Dram of Poison

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “We found it!” they all shouted.

  “Everything’s under control,” yelped Lee, who was waving a sheet of paper. “The marines have landed! We did it, after all!” He pounded Mr. Gibson on the back rather violently. “No sting! O grave, where is thy … !” he babbled.

  “Tell us,” screamed Rosemary, over the noise, “one of you—”

  “This Jeanie child,” roared Theo Marsh, “this Jeanie is so sound and intelligent that I am lying in the dust at her feet. Fool! Fool, that I am! My life! My work!” He snatched the paper from the bus driver.

  “But what—?”

  The nurse said, “Well, tell them!” Then she told them. “It was Jeanie who asked Theo to draw the face he’d seen.”

  “And he drew it so well,” cried Jeanie aglow, “that Grandma recognized her!”

  The paper was thrust under Mr. Gibson’s nose. A few pencil lines—a face, a beauty.

  “Mama said it was Mrs. Violette,” yelled Paul, “and I couldn’t believe her. I never thought she was so darned lovely.”

  “Have eyes … and see not,” droned the artist. His hair stood on end. He held the drawing in both hands and moved it softly to and fro. “Has she ever done any modeling?” he crooned. “These exquisite nostrils!”

  “But what—” gasped. Mr. Gibson, “what’s happened!”

  “Virginia called up her house,” explained Lee excitedly. “This Violette or whatever. And it was this Violette. Some sister or other was there and this sister says, Yes, she had it!”

  “This sister ha—?”

  “Mrs. Violette had it!” boomed Paul. “She’s gone to the mountains. She took it with her! But Mrs. Boatright called the police …”

  Lee said, “And she’s buddies with the high brass. She told them what to do, all right.” He spanked Mrs. Boat-right on the shoulders. “Hey, Mary Anne?”

  “They will stop her car,” said Mrs. Boatright calmly, “or truck, as I believe it is. We secured the license number. An all-points-bulletin. The organization is quite capable.” Mrs. Boatright was beaming like Santa Claus, for all her calm.

  “So you see!” gasped Virginia. “She’s not going to use it en route. How could she? So you are saved!”

  Ethel stood there.

  “Furthermore,” said Mrs. Boatright, looking around as if this were a committee, “I see no reason, at all, since there has been no catastrophe, for any further proceeding. Justice will not be served by publicity or by punishment. Mr. Gibson is not going to kill himself. Nor will he ever do such a thing as he did. I do believe that I convinced Chief Miller … If not, I will.”

  “You did already,” cried Lee. “You beat it into him, Mary Anne. Believe me, you were superb! So All’s Well that Ends Well! Hey? Hey?”

  “Hey?” joined Theo.

  Rosemary made a little whimpering sound of relief and staggered and drooped into a chair.

  “Is there any brandy?” said the nurse anxiously, observing this collapse with a professional eye.

  Ethel stood there. She had no idea what was happening. She understood nothing. “Brandy in the kitchen,” she said mechanically, “left-hand cupboard, over the sink …” Her face went into a kind of social simper. She expected to be introduced to them all.

  But the nurse ran toward the kitchen with the bus driver on the end of her arm.

  The telephone rang and Mrs. Boatright rolled in her swift smooth way to answer it.

  It was Theo Marsh who turned, elbows out, chin forward, eyes malicious, and said loudly, “So this is Ethel? Lethal Ethel?”

  “Really,” said Ethel, turning a dull red, “who are these people!”

  Mr. Gibson, trembling in every limb, had fallen into a chair himself. He realized that Ethel was completely at a loss. She was not on the same level as the rest of them. She couldn’t understand their swift communications. She’d been insulted besides … But he could not speak, for he was saved who had been doomed, and he tingled and was dumb.

  Rosemary said weakly, “We were just going to tell you—just a min—” She gasped to silence.

  There was a silence as they all understood this with surprise. Ethel did not know?

  Mrs. Boatright spoke into the phone, “Yes, he is here.… But may I take a message—? The Laboraory? Oh, I see. But it has been found, you know, and no harm done at all.… Oh, you did? … No, you couldn’t have known at that time.… I see.… Oh no, it was never loose upon the public. That was just an error.…” She went on murmuring.

  Out in the kitchen the nurse found the brandy with dispatch, but then Lee, with enterprise, embraced her. They stood in a clinch. A green paper bag lay on top of the other trash in the kitchen wastebasket. The bottle, with King Roberto’s picture on it, stood upside down on the counter. But they whispered, and they were not looking at the scenery.

  In the living room, Theo bared his particolored teeth at Ethel. (Mrs. Boatright was too busy on the phone to restrain him, for now she was calling to have a car sent.) So Theo said, “Ethel herself? The dead-end kid? The doom preacher? The amateur psychiatrist?”

  Ethel looked as if she would choke.

  “I cannot see,” she cried, hoarse with rage, “why a perfect freak of a strange old man is permitted to come in here and call me names! Until somebody in this room makes sense, I intend to eat my dinner, which—” her voice rose to a scream—“is getting cold!”

  Ethel never could bear an interruption in her schedule, or any surprises. She went to the table and sat down with a plop and plunged her fork blindly into the congealing mass of the spaghetti. Theo Marsh drifted after her. He leaned on the wall and watched—his head cocked.

  But to Mr. Gibson, in the chair, in the living room, his senses were returning. His eyes were clearing. He had assimilated the news, the wonderful surprise. He was saved. He was free. He loved and was loved and nobody was going to die of the poison, and prayers are really answered for all a human being dares to know, and he looked about with relish to receive the sense of home—his dear—his earthly home.

  And his breath stopped.

  “Rosemary! he cried. “What is that? On the mantel?”

  “What, darling?” Rosemary, who had risen, restless with joy, moved, drunken with relief. “This?” She took a ball of mustard-colored string up in her hand. “There’s money here,” she said wonderingly, “where the blue vase used to stand.”

  So Mr. Gibson, his wits working as fast as ever they had in his life, quickened with terror, plunged like a quarterback between Paul and Jeanie past the body of Theo Marsh to seize the loaded fork from the hand of his sister, Ethel.

  “Mrs. Violette was here!” he shouted.

  “Really, Ken, I couldn’t say,” said Ethel huffily. “But you left every door in this house unlocked and we could have been robbed …” She was livid with anger.

  “Olive oil!” he shouted. “A bottle of olive oil! Where is it?”

  “In the sauce,” said Ethel. “I presumed you meant it for the sauce.” Her brows were at the top of their possible ascent. “Have you gone mad?” she inquired frigidly.

  At this moment the nurse and the bus driver came on loud quick feet. “What’s this!” Virginia said. She had a glass of brandy in one hand and a small empty glass bottle in the other, which bottle she shook at them.

  “And this! Hey!” puffed Lee Coffey, showing them the green paper bag.

  “It’s here,” said Mr. Gibson. “Don’t touch it, Ethel! It is a deadly poison!”

  “Poison?” she said recoiling.

  Mr. Gibson scraped spaghetti off all three plates into the bowl and then he took up the bowl in a grim clutch. “It must have been Mrs. Violette who spoke to me,” he told them. “She did have to go to the bank. I remember she said so. She took the bus, down and back. She spoke the second time when she saw me leave it in the seat. She knew it was mine. She brought it back with the string!”

  “She is so very honest …” said Rosemary awesomely.

  “That’s it?” cried Theo. “You go
t the poison, there?”

  “It’s here. And it’s been here all afternoon,” said Mr. Gibson, and he took the bowl tenderly with him and sat down and held it on his lap and bowed his head.

  “We must inform the police,” said Mrs. Boatright briskly—but with deep pleasure.

  “We are all heroes,” said the bus driver.

  But Jeanie Townsend, girl heroine, stood with all the other heroes, and frowned. “But why doesn’t Miss Gibson know about the poisoned olive oil?” she asked. “I heard them telling all about it … on her radio. This one, right here.”

  “I … don’t under—what poison?” said Ethel, rising, tottering. “I don’t understand. Olive oil?”

  Paul began, “He stole it from my lab …”

  “The laboratory called earlier,” said Mrs. Boatright sharply. “They were just on the line. They had discovered their loss. The police had not got to them then. But surely, they must have told you about your brother who had the only opportunity—”

  “I—took a message,” said Ethel thickly. “Nobody mentioned … poison? Did Ken have poison?” Her eyes rolled.

  “He was going to do himself in,” said the bus driver chattily. “But he thinks better of it now.”

  “Do himself … what? Please …”

  “He thinks better of it now,” said Rosemary shakily. “Oh, darling, have we really found it?”

  “Right here,” said Mr. Gibson. “I’ve got it.” He tightened his tight fingers. Rosemary looked angelic, suddenly, as if she would now fly up to the ceiling on great white wings.

  “Je-ust a minute,” said Theo Marsh. He looked at Lee Coffey. “What have we here?” he inquired. “Hoist?”

  “Hoist! Hoist!” croaked the bus driver. “I see what you mean. With her own petard.” He flung out one arm.

  “Uh-huh,” said Theo. “We better analyze this. Now, Ethel …” He rounded upon her. “You know, of course, that we are all impelled by subconscious forces. Primitive and low. Hey?” (He had picked up the bus driver’s “hey.”)

  Ethel looked absolutely stupid.

  “You say you didn’t ‘hear’ the warning? Hah-hah-hah.” The artist gave forth a mirthless sound. “But the subconscious hears all things, my dear. Now, you know that Then the laboratory phoned. But told you nothing? Nor did you ask?”

  “Likely story, all right,” said Lee cheerfully. “Where was your subconscious … hey? All God’s chillun got sub—”

  “Her subconscious was putting two and two together,” said Theo, shouting him down. “Therefore it is obvious, is it not, Ethel? You wished to kill your brother and his wife. You must have.”

  Ethel stared at him.

  “Because you nearly did kill them, you know,” said Theo. “There is a deadly poison in that sauce. Don’t try to tell us you never ‘meant’ to do it.” He put his thumbs in the armholes of his vest He looked like the sheriff in a Western.

  “I …” croaked Ethel, “I had no warning … I don’t understand.… Please.” Her wits seemed to return. “You mean we would have become ill?”

  “You would have become dead,” said the bus driver. Her eyes popped, staring.

  “Failing this,” said Theo, “you then obviously wished to kill yourself.” Theo veered to the bus driver. “Say, how does that come in?”

  “We’ll figure something,” said the driver enthusiastically. “We’ll tell her what her motive was.” “Sex?” said Theo, brightening. Mr. Gibson was speechless.

  Rosemary said indignantly, “It doesn’t come in. Stop it, both of you.”

  “Subconsciously,” began the artist, his bright malicious glance examining his victim.

  “Theo,” said Mrs. Boatright.

  “Lee,” said Virginia in exactly the same tone. The bus driver’s shoulders dropped, his arms turned outward in a gesture of apology and relaxation. But he was grinning.

  Mr. Gibson, however, watched his wife. Adoringly. (My darling, he thought, is truly kind and compassionate of heart. And if this is innocent, how sweet it is, this innocence, how lovely!) For Rosemary stood beside Ethel, furiously defending her.

  “Ethel just does not hear words when she turns on music. She has trained herself not to. She really wouldn’t have heard the warning. She is not trying to kill anybody. She didn’t mean to. She couldn’t have. It would have been an accident. And you know it,” she defied the artist, “and don’t be so mean, now.”

  “Rosemary,” said Ethel brokenly, reaching for her. “I don’t understand this … honestly. I certainly wouldn’t want to hurt you or anyone … honestly—”

  “Of course not,” said Rosemary, caressing her as one would comfort a frightened child. “Don’t you pay any attention to these cut-ups. Now, I believe you’d never mean to, Ethel.”

  Mr. Gibson thought dizzily, Rosemary and I must try to help poor Ethel … poor, brave, unlucky Ethel, faithless, cheated of love. He seemed to himself to pass out for a moment or two. Everybody seemed to be telling Ethel the whole sequence, and he could not bear it. He revived to find himself still sitting in the chair with the bowl of poisoned food tight in his hands. He looked about him.

  Now Ethel sat alone.

  Mrs. Walter Boatright was on the phone telling the police department exactly what it was to do now. (It would do as she said. He had no doubt.)

  The little nurse, finding nobody interested in the brandy, had slipped to the floor beside Ethel’s chair and sat there thoughtfully sipping it herself.

  The bus driver and the painter were wringing each other by the hand, the artist literally hopping up and down in intellectual delight and still muttering, “Hoist! Hoist!”

  “Judge not! Hey?” said the bus driver. “The biter bit A bitter bite.”

  Jeanie had run for the door in a streak, a moment ago (now he recalled), yelling, “I’ll tell Grandma.” And Paul, who had been hugging her, in his joy, now hugged Rosemary. (Anybody. Any soft huggable body. Mr. Gibson understood perfectly.)

  He hugged the bowl and thought, Now who could predict such a scene as this? He felt delighted.

  But he did not contemplate it long. Hanging onto the bowl, he plunged into the celebration, himself, in person.

  A police car had slipped into the drive; now a cop got out.

  He was young, and not too sure what he’d been sent here for. He approached the door of the cottage. Before he could ring, it was swinging in before him with a tremendous welcoming verve, pulled by a small, compact man with dancing eyes. This man had a slight, brown-haired, merry-eyed woman tucked under his other arm. She was smiling too, and she helped balance, between them, what looked to be a wooden bowl full of spaghetti. These two stepped back in unison, like a pair of dancers, bowing him inward.

  In the small foyer, a big handsome gent was crooning into the telephone. “It’s O.K., dear. It really is! Everything is wonderful and I’ll be home soon.” (The cop had no way of knowing he was talking to his mother-in-law.)

  In the living room, a wiry old gentleman in a pink shirt whistling tunelessly through his teeth, and with his thin legs prancing, was enthusiastically steering the majestic bulk of a beige-and-white-clad matron in the waltz. She stepped lightly.

  Another man, in a leather jacket, crouched for the purpose of kissing the not unwilling lips of a cool little Nordic blonde who was sitting on the floor. From a tiny glass in her limp hand, something trickled on. the back of his neck. He wasn’t minding.

  The cop’s eye assessed all this. He was here, he supposed, to ask questions. “I dunno much about this,” he confessed, looking at the plain-faced, middle-aged woman who sat in the midst of all the hilarity, stricken and still, staring at the carpet (as if she’d been shook, all right, he thought). “Is she the one,” he said aside with pity, “who got careless with some poison?”

  The man at the door hesitated. Then he said, “No, it was I. But mercifully … Come in. Come in,” said Mr. Gibson cordially. “I’m all right now.”

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Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, 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, 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 © 1956 by Charlotte Armstrong

  Copyright renewed 1984 by Jeremy B. Lewi, Peter A. Lewi, and Jacquelin Lewi Bynagta

  ISBN 978-1-4532-4561-3

  This edition published in 2012 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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