Chocolate Cobweb

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “Yeah. We found it under a pile of junk. Amanda tells us it wasn’t on the case at all. You’d say he left it down there?”

  Ione raised her brows.

  “Her key,” said Thone.

  “Which lies about the house all day,” she sighed.

  “Wait a minute, now. You say you came through that place, Mrs. Garrison, and the two of you came up together. Was there any odor of gas?”

  “No.” She was quite definite. “No. None at all. Ah, then it couldn’t be, could it?” She seemed to relax. She even seemed to be glad.

  “That gas line has a valve in the service porch,” said Thone sharply. “Right up here.”

  “Oh, dear …” said Ione.

  “Yeah?” Kelly peered from one to the other.

  “It’s true. It’s true,” moaned Ione, pursing her soft lips. “And while I was waiting there to turn off the lights after Amanda left … I’m afraid he came out. He did come out there. With his foot and all, just at that time. He said it was for a drink of water. He rather—chased me away when I tried to help. I left him there. Fanny will tell you. Oh, Lieutenant,” she shrunk in her chair, letting her spine bend as if truth overwhelmed her, “how could he guess how it was done, if he hadn’t done it?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And another thing!” She straightened with a jerk. “Oh, when I came out the workshop door, it wasn’t locked. He’d left it—so I could come through. The key, you see. The key …”

  Gene said, “God damn it!” glaring at Thone.

  “What about this fellow?” said Kelly suddenly. “Let me hear you explain the fact that this fellow was called in. Why did Thone take the risk of having him hanging around?”

  “So little risk, as it turned out,” she murmured. “Still, it was Amanda who called him. Did Thone even know that?”

  “I knew it,” said Thone stupidly. Amanda’s eyes widened a little.

  “Or,” said Ione airily, “does he only pretend, now, that he knew it?”

  “I think you can see,” said Thone, “how clever she is. How her mind works.”

  Silence fell on the long room. Fanny fingered her diamonds. Kate said, in a loud voice, “Amanda is coming home. I don’t care who—”

  Gene said, “Yeah, she’s got to get out of here. Nobody’s going to have a second chance.”

  “Just a minute. Just a minute,” said Kelly. “This thing doesn’t jell, you know. Not yet. So he fixes to kill the girl and then he gallops down there, foot and all, as you keep saying, to save her life.” He looked foxy and triumphant.

  “Yes,” said Ione in a trembling voice. She looked down at her hands. “Oh, yes.”

  “Well?” said Kelly.

  “It was so sly,” she said. “Ugly and sly. His mother’s accident gave him so many ideas. Haunting him all these years. It was easy to fool poor little Mandy. She was so blindly in love. Knowing nothing whatever about him. All ready to believe in an old murder, if he wished her to. Poor romantic child. He could do no wrong. How easy it must have been! What an eager little victim, walking right into it, blind with love! Oh …” lone went on with passion, “I suppose he’d have called her death a suicide. A girl did kill herself, you know. Maybe you don’t know. But it was for love of him. He had that precedent.” The soft, prim little mouth writhed. “The precedent of his fatal charm!” she added venomously.

  “Yeah, but he changed his mind,” insisted Kelly.

  “Ah, can’t you see? Don’t you remember? What happened up here?” Ione lifted the handkerchief. Her face made as if to weep at last. “My blessed Toby can’t speak—or move—perhaps not even live! So of course it wasn’t necessary to kill anyone. What can it matter now? His father’s gone, as good as gone. He’ll make no new disposal of Belle’s fine money. Adopt no daughter. Why take the risk? There was no need. He saw that, Lieutenant. And then, of course, she’s a lusty little armful! And so ripe!” Her body was vibrating, hating. She covered the malice with her handkerchief. “Oh, that all this has broken my Toby’s heart,” she cried through the cloth, “Thone doesn’t care!”

  Fanny put her old dyed head down on the chair and began to cry, brokenheartedly.

  Kelly’s eyes swiveled to Thone. “Well?” he said, deep in his throat, like a growl.

  CHAPTER 28.

  THE SOUNDS THE WEEPING WOMEN made grated on the nerves.

  Thone said, so low he could scarcely be heard at all, “And we still don’t know how …” He linked his fingers, elbows on the chair. He looked boldly at Kelly. “What, out of all this stuff, do you believe?”

  Kelly said, above the womanish noise, “Nobody can hang on what I’ve got. Not till I fill it in. But I’ll fill it in.”

  Gene bounced to his feet. “Mandy, you come home! The policemen can handle it. You come away from this double-crossing louse!”

  “What?” said Mandy. She stirred. She pushed at the blanket. She moved her feet. Her mother’s body was still in the way.

  Kate said, “Mandy, darling, we’re going to take you home now.”

  “Oh, not now,” said Mandy. The other women left off weeping as she raised her head. She was dizzy, suddenly. Her face went white. She felt very rocky, trying to sit up. But she batted the doctor’s hand away. Her stockinged foot, the slipperless one, nudged at Kate’s haunches.

  “Go home,” said Thone.

  Half up, she stared at him. His face was as white as hers. “Why?” she said. She could feel Kate’s angry doubt and Gene’s conviction, Fanny’s despair, all answering why.

  “Because, for all you know, she’s right.” Thone stated it quietly.

  Color was coming back to her cheeks. Her mouth began the sweet curve of her smile. “I know more than you think,” said Mandy mischievously.

  Thone’s face changed like magic. The mask fell off. Mandy looked away. Her heart was singing. She got her feet to the floor, kicked off her other shoe, and curled up her toes. “Boy, she sure is a wily customer,” said Mandy, and grinned at the policeman. “But we can put up quite a long story, too, you know, and just as fancy.”

  “We …” Thone choked.

  Mandy said with bubbling cheer. “Fanny Austin, you funny old thing. What makes you think he’d be that slimy?”

  “But he was glad,” mourned Fanny, “about Tobias. He was glad!”

  “Shouldn’t we be?” said Mandy, more soberly. “Do you think he’d enjoy these goings on?”

  Fanny lifted her head.

  Mandy said, “It’s all very well to horse around. After all, I’m alive, so that’s O.K. But what about her? What about Belle? Darn it, we didn’t get it! We still don’t know how …” Her eyes slid past Ione as if she weren’t there. “Although … Mr. Kelly, you do believe Thone changed those glasses? Fanny’s an honest witness. You can say to yourself, that’s true?” The Lieutenant was forced to nod. “Now, I did get doped. You can admit that, can’t you? So if only we could prove his father changed them back … As far as all the rest of it goes, why, she had her chance, exactly as well as Thone, or even better. So it depends which drink I got. If I drank the one she fixed for me and the one Thone tried to keep me from getting, well? That sorts things out, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I guess you’re right at that,” said Kelly with sudden heartiness. “Any chance, Doc?”

  The doctor went out to the hall. He came back looking almost nettled with surprise. “He’s conscious,” he said. “That is, as far as we can tell. He can’t speak, you know. Whether he can hear or understand, I don’t venture …”

  “If he could answer just one question,” said Amanda, vivid with hope, “it would make the difference.”

  “One question,” said Kelly, hopeful himself. “Would it hurt to try?”

  The doctor looked at Mandy rather tenderly. “If he can’t be reached, can’t hear, why, no harm. If he can, one question …” He settled his shoulders. “Perhaps, under these circumstances, it’s up to his—family.”

  Thone looked at Ione and she at him.


  “Don’t—” she began and bit her lip.

  “Shall we try?” said Thone. His face had thawed. It sparkled in mocking challenge.

  “Oh, poor Toby,” she murmured, voice distressed, eyes crafty. “But of course we must try.”

  As they got up to move stiffly out of this seated pattern, Mandy and Thone were wafted as if a current bore them toward each other until their shoulders touched. Gene pushed past Kate and caught Amanda’s arm.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” he said. “You could be right. You know more about it than I do. Sorry.” He glanced at Thone. “But, God Almighty, Mandy, when I saw you lying in there and I thought there was blood all over …”

  “Blood?” said Thone stupidly.

  Mandy was looking straight into Gene’s eyes. “I know,” he said, “it’s just one of those things. Don’t tell me how fond of me you are. I know that. I know.”

  “But I thank you,” said Mandy. Her fingers went slipping under Thone’s arm and suddenly, convulsively, he squeezed them to his side.

  CHAPTER 29.

  TOBIAS LAY ALIVE, IF IT COULD BE called life. He breathed. In his room, here on the upper floor, which was vast, he lay in a double bed, sheet to his chin, arms limp outside the covering. He lay, and his eyes were open although they looked blind.

  No one questioned Mandy’s right to go to his bedside, to bring herself in her crimson frock, with her dirty face, her tousled hair, to a spot where, if he could see, he would see her. Thone stood close behind her. All the wires were up and vibrating between them now.

  Ione was at the right of the bed. If Tobias could see, she, in her lavender, was in his sight also.

  Kelly and the doctor stood a pace or two away from the foot of the bed. At the open door, Fanny peered in and Kate, unwilling to let Mandy out of her reach, was beside the actress. Gene alone remained in the hall, biting on a sense of loss, as one worries an aching tooth.

  The doctor took an uncertain step forward. “Mr. Garrison …”

  “Toby, dear …” said Ione musically.

  He did not rouse.

  “Dad …” said Thone. Mandy felt at her back the coursing of sudden grief through his body.

  Tobias lay alive. If thoughts moved in his brain at all, they would be old patches, memories and tags, a hodge-podge. He did not seem to hear or even to know that they were there.

  “I doubt if he can tell us …” the doctor began.

  But Fanny spoke excitedly. “There’s that old French book. What is it? Something by Dumas. The old man and the eyelids! Don’t you remember? He made a sign with his eyelids! Ask …”

  The doctor took one startled, unhappy glance at her. “Can you close your eyes, sir? If so, will you?”

  The weary lids trembled. They did tremble.

  “I’ll ask it,” Kelly moved closer. “Mr. Garrison,” he said in a quiet, respectful, and somehow official voice, “if you turned the table in the other room and changed the glasses around, will you please close your eyes.”

  Tobias lay with his eyes open. If he heard, they couldn’t tell.

  “If you did not,” said Kelly desperately, “will you try to tell us so. By closing your eyes.”

  The sick old man kept staring. He did not even blink. If his mind took in impressions, they could not tell. Nothing reacted. Nothing returned.

  “Ah, maybe he can’t …” cried Mandy. Her heart filled up with pity and love. She sat on the bed and took his poor hand. She smiled her loveliest. The eyes seemed to rest on her face. Then, slowly, they closed.

  Thone turned to look at the Lieutenant.

  Ione said tremulously, “Come away. That’s enough. Oh, come away.”

  But Mandy bent down and kissed the quiet hand that would paint no more. She didn’t believe he had answered anything. She brooded, watching his face. Behind her, someone’s breath sawed painfully.

  In a moment, Tobias reopened his eyes. She thought she saw the tiniest flicker of an expression. Thone thought so, too. He leaned. “Dad …”

  Something about the eyes said, No. No, you shall not rouse me. No, I will not come back. No, it’s too much to bear. I cannot. I will not. Let me go.

  Mandy stifled the need to sob. She thought, he’s going to die and he’ll never know. He’s got that burden, that awful burden. He thinks Belle killed herself. He still thinks so. He has no doubt. If we could only tell him it wasn’t so. If it were only proved so that we could tell him for sure.

  The room seemed to have fallen under a spell. It settled as it was. They were like statues, grouped, waiting. Waiting on death, perhaps. In the upper spaces of the chamber it poised its black wings. Ione’s back was straight. Her little pigeon bosom swelled under the lavender silk. She folded her hands, to wait with courage and decorum. The folding of those small hands was a kind of victory. Minutes passed.

  Mandy’s glance caught a catalogue lying on the bedside table. A catalogue of Tobias’ recent show. It was folded to a black and white reproduction of “Belle in the Doorway.” She thought, Dare I lift it up? If I should hold it up, could he see? Dare I even try to remind him of Belle now? Her heart, her pity answered, No. Idly, her eye traced the lines of the work. Such a stupid …!

  She caught at this trace of an old thought in surprise. That was what she’d thought when she saw it in the newspaper, when she’d first seen it, the day Cousin Edna had left. That Sunday morning, eons ago. Wait. Why stupid? Why had she been so harsh and even brutal in her judgment and then, when she’d seen the picture itself, gone overboard in plunging excitement and admiration?

  She turned her mind in on itself, examining some movement of thought that had been continuing without her conscious attention. All this time, she realized, there had been a word beating in her brain. Blood? Blood? Blood?

  She caught at that, too. Where had it come from? That word, in that tone. Why, Thone had said it, as she kept hearing it, in dull surprise, in total blank incomprehension. As if he said, “Blood? Why blood?” Gene, of course, had meant her red dress. That’s what he’d seen on the workshop floor. But Thone … He knew, of course. He expected her red dress. Yet he didn’t understand.

  Her mind began to race, clicking off one point after another. She got to her feet, trembling.

  “Thone,” she said, very quietly. It didn’t matter that Tobias lay there. He would not hear. Nerve failed her and she hedged. “Have you a driver’s license?” she faltered.

  “I wangled one,” he murmured, barely attending. “I shouldn’t have it.”

  She knew why not! She knew why he’d had trouble getting the Army to take him. Why he’d had to talk his way through the war. And why he’d let her drive the car. And why he’d mistaken, that same day, her yellow and dark blue costume for the yellow and brown she’d worn before. Why he’d seen no difference! Why he wasn’t a painter! Although he understood line and space. Why he’d seen nothing to make him think of blood, as she lay in her crimson on the floor!

  “You are color-blind,” she said aloud, “aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  The doctor squirmed. But nothing disturbed Tobias. Nothing could touch him. Somehow, they were all listening to Mandy and she went on.

  “Your mother was color-blind, too,” she said.

  “She was, yes.” Thone’s attention caught up with the conversation. “Why, Mandy?”

  “It’s unusual in women.” She was so excited she could hardly stand.

  “Very. But she was.”

  Oh, yes, of course Belle was color-blind. Witness the drab and neutral clothes she wore until she met Tobias, that colorist, that man in love with the rainbow. And afterward, how she’d never dared vary her “costumes,” as Fanny said. Of course, she wore what the dressmaker put together, since this only was guaranteed against clashing error. Oh, no, Belle didn’t care for painting. Could not. And of course she rarely drove a car: she had no license.

  “Why didn’t you say!” Mandy’s voice raised a little. “Oh, Thone, Thone, why didn’t you ever say!”<
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  “She was a little bit sensitive about it,” said Thone, quietly, matter-of-fact. “She never spoke of it. So we didn’t, either.”

  Just quietly, like that, they never spoke of it.

  “But that’s why she didn’t like the picture!” cried Mandy, “and you don’t, either. ‘Belle in the Doorway’! I don’t like it, myself, without the color!”

  “It’s … No …” He was letting her lead him. He knew she was going somewhere. He didn’t know where.

  Amanda said, “Mr. Kelly, about the Consolidated Cab Company. What’s painted on those cabs? Do you know?”

  “The name,” said Kelly in astonishment. “Why?”

  “Not the color?”

  “Huh?”

  “Not the word ‘green’?”

  “No.”

  “Did you tell your mother, the night she died,” she cried at Thone, “that her cab, when it came, would be green?”

  “I never even knew. Anyhow, why would I tell her? It wouldn’t have meant anything to her. She couldn’t …”

  “Ah, but she did! The woman in the road!” Mandy turned on Ione. “You did! Out there in the road, that night. You could tell. And you didn’t know Belle was color-blind, did you? Or you’d never have called out, ‘Cab … green cab.’”

  “Wait a minute,” said Kelly. “That driver positively identified Mrs. Garrison.”

  “He was mistaken,” said Mandy. “He was just plumb wrong. This Mrs. Garrison, yes. But not Belle. Not possibly Belle. Not Belle at all.

  “And that’s how she did it. She sent the cab away. She took Belle with her, somehow. That’s how she got her chance to murder Belle. Nobody mixed up chloral in this house. She must have …”

  “My patient,” said the doctor crisply. “All of you, please. Get out of this room.”

  But Mandy bent down. She said to the living eyes, “She murdered Belle. She tried to murder me. You’ll help us prove that, now. You did change the glasses? Close your lids, say yes.”

  Tobias closed his eyelids. It was perfectly deliberate. It had meaning. The eyes that opened again were alive.

  “Oh, dear … dear …” sobbed Mandy. “No, no, she never meant to leave you. She never would have gone. Now you can be sure.”