The Innocent Flower

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “I’m going to lay a ghost,” Duff said grimly, “if I can.”

  “What ghost? What do you mean? You said something about a ghost last night, too. I don’t …”

  “Neither do I understand,” said Duff, “but I am a haunted man, doctor. And before I can get anywhere at all in this thing, I’ve got to lay a ghost.”

  The doctor looked helpless and let him go.

  CHAPTER 13

  Duff drove his car down Mary’s street; and there, coming out of her front door at nine-thirty in the morning, bold as brass, was none other than Mr. Haggerty.

  Duff slid slyly to the curb, waited, and as his victim came jauntily to the sidewalk, turning his toes out, sniffing the morning, Duff pounced.

  “Where have you been?”

  Haggerty jumped and peered dramatically through the car window. “Ah, there, Mr. Duff. Good morning. Good morning.”

  “Where have you been?” said Duff again. “I’ve missed you.”

  I’ve been”—Haggerty’s eyes rolled as if he skirted on a secret matter—“away.”

  “Away?” Duff drawled.

  “Yes, away.”

  Vaudeville, thought Duff. “Not keeping an eye on the premises last night, then?” he challenged. “Not lurking?”

  “No. Er … no.” Haggerty denied it judiciously. His fingers went to his coat pocket and pulled out the notebook. “Would you care to tell me what happened?” he inquired politely.

  “Nothing happened, as far as I know,” snapped Duff.

  “Perhaps I—er—misunderstood.”

  They eyed each other.

  “By the way,” said Haggerty, “a Mr. Maguire was on the telephone, within the moment. I happened to take the call.” Duff’s eyes glittered. “He refused, however, to give me any—er—dope,” said Haggerty, “although I explained to him that you and I had reached an understanding.”

  Duff said nothing at all His silence was enough comment.

  “Mr. Maguire went on to say,” Haggerty went on with a little less aplomb, “he had nothing that seems too terribly important.”

  “Too terribly?”

  “Sorry. My adverbs.” Haggerty bowed an apology. “He said, ‘Tell the boss I’ll give him what I got later. It can wait.’” The mimicry wasn’t bad. But Haggerty dropped it quickly and went back to his own peculiar style. “He further said that he cannot be reached for an hour or two because he is going—er—away.”

  “Thank you so much,” said MacDougal Duff.

  “Oh, don’t mention it. Of course, if you would care to know where he is going and what he will find out when he gets there …”

  “Naturally, I’d be pleased,” Duff responded. This phony courtesy was catching.

  “Since I have already been there …”

  “Been where?”

  Haggerty looked hurt “This is a guess, of course,” he said.

  “Oh, go ahead, guess. Pray do.”

  “Very well.”

  Duff thought to himself that “Very well” was a phrase used only in moments of self-conscious stuffiness. Haggerty, however, seemed to think it was a normal equivalent of “O.K.” The man talked as if his part had been written by a bad playwright, and Duff had caught the thing from him. This whole dialogue was preposterous.

  “I believe,” said Haggerty, “that in an hour or two your Mr. Maguire will be making inquiries at the Boone Home for the Mentally Ill in Haytonville.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Inquiries about Mrs. Eve Norden Meredith’s mother’s sister.” Haggerty lowered his lids modestly.

  “Who is, I presume, an inmate there?”

  “Who was. Deceased, 1940.”

  “Insane?”

  “Oh, yes, indeedy,” said Haggerty.

  Duff leaned back. “Now, I wonder why this interests you and Mr. Maguire.”

  “It interests us,” intoned Haggerty, “because Miss Emily Brown seems to have stumbled upon what was a family—er—skeleton.” One would think he had invented the phrase at the spur of the moment.

  “Oh, let me guess,” said Duff. “So she told Eve’s husband and frightened him away.”

  “Yes, she told Eve’s husband. The baby, Ralph, was very small. The husband did go away. He was a matter of-fact man, himself. He was practical. He didn’t fancy the connection. He seems to have believed himself the victim of fraud and deception, the injured party.”

  “And where is he now, we wonder.”

  To Duff’s surprise, Haggerty answered. “In Washington, I believe.”

  Duff thumped the upholstery of his car with his fist. “In Washington? Alive? Real, eh? Located and found to be himself and nobody else?”

  “But … aren’t we all?” said Haggerty with terrific delicacy.

  Duff looked coldly at him. “I must say this comes in very pat.”

  Haggerty ducked the implied accusation. “Why, thank you,” he said gracefully.

  “Can you tell me out of your omniscience, Mr. Haggerty, where Professor Moriarity is now?”

  Haggerty smiled a bright mechanical smile as one whose boss has made a not very funny joke. “As a matter of fact, I did happen to ask a friend of mine. in a casting agency. It seems Moriarity—Professor’s very good, sir, ha ha— Moriarity has changed his name again.”

  “His habit.”

  “You knew that? Yes, a habit of his. However, this time he seems to have dropped completely out of sight At least, so far as my friend knows.”

  “Is he crazy?”

  “Who?”

  “Moriarity?”

  “Crazy?”

  “You do know what I mean?”

  Haggerty took out the notebook and made a note of it. Afterwards, he said, “I do not know, sir. He may be. The rumor is that he’s involved with a wealthy woman.”

  “Or not so crazy,” snapped Duff. He unlatched the car door. “Get in and sit down,” he said briskly.

  It seemed to be part of Haggerty’s code to obey such a sudden instruction without curiosity. He got in and sat down. Duff said, “Identify yourself, please.”

  Haggerty got out a leather and celluloid case and displayed a driver’s license issued to one Francis Xavier Haggerty, male, white, height 5’ 11”, col. of hair brown, col. of eyes brown, age twenty-eight.

  “You don’t look it,” Duff said.

  “Pardon?”

  “Age twenty-eight.”

  “Why, thank you,” said Francis Xavier. “Social Security, sir?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Draft number?” Haggerty said a little anxiously, “I presume you mean I appear older?”

  Duff said, indifferently, “Never mind. I see you have papers.”

  Haggerty said, “Who do you think I am!”

  “I think you’re an odd duck, whoever you are, Mr. Haggerty. Pray pay no attention to my rude and suspicious nature. And do tell me, is Mrs. Moriarity at home this morning?”

  “No, not at the moment She left the house half an hour ago. For the funeral, I understood.”

  “But you saw her this morning?”

  “Certainly. For a moment or two.”

  “What have you been doing since she left?”

  “Chatting with the children,” said Haggerty, brushing his lapels as if he had suddenly discovered dust on them.

  “And who do you think did it, Mr. Haggerty?”

  “I should like to ask you that question, sir. In fact, it is time, is it not, that I asked a question or two and you did the answering? According to compact.”

  “According to mythical compact, yes, to be sure.” Duff put his neck on the back of the seat and looked at the flannelly gray inside of the car’s top. “I can’t answer any questions because I don’t know any answers. All I have, my dear Haggerty, is perhaps a small nebulous nudge from the subconscious.” Duff could be cryptic and romantic, too. “Let us say, a little hovering of the wing of truth, a feather touch …”

  “A hunch!” breathed Haggerty in an awed whisper.

  Duff
controlled his smile. “Do you believe in hunches?” he crooned. “Tip-offs from the subconscious, aren’t they? Clues, as our friend O’Leary puts it Do you know O’Leary? No? Well, let me tell you my dream, Mr. Hag-gerty”—Duff slid farther down in the seat and let his voice murmur—”for I have been dreaming. I was in a hall …”

  He told his dream all the way through, and Haggerty made a silent audience. “Well?” said Duff when he had finished.

  Mr. Haggerty frowned. For a moment, Duff thought he wasn’t going to play any more. He did stretch a leg and feel of it as if to see whether it had been pulled. “What does it mean?” Duff insisted.

  “I should say it meant you were ambitious,” intoned Haggerty.

  “Brutus says Caesar was ambitious.”

  “Eh?”

  “Go on.”

  “Ambitious to do your job, of course. Anxious. The spotlight is your responsibility. And it would seem”—that ponderous delicacy came in again—”you wish to catch your man. Was the lecturer a man?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Duff cautiously.

  “In any case, you caught him.”

  “And the people surging over the footlights?”

  “That means you want to catch himself yourself, alone, first, before they do,” said Haggerty rapidly.

  “I see. I see.”

  “As for the end of your dream, when you walked on light, well, might not the light be inspiration? Seeing the light, sir? Leading you to a woman? Leading you—to a woman!” he repeated in his awed romantic way.

  Duff laughed. “I find that dream more and more fascinating,” he said carelessly. “Thanks for your comment. And for your information, of course.”

  Haggerty didn’t want to be dismissed. He put on a hurt look and sat still. But Duff reached across and unlatched the door. “I’ll—er—see you later,” he said, making the phrase sound heavy with hint and mystery. Therefore, as he had judged, Haggerty accepted it He got out and bowed Duff out.

  “How much later, do you think?” he asked.

  “Oh, five-ish,” Duff waved a hand. Haggerty saluted and went off up the street, jauntily, turning out his toes.

  Dinny was on the phone, ordering groceries from a scribbled list. Taffy was up and out, sitting in the sun on the terrace with Davey and Mitch and seven stuffed toy animals. The boys were taking a bicycle apart, in the stable. Duff looked in and found them smudged and absorbed, but they followed him back toward the house as if he were bound to be more interesting than Alfie’s coaster brake.

  Dinny joined them on the back porch. Duff was peering through the curtained French doors. The eastern sun at the side window made the interior of the dining room perfectly visible. Yet late in the day or in the rain, he realized, this would not be true.

  Alfie said he hadn’t tried to look in, anyhow.

  Duff sat on the porch rail. He took a notion. He followed the impulse to tell them his dream.

  “Something you et,” said Alfie at the end. “What’d you have? Cheese?”

  “No cheese.”

  “Sauerkraut?”

  “No sauerkraut.”

  “Gosh,” said Alfie, “I had a nightmare once on top of sauerkraut, boy!”

  “Shaddup,” said Paul.

  “What do you suppose it means?” Duff asked them again.

  “Doesn’t have to mean anything, does it?” said Paul kicking at the floor.

  Dinny said, “I don’t see any sense to it”

  “None at all? What was I trying to do? Why?”

  “Well,” she said, “it looks as if you were trying to protect that speaker or whoever it was. Trying to keep him safe from the crowd.” Duff nodded. “Well, you did it. That’s all,” she said.

  “And the rest?”

  “Oh, that’s your sex life,” said Dinny blandly. Then she retreated to the fake fumbling with words she put on for the benefit of most of her elders. “I mean, isn’t that what dreams are supposed to be? I mean, aren’t they? You know, Freud? I mean, I don’t know …”

  Paul looked up from his feet “Yeah, but I don’t see why locking up a man doesn’t go with the idea that you are a detective. I mean, it might. You’re supposed to get people into jail, aren’t you?”

  “That’s an idea,” murmured Duff. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

  “And the beautiful dame,” said Paul, “is just a beautiful dame, maybe you’re in love with. Or maybe it’s your mother or somebody.”

  The sunny morning tipped and shimmered and righted itself. Duff got off the railing, breathing hard. “Look here,” he commanded them. He stood so tall and looked so suddenly alert and determined that they shrank away and their three frightened faces turned up at him, wide and white of eye. “Get me a picture of your father!” roared MacDougal Duff, at least as close to a roar as ever his gentleness could come.

  “A p-picture of Dad?”

  “If you please!”

  “But …” Dinny looked helpless.

  “Gee,” said Alfie, “I dunno where there is any.”

  “Do you?”

  “No,” said Paul. “We just haven’t got one, unless Mother knows.”

  “Anything will do. A snap. A sketch.”

  They were dumb. They shook their heads.

  “I can search the house,” he threatened.

  “O.K. We’ll help you,” said Alfie cordially, but the other two remained as if numbed with surprise.

  Somebody burst out of the back door and ran down the drive. There was a flash of faded blue as somebody ran into the stable. Duff was off the porch and at the stable door quicker than the kids behind him. When those three saw that it was their mother in her blue jeans and working shirt, with her face grim, they surged past him and stood around her like a guard.

  Mary snatched at a hoe. In spite of her expression, she looked very young. Her hair was tousled. The blue pants were old and worn and fit her well. She had on flat round-toed brown shoes, scuffed like a boy’s. She looked, Duff thought, with a queer shamed pang, cute.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Mom?”

  “Did anything happen?”

  “Just funerals,” she said. “Don’t mind me. I’m going out and dig”—she caught her breath like a sob—”in the sun. I want to get the taste of it out of my mouth.”

  The kids faded away. They seemed to understand immediately, and they seemed relieved, as if this were a familiar reaction once they understood what she was reacting to Mary flashed a blue eye after them, shoved open a side door with a bang, and went out into the garden, holding her hoe like a spear.

  Duff followed after. He stood in the sun and watched her as she attacked the ground among the cabbages. Mary pushed the hoe back and forth in vigorous rhythm that slowly lost haste and steam. The scuffle hoe cut under the weeds and they fell. The sun beat down. Silence surrounded them, through which the hoe crunched pleasantly, the earth turned a deeper brown where she worked, and the garden smells arose, the earthy perfume of peace.

  MacDougal Duff in his city clothes might have been a scarecrow had the little breeze been able to swing his sleeves. It touched his hair.

  I’m such a fool,” sighed Mary at last, “to hate it so much.”

  “I’m sure it was hateful,” he said. “Mary …”

  She leaned on her hoc. By now her face had color and some dirt on it. Her eyes were so blue and so candid, Duff held his breath.

  “I had to get where things were living and growing,” she told him. “I’m ashamed to have been in such a silly hurry. But when they bury me, I hope it’s in topsoil. Where there’s life. Even worms are life.” Her mouth quivered. “There’s only such a thin shell of life around the earth, a spade deep. Not much deeper.”

  “But a fine thing,” he said, “as far as it goes.”

  She squinted an eye up toward the sun and then down at the cabbages. “Yes.” They smiled at each other.

  “I want a picture of your husband,” Duff told her, as if he were taking up a train of thought they�
�d left off together.

  In a queerly companionable way, she let the assumption stand. She showed no particular surprise or curiosity either. “I don’t think I’ve got one,” she said calmly.

  For Duff, the peace was torn. “Why not?” he demanded.

  Mary shrugged. She began to push the hoe. “Why don’t you go ask Eve if she has one?” she suggested over her shoulder. “She’s a one for albums and all that She really might …”

  “Very well. I will.”

  Very well! Duff marched off through the cabbages. He felt stiff and angry. He was under a compulsion to be rude. He kept his eyes strictly ahead, but movement in the lane, outside the garden, caught them.

  He turned and walked to the fence and peered through some vines. He sang out, “Wait a minute! I say, Mr. O’Learyl”

  Mr. O’Leary’s strutting trot faltered. He turned his head anxiously and looked all around and then up, too, as if there might be angels. Duff’s long face came through the leaves, and Mr. O’Leary jumped in his tracks like a startled rabbit,

  “What are you doing here?” said Duff sternly.

  “Where?” said O’Leary furiously. He put trembling fingers to his temples. “What am I doing where? What do you mean?” He stamped his foot like a child. “Where am I?” he screeched. Then he fumbled for the thing that looked like a watch. “Four and two-tenths miles,” he read. “And what, may I ask, is that to you, sir?”

  “To you it’s four and two-tenths miles? That’s all?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Just your walk?”

  “Naturally.” O’Leary danced with rage. “I walk by doctor’s orders. As you ought to know. You …”

  “And how do you decide where to go?”

  “I don’t! I … damn it all, sir, I don’t care where I go!”

  “This is a coincidence?” Duff, with vine leaves in his hair, felt himself leering.

  “What, sir! Look here, I have nearly six miles before lunch …”

  Duff looked into his blue-gray eyes, swimming in liquid outrage. “March on.” He put his hand over the fence as if he held an apology in the palm of it. “I’m very sorry.”

  Mr. O’Leary seared the hand with a blistering glare and marched on.

  Duff turned back along the path to a gap between some berry bushes, toward the lawn. Mary was slowly pushing her hoe back and forth among the silver cabbages;