Omit Flowers

by Stuart Palmer

  I nodded. “He had that kind of a sense of humor,” Todd went on. “Remember how he sent Dorothy and Mildred unsigned checks for Christmas last year? That was another funny joke, as funny as a broken crutch. Well, this year he got another idea. So he went up to Los Angeles and sent some telegrams calculated to bring us all together. Knowing that Gilbert Ely was dead, he used that name.

  “And when the first relatives arrived it was all planned out. He arranged to sleep in the garage. He arranged the storage of all that oil and gasoline—enough to insure a terrific fire when a match was set in the right place.

  “He locked himself inside the garage room, knowing that the locks would be found and studied later. But outside at the window he had already placed the ladder. He went out and down that ladder before he set the fire!”

  I held up my hand, demanding to know about the human remains found in the garage. “Who died there? And if Uncle Joel killed some tramp, how can he come back expecting…”

  “There are lots of different human remains,” Todd explained slowly. “I had a few more questions to ask of Dentist Garvey. He had a lot of connections with Eastern colleges and hospitals. He could get hold of an amputated arm or leg, a human jawbone with teeth…”

  “Then he was an accomplice?”

  “Of course,” Todd said. “Elementary, my dear Watson. All those evidences of new-found wealth—the new Rolls, the office furnishings. Even the receptionist had a new fur coat!”

  I saw another objection. “Those teeth matched his records, Todd. How could he fake that, even if Uncle Joel paid him all the money in the world ?”

  “You mean his records matched the teeth,” Todd reminded me. “He could arrange that as he pleased. Yes, and he could burn the jawbone and the other grisly bits which he had secured for experimental purposes so that they were in the right blackened state, and then come up with the first crowd of sightseers and toss them into the ruins. There was no guard over the ruins on Christmas morning, you remember. Not until the sheriff came back with the Mexican couple.”

  It all seemed to fit, and yet…

  “A dentist wouldn’t take a risk like that,” I insisted.

  “Why not?” Todd countered. “Where was the risk? All this would have been almost impossible to prove. At the worst it was nothing but a hoax. And Garvey was well paid for his trouble. That’s why Uncle Joel, for the first time in years, drew his full income last year. It was worth it, to play his joke on us.”

  I still was doubtful. And somehow I felt cheated. I shook my head. “It’s ingenious, Todd, but…”

  “But it doesn’t explain enough? Listen, then. Uncle Joel had to be where he could enjoy the full effect of his happy little joke, so he could hear and perhaps see what was going on. So instead of slipping off to San Diego or Los Angeles, he simply took up his camp in the cottage that was wrecked in the barranca!”

  “Kosy Kottage!”

  Todd nodded. “I was stopped for awhile, because I knew that nobody could take a broad jump of fifteen feet. But Uncle Joel answered that problem. Just as he answered the problem of how to sneak into the house every night, how to reach the kitchen and the icebox. The downstairs doors were all tightly locked and bolted, but he used the ladder!”

  “Would it work?” I began.

  “Why not? Just because a ladder is usually used for reaching vertically don’t think it wouldn’t make a good bridge. He dragged it into the cottage behind him. There he remained in the daytime, coming into the house at night. The upper windows can’t be locked, Alan.”

  I nodded, remembering. “Then it was he who hit me?”

  Todd nodded. “You almost caught him that night. He probably dropped behind the billiard tables as you came upstairs. He had to knock you out, so he could get through the window. It wasn’t time to spill the beans yet, you see. But you had him worried. He wanted to get down to the basement and remove the wire he had tapped into the phone line.

  “He’d been listening in, for amusement. That extension wire must have run down the barranca all the way to the cottage. But he heard Mildred say something over the phone about someone listening in that afternoon, and he was taking no chances. When he couldn’t remove the wire on the inside, leaving no traces, he cut it outside the house while we were in the cellar. Nice chap, Uncle Joel is.”

  There was a silence. “Mildred, then…” I said.

  “She saw him,” Todd told me slowly. “She must have. On the second night, when she came screaming upstairs. She thought it was a ghost for a moment. Next day she must have realized that he was alive.”

  “But why should she keep quiet? Why wouldn’t she tell?”

  “She couldn’t speak,” Todd explained wearily. “Mildred wanted her share of that trust fund more than anything else in the world. She knew how much it meant to all of us. Can’t you see that it would have been impossible for her to say the word that would dash every hope? She stalled for awhile, and then when she thought that she would have to tell she sweated blood over the thought that perhaps she had made herself a party to fraud or worse.

  “Mildred lost all sense of proportion. Rather than tell the truth she threw herself out of the window. She was crazy, if you like—crazy with fear and a secret that was too big for her to keep.”

  “Then she wasn’t murdered,” I said. “Somehow, in spite of the handkerchief, I’ve thought all along…”

  “She was murdered, all right,” Todd Cameron told me. “But not in any way that a court could consider. If our precious uncle hadn’t had his idea of dropping riches into our laps and then snatching them back before we could grab—Well, she would be alive today. He killed her with his malice, just as he killed the dentist who had acted as his aide.”

  “But how could he kill Garvey?” I began to see what Todd was driving at, the full implication.

  “Killed him with money,” Todd explained. “Money which bought liquor to fuddle the brain. Money which bought fur coats for pretty receptionists. Money which bought a super-car that would do a hundred and twenty miles an hour. Garvey was bound to kill himself sooner or later. Not that Uncle Joel cared, one way or the other.”

  “Well,” I said, “of course he’s crazy. And nobody can touch him for all this?”

  Todd nodded. “That was in his mind. The whole plan was foolproof. If anything went wrong and questions were asked, if we complained at having our inheritances snatched from our noses at the last moment, then Uncle Joel was in the clear. He could point to the silver plate in his skull—a nice touch, Garvey’s tossing a duplicate into the garage ruins—and say, ‘But I’m a war veteran, and I’ve been wandering around the countryside with a bad case of amnesia. If anything’s wrong I didn’t know about it!’ And what jury would hold him?”

  I walked up and down the room, snapped at the window shade. “Todd, can he really get by with it? Can he take two lives—indirectly, I admit—can he ruin the lives of the rest of us? Isn’t there any way at all we can make him answer for—well, for what happened to little Mildred?”

  Todd was smiling, that odd strained smile. “Nothing can be proved on him except that he’s disappeared and returned. Never once did Joel himself do anything which could get him into trouble with the law—not anything that will stand in court. What Garvey did is another matter, but how can we prove when or how our precious uncle paid him for it?” Todd shook his head again. “No, Alan, he planned it all out very cleverly.”

  “But morally…”

  “That’s another matter,” Todd reminded me. “You can’t swear out a warrant because someone morally was the cause of two deaths. Oh, it doesn’t do any good to get angry. I tried that, when I found Joel Cameron spying on his funeral. I told him he was a black murderer, and he laughed at me. He said that if people were weaklings they had to go down in the struggle. He said it was too bad about Mildred, but…”

  “Todd,” I interrupted, “where is he?”

  “He changed his plans a little,” Todd explained. “He’s going away.”
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  “Oh,” I said. Then, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to have that gun of mine that you borrowed.”

  Todd said nothing. He took the little revolver from his pocket, handed it to me.

  Up until that time I had been taking a small part in this play. A small part in life, really. But all that was going to be changed. No man has the right to play games with human souls, human lives. I spun the cylinder, found that the gun was unloaded.

  “Where are the bullets, Todd?”

  “Why?”

  “Never mind why,” I told him. “Where are they?”

  “Sure that you really want to know, Alan?”

  I nodded.

  Todd motioned toward the big cabinet between the windows, that tall locked cupboard which had intrigued me on the first day of our stay.

  “In there,” he said.

  I nodded. “And Uncle Joel? I want to see him before—before he goes away.”

  “That can be arranged,” Todd said. He took a key out of his pocket, went to the cabinet. He opened the door, stood back. “Joel Cameron is in here, too—with six bullets in him.”

  I had a nightmare vision of a round face that still wore an imbecilic grin, of a huddled dark figure… and then Todd closed the door.

  “Tonight, after everyone is gone, I’m going to take him down to the vault and slip him into that big empty coffin.” Todd spoke, breaking the awful silence. “He’s been buried, Alan. He’s had prayers said over him. Nobody will ever suspect…”

  I couldn’t think of any words that went together.

  “Now will you get out of here, and take Dorothy with you?” Todd demanded hoarsely. “Will you go?”

  I shook my head.

  “You can’t stay and help me,” Todd insisted. “I don’t need you—and it would make you a party to—”

  Again I shook my head. But I had to remember that Dorothy loved this man, that I loved Dorothy, and also that I loved Todd as a brother. And I would cheerfully have done what he had done.

  Todd was waiting. “Well?” he said.

  “I’m going to do what I’d want you to do in my place,” I said. “I’m going to telephone the police.”

  Todd Cameron didn’t say anything.

  “If you try to escape I’ll pull this trigger,” I told him. “Of course, the gun may be empty. It will take me several minutes to get to the telephone, and I may give the wrong number to the operator. I shouldn’t be surprised if it took me some time to reach Sheriff Bates. In the meantime, I don’t see how I can keep you from escaping.”

  “No,” Todd agreed.

  “You have a car outside,” I went on. “There’s nothing to prevent me from telling Sheriff Bates that you made a getaway headed north toward Los Angeles. The border is only a few dozen miles, but I can’t think of any reason why you would head that way.”

  “You think I ought to run for it?” he said softly.

  “If you go,” I said, “take everything that belongs to you. I don’t mean baggage.”

  He stared at me.

  “Dorothy,” I said. “Tell her what’s happened. She loves you, Todd. I didn’t want to think so until I had to, but I admit it now. She’ll love you all the more because you avenged her sister. She’d rather be a fugitive with you than go on living half a life…” I stopped. “That is, if you love her?”

  Todd Cameron didn’t hurry. He came over to me, shook my hand. “I love her,” he said. “You know that. If she wants to go… And you, you’re aces, Alan. I’d have done this for you. Luck, Alan.”

  He wished me luck! But I knew that my luck was slipping away. I heard Todd call out Dorothy’s name before her door. He went inside, and there was an agonizing wait of a minute or so.

  They came out, both of them. I heard Dorothy cry “Alan!” in a breathless, excited voice. She tried my door, but I had locked it. I didn’t want to say good-by, didn’t want to hear her say it. I couldn’t face it.

  “Alan!” she cried again. Then she was gone; they were both gone. I waited, locked in the room with a dead body in the cabinet, for as long as I could make myself wait. Then I went down the hall, downstairs to the telephone.

  I called Sheriff Bates, kept on calling him until I finally reached him. I forced myself to do my duty as a law-abiding citizen, told him of the discovery of the body of Joel Cameron. But I left out some details.

  The sheriff asked question after question, and I answered them to the best of my ability, answered them at length. After all, every minute meant that Todd was a mile closer to the border, closer to Mexico with its lonely hills and canyons, closer to little seaport towns that he knew so well….

  It was Dorothy that I thought of, far more than of Todd. I knew that I loved her more than anything on earth. But Todd was one of those born to do, born to be, born to have. A pyknic type, the psychology books would have it, rather than the dreaming, talking leptosome that was I. Why should I have imagined that she could choose otherwise?

  The sheriff was still talking. “Don’t go away!” he ordered. “I’ll be there in half a jiffy.”

  I wasn’t going away. Except for the thing crammed into the cabinet upstairs, I was alone in Prospice. I had never felt more alone in my life. I knew that there were things I ought to be doing, answers I must prepare to questions that would sweep upon me like a flood. In my pocket I felt the weight of the little pistol. Perhaps the sheriff would try to draw a significance from the fact that Joel Cameron had been murdered with my gun. Well, what matter if I did stand before a jury for this?

  A man who spends his life poring through books, writing articles and books that nobody wants to read, is of questionable value to himself or anyone else, I told myself again. What did I have to lose?

  And then, all too soon, there came a shrill ring at the bell. I took my time about walking forward through the deserted house. It might be the last minute that was completely at my disposal for some time.

  I took a deep breath and opened the door.

  But it wasn’t Sheriff Bates. It was Dorothy.

  “He’s gone, poor Todd. Poor haunted Todd. At the last minute he wanted to stay, but I made him go. You know, Alan, I think he did love her a little. Mildred, I mean.”

  I drew her through the door. “But I don’t understand you! You should have gone with him. You love each other, and he’s lost everything else. It would have made everything right, don’t you see?”

  She shook her head.

  “I couldn’t go with him,” Dorothy said gently. “I kissed him good-by and I watched him out of sight. But all I could think of was you. I could see you arrested for this, in the witness chair, maybe…”

  “So?”

  She shook her head. “Listen, Alan, you stupid old goose. I can be a housekeeper, if that’s what you want. I can be a secretary, or a mother, or a Dutch uncle. I think what you need most of all is someone to take care of you…

  I could only stare at her stupidly.

  “I couldn’t have helped Todd, not really,” she explained. “Or I’d have gone, no matter who I loved. You know that. Someday, even without a woman to hinder him, they’ll catch up with Todd Cameron. They’ll bring him back, make him stand trial. We’ll do what we can for him then. But now—now, Alan—”

  “Yes?”

  “One for all,” she said softly. “And all for one—and you for me—”

  Somehow I didn’t even mind the shrill ringing of the doorbell.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, place
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  Copyright © 1937 by Stuart Palmer

  Cover design by Mimi Bark

  978-1-4804-1932-2

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