Lemon in the Basket

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “Said she was going home, eh?”

  “Same clothing as when she was found?”

  “Didn’t live too near the beach, did they?”

  “No, they did not,” said Duncan, answering the last one. “Will you excuse me now, please? At least the Little Prince is safe, and we can all be very glad of that.” He put on a pained smile, but they hadn’t waited for his final asininity. They were leaving him.

  He left them, and went in.

  Within the shrouded house, the Judge was already on his telephone. Duncan went back to the lanai, feeling so deep a depression that he could hardly wade through an account of his part of the interview. Phillida said she wouldn’t bother to remember the ins-and-outs of it all; she intended to take up the position of refusing, as usual, to discuss her husband’s patients.

  “Do, dear,” said Maggie wearily.

  Tamsen said, “What you told them was only supposed to be guessing.” She was weary and in pain, but she wanted to be helpful to somebody. “So it wasn’t really—”

  “Lying?” Duncan pounced. “Oh, yes, it was. Even the guesses were lies. They left Rufus our hero, didn’t you notice?”

  Then he was ashamed to have indulged himself. He said to his mother, “Mitch will take care … of taking care of Rufus now, won’t he, Maggie?”

  The Judge came hurrying. He had news.

  The dead body of Colonel Gorob had just been found in an otherwise deserted old Spanish house on Mynard Street. The informant said that the house had been under surveillance all afternoon, until the time had come when it had seemed … well … rather dead. There were indications that the Colonel, who may even have been the aggressor, had fought hard for his life. Some vanished tenants were suspect and wanted, and furthermore, guessed to be of a dubious political character.

  “I guess that takes us off the hook for a while anyhow,” said Duncan, rubbing his head with hard hands, because it had been a rough day and he couldn’t shake off his depression. “Gorob won’t be talking. You realize? Now that ‘they’ have killed Gorob, there is going to be a big fat theory, marching with my lovely guesses, that ‘they’ also murdered Lurlene. You wait and see.”

  The Judge said, “I wonder how they ever got hold of her, poor girl.” His lips were shaking.

  Duncan found himself much startled. “Do you mean …? Maggie really did guess …?”

  His mother said tartly, “I wasn’t guessing. And for once, I wasn’t acting, either. Did you think I was putting on some sentimental loyal vote of confidence because Lurlene had been a member of this sacred family? No, no, no. To drown oneself … that takes some resolute despair. It wasn’t in her character to do any such thing. One minute’s honest thought and all of you—” She broke away from her nervous anger. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. For both, and all, and everything.”

  The Judge sat down beside her with a sigh. What amount of honest thought, he wondered, can explain the absolute mystery of Rufus?

  Duncan said it, heavily: “Will we ever understand? Will we ever guess what got into Rufus?”

  Phillida said brittlely, “Maybe we ought to run people through an every-six-months’ checkup for emotional health. They check out automobiles for public safety.” She seemed on the verge of tears.

  Tamsen said, “But he had … He was the one who must have had some kind of resolute despair.” (Yes, she thought, he did try to destroy himself—within that act of senseless destruction. He tried.) “But he failed?” she asked, wonderingly.

  The Judge didn’t want this kind of talk.

  “We didn’t understand, we don’t now; and I doubt we will, in the course of this evening,” he said severely.

  “But oh, I wish …” Tamsen began.

  Duncan found that he didn’t want any heart to bleed, out loud. “Come on, Tamsen,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

  Phillida said, in her normal fashion, “With quite a load of secrets, eh? Don’t worry. We’ll manage. I’m going, too. I’ve got a few kids to look in on.”

  “Do, dear,” said Maggie.

  So Phillida went away.

  But Tamsen said, “I don’t want to leave them alone. If there’s anything …”

  “Show a little respect,” said Duncan grimly.

  When they were gone, Maggie said, “Secrets?”

  “Hush, Maggie darling.”

  31

  On the royal plane, as it sped homeward, the boy was huddled to his secret pain, and Inga, who shared this secret, fetched him some water for the taking of pills. No thought of the U. S. A., behind them, was present in either of their minds. They had a performance coming up. The pilot had just informed his passengers that the home airport was already swarming with people in a mood for turbulent welcome and rejoicing.

  The pilot had also relayed a message from Alice Foster to the Princess. “Love and cheers, from all.”

  The Princess, sitting alone, knew that “all” meant Dhanab, who was with her mother because that male creature had needed to be within the aura of Jaylia. This was a secret. She thought she would marry Dhanab soon, now. It wouldn’t be a bad match. Aljedi had been the dashing one, the one with the verve and the charm. But two people with verve and charm, in one marriage, had been a bit much. Dhanab was a man of less force, but not stupid, reasonably attractive. He was the natural regent (religiously sound) if the old King should die. Jaylia, who had once expected to be a queen, saw no reason why she should not be one, at least in fact, until her son grew up. Dhanab could be ruled. The Princess smiled to herself. She had her methods.

  The old King, riding in his private compartment, looked down at clouds. He had lived a long time. His secret may have been that he knew all these secrets, and many more besides. If so, such was his destiny.

  Duncan Tyler, driving Tamsen home, was thinking about secrets. Individual human dignity, he decided, required the keeping of some. He had, for instance, told one of his own, and now wished he had not. Times change, and the truth now was that he felt enormously relieved to be rid of the Princess—as well as of the Prince, the King and the whole shebang. Why should a human, competent to learn, put obstacles in his own path by bleating forth his current foolishness? Let him, from time to time, suspect himself of unwisdom.

  “Were we wrong?” said Tamsen, who was sitting in a forward lean, looking very tense and miserable. “Because Rufus needed what he thought was prominence, should we have just let ourselves be destroyed?”

  “Well, we didn’t.” Duncan had been thinking of something else, in order not to think of this. But it cost us, he thought, now. And something is wrong, somewhere. (Oh, my brother.)

  Tamsen looked at him. She had reminded him of his sorrow and she was sorry. Now, must she make him sorry for her sorrow to have … No, no, no. There she went, into foxiness, a spiral of guilt and part-time vanity, not necessarily kind. Tamsen had a new secret. She would have shot a man to death. She wasn’t going to discuss this not-in-the-least theoretical limit to her code of ever-be-kind. She was going to have to think the whole thing over.

  Phillida Tyler did not take a freeway but crept home through surface streets, driving hesitantly and rather ineptly. She made it to the garage, went up in the elevator with trembling thanksgiving. When she came into her own place, she sat down to sigh, alone. She had been living in the weakness of near-panic for some time. But she had behaved well. So, not having been turned aside from anything she had been required to do, she could keep her humiliating secret.

  Dr. Mitchel Tyler sat in the hospital canteen. He was in the business of keeping secrets, all day long.

  A Dr. Boyer now sat down beside him. “Say, you’ve certainly hit the headlines, Doctor.”

  Mitch grunted.

  “Sorry to hear about your sister-in-law.”

  “Yes.”

  “Despondent for long, was she?” This seemed sly.

  Mitch shrugged. The other doctor seemed to be a rumor or two behind.

  “There’s always the good old ethical ques
tion, isn’t there? Should the family be told?”

  Mitch looked sideways at him. Told what? Lurlene had been drowned. That was the verdict and it was correct.

  “You know, I dreamed up this … well, pretty convincing motive for suicide the other day,” said Dr. Boyer. “Hypothetically, that is.”

  “That so?”

  “Suppose there is some poor dumb woman. Childless, let’s say for a lot of years. Suppose one day she says to her husband, ‘Hooray, I’m pregnant!’ But she happens to say this just about the time he’s been trotting to some fella, like me, for tests, at last. And he’s just found out that he is sterile, always was, and always will be. Terrible timing, wouldn’t it be? Poor woman.”

  “Poor man,” said Mitch calmly. “Hypothetically, that is.”

  “Right,” said the other doctor amiably. “Say, what does the word ‘ironical’ mean?”

  Mitch let out a short laugh. “Look it up,” he advised, and he left.

  So Rufus had a secret? Had had. God knew what he had left, now. The Doctor, trained to cut his losses, cut them (with a pang). Lurlene hadn’t been pregnant. She had been, no doubt, virtuous, although probably murdered. Still, poor man. Poor brother.

  In the west guest room, upstairs, the male nurse was feeding his charge. “Open. Open. That’s the boy.”

  But Rufus kept letting the soft food dribble out of his mouth. He was gazing up at the nurse with melting eyes, begging for pity. “Can’t.”

  “Sure, you can. Sure, you can,” the nurse said in a comforting croon. “Come on, just a couple more swallows. Then we’ll tuck you in. O.K.?”

  The nurse was thinking, Oh, oh, this one’s sure regressed, and how! Still, he felt sorry for the poor fellow. “That’s a good boy,” he said, out of the kindness of his heart.

  The swimming eyes shot a second’s worth of life. Don’t kid me, they said. But then they began to beg again. Am I a good boy? Tell me again. I will stay here, just like this, if you will tell me again. I am? I?

  Down in the lanai, Maggie had put her head over against the Judge. “I act. That’s what I was born to do. But oh, William, I am so …”

  “Hush. Hush.”

  “No. Let me spit the taste out of my mouth, for now. Just now.”

  The Judge waited helplessly.

  “Oh, William, we said that we would be fair.” She was not weeping aloud, but her voice keened, as might have been effective in a theatre. He understood. She couldn’t help that. “We said that we would tell them all, all three, that they were adopted children. Chosen Ones.”

  “We were as fair as we knew how to be,” he said, “and they were all legally adopted children.”

  “And we said that they were, nevertheless, truly our children, and we would not say different to the world.” The melody rose and fell.

  “Yes, and we have not.” The Judge could only stay beside her, wherever she was going.

  “But Mitchel,” said Maggie, “and oh, let me speak these truths, for now. Just now. Mitchel was not born my son, although he is yours, flesh and bone.”

  The Judge winced a little. Mitch’s mother had been … well … a girl. (Oh, young days, white with joy, black with agony! Very little compromise. But one grows gray.) This excursion of his mind suddenly amused him and thus restored him.

  “And Duncan, God bless him,” Maggie was continuing, “was neither of ours. The only Chosen One.”

  “Yes, darling. Humanly speaking.” The Judge was on balance, now.

  “And Rufus,” she mourned, “never yours, was truly born of my body, in secret, before we ever met.”

  (And some things are told without telling, and although Rufus had not known that he knew, if he had nevertheless known.… But this, the Judge thought, is, or may be, simply nonsense. What shall a little animal care, except that he is loved and fed? And it was all three of them we “chose,” and took to love and feed—a little late. Still, he sought to turn his mind, lest she read it.)

  “They were all ours,” he said stoutly, “and are now.”

  The somewhat elderly woman lifted her plain face. “More kinds of truth than one? Truly?”

  “God knows, as I dare imagine,” said the Judge in his calm way, “that all children are our children. None alike, God knows that. But all ours, just the same.”

  “Just the same,” she wailed softly. “All ours. In sickness or in health.”

  “Yes, Maggie darling.” The Judge still heard the mourning music, but he could tell that she was steadying to turn forward again, and that was as good as could be. All that was possible.

  Yet what it is to be fair “just the same” (he thought in his private mind) to all these children—who are none alike—we must soon apply our human wits to discover.

  About the Author

  Edgar Award–winning Charlotte Armstrong (1905–1969) was one of the finest American authors of classic mystery and suspense. The daughter of an inventor, Armstrong was born in Vulcan, Michigan, and attended Barnard College, in New York City. After college she worked at the New York Times and the magazine Breath of the Avenue, before marrying and turning to literature in 1928. For a decade, she wrote plays and poetry, with work produced on Broadway and published in the New Yorker. In the early 1940s, she began writing suspense.

  Success came quickly. Her first novel, Lay On, MacDuff! (1942) was well received, spawning a three-book series. Over the next two decades, she wrote more than two dozen novels, winning critical acclaim and a dedicated fan base. The Unsuspected (1945) and Mischief (1950) were both made into films, and A Dram of Poison (1956) won the Edgar Award for best novel. She died in California in 1969.

  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.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1967 by Jack and Charlotte Lewi Family Trust

  Cover design by Jason Gabbert

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-4275-8

  This 2016 edition published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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  CHARLOTTE ARMSTRONG

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