Lemon in the Basket

by Charlotte Armstrong

“Why did Rufus show up at this police station, sir?”

  “Why was he talking to the cops around midnight?”

  “Judge? What did he mean, a big important crime?”

  “I am very sorry,” said the Judge. “I cannot tell you anything. I don’t know what to tell you.”

  This, at least, was the bare truth, he thought, as, amid protests, he went back into his house having done (he feared) no particular good.

  The family was gathered in the lanai. Except for Rufus, who was upstairs with the burly male nurse Mitch had called in to attend to him. Except for Lurlene, who was God knew where, saying God knew what to whom.

  When the Judge came in, feeling futile, Maggie said at once, “Never mind, William.”

  Tamsen said, “Saiph is all right. They’ll get him home safe, won’t they?”

  Duncan said gloomily, “There is that.”

  The Judge had heard this said before. When he had told the right people the right things, one of them had said, “There is that.” And so there was. The Judge sat down.

  Mitchel said, “Well, the hell with them out there. I’m running the gantlet and going back to work.”

  Phillida said, “Work, for the night is coming.” Her eyes shone, as if with tears.

  But Mitch shrugged, saying you never knew. He kissed his wife, and then his mother, and left to push ruthlessly through and escape.

  The Judge said, to encourage the others, “With the King’s statement and Saiph coming home, I suppose all is well enough in Alalaf. There is that.”

  “It’s just us Tylers, then?” said Tamsen.

  “That’s who it is, honey,” Duncan said. “If we try to say that Lurlene is also off her nut, that won’t wash, I’m afraid.”

  “What could she do?”

  “She can tell the truth,” the Judge said.

  “She can tell it,” said Maggie dreamily.

  The Judge gave her a very suspicious look. Maggie, who had come downstairs as from a bier, had sat among them, the most detached and calm. Maggie, who mourned Rufus as if he had died (and properly so, the Judge agreed), had seemed held in the peace of that finality. But now she had a sphinx-look on.

  Colonel Gorob was in conference with two of his new masters. They had all listened to what this Mrs. Lurlene Tyler had to say. They had all thanked her courteously. Now she was being given refreshment in another room.

  “Do you believe her story, Gorob?” said the thin one.

  “It may very well be true,” the Colonel said stiffly, noticing the absence of his title and rank.

  “Really of no moment whether it is true,” said the fat one. “We can’t afford to have it told.”

  “No?” The Colonel was somewhat surprised. “It seems to be the very story I had wind of last night. With an improvement. An American attempt to assassinate the Prince. Surely, this is useful.”

  “It will not be believed.”

  “No?”

  “Rufus Tyler is, at present, a great man in the eyes of the populace. He is supposed to have known about the explosive and come in time to ‘save’ the ‘Little Prince.’” The fat one’s voice put in the sneering quotation marks. “Now, how can Rufus Tyler be held up as one who tried to assassinate the same child he so nobly saved?”

  “He knew nothing,” said the Colonel irritably. “It was a freakish misunderstanding.”

  Failure, however, was failure, whether freakish or no.

  “Our people would be accused of inventing a completely silly falsehood,” said the fat one. “Not clever at all. Against a Tyler? That respected family? No, no. It could weaken our propaganda machine. We would look like fools. Wiser to keep her quiet.”

  “I agree,” said the thin one. “I saw that at once. But she obviously came here for the very purpose of getting publicity for her story. How can she be convinced to keep quiet? Now that she has been here, and met us, in the bargain?”

  “The safe way, then,” said the fat one. “No use arousing any more inquiry than is unavoidable.”

  “It has been laid on, just in case,” the thin one said smugly. “Speaking of inquiry, Gorob, are you aware that we must abandon this house because of you?”

  “No. No.”

  “You were seen entering last night. You were recognized.”

  “I doubt that.” The Colonel bridled.

  “You know that. The woman heard it stated to the public. That is how she came here.”

  “Why did we not hear it?” But the Colonel knew the answer to this. Those sidewalk interviews had seemed useless, boring, time-wasting and unimportant. His masters had turned the broadcast off, to discuss and assimilate the news of failure.

  “Quite enough, of course, that it was stated,” the fat one said. “The Americans will be around to ‘check it out,’ as they like to say.” (Gorob began to feel time pressing.) “We shall be leaving within the quarter hour.”

  “I see.” The Colonel did not ask his next question aloud. He wondered it. “Am I?” he wondered.

  They did not say whether he was. He didn’t trust them.

  Lurlene, in another room, thought they were certainly being very nice to her, around here, for a change. The woman had respectfully brought her a cup of tea and some little cakes. And now the woman said to her, “If you would care to come and wash, madame?”

  “Say, thank you very much,” said Lurlene archly, getting out of her chair. The cakes had been a little sticky. In any event, Lurlene wanted to do what was proper and expected of a great tragic figure. Say, maybe they knew she was going to be on TV pretty soon. She thought these people were certainly thoughtful. The woman actually bowed before she turned to lead the way.

  The bathroom looked pretty fancy, for an old place like this. Then Lurlene noticed that the tub was half full of water. Was she supposed to take a bath, for heaven’s sakes? She looked a second time. “That water don’t look clean to me,” she said. It certainly looked kind of funny, kind of brownish-greenish, and there was stuff floating in it, too. Lurlene bent and put her fingers into the water. “Hey,” she said, “this is ice cold! Listen, I don’t get the big—”

  The woman had a hard hand at the back of her neck. Two men were there, suddenly. Lurlene got the big idea in a few seconds, as her face went into the sea water. For all her threshing, it stayed there, long enough.

  Therefore, at eight o’clock that evening, the Tyler house was besieged more violently than ever.

  Just at dusk, Lurlene Tyler’s fully clad body had been fished out of the ocean. Mitch had rushed to where she had been taken. The cause of death was drowning. In sea water. No sign of foul play. Suicide?

  But why? Why? Why?

  30

  The whole house had recoiled upon itself. All draperies had been drawn. Sam, having snipped the wires to the doorbells, was stationed in the front hall. Hilde was near the back door. The family was in the lanai.

  Duncan was pacing. “We’ve got to give them a story. There has to be at least a theory. The one thing the human race can’t stand is an absolute mystery. They’ll hunt and they’ll pry and they’ll guess. Consider how many mysteries we have, here. Nobody knows what got into Lurlene. Nobody knows what Rufus intended to do at the airport.”

  “Except that he didn’t go there to tell about a bomb,” said Phillida, “although they have that theory.”

  “All right.” Duncan stood corrected and went on. “But we can’t go out there with the true story, and even if we thought we should, the fact is, we don’t know it. Nobody knows where Rufus was all night. Not a one of us knows whatever got into him, that he tried to shoot the Prince of Alalaf in the first place. There was no reasonable reason. Which is pretty intolerable.”

  “He had an unreasonable reason, I suppose,” said Tamsen, in pain.

  But Duncan kept thinking of that piece of paper, on which Lieutenant Dennison had made his “rough” notes. “We’ll have to incorporate what is known,” he said, “into some kind of story. They’re human. They’ve got television cameras o
ut there.”

  The Judge, who had done his private duty long ago, and told all of the truth he knew—to people who needed to know it, but who would not, for reasons, tell it everywhere—was feeling the peace of the acceptance of the finality of death. He couldn’t, in the moment, rouse himself to Duncan’s anxiety. To life’s fitful fever, he thought dreamily.

  He said, “I don’t think I can cope, Duncan. I don’t think I am the one to go out there and tell them a story.”

  Phillida said, “I don’t think I am, either. I would be willing, but I’m not the kind who could.”

  Tamsen chirped up. “If somebody would help me, with what to say …”

  “No, no,” said Duncan, but with appreciation. “You haven’t the gift, honey. Or the authority. I suppose, after all, this is up to Maggie.”

  “Yes,” said Maggie. “Yes, I know.” She said to the Judge, as if he had asked her, “I’m all right.” Then she looked at Duncan. “You did very well. You may come, too.”

  “We can share it off, maybe?” said Duncan. “I can wind in and out of what’s known about Rufus.”

  “I’ll speak of Lurlene, then.” Maggie nodded sharply. “All right? It is a mistake to rehearse too much when you are basically going to wing it.”

  “Is there a theme?” Duncan asked keenly.

  “The theme is tragedy,” said Maggie in a low voice. “For this family.” She turned up her plain face. “God knows, but there may be more than one kind of truth.”

  “Amen,” said the Judge, rousing himself after all. “And I’ll come too. No, I won’t speak. I may need to know what you say.” The Judge had realized that the peaceful contemplation of finality was not for him—not for a while yet.

  Duncan went out alone to make the arrangements. They wanted a television interview. It would be on the portico. Duncan bore himself soberly, waiting out the preparations, the lights, camera, the set made ready. The decision was that all questions would come from off camera. For their picture, they had a star.

  But all the theatricality seemed to have been knocked out of the incomparable Maggie Mitchel by what had happened, in real life, to her own children. She was just a woman, a sad and stricken woman, trying not to let her bewildered sorrow be a nuisance, the way any decent woman would try. Bearing up, not going to make a big scene, speaking somewhat monotonously, and faltering sometimes.

  Lurlene had not been feeling well at all last night, she told the world through the relentless lens and sound track. “So we put her to bed and kept her overnight. Then, this morning, we were all … well … upset by all that was happening. Lurlene seemed to be feeling better … I mean … in her health. She did cry. I recall that, now. I thought it was nerves.”

  “When did she leave, Miss Mitchel? I mean, Mrs. Tyler?” Tragedy deserved hushed questions.

  “About the middle of the morning, I think it was. She said she wanted to go home. I didn’t understand at all. I thought she just wanted to go home, that’s all. It might have been something to do with my son’s leaving here last night—and not coming back at all.”

  “How is he, Mrs. Tyler?”

  “He is not well at all.”

  (The Judge thought, Bad lines! No playwright on earth would have written this dreadful sequence of repetitious “all” sounds! Well, she is still incomparable.)

  Duncan cleared his throat, touched his mother’s arm, and took over. “The fact is, my brother …”

  Maggie didn’t use her handkerchief. She didn’t smile. She didn’t cry. She just stood numbly, in the shelter of her husband’s concern for her, as any stricken woman would.

  “I’m afraid my brother is having a serious breakdown,” Duncan said.

  “Has he told anything yet?”

  “What happened last night, Mr. Tyler?”

  “How did he find out about the bomb?”

  “We have been trying, of course, to piece it together.” Duncan was using a lecturer’s manner, sounding a little wordy and stuffy. “We do know that when he left here last evening, this Colonel Gorob also left, at the very same time. Now, I had better say that this is theory, at best. However, we do get the impression that my brother was … or may have been … picked up by those people. It is possible that he may have been given drugs of some kind. They may have been trying to find out, from him, some things they wanted to know. Such as the security arrangements for Prince Saiph. But we believe that if anything of this kind did happen, he must have got away from them at some time during the night.”

  At this point, the flow of his much qualified “statement” was broken by a question.

  “What about your brother’s arrival at a police station, around twelve o’clock?”

  “Yes. Yes, that is what I mean.” Duncan congratulated the bright pupil. “He did go to that police station, as you know. Now, I myself went there as soon as Lieutenant Dennison called this house, in a very understanding way, I might add.”

  Duncan was feeding them a wild yarn in as long-winded and boring a manner as he could. “By the time I arrived, he had slipped away, and this, I might add, was no one’s fault, really. Why he left there, as he did, we do not know. Whether he feared that those same people were on his … er … trail again.” Duncan apologized for a gaudy word, “Of course, they may have been, for all we know.”

  Duncan had the stage, although they had kept Maggie in the picture. She was helping by giving him a stillness of attention. But his listeners were becoming restless.

  “Yes, but, Mr. Tyler, what is your brother’s story?”

  “He tried at that time, as you may know,” said Duncan, “to give the police his story. Obviously, he knew by then that there was a plan. That a crime was to be committed. A ‘big important crime.’ He said as much.”

  Duncan intended to go down the notes that existed on a piece of paper in that police station. The “rough” notes. He was going to rough them up some more. Several of his listeners were taking notes right now.

  “That would be the bomb on the plane, you think, Mr. Tyler?”

  “That would be it, presumably. My brother seems to have tried to tell them that the boy was to be killed. But he was very difficult to understand. He still is. He does say ‘shots.’ Lieutenant Dennison was shrewd enough to surmise that he may have been drugged. You see, if they had given him shots of some kind, and perhaps had overdone the dosage, that would possibly account for his having been so rambling and incoherent.”

  Duncan stopped and bit his lip. “There has evidently been damage,” he said flatly, “to his speech centers.”

  “You mean he can’t talk yet?”

  “He tries very hard,” said Duncan, looking suddenly younger. “Oh, yes, he does keep saying that someone ‘wouldn’t let him go.’ So that seems to indicate that he was imprisoned somewhere for some period of time.”

  (Duncan thought he was sounding like a perfect ass. All right.)

  “Where did he go, though, when he left the police station?”

  “We do not know, in full detail. The police were looking out for his car during the night, but they had no luck. It is our theory that since he must have known what was planned for the royal plane, when he realized that he could not speak clearly enough, he could not put his words together in such a way as to make himself understood, he felt he simply had to stop the thing anyway. So he must have gone as directly as he could to the airport. His car was found there, finally.”

  “That’s right.” Another piece clicked in.

  “He must have known the time for departure. After all, it was on the air. We hear that he was seen—or was thought to have been the man who was seen—in the coffee shop there, very early this morning. We suppose that he was trying to pull himself into condition, into some shape to be able to talk, to tell somebody ‘before it was too late.’ In fact, he said that to the gate man.”

  Duncan was speaking more vigorously now. He put on a proud look. “As a matter of fact, he had pulled himself together, to the point that when he came to that g
ate he did speak rather clearly.”

  “So then they had to go and knock him out, right?”

  “Yes, they did. However, you must see their point of view. Those men—the man who hit my brother, for instance—can’t be blamed for doing what was done. My brother looked … well … very much disheveled after the kind of night he must have had, and he was running, as you know, toward the royal party. It was the duty of those men not to let anyone near the Little Prince.” Duncan was being terribly “fair.”

  “Too damn bad, though,” somebody said.

  “Well, it worked out,” Duncan said, “for Al Saiph. I think that’s all, really, that we can possibly say until we know more.”

  “I’d like to ask you …” said one of the interviewers. “Mrs. Tyler?”

  “Minute,” said somebody. The camera wanted more of Maggie, and closer up, if there was going to be any more of her.

  “Mrs. Tyler?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think there is a connection between what happened to your son Rufus, and what happened to his wife?”

  “There may be,” said Maggie sadly.

  “Mother,” said Duncan (who never called her “mother” in real life). “Don’t you think that’s enough?”

  “No,” said Maggie. “No, it isn’t. I want to say”—Maggie had drawn herself up—“that I have tried, as hard as I can, to understand how poor Lurlene could have taken her own life. But I knew her.” Maggie began to shine with the look of reckless honesty. “And I don’t believe she did that! I knew her very well, and I don’t believe it was in her character. I don’t think it’s possible that Lurlene could have done such a thing. I don’t believe it!”

  Duncan stepped quickly between her and the camera’s eye. “Take her inside, Dad?”

  So the Judge took Maggie gently inside, while behind Duncan there was some protest, much murmuring, and a few cries of “Thanks.” “Thanks very much.”

  When he turned around they had stopped taking pictures. They had had their “dramatic highlight.” Duncan, alone, waited out the brief final barrage.

  “Lurlene didn’t leave any note, did she, Mr. Tyler?”