by Alice Duncan
"You aren't eating much, Daisy," said Vi, noticing my poor appetite and disapproving of it.
"I'm sorry, Vi. It's all delicious, but Harold took me to lunch at the Castleton today, and I'm still not hungry yet."
"Exalted places you dine in," grumbled Sam, digging into his third salmon croquette.
"Not my fault," I said. "I just happen to have exalted friends. Heck, Emmaline Castleton was the one hosting—or should that be hostessing—?"
"What difference does it make?" Sam growled.
"None, I guess." I sighed. "But she's a friend of Glenda Daltry, who's Vivian Daltry's daughter, and—"
"Who are the Daltrys?" asked Ma. Fair question.
"Vivian Daltry is Mrs. Franbold's daughter. If you'd been able to come to Mrs. Franbold's funeral, you'd have met her. She's a nice lady. I didn't meet Glenda, her daughter, but I'm sure she's nice, too. Anyway, Emmaline seems to like her. They're friends."
"What about them?" asked Sam, his voice not inviting frivolity, darn it.
"Well, you know that Charles Franbold thinks someone poisoned his mother on purpose, right?"
Sam set his fork and knife on his plate. They crossed each other, kind of like swords. I considered this a bad sign. He said, "Here we go again," in a voice that could have etched glass.
"We do not!" I cried, already feeling abused. "Emmaline just asked if you knew yet if Mrs. Franbold was poisoned. Or not."
"What difference does it make to her?"
"None, except that's she's friends with Glenda, and Glenda is engaged to marry Barrett Underhill, and he works at his father's chemical plant. Well, I guess it's a fertilizer plant, and Glenda is worried that someone will blame Barrett for Mrs. Franbold's death because chemical plants and fertilizer plants use a lot of poisons in their products."
Everyone at the table had stopped eating and was staring at me by the time I finished my explanation. I understood. It sounded lame to me, too. I lifted my shoulders and my hands in an "It's not my fault gesture." Didn't work.
"You are not going to get involved in another investigation, Daisy Majesty," said Sam, laying down the law. He always did that, and I generally ignored him.
"Do they know what did in Mrs. Franbold yet?" asked Pa, being relevant.
"Oh, I do hope she wasn't really poisoned," said Ma.
"Me, too," said I.
"Indeed," said Vi.
"The cause of Mrs. Franbold's death is still under investigation," said Sam formally. "Her death is being scrutinized by the Pasadena Police Department in cooperation with a couple of doctors. We don't need your help, Daisy."
"I know you don't, but if you ever figure out what killed her, will you please let me know? Just so I can tell Emmaline? So she can tell Glenda, and Barrett can stop worrying?"
"Why is he worrying that he'll be blamed if he's innocent?" asked my mother, who almost always used her common sense.
"I don't know," I admitted. "Sounds kind of fishy, doesn't it?"
"Yes." It was Sam who answered. "And I do believe I'll have to pay a call on Mr. Barrett Underhill."
"Oh, Lord, please don't tell him I sent you!"
"You didn't send me," said Sam. "I'm investigating a woman's death. We don't divulge who gives us our leads."
"Is it a lead?" I asked in a weak voice.
"Don't know yet." Sam reclaimed his silverware and dug into his dinner again.
That went well, didn't it? I'm being sarcastic, in case you couldn't tell.
The next day, Saturday, I drove Vi to work at the Pinkertons' mansion. Well, I also drove Ma to her job at the Hotel Marengo, but that was just up the street a ways. After I dropped Vi off, I toddled down to the Pasadena Public Library, hoping this was one of the two Saturdays per month during which Miss Petrie was on duty. It wasn't. That meant I was on my own.
So the first aisle I turned to was where the cookery books were shelved. I knew they were in the 600s, and it didn't take me long to find them. Hmm. Now where would one find a recipe for shrimp cocktail sauce? If the one in question were I, she didn't have the slightest idea. So I picked up a few cooking books and flipped to their tables of contents. I looked under "Appetizers," thinking that's probably where the recipe would be.
I'd gone through maybe six books and was about to give up when I picked up a huge volume called The White House Cook Book. If anybody should eat shrimp cocktail, I figured it should be the President of the United States. Sure enough, I found what looked like it might be a recipe for cocktail sauce made with tomato catsup, made mustard (whatever that was), and a few other things that might be suitable for dunking shrimp in, especially if you traded the made mustard for horseradish. I definitely tasted horseradish in the cocktail sauce Emmaline fed us. So I tucked the book under my arm and headed for the card catalogue to look up where the poisons might be hiding in the stacks. Since I couldn't find any card in the catalogue labeled "Poisons", I decided to look at "Forensic Science".
They were in the earlier 600s. Should have looked at the card catalog before I started my search. Oh, well.
The library is a fabulous place. I love it and would live in it if I didn't already have a home of my own. If I ever had an opportunity to go to school again in my lifetime, I'll study how to be a librarian.
However.
Because Sam Rotondo was a rotten, no-good beast, I didn't know what poison might have caused Mrs. Franbold's death, if Mrs. Franbold was poisoned. Sam had mentioned as Mrs. Franbold lay dead in Pastor Smith's office that Dr. Benjamin suspected cyanide. So I heaved a tome about forensic science off the shelf, after carefully putting the cooking book on the floor at my feet, and flipped to the table of contents. What I found was a whole lot of stuff about how to determine if a bullet came from a certain kind of gun. Or maybe a specific gun.
Not what interested me at the moment, although ballistics—which is what folks called this new discovery—was kind of interesting if, say, one were writing a murder mystery. I wasn't. I was trying to solve one, providing there was one to be solved. Oh, dear. Perhaps I should have looked at plant books. Most poisons came from plants, didn't they? Hadn't Sam mentioned apricot pits and stuff like that? So, after I stuffed the forensic science book back into its place, I traipsed back to the card catalogue.
At least looking up plants got me out of the 600s. All the way to the 500s. What a thrill. Fortunately for me these books weren't as huge as the forensic-science books had been.
And it looked as if I'd struck pay dirt! There they were, in all their glory: all the plants I'd read about in murder mysteries: belladonna, foxglove, apples. Wait a minute. Apples? My goodness. I didn't know that. Did you know that apple seeds were poisonous? Well, they are, but not very. Anyhow, it would be hard to poison a person with them, especially during communion.
Unless you pounded the seeds to powder and dumped them into the grape juice. But you'd still have a suspiciously thick inch or so of communion juice, and I doubt anyone would drink it.
Ah, and there were Sam's precious apricot pits. Good heavens above! Darned near everything we eat contains poisons of one sort or another. Potatoes? I guess I'd rather die eating potatoes than apricot pits. However, I got bored with my research before I found anything particularly useful in the plant section.
My best guess was still on cyanide, and it probably came from the Underhill plant. But how? And who did it?
I didn't have a single idea, although I hoped Emmaline was right, and whoever did it—if anyone did—wasn't Barrett Underhill.
Hmm. Did Betsy Powell work at the Underhill plant? I'd have to ask someone. If she did, and if she'd slipped some kind of poison into the communion grape juice, it might account for her outburst at church. But why would she want to poison nice old Mrs. Franbold? What if she'd made a mistake, and the juice meant for someone else had been consumed by Mrs. Franbold? That had been Emmaline's suggestion. But whom would sweet, spinsterish Betsy Powell want to poison?
Bother. I don't know how detectives like Sam ever solved
their cases if they were all as indefinite and befuddling as this one. If it even was a case. Bother.
I picked up the cooking book and went to the fiction section. Someone had done library patrons a huge favor by placing detective and mystery novels in a section all to themselves. They'd done the same for westerns. So I prowled around the mystery section, picking out a couple of my favorites, The Circular Staircase and The Window at the White Cat, by Mary Roberts Rinehart; The Thirty-Nine Steps, by John Buchan; The Moon and Sixpence, by W. Somerset Maugham (very well, this isn't a detective novel. I wanted to read it); and (back to the mysteries) His Last Bow, by Arthur Conan Doyle, mainly because I missed Sherlock Holmes so much. His Last Bow wasn't all that great, but it was Sherlock.
After that, I decided to check out a few of Edgar Wallace's books, even though I'd read most of them already. Boy, I really missed Miss Petrie when she wasn't there. She could always steer me in the right direction. But I struck gold! Bones of the River sat there on the shelf, staring back at me. This was one of the books Miss Petrie had mentioned as coming from Great Britain. If she'd been there, she'd probably have stuffed it under her desk for me. So I grabbed it, took my haul, and staggered to the check-out desk with my bounty. There's nothing so comforting as knowing you had plenty of books to read!
Oh, and in case you thought I was being unnecessarily greedy, I'd picked up the already-read-by-my-family books from the table beside the front door and returned them. So I was only exchanging books. In a manner of speaking.
I could hardly wait to get home and read!
Chapter 10
However, lest you think I do nothing but snoop into other people's business and read books, before I sat Spike and me down on the sofa to read, I cleaned the house and set the table for supper. I even made my own lunch! I know that doesn't sound like a big deal to lots of people, but you mustn't overlook the fact that I can't cook a lick.
I can, however, fix a sandwich, providing there's anything to put between a couple of slices of Aunt Vi's good bread, and there was leftover ham in the Frigidaire. So I not only prepared my own lunch, but I also made a sandwich for my father. What's more, I served them both very prettily, with a sliced apple as an accompaniment. There. I'm not totally hopeless in the kitchen. It's only when I try to prepare something from scratch and have to apply heat that my culinary clumsiness asserts itself.
Pa was pleased. "Good sandwich, sweetheart." He was trying to make me feel better about being a crummy cook.
"Thanks, Pa. I guess even I can't ruin a sandwich."
He laughed, but he knew. My entire family and Sam Rotondo knew about the kitchen and me, and what mortal enemies we were.
Vi brought home our dinner from the Pinkertons' house that evening: a delicious and hearty lamb stew that she served with her light-as-air biscuits. She also served us apricot tarts for dessert, and I couldn't help but think about those apricots' poisonous pits. Fortunately for all of us, Aunt Vi had removed the pits before undertaking her pastry-baking. She made the flakiest crusts known to man. At least all the men I knew.
Sam didn't come to dinner that night, and his absence was felt. But when he telephoned later that evening, he said he'd been detained at the office. When I asked what had detained him, he said he'd had to look at a corpse in the morgue. Ew.
"Who was the corpse? I mean when it was alive?" I asked.
"Don't know yet. I thought it might be the missing Evans, but it wasn't."
"Oh." I paused for a second, digesting this. "How did you figure that out?"
"Description. This guy was in his late sixties. Looks as if he died from drinking bathtub gin, or something approximating it."
"Oh. How awful."
"Yeah. It was awful, all right."
"Um... What happens when a person drinks that stuff?"
"Lots of things. Generally, you'll go blind first, and then your liver and kidneys and stomach get torn to shreds. This guy's innards were almost not there any longer, and his skin was a bluish tinge." I heard a huge sigh come over the wire. "I swear, people will drink anything."
"That sounds ghastly. I wonder why folks drink that stuff."
"Can't get anything else, I suppose."
"Yes, but... Oh, never mind. I suppose some folks are driven to drink like some other folks are driven to... I don't know. Gamble, or something."
"Too true."
"I appreciate your looking into Evans' disappearance, Sam."
"You're welcome. However, this wasn't him. Or he. I forget which it's supposed to be."
"I don't suppose it matters."
"You're the one always correcting my grammar," he said. I think, although I'm not sure, I heard a smile in his voice.
"Nonsense. I am not. You missed a delicious dinner," I said, deciding not to be annoyed by his attitude.
"Didn't know I was invited," he said.
"You're always invited, Sam. You should know that by this time."
"Am I?"
"Of course you are."
"Well, thanks."
"You're welcome," I said, still holding on to my sweet temper, albeit with difficulty. How on earth would Sam and I ever get along if we were to marry?
No answer occurred to me, so after I replaced the mouthpiece on the cradle, I took my dog and my book and sat in the living room until I was tired enough to sleep.
The next day, the first Sunday in February, I felt a little creepy because it was last communion Sunday during which Mrs. Franbold had dropped dead. Nevertheless, after breakfast of ham and eggs and toast, my family and I (except Spike) walked up to the church. Right before I swerved to enter the choir room and assume my robe, Sam strolled up to greet us. I didn't linger, but bade him good morning, gave him a peck on the cheek, which surprised him as much as it did me, and went to do my duty.
Lucille Spinks was in an uplifted mood because her marriage to Mr. Zollinger was coming right up on the second Saturday in March. She'd asked me to be a bridesmaid, which I thought was nice of her. I'd volunteered to make all the bridesmaids' dresses, which she thought was nice of me, so we were in accord that warm first Sunday in February. Odd weather we have in Pasadena sometimes. It can be cold and foggy in July and August and warm as toast in February and March. That was one of the toasty February days.
Our anthem that morning was "Holy, Holy, Holy," which was an oldie but a goodie, and one we hauled out every now and then for Communion Sunday, as we did that day. As usual, the choir got served communion first and separately, and then the room full of congregants got in two lines and proceeded down the center aisle to take communion. I noticed Betsy Powell was helping again that day, along with several other long-time church members.
With some displeasure, I saw Mr. and Mrs. Underhill standing in the line. I didn't dislike Mrs. Underhill; nor did I dislike the two Underhill girls, Miranda and Millicent, both of whom were adolescents, perhaps thirteen or fourteen or thereabouts. They seemed to be sweet girls. I'd never paid much attention to the Underhill clan until I'd witnessed Mr. Underhill allow Mrs. Franbold to fall to the church floor and then look grumpy about her demise. The rest of the Underhills seemed unexceptionable people, although I didn't really know them. Mr. Underhill appeared grumpy that Sunday, but he always looked grumpy, so there you go. The rest of his family seemed wary, unless that was my imagination, which sometimes fires up for no discernible reason.
But by gum, perhaps it wasn't merely my imagination making me acute that day, for no sooner had Mr. Underhill snatched up his communion wafer, stuffed it into his mouth, and gulped his grape juice than he started to convulse and then fall to the ground amid a chorus of gasps and shocked cries from the churchgoers.
"What's happening?" asked Lucy. She was supposed to wear spectacles but didn't most of the time, so she had to rely on other people to report interesting happenings to her.
Not at all shy, I stood to see what had happened to Mr. Underhill.
"Mr. Underhill collapsed," I reported to Lucy.
"Mercy sakes!
Another one?"
"Indeed," said I, thinking this was ridiculous. Not that I didn't appreciate excitement as much as the next person, but to have two Communion Sundays in a row disrupted by a falling body was a trifle too much to endure.
"What do you think happened to him?" asked Lucy, pulling the edges of her eyes outward so that she could see better and squinting hard. I thought she'd look better if she just wore her cheaters, but I didn't tell her so.
"I don't know." I suspected poison, but I didn't let on.
But why did someone persist in poisoning the First Methodist-Episcopal Church's congregants on Communion Sunday? I didn't know, but I felt mighty unsettled by the notion. I liked my church, darn it, and I didn't think it was nice of someone to persist in killing its members.
A space had cleared around Mr. Underhill and I heard someone, probably his wife, cry, "Grover!" In the cleared space, I saw Mr. Underhill clutching at his throat and uttering gasping, unintelligible phrases or words. If he were a better-liked man, probably someone would have rushed up to help him, but evidently no one quite dared, which I considered an interesting phenomenon. When Mrs. Franbold fell, everyone except Mr. Underhill had raced to assist her, for all the good it had done.
But there were Sam and Dr. Benjamin. They didn't care how unpopular a man was; if he was in distress, they would try to help him. I saw them both kneel beside the writhing form of Mr. Underhill. Then I saw Mr. Underhill shake all over once and then lie still.
Goodness gracious. What did that mean? Actually, I thought I knew. The man was dead. His was a much more dramatic demise than Mrs. Franbold's had been. Interesting.
I squinted into the sanctuary. The lights were on, but the room was big, and folks had begun crowding around Sam and Doc Benjamin. Was Mr. Underhill's face a pinkish red? One of the books I'd checked into at the library had confirmed my notion that a victim of cyanide poisoning was liable to show a distinct pinkish coloring after death. Perhaps I was imagining the pinkening of Mr. Underhill's skin tone. My imagination takes off on its own quite often.