Dram of Poison

by Charlotte Armstrong

  Mrs. Boatright was making a speech. She had a clear voice and she knew how to breathe and she could be rather eloquent. Even Rosemary stopped her weeping noises to listen.

  “No one should be the prisoner of stale gratitude—to change and also mix the metaphor” declaimed Mrs. Boat-right. “I think of the children in this world, enslaved by parents trading on gratitude for old deeds that should have been done for love only in the first place. I think of parents who have become, in fact, whining nuisances that flesh-and-blood rightfully resents and yet blood, that is thicker than water, scourges itself for resenting. I shudder at so much unhappiness. Gratitude can be a dreadful thing when it becomes a debt—you see?—and there is guilt and reluctance. But if, by continued feeding, faith is created, and mutual respect is accumulated and confidence grows, in love, in friendship, then gratitude turns into something better. And something durable.” She paused and one expected the pattering of ladies’ hands over the luncheon tables. Here was only the rushing sound of the car, and Rosemary saying, “I know …” in a choking voice.

  “If parents, for instance,” said Mrs. Boatright, wistfully, in a more private kind of voice, “could only grow up to be their children’s friends … Have you children, my dear?”

  Paul said hastily, almost in alarm. “They’ve only been married … less than three months …”

  There was a silence, deep … except for the sounds of the car’s progress.

  Lee Coffey said in a moment, “Is that so? I didn’t know that.”

  “A bride and a groom,” said Virginia slowly, her voice caressing the words sadly.

  The news was sinking into the fabric of all their speculations, dyeing everything to different colors. Mr. Gibson felt like crying out, No, you don’t understand. It was only a silly, unrealistic arrangement. And I am fifty-five. She is thirty-two. It leaves twenty-three.

  He cried out nothing.

  Mrs. Boatright turned and said to him, “Rosemary finds your sister difficult. Rosemary has been unhappy. But Rosemary wasn’t the one who stole the poison, was she?”

  “No,” he said. “No.”

  “Then what was the matter with you?” she asked.

  He couldn’t answer.

  Paul turned around. “You certainly raised the devil,” he said. “You might have been a little bit thoughtful of Rosie at least. And Ethel. And me, for that matter. If you’d thought of others and not yourself …”

  “He does think of others,” said Rosemary faintly.

  “Not today, he didn’t,” said Paul, “and what he did was a sin.” He jerked his head to look forward. The back of his neck was righteous and furious.

  “‘Oh … that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon ’gainst self-slaughter …’” crooned the bus driver. “That’s what you mean, hey?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yes, but that’s our culture,” said the bus driver. “You take Japan …”

  “You take Japan,” said Paul, sulkily.

  Mrs. Boatright, who had a way of going back and clearing up one thing at a time, said, “I serve with the Red Cross, the Board of Education, the Society for the Encouragement of the U.N., the Council for Juvenile Welfare, the American Women for Political Housecleaning, and the church, of course, and I work in these groups. But not for ‘others.’ Isn’t this my world? And while I am here, my business?” She conquered her oratorical impulses. “There is a weakness about that word ‘others,’” she said privately, “and I never have liked it.”

  “It’s not definitive,” snapped Virginia. “Show me one patient. An other.”

  “The odds ain’t good,” said Lee Coffey ruminatively. “Couple of billion ‘others’; only one of you. You can’t take an interest, except pretty vague and slightly phony, in the whole caboodle of ’em.”

  “Quite so,” said Mrs. Boatright genially. “You can only start from where you are.”

  “Although once you get into this business,” said Virginia softly, “you are led on.”

  “One thing comes after another,” agreed the bus driver, and the nurse looked at him, with that quick alert tilt of her head again.

  “Do you get paid, Mrs. Boatright?” said Rosemary, straightening up suddenly.

  “Of course not.” Mrs. Boatright was scandalized.

  “You see? She’s just a parasite,” said Rosemary, half hysterically.

  “Hey!” crowed Lee Coffey. “That sounds like good old Ethel to me. Ethel says any dame whose old man has got dough is just a parasite? I’ll betcha she does. So she never met a high-powered executive like Mrs. B. I’m telling you, this Ethel has got everything bass-ackward. Hey, what was it she said about blondes? You never did tell me.”

  “Blondes,” said Rosemary clearly, “are predatory nitwits.”

  “Are-ent they, though?” said Lee to his nurse fondly. “Aren’t they just? All of ’em. This means you, too, honey-bunch. You and your definitive, your patient.” He chuckled. “Oh boy, you know, that’s Ethel’s trouble, right there? She starts out with ‘some,’ slides into ‘many,’ and don’t notice herself skidding right off the rails into ‘all.’”

  “Ethel’s a pain in the neck,” said Paul grumpily. “I told you, Rosie, the day she sent you into a fit—”

  “Ethel,” put in Mrs. Boatright thoughtfully, “is beginning to sound like a scapegoat.”

  Mr. Gibson stirred himself and said rather sharply, “Yes. And you are all so very kind to be pro-me; I can’t think why.… But I’d like to get this straight, please. I stole the poison. I meant to die. I stupidly; criminally, left it on the bus. I am responsible, guilty, wrong, and totally to blame.” He knew this to be true.

  “Yes,” said the bus driver in a moment, thoughtfuly, “when you come right down to it, sure you are.”

  But Mr. Gibson was thinking dizzily … Yes, but if I am to blame, there was freedom. I could have done otherwise. Without freedom, there is no blame. And vice versa. His brain swam. I don’t know, he thought. I thought I knew but I don’t know.

  “Not a lot of use in blame, though,” the bus driver was saying. “It shouldn’t linger. You shouldn’t blow on them ashes, hey, Mrs. B.?”

  “Make a note of an error,” said that matron briskly, “for future reference … but file it. Now, Rosemary, powder your nose and put on some lipstick and brace up. Theo Marsh may very well be lost in some masterpiece with the thought of nourishment far, far from his mind. It would be quite like him.”

  “I haven’t got a lipstick,” wailed Rosemary.

  “Use mine,” said Virginia warmly.

  “Put a good face on it, girls,” said the bus driver tolerantly. “A man, he takes a shave …”

  Mr. Gibson saw Paul Townsend rubbing his jaw.

  The whole thing struck him. The six of them, this heterogeneous crew, hurtling out into the country on a guess and a prayer, and conversing so fantastically.

  Mr. Gibson heard a rusty chuckle coming out of him. “You know,” he said, “this is remarkable?”

  Not a one of them agreed. He felt all their eyes, Lee’s in the rear vision miror, Virginia’s and Paul’s turning back, Mrs. Boatright’s at his side, Rosemary peering around her. All the eyes said, What do you mean? Not at all!

  “Are we getting there?” said Rosemary.

  “We are,” said Mrs. Boatright

  When they passed the place where the yellow bus had been left, on the road’s shoulder, it was gone. Lee said, “Hey, I wonder am I fired?” No one could tell him, and since he had sounded merely, and rather merrily, curious to know, no one tried to console him, either.

  After a while Mrs. Boatright said, “It’s a dirt road. Going off to the right a few yards beyond the junction. The house is wood, stained brown, and it sits on a knoll.”

  “I can see a house like that,” said Virginia. “Look. Is that it? Up there?”

  Chapter XVIII

  THE LOW STRUCTURE on the high knoll looked not only rustic but abandoned. The front wall was blank. Weeds grew up to
the doorstep. On a narrow terrace of old brick, overrun by wild grass, a few dilapidated redwood outdoor chairs sat at careless angles, their cushions faded and torn. A cat leaped out of one of these and fled into the wilderness.

  No sound, no sign of life came from this building.

  Mrs. Boatright rapped smartly.

  Without sound, the door swung inward. They could see directly into a huge room and the north and opposite wall was glass, so that this space was flooded with clear and steady light. The first thing Mr. Gibson saw was a body.

  The body was that of a female in a long flaring skirt of royal blue and nothing else. It was lying on a headless couch. As he blinked his dazzled eyes, it sat up. The naked torso writhed. It was alive.

  A man’s living voice said, “What have we here? Mary Anne Boatright! Well! Is this a club?”

  The torso was pulling on a loose white T-shirt, slightly ragged at the shoulder seams. It went strangely with the rich silk of the skirt and the skirt’s gold-embroidered hem.

  “This is important,” said Mrs. Boatright, “or I wouldn’t disturb you, Theo.”

  “I should hope it is,” said the voice. “It better be. Never mind. I’m tired. I just decided. Put your shirt on, Lavinia.”

  “I did, already,” said the girl or woman on the couch who was sitting there like a lump, now. She turned her bare feet until they rested pigeon-toed, one over the other. Her eyes were huge and dark and placid as a cow’s.

  Mr. Gibson tore his gaze away from her to see this man.

  “Theodore Marsh,” said Mrs. Boatright formally, but rapidly. “This is Mrs. Gibson, Miss Severson, Mr. Gibson, Mr. Townsend, Mr. Coffey.”

  “You don’t look like a club,” said the painter. “What are you? I’ve surely seen several of you before, somewhere.”

  He was tall and skinny as a scarecrow. He wore tweed trousers, a pink shirt, and a black vest. His hair was pure white and it looked as if it had never been brushed but remained in a state of nature, like fur. His face was wizened and shrewd, his hands knobby. He must have been seventy.

  He was full of energy. He moved, flipperty-flop, all angles, beckoning them in. He had yellow teeth, all but three, which were too white to match the rest, and obviously false. His grin made one think of an ear of corn peculiarly both white and golden. He certainly had not been poisoned.

  “Did you find a bottle of olive oil?” Rosemary attacked in a rush.

  “Not I. Sit,” he said. “Explain.”

  Mr. Gibson sat down, feeling weak and breathless. The nurse and the bus driver sat down, side by side. Paul remained standing, for his manners. His eyes avoided the sight of the model’s bare feet.

  Mrs. Boatright, standing, her corsets firm, told the painter the story succinctly and efficiently. Rosemary, by her side, punctuated all she said with wordless gestures of anxiety.

  Theo Marsh subdued his energy long enough to listen quickly, somehow. He got the situation into his mind, whole and fast.

  “Yes, I was on a bus. Took it in front of the public library late this morning. You the driver? I did not study your face.”

  “Few do.” Lee shrugged.

  “Can you help us?” interrupted Rosemary impatiently. “Did you see a green paper bag, Mr. Marsh? Or did you see who took it?”

  The artist took his gaze off the bus driver and put it upon Rosemary. He leaned his head sharply to the right as if to see how she would look upside down. “I may have seen it,” he said calmly. “I see a lot. I’ll tell you, in a minute. Let me get the pictures back.”

  Mrs. Boatright took a throne. At least she deposited her weight upon a chair so regally that it might as well have been one.

  “You, with the worries and the graceful backbone,” the painter said, “sit down. And don’t wiggle. I despise wiggling women. I must not be distracted, mind.”

  Rosemary sat down in the only remaining place, on the couch beside the model. She sat … and her spine was graceful … as still as a mouse.

  (Mouse, thought Mr. Gibson. Oh, how have we come here, you and I, who surely meant no harm?)

  Six of them, plus the model Lavinia, all stared solemnly at Theo Marsh. He enjoyed this. He didn’t seat himself. He moved, flippety-flop, all elbows and angles, up and down.

  “G-green,” stammered Mr. Gibson.

  “Green?” the painter sneered. “Look out the window.”

  Mr. Gibson looked, blinked, said, “Yes?”

  “There are at least thirty-five different and distinct greens framed there. I know. I counted. I put them on canvas. So tell me, what color was the bag?”

  “It was a kind of …” said Mr. Gibson feebly. “—well, greenish …”

  “They have eyes and see not,” mourned the painter. “All right.” He began to act like a machine gun, shooting words.

  “Pine green?”

  “No.”

  “Yellow green? Chartreuse? You’ve heard of that?”

  “No. It wasn’t—”

  “Grass green?”

  “No.”

  “Kelly green?”

  “Theo,” said Mrs. Boatright warningly.

  “Am I showing off, Mary Anne?” The painter grinned.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Boatright.

  “Well then, truce to that.” The painter shrugged. “Well then, gray green?”

  “Y-yes,” said Mr. Gibson, struggling. “Palish, dullish …”

  “In other words, paper-bag green,” said the painter, amiably. “Of course.” He rambled to the left and stopped still and looked blind. “I sat on the left side of the bus,” he said dreamily. “For the first ten minutes I examined a hat. What blossoms! Watermelon shade. Nine petals, which is unlikely. Well, to proceed. I saw you … the man there with the good eyes. That can’t tell one green from another.”

  “Me?” squeaked Mr. Gibson.

  “A man of sorrows, thought I,” the painter continued. “Oh yes, you did have in your left hand a gray-green paper bag.”

  Mr. Gibson began to tremble.

  “I watched you a while. How I envied you your youth and your sorrow! I said to myself, this man is really living!”

  Mr. Gibson thought one of them must have gone mad!

  The artist’s eyes slid under half-drawn lids. “I saw you put the paper bag down on the seat.” The eyes were nearly closed now, and yet watched. “You took a small black-covered notebook out of your pocket …”

  “I … did?”

  “You produced a gold ball-point pen, about five inches long, and you wrote—brooded—wrote …”

  “I did!” Mr. Gibson began to feel all his pockets.

  “Then you got to brooding so bad you forgot to write. I lost interest. Nothing more to see, you know. Besides, I discovered an ear without a lobe, two seats ahead of me.”

  Rosemary had jumped up. She stood over Mr. Gibson as he drew his little pocket notebook out and flipped the pages. Yes, pen marks. He looked at what he had written on the bus. “Rosemary … Rosemary … Rosemary.” Nothing but her name three times. That was all.

  “Trying … a letter to you,” he stammered, and looked up.

  Rosemary’s eyes were enigmatic … perhaps sad. She shook her head slightly, walked slowly back to the couch and sat down. Lavinia changed her feet, and put the top one underneath.

  “I saw you, Mary Anne,” the painter said, “and pretended not. I lay low. Forgive me, but I didn’t want to be snared and exhibited.”

  “I saw you, you know.” said Mrs. Boatright calmly, “or we wouldn’t be here. Had nowhere to exhibit you, profitably, at the moment.”

  “You lay low?” The painter sighed. “Ships in the night. I am a vain man, amn’t I? Well, let’s see. Let’s see.”

  “The paper bag?” pressed Rosemary.

  “Quiet, now,” the painter’s eyes roved. “Ah yes, the heart-shaped face. Saw you.”

  “Me?” said Virginia.

  “On the right side, well forward?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where you could tur
n those gentle eyes where you liked,” said the painter, mischievously.

  Virginia’s face turned a deep soft pink. Lee Coffey’s ears stood up.

  “I didn’t try to see whether he was looking sly at you. Perhaps in the mirror?” said the painter and swung to the driver. “Were you?”

  “Me!” exploded Lee, and then softly, “Me?”

  “Theo,” said Mrs. Boatright severely, “you are showing off again. And behaving like a bad little boy.”

  “I don’t care to have her embarrassed,” said the bus driver stiffly. “Get on to the subject, the poison.”

  The painter flapped both hands. “Don’t mind me,” he said irritably. “I see things. I can’t help it.” (The bus driver picked up the nurse’s hand in his, although neither of them seemed aware of this or looked at each other.) The painter clasped his hands behind him and arched his thin ribcase and teetered on his toes. “There was that ear …”

  “Whose ear?” demanded Rosemary fiercely.

  “Can’t say. All I noticed was the ear. We could advertise. Wait a minute … Didn’t Mary Anne say your name is Gibson?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then somebody spoke to you.”

  “Did they? Why, yes,” said Mr. Gibson. “Yes, that’s true. Somebody said my name, twice. Once while I waited. Once, just as I was getting off. Somebody knew me.” He was suddenly excited.

  “Who, Kenneth? Who?”

  He shook his head. “I … don’t know,” he said with shame. “I paid no attention.”

  “He was sunk,” said the painter nodding vigorously, looking like a turkeycock, his wattles shaking. “He was sunk. I noticed that.”

  “Did you notice who spoke to him?” Rosemary demanded.

  The painter looked dashed. “Darned if I did,” he said with chagrin. “I’m so eye-minded. Oh, I heard. But I made no picture of the speaker. I did not connect. However …” He paused in vanity until all of them were waiting on him. “I believe I did see somebody pick up the paper bag.”

  “Who?”

  “Who?”

  “Who?”