The Innocent Flower Read online

  “I don’t think I’ll change it,” she said, rather shortly.

  “A theatrical dynasty, of course,” Duff murmured.

  “If you’re thinking of my father,” Dinny said, lured to this, subject in spite of herself, “I’m afraid he has always been pretty adequate.” She looked sorry to have so spoken.

  “That’s a nasty remark, isn’t it?” Duff said mildly. “Very damning.”

  She nodded. “I shouldn’t have said that. I guess he’s done all right, without ever making a splash. He’s … Well, he’s good. He’s skillful.”

  “A good workman?”

  “Yes, that’s it. He’s very versatile. Too versatile, maybe. He always likes to do something he’s never done before. He was always restless.”

  “Not—what is it they call it?—typed?”

  Dinny said, “I think he was scared of that. He keeps changing his name, starting over. He doesn’t seem to stick, somehow.”

  “Keeps changing his name?”

  “Oh, yes. My goodness, we never know.”

  Duff should have said, “Do you see him often?” It would have fallen in here, that casual question. Instead, he found himself looking away, looking at the dishes piled in the red wire drainer on the sink, thinking to himself that there seemed to be a lot of dishes.

  He murmured, “So you slept well?”

  “Oh, my goodness!” Dinny laughed. “I’ll bet,” she said gaily, “nobody told you anything about our ghost!”

  Duff took a swallow of his coffee before he let his eyebrows soar in polite unbelief.

  “We have one, you know. A Hessian. You know, one of those soldiers …”

  “Yes,” said Duff carefully, “go on.”

  “Well, the story is that he was one of those who ran away from the British Army. He didn’t want to fight any more. He wanted to get food and shelter, so he asked here if they had any work. But I guess he couldn’t speak English much.…”

  “Here at this house?” said Duff without skepticism.

  “Well, not this house, of course,” she said. “This house isn’t that old. But there was a house here then.”

  “During the American Revolution?”

  “Umhum. Isn’t it fascinating?”

  “Very,” said Duff. “He died here?”

  “Umhum.”

  “And why doesn’t he rest easy?”

  “Oh.” Dinny rolled her eyes. “Well, you see, all he wanted to do was work for his keep, kind of, but to the people who lived here he was one of the enemy. And they killed him, that night. They thought he was a spy. I guess that’s why he doesn’t rest. He … can’t understand it yet.”

  “It must have been very disillusioning,” Duff said.

  “Well, of course it was.” She giggled. “Anyhow, we hear things sometimes.”

  “Footsteps?”

  “Umhum.”

  “Does he clank?”

  “No-oo.” Dinny said. “He moves around in the house.”

  “How does he like his eggs?” Duff said.

  Dinny pushed back from the table with both hands on the edge of it. “What?”

  But Duff’s eyes grew dreamy. He settled back in his chair and looked past her while he talked. “Ah, that poor foreign boy,” he said pulling out the emotional stops in his flexible voice, “who couldn’t speak the language! I wonder if the propaganda got to him, the propaganda the patriots put out? Or I wonder if he simply felt it stirring in the air, the notion that must have been new to him, herded and sold as he was to fight a war for no reason of his, at all. I mean the notion that a man can stir his stumps and get out of that helpless herd and be for himself. Because here was a new kind of world, in which men didn’t see why they shouldn’t be and think and decide and work for themselves. An awfully new notion. But somehow or other, just such a notion that, once discovered, would keep gnawing and working in a man’s head. Shouldn’t you think so?

  “Oh, I suppose they talked it over, in their own language, around their fires. And some said they would be. damned if they weren’t going to try it. I suppose he would have kept thinking about them, the ones who had gone, when the ranks closed up after them as if they had died in battle. But he would know they had not died, but had perhaps escaped.”

  Dinny was staring at him.

  “So one night, he did it. He took the step, shook loose. Became a man instead of a statistic, a man with a private soul and some of his destiny in his hands. He must have been very much excited and afraid, too. After all, he was stepping into the unknown, and the risk was awful, like depending on there being a heaven, if you aren’t sure. And he couldn’t even talk about it. Because these people couldn’t understand him. Poor foreign boy. He came to this door, ready to be friendly, ready to believe in miracles, perhaps in kindness and in help, or in the greater miracle of fair pay and no questions asked. And when he went to sleep that night, poor fellow, he did think it was going to be all right.”

  Duff’s voice stopped, while he came back a hundred and sixty-odd years. He smiled at Dinny. “You gave me a tragedy,” he said. “Don’t you think it’s the essence of tragedy when what happens needn’t have happened at all, had they been able to understand each other?”

  Dinny swallowed. “I forgot you used to be a professor of American history.”

  “Oh, no. That you remembered.” Duff said softly. “What you did forget”—he looked about as dreamy as a fox at this moment—”there’s an old story about a woman who fell asleep in church and dreamed she was dying, and before she woke, she did die.”

  “But how did they know what she dreamed!” Dinny blurted and then kept her mouth open.

  “Exactly. How did your folks know, after they’d killed him, that he wasn’t a spy?” Duff waited for no answer. “My dear, it was sweet of you to make him a Hessian. You must know how fond I am of the Revolutionary period.”

  Dinny was looking down, and there was color in her face.

  “Look here,” Duff said, “you don’t misunderstand me, do you? I am here as a friend, you know. Not quite as a spy.” Dinny’s eyes shot to his. “Have a conference,” Duff suggested gently, “why don’t you?”

  And he went away.

  He wandered out to the stable, which he found deserted. After some search, he located the place where the poisons were kept. It was an old cupboard that had been there when there were horses. It was secured by a small, very flimsy padlock, the key of which hung on a nail near by.

  Duff opened it and examined the things he found. Paper sacks with the name of their contents scrawled in pencil outside. A can or two. A bottle. Sinister names, of all the wrong poisons. Then he found a little cardboard box, covered with printing—40 per cent nicotine, and so forth. Here had been the right poison. Gone now. He knew Pring had taken it away. His fingers felt a paper inside the box, and he drew it out. Instructions for use. Ah, yes. Duff read them with very great interest and looked at all the pictures.

  When he finally tucked the box back into the cupboard and locked it up again, he stood for a moment, running his eye over the garden tools, the rakes and hoes, the mower and the spade, the flower pots, the bags of fertilizer, the wheelbarrow, the hose, the pile of stakes, the clippers and trowels and dibble and pruning shears, hanging on the wall. And the sprayer, standing neatly in the corner.

  It was a cylinder with a handle at the top with which one pumped up pressure. Then it could be slung over one’s back and the spraying material released by the trigger at the end of the short, narrow hose. Duff was interested in the nozzle. He unscrewed its parts. There was a tiny screen inside, to turn a thin stream of liquid into a spray. The screen, however, was easily removable. Duff shook his head. Didn’t know. Couldn’t tell. Have to see the thing in action.

  He didn’t like the idea. Didn’t like it at all. It seemed too pat and mechanical. It was very logical. It fitted so neatly. That was why he didn’t like it.

  The idea was that a harmless bottle of wine, standing on a table, could be made poisonous quic
kly in those very few possible minutes, by the boy who was just outside with a sprayer full of the right poison slung over his back at the time.

  Davey would have seen. Perhaps Davey wouldn’t tell or thought it was an elephant. But Alfie would have known. Alfie on the porch, calling, must have been a confederate. Paul would have had to come in through the French doors from the porch. He couldn’t have put the sprayer through the window on the other side of the room because of the screen, or even if that had been raised, it was too far from the table. He would have had to cross a line of vision from the hall where the doctor and the victim were standing. Duff sighed. Not so logical, after all. Just startling, for a moment. Surely the stuff was diluted almost to nothing in this sprayer, according to instructions. Must have been. He must ask to see the toxicologist’s report, he thought.

  Approaching the house, he heard, through its opened windows, a joyous commotion. “Hey, Taffy’s home!” Davey and Mitch ran shrieking across the terrace, and the garden door banged after them. Upstairs, Dinny’s voice called it out. “Taffy’s home!” He could hear the boys thumping down the stairs from their lair. “Taffy’s home!”

  He himself got indoors soon enough to see Taffy, pinched into a stretcher by grinning ambulance men, ride triumphantly, to shouts of joy, up the stairs at home.

  Mary had come in behind. She stood in her own house and sighed and pushed her hand through her hair. Duff went toward her, smiling. “How is she?”

  “She’s full of beans!” said Mary. “Oh, she’s fine.” Her eyes slid into the living room and grazed the red couch. “Everything looks all right here. They haven’t been a trouble to you, have they?”

  So confidently did she expect him to say, “Oh, no, of course not,” that she was halfway up the stairs and still smiling when she realized that Duff had said, “Oh, yes, of course.” She stopped and threw him a puzzled but not worried look, and went on to settle Taffy.

  Duff felt just a little forlorn. The house to keep, the kids to watch.… Now these were Mary’s. Mary looked better. She was almost pretty. Certainly attractive. Rested, now. What a nice straight body. She seemed young. Living with these kids would keep you young. Have to look sharp. No doubt she did. Intelligent. And what loving unity … damn’ nice bunch of kids … she was the core, the source …

  Duff caught his mind whipping about like a flag in the wind and stilled and steadied it, deliberately.

  In some ways, he realized, this was being and going to be his most difficult case, because he was not thinking, not seeing, not hearing quite clearly. Everything passed through a blurring personal emotion. His own emotion. He, MacDougal Duff, caught by feelings in the matter. He would have to spy them out and weigh them and then discount them, these feelings, whatever they were. He was involved. Because he was afraid for Taffy, yes, and sorry for Mary, and envious, touched, concerned …

  He’d better, he told himself sternly, cracking the slang like a whip over his seething insides, he’d better pull himself together.

  CHAPTER 9

  The men with the stretcher came down again, and Duff, standing in the front door, watching the ambulance back out of the drive, became aware of Dr. Christenson’s car pulled up at the curb and of the doctor himself talking very earnestly to a rather dapper-looking fellow whom Duff had not seen before. Pricked by curiosity which, in his business, was so often a part of his duty, Duff went out and strolled down the walk toward them.

  The doctor’s friend was a slight man, of medium height, with a narrow chest which he seemed to be trying to puff out. He stood with his shoulder blades drawn together in the back and his chin drawn in. Hatless, in summer slacks and a shirt open at the neck, he nevertheless looked dapper. Dark-haired, blue-chinned, his face wizened and lined, and yet not old, he turned weak gray, eyes on Duff without seeming to see him at all.

  “Good morning,” said the doctor. “Mr. O’Leary, Mr. Duff.”

  Duff took a thin hand that squeezed his with convulsive strength. He saw in O’Leary’s other hand an object something like a watch. He said, “I believe I have spoken to Mr. O’Leary on the phone.”

  O’Leary cocked his head. “Oh, yes. Yes, of course. Last night, wasn’t it?” It was not so much the turn of the vowels that gave that British effect as the rise and fall and the quick pace of the voice.

  “I wish you would tell me,” Duff said, “because I’ve been bothered ever since. Why on earth did you call me Professor Moriarity?”

  The man’s eyes moved impatiently. “That’s simple enough. After all, the doctor told me he would be at the Moriarity house.”

  “But why Professor?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It seemed very natural, somehow. Don’t you think so?”

  “If the doctor had been at the Brown house, you’d have asked for Father?”

  “Father Brown? Yes, that does sound familiar, too. Doesn’t it?” O’Leary bobbed his head at them. He put the thing that looked like a watch into his shirt pocket. “Er … five miles then. See you later.” He set off down the sidewalk with shoulder blades still drawn together and his feet doing a nimble heel-and-toe.

  “What’s the matter with him?” Duff asked.

  “Nerves,” said Dr. Christenson shortly.

  “You say he is staying with you?”

  “Yes.” The doctor sighed heavily. “I don’t know. Queer fellow. How’s Taffy?”

  They went up to see Taffy together.

  She was enthroned in her own bed holding court for all of her brothers and sisters. Taffy’s eyes were bright and her face was merry. Her pretty mouth and teeth looked as if they had been born smiling. She wore thick taffy-colored pigtails, pulled away from a center part, but the fair hair escaped in little wispy curls around her forehead. She looked, Duff thought, as happy as a little lark. And so, indeed, did everyone look happy.

  “Are you going to telephone to my tummy again?” she demanded of the doctor. The doctor said yes, he was, and used his stethoscope. Taffy giggled some and then breathed for him, all obedience and sober co-operation. The doctor tweaked the end of her nose and said he guessed she wasn’t sick any more.

  Paul said, “Hey, Taffy, how was the hospital?”

  Alfie said, “Did they wind the bed up and down for you?”

  “It folded up,” said Taffy, “something like a W.” She spoke slowly without slurring at all. The effect was grave and charming.

  “But what did it do?” Davey demanded. Paul began to demonstrate with a strip of paper.

  Duff withdrew with Mary and the doctor. It was a scene so far from death, so far from murder, so far from evil, that it made the throat ache.

  They went down to the living room, and Mary looked around as if her housewife’s eye saw work ahead, and then she sighed and said, “Well, I suppose I’d better keep her down a day or two?”

  “Yes,” said the doctor, “if you can.”

  “You look tired,” Mary said. “Have you time for a cup of coffee?” Her eyes were drawn to the windows and the garden. “Let’s have some outside.”

  So Duff and the doctor found themselves lying in long wooden chairs in flickering shade, looking across the roses to where a green peninsula of lawn tongued into the shrubbery, flowed around a little pool, and reunited to meet a white gate under the trees. The red roof of a house was partly visible.

  “Eve’s house.” The doctor nodded. He put a cigarette into the holder he affected. “Mary’s garden is lovely, isn’t it? She works very hard on it.”

  “Yes, it’s lovely,” Duff said.

  “Connie’s rather let her flowers go.”

  “Miss Avery has a farm, they tell me.”

  “Well, a small farm. Yes, I suppose it is a farm. A beautiful. place. On the water front, you see. Valuable land. Belonged to her father, of course. Now it’s Connie’s, since her mother prefers the city now, in her old age. Connie’s father—er—” The doctor didn’t finish, but Duff knew it would have been something rapturous. “I’m pretty lucky,” the doctor admitted, �
�and for the life of me, I don’t know why.”

  “A very handsome young woman,” Duff murmured, hoping this would do.

  “Yes, isn’t she? Yes, something distinguished about her. It’s not only her looks”—the doctor was very earnest about it—”it’s everything. Character, intelligence, and she’s very capable, very strong, really. Very fine,” he added reverently.

  “She raises chickens?” Duff managed not to prick the balloon, though well he might have with such an incongruous and earthy remark.

  “Oh, yes, since the war. She knows a great deal about—er—breeding, that sort of thing. Has kennels, you see. At first it was a hobby, but I do believe that she can show a little profit on her dogs. Lovely animals. They’re rather famous. Miss Avery’s Irish setters. Of course, she’s only begun with chickens.”

  “Chickens must be rather a let-down,” Duff mused. “Aren’t they … rather filthy? Have to be deloused and all that?”

  The doctor turned his head and a wandering sun-ray flashed on his glasses, obscuring Duff’s sight of his eyes. Duff went on, “But I suppose she has farmhands to do all that sort of thing.”

  “Naturally,” the doctor said rather sharply. “And so do dogs have to be defleaed, you know.”

  “But not with nicotine,” drawled Duff.

  The doctor pulled his feet off the footrest and seemed crouched to spring up. “Look here,” he said fiercely, “what are you trying to get at?”

  “I’ve been reading the folder that comes with nicotine sulphate,” Duff said mildly, his voice making no emphasis or comment. “I see it is recommended for painting roosts. Ah, well, learn something every day.” He looked slumbrous, but the doctor was not comforted.

  “Let me put you straight,” he snapped. “Constance Avery never saw Emily Brown in her life, never knew her, never had anything to do with her, and I daresay that if it weren’t for my knowing her, Constance wouldn’t care whether she lived or died.”

  “I’m sure not,” Duff murmured.

  “Furthermore, she was not in or near this house since Brownie came, and could not possibly …”