She stared at him. “I don’t know why I don’t let you go ahead and get poisoned.”

  Nothing changed in his face. “Yes, why don’t you?” He reached for another blade of grass.

  Mandy closed her eyes. Oh, God, she thought. Well, all right. It won’t make any sense unless I tell him. All right. Let him have it. She said, painfully, fumbling her way to a confession, “You’re probably used to having girls fall for you, with no encouragement.” She opened her eyes. He was looking at her with a face so white and hurt and frightened that she stopped with her mouth open—just too late hearing with his ears the thing she’d said. “I’m s-sorry.” Her face flooded with color. “I didn’t mean—I was only trying to say—”

  “Shall we skip this part?” He threw away his piece of grass. “Go back to where you had it analyzed.”

  “I tried to call you, as soon as I knew the stuff was dangerous. I couldn’t get you on the phone. I went to Fanny Austin, to see if I could understand it.”

  “You didn’t mention poison to her.”

  “No. Because, after that, I thought I knew. I guessed you were safe.”

  “Safe?” His eyebrows were unexcited and skeptical.

  “For now,” said Mandy. Her heart ached. She put her hands over it. “I know what it looked like to you. But the point is, as long as she’s confused, you’re safe. That’s why I had to try to confuse her.”

  “Who?”

  “Ione.”

  “What’s Ione got to do with it?”

  “I think she wanted you to die.”

  “You’re crazy!” he exploded.

  “Maybe,” said Mandy, troubled. “Anyhow, now that I’ve had this chance to tell you the whole thing, I can stay out of it. You can look after yourself. I don’t really want to come up and stay. I don’t really want to upset your father.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not sure “I’m getting this. Are you claiming to have been protecting me?”

  “Of course,” said Mandy.

  “From sudden death?” She nodded. He let himself fall flat on his back and roared.

  She waited silently.

  “So Ione was going to kill me off?” He sat up and brushed off grass. His eyes were still brimming with bitter mirth. They hunted her serious face as if to confirm the joke. “Why?” he demanded. “What’s she got against me?”

  “You’re Belle’s child.”

  “Oh, come.”

  “Only she’s not quite sure of that, right now.”

  “Not sure?”

  “That you’re Belle’s child. She thinks maybe it’s me.”

  “You don’t know what you are saying,” he said in a minute, rather pityingly. “You don’t know what it’s all about.”

  “There was poison,” said Mandy slowly, stubbornly, “in your chocolate.”

  “If there was, Ione destroyed it.”

  Mandy shook her head. “Then was it your father? Or the servants? Or Fanny? Who wanted you to die?”

  “Nobody wants me to die,” he said, “as far as I know.”

  “But the
re was poison and she knew it.” Mandy clenched her fists. “Tell me this: Did you ever have a narrow escape before?”

  He kept looking at her and his face sobered, subtly. “Anyone has accidents.”

  “But you did? Where? Here?” He shrugged and she struck at his arm. “Tell me!”

  “Damned near got electrocuted in the bathroom once,” he admitted cheerfully. “What of it?”

  “Here?” He nodded. Their eyes clung a moment. Mandy put her knees up and her head on them. “That settles it,” she said in a muffled voice.

  “It hardly settles anything.” His voice was hard. “You’ve worked up quite a complicated story out of nothing much. There’s one thing that is settled, however. Whatever reason you think you’ve got, you’ll ape my mother no more!”

  “No?” She straightened angrily. “You mean you still don’t believe there was any poison? But why should I say so? Why should I lie?”

  “Why do you do anything?” he murmured. “I think you’re fond of plots.”

  “How did your mother die?” she flung at him. “Where was Ione then?”

  “That’s enough.” He got to his feet.

  “You were there, weren’t you?” She scrambled up. She was pleading. “Don’t you see? Ione must have hated your mother. Don’t you see how this could be part of the same …”

  He looked down, inscrutably, brushing off grass.

  “But how do you know?” she wailed. “What makes you so sure it wasn’t murder?”

  “So now,” he said icily, “your marvelous intuition knows better than the police investigation, the doctors, the husband, the son, and all who were alive and present six years ago.”

  “But is it impossible?”

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s impossible.” His eyes blazed. “And if you ever breathe one syllable, one hint, of any such notion to my father, I will wring your neck. Do you realize—is your cheap mind capable of realizing what you’d do to him? You’d kill him! You’d tear him to pieces! You shut your ignorant mouth! You keep your nose out of my father’s memories, or by God, I’ll—”

  He’d grabbed her in his fury. He was going to shake her. She hung in his grasp.

  “So I’ll shut my mouth and you’ll get murdered!” she cried. Her head snapped back as he lifted her in anger. She began to cry. But she paid no attention to her tears and they rolled down her face. “Of course I won’t say it to your father! What do you think I—Let me go! I promise. I promise that.”