As the organ mooed again, Spray suppressed another giggle. The announcer passed the microphone back to Mr. Milliken, who, crouching amorously over it, shuffled spontaneous, rapidly revised typewritten sheets and started to read in a honeyed croon:
“Hello, folks. Here I am again. Old Daddykins.” Chuckle. “What a day it’s been. A real lazy August day. I bet you won’t be surprised to hear that young Spray’s been down baking herself all day on the beach. Morgan has been down there most of the time too, fixin’ the old catboat. Mebbe you think they managed to lure Lucy there to cavort with them too? Do you? Well, that’s where you’re wrong. Lucy’s had something on her mind all day.” Chuckle. “Something I hope to have on my tummy right soon. A real, ginger-peachy, gooey chocolate layer cake. Yes, folks, Lucy has been bending over that hot stove all afternoon and I bet you she’s been using some of the lip-smacking Mookow Milk in that cake’s preparation too.”
A weird voice like that of a demented elf piped from the loudspeaker :
“Mookow Milk, Mookow Milk
Hi-diddle-diddle-diddle
Mookow Milk.”
Daddykins continued: “Now, folks, don’t imagine this yummy cake is just for Spray and Morgan and old Daddykins. Oh no, today we’ve got ourselves two—I mean we’ve got ourselves a real important visitor. One of the loveliest ladies in the country. One of the most talented. One of Lucy’s closest friends. She’s living just a ways down the beach from Lucy’s lovely summer home and she’s strolled over for a little neighborly visit. And you should see her eyes as she’s looking at the cake! Boy, is she going to have a field day with it. Know who she is?” Chuckle. “Give up? Well, it’s none other than that wonderful lady who, along with Lucy, is way up there as America’s First Lady of the Theater. Miss Daphne Winters.”
Evelyn, who had twisted around in her seat to watch the proceedings, had listened to this speech with a steadily mounting indignation. I couldn’t blame her. Never, probably, had the august Daphne Winters been served to her public with so nauseating a sauce. I turned to look too. Below Daddykins on his dais, Lucy, Daphne, Gretchen, and Sybil were seated around the table at their individual mikes. Lucy held a knife poised above the cake, about to cut it. Daphne was serenely fingering her mike and looking out at the sea. Sybil was tensed, but Gretchen seemed vague and listless.
Daddykins oozed on: “But don’t you good people imagine that this tea party is going to be just lazy-day lounging. You mustn’t get it into your heads that these lovely stars of stage, screen, and radio just spend the summer lolling around their private swimming beaches. Lucy has the great responsibility of choosing a new play to enrich all your winters. And today I guess you’ll be just about as excited as me to know that Lucy’s picked a play. It’s not a new play. Oh no. It’s not every day a new script comes along with enough of the old what-have-you to shape up to Lucy’s talents. I guess my little daughter must have read hundreds of scripts that people sent to her. I reckon she’s studied up on dozens of old classical plays in her library too. And it’s the classics that have won out. The play Lucy picked for fall production on Broadway has something for young and old alike. It’s a play by that old Scandinavian great-granddaddy of playwrights, Henry Ibsen. The play is called The Lady from the Sea.”
Evelyn’s breath was expelled in a loud hissing gasp. At the central table The Divine Daphne picked up a sandwich, looked at it as if it were a cockroach, and dropped it. She must have heard the news that Lucy Milliken, who had trespassed on her preserves and tricked her onto a radio program; had also by a disastrous accident chosen the play which Daphne had selected for herself, but her superb calm remained unruffled.
Mr. Milliken droned on: “So now you know the real reason why Miss Daphne Winters strolled over this rare afternoon. It wasn’t just for that homemade cake. (And is she plowing into it now, folks. You should see her.) It was to help her friend. Everyone knows that for years and years Miss Winters has been the great little Ibsen interpreter of America. And Lucy’s going to ask her for a few pointers, for her slant on how she should re-create this glamorous, winsome creature—The Lady from the Sea.”
Just before he had finished the last words Lucy had turned to look at him, the knife poised in her hand. At this point he nodded.
“Now, ladies and gentlemen of America, let’s begin. Let’s sneak up to the tea table where Lucy and Miss Winters are seated; let’s take a peek at what’s going on around—that cake.”
Lucy plunged the knife into the chocolate cake. She cut a slice and, balancing it on the knife, reached it across the table toward Daphne. For the first time on the broadcast her famous voice sounded, warm, friendly, childishly coaxing.
“Daphne dear, do have another piece of cake.”
Daphne was watching her vaguely. Then her equally famous voice, round and glorious as organ music, intoned into her microphone:
“What cake?”
“This cake, dear.”
“Oh, no, thank you.” The voice dripped with distaste. “I know you have an excellent cook, but I never touch cake. Particularly not when it’s made with canned milk.”
Flustered, Lucy Milliken wabbled the slice of cake, which according to Daddykins had already been rapturously devoured by The Divine Daphne, back and forth on the knife. She half offered it to Gretchen, but the girl did not raise her eyes from her plate. For want of anything else to do with it, Lucy let it flop on the pretty flowered cloth. Even she must have realized by now that she had caught a wolverine by the tail.
After a few seconds of bleak silence broadcast to every tenth American home, she asked brightly: “Well, Daphne, what do you think of my idea of playing The Lady from the Sea?”
The Divine Daphne’s voice, as meticulously enunciated as before, asked into her mike: “Just what part were you planning to play?”
“Well—er—the main part. Ellida Wrangel.”
“Oh,” said Daphne Winters, and the “oh” expressed as much as an “oh” can possibly express.
Lucy, less brightly, said: “It’s the first time I’ve ever thought of doing Ibsen.”
“Yes,” said Daphne Winters, “I know.”
“And I’m sure you, with all your wonderful experience, would have some valuable suggestions.”
After a long moment of meditative silence Daphne said: “By a strange coincidence, I was just running through a scene from the play with Sybil here. Sybil Wentworth, such a talented young actress. Do you remember the scene, Sybil?”
“Yes, Miss Winters, I think so,” panted Sybil into her virgin mike.
“Then wouldn’t you like to help Lucy? Give her a little of the feeling? Let’s run through the scene.”
That beautiful serene voice had managed in a few minutes to wreak more havoc than a tornado sweeping across the terrace of Lucy Milliken’s “lovely summer home.” It had eschewed Mookow Milk and dismissed Lucy as an actress of no consequence. And now it was about to send a rival reading of Ellida Wrangel ringing triumphantly into every tenth American home.
In a desperate attempt to avert this disaster, Lucy broke in: “It’s awfully sweet, Daphne, but don’t bother. Really, I—”
“It’s a pleasure,” cooed Daphne. “Listen carefully, Lucy, and perhaps you’ll catch something of the mood. Sybil dear, begin.”
She had shifted in her chair to look at Sybil, but something very strange had happened. Sybil had stopped being conscious of The Divine Daphne or of her microphone. She was staring across the table at Gretchen.
I looked at Gretchen too. The spotlight had been so exclusively upon Lucy and Daphne that I had hardly noticed the other Symphony. Gretchen’s head had dropped down onto her arms as if she had incredibly fallen asleep. A little breeze from the sea rippled across her thick red hair.
I remembered her complaint of a headache. I remembered the capsules. Instinctively, as a doctor, I rose to my feet.
Lucy, picking up the silence, was chattering into her mike. Sybil leaned across the table and touched Gretchen’s arm. G
retchen did not stir. Sybil gripped the arm and shook it.
Gretchen did stir then, but there was no purpose in her movements. The whole body lurched to one side. As her arm flopped against the edge of the table, the balance of her chair was disturbed. She tottered and then dropped sidewise, falling in a heap of multicolored cotton among the wires on the terrace floor. She lay there motionless like a discarded marionette.
Sybil screamed. Daphne Winters jumped up, her great eyes dilated. The announcer in the blue suit rushed to a switch and cut contact between America’s Happiest Family and every tenth American home. Organ music blared again from the loudspeaker. In the pandemonium Don Lockwood and I reached Gretchen at the same moment.
We both dropped to her side. With incredulity I noticed at once the odd rigidity of her arms and legs and the sinister discoloration of her lips. I was conscious of Evelyn running to Daphne’s side, of Daddykins wringing his hands, of Lucy Milliken, her profile marred by harsh exasperation, bending over me and asking in her soft, sympathetic voice:
“Tell me, Doctor, what is the matter with her?”
I thought I knew at least one thing that was the matter with Gretchen. Just looking at her was enough to tell that. But it was Don who was feeling her pulse and Don who actually said what I might have said myself.
He looked up with an expression of stunned amazement.
“Tell us,” said Lucy. “Oh, please, tell us.”
“She’s dead,” said Don. “That’s what’s the matter with her. She’s dead.”
“Dead!” echoed Tansy. Don’s wife was standing by Morgan Lane and her hand was clutching his as if, though she had never met him before that afternoon, he symbolized security for her. “But how could she possibly be dead? Don, how did she die?”
Don and I exchanged a glance. It was the complex glance between two people who had both made the same observation and drawn the same conclusion from it.
“Don,” repeated Tansy. “Tell us. How did she die?”
Don Lockwood did not say that it looked as if Gretchen had died from respiratory failure and that it looked as if the respiratory failure had been caused by some virulent type of poison. Neither did I. I suppose it seemed too unlikely an announcement to make before such an assemblage of celebrities while the memory of Daddykins’ gladsome tidings to America still rang in the air.
But I knew it and he knew it.
We had taken a sudden step into darkness.
Either there had been a fantastic accident. Or Gretchen had chosen one of the least orthodox of moments to commit suicide.
Or—she had been murdered.
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About the Author
Patrick Quentin, Q. Patrick, and Jonathan Stagge were pen names under which Hugh Callingham Wheeler (1912–1987), Richard Wilson Webb (1901–1966), Martha Mott Kelley (1906–2005), and Mary Louise White Aswell (1902–1984) wrote detective fiction. Most of the stories were written together by Webb and Wheeler, or by Wheeler alone. Their best-known creation is amateur sleuth Peter Duluth. In 1963, the story collection The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow was given a Special Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
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Copyright © 1946 by Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Cover design by Ian Koviak
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5157-6
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Death’s Old Sweet Song Page 22