Deadly Nightshade (9 page)

“It's been a tough experience for you, Mrs. Bartram. Are you familiar with this part of the country?” asked Gamadge.

“No, I've never been East before—except when we went through on our trip to Europe, ever so long ago. I didn't think then that I'd come back married, and with a little girl! I come from Ohio.”

“Just a tourist, weren't you, Dell?” Her husband contemplated her with affection. She was a conservative, Gamadge noted; her dark-green suit was longer in the skirt than the fashion of the moment decreed, and her smart green felt hat fitted her head with uncompromising snugness. Blond hair, tightly waved, covered her ears and was pinned into a large neat roll at the back of her neck. She had Irma's pink cheeks and round eyes, but there was a suggestion of primness about her that the expansive Irma did not, and never would, possess.

“Traveling with Famous Cruises, in The Hague,” she told Gamadge. “I met Mr. Bartram at The House in the Bush. So pretty, isn't it? Or haven't you been there, Mr. Gamadge?”

“I have. I liked Holland ever so much.”

“Isn't it a wonderful place? We did hate leaving, so!”

“We did,” agreed her husband, grimly. “I settled right down there, you know, Gamadge; never left the country except on business trips—the Dutch East Indies, and so forth. Before Irma was born. Those were the days, weren't they, Dell?”

“They were wonderful. Have you ever been to Java, Mr. Gamadge?”

“Never, I'm sorry to say.”

“And to think it's all over, perhaps forever! I can't believe it. It was just like a bad dream, crowding in on that awful little boat. No conveniences. I didn't realize there
were
such boats any more as the
Alberta
.”

“I pulled every string I could get hold of, trying to wangle a passage on the
Nieuw Amsterdam
,” said Bartram. “Couldn't make it; she was jammed. We were lucky to get anything. Rough trip, too. We docked on Sunday. That reminds me, Mitchell; believe it or not, I never realized until last night that we drove down that road past the Beasley farm on Tuesday morning, just before everything happened up there.”

“No!” Mitchell's face was wooden.

“We did. Truth is, we were so tied up with our own troubles here that I hardly paid any attention at all to the other cases. I didn't take in where the other poisonings had happened. And then somebody said something about the Ormistons, and I remembered the locality, and figured it out. But we came through early—around ten.”

“Too bad you weren't an hour later.”

“Might have seen something, mightn't we? Quite a trip, we had. We wired to Carroll from Montreal on Sunday morning, and said we'd be dropping down for lunch on Tuesday. Was he surprised! You can imagine, after all these years. He's kept at me, of late—wasn't I getting nervous over there? Wasn't I thinking of coming home? I said, certainly I wasn't; swore I'd stick it out. I thought Holland was as safe as Boston, and always would be. But Adèle began to worry, this summer; she's a good sport—so's Irma, for that matter—but the Americans started to clear out, and you know what mass suggestion is. Well, I went out on Sunday morning and bought the Cadillac; and if anybody had told me even three weeks ago that I'd be buying it in the slightly used department—”

“Now, George! You said you were going to stop talking that way.”

“I know; fact is, let's hope it's temporary, but just now I'm hanging on to my cash. Well, I finished sending my telegrams—I forgot to say that I couldn't send any radio messages from that damned
Alberta
; something had gone wrong with their wireless, or so they said. I never could make out whether it was really a breakdown, or whether they had orders not to send out anything; it was all very hush-hush, even then.

“I got the car, and as soon as Dell had pulled herself together—”

“I was sick almost all the way over,” said Mrs. Bartram. “Ten days.”

“Sick as a dog; Irma wasn't, though. Gad, you should have seen that child eat! Rotten food, too; nothing any good but the cheese. You know that Canadian Cheddar? Wonderful. Well, Dell wanted to see something of the country, so I doped out a route, and we started down. Spent Monday night in a little town called Haverley, not far up the line from here.”

“How'd you like the Beaulieu Tavern?” inquired Mitchell, with assumed interest.

“Didn't stay there. Stayed at the Stone Ridge House, and a one-horse place it was. Canary-bird dishes for the canned vegetables, and no private baths.”

Mitchell, in his satisfaction at having extracted the name of the hotel from George Bartram without asking for it, was about to commit the faux pas of wondering aloud why the Bartrams had not stayed at the Beaulieu; but remembered in time that it was a resort, and expensive.

“Tuesday morning we started early,” continued Bartram, “and we struck Bailtown just before ten. I wanted to go around the other way, but Dell and Irma were crazy about the shore, so we stuck to the coast road. When we got to the Point up there above Beasley's we came right down past the farm, and went on through to Ford's Center.”

“Went to the Center first, did you?”

“Yes. I'd told Carroll we'd turn up at one, so we had lots of time; and poor Dell was going crazy about the state of her hair.”

“Of course I wanted a wave, George; I wasn't going to meet your brother for the first time looking like I don't know what; and Irma needed a shampoo. We couldn't get anything done on the boat, and it was Sunday in Montreal, and Labor Day in Haverley. So George decided to drive down early on Tuesday and try to find a hairdresser in Ford's Center. We didn't tell Carroll; we were afraid he might feel hurt about our not coming here right away. He doesn't know yet.”

“Well, the point is that we passed the Beasley farm—and it hadn't changed by so much as a lilac bush since I saw it last—we passed it shortly after ten.”

“You didn't see anybody, I suppose, or meet a car?” asked Mitchell wistfully.

“Not a soul.”

“No gypsies on the road?”

“Not that I noticed; there was no traffic at all until we got to the Oakport branch, and not much after that. I parked my wife and Irma at a moth-eaten place—”

“The funniest hairdresser's I was ever at,” said Mrs. Bartram. “It didn't even look sanitary. They gave me a very nice wave, though.”

“I see that they did.” Gamadge glanced respectfully at the petrified-looking ridges on either side of Mrs. Bartram's round face.

“And it stayed in very well. So George went off, and he never came back for us for two solid hours.”

“Having a shave, haircut, massage and general brush up of his own, I suppose,” said Gamadge, carefully avoiding Mitchell's gleaming eye.

“No, I managed to do what had to be done in that line at Haverley. I just went for a drive over the old territory, down the shore a way, around towards the west.”

“Look up any old cronies?” asked Mitchell.

“I haven't any old cronies around here, any more.”

“Ormiston?”

“Ormiston! He was never a crony. Anyhow, we got to Oakport by one. My God, what a thing to run into! I was the one that saw the nightshade, you know. ‘Carroll,' I said, ‘my God, that's nightshade!' They have lots of it in Europe, you know—much more than here.”

“It was terrible. Oh dear, I can't bear to think of it,” said Mrs. Bartram.

“That nurse has her wits about her.”

“But your brother ought to pension old Annie, George. She really isn't right in the head.”

“You and your pensions! My dear child, do you know how much capital it takes to pension anybody?”

“She could probably live in Ireland somewhere for five dollars a month.”

“I hope I'll never have to see you or Irma living on five dollars a month somewhere. And do you realize that poor old Carroll has been supporting that Mike of hers since 1922, or whenever it was? Her son was ambushed and shot in the Troubles, as she calls them,” he explained to Gamadge, “and he's an incurable in some Irish hospital. Father started paying his expenses, and then Mother took it on, and now Carroll has the job.”

“You've noticed that Annie seems a little odd?” Gamadge addressed Mrs. Bartram, who replied with vivacity:

“She's been odd ever since it happened. After Miss Ridgeman and I got poor little Julia into bed, and the doctor came, I rushed down to the kitchen for things he wanted, and I told Annie about it. She hadn't heard a thing, and Adelaide was down cellar, freezing the ice cream. ‘I'm Mrs. George Bartram,' I said, ‘and poor little Julia has eaten some nightshade berries. Miss Ridgeman and I have got her to bed, and the doctor wants hot water and coffee and mustard.' She sat on her chair staring at me with her mouth open, and she never moved. I had to call that Adelaide to help me find things.”

“You're sure you mentioned nightshade to her?”

“I'm almost sure I did. Why? Oh, you think it gave her a shock. Well, she never even said anything. Adelaide and I—oh, I'll never forget that day!”

“Yes, you will, Dell. I ought to take you and Irma out of here.”

“We can't consider ourselves at such a time. Annie does rather scare me, Mr. Gamadge; she keeps telling me to take Irma away, and she said the same to Mrs. Ormiston. We don't know what to make of it.”

“Don't make too much of it, Mrs. Bartram.”

“That's what I say,” agreed George Bartram. “The Irish always get some wild idea in their heads. Annie hasn't been right since the Troubles. Let's talk about something else. Who do you suppose that funny-looking old bird was, Dell—the woman sitting on the cemetery wall, this morning?”

This peculiar attempt on the part of her husband to take Mrs. Bartram's mind off gloomy subjects did not seem to strike that lady as strange. She responded with a matter-of-factness that Gamadge found rather touching; her immunity to the absurd made her immune to her husband's absurdities.

“That elderly woman, dressed in black? I thought she must be one of the Bartram connection.”

“We have no connections, and if we had they wouldn't look like that old girl. Who was the fellow in steel spectacles and the pepper-and-salt suit, talking to Mrs. Ormiston?”

“I don't know. Didn't he come with the sheriff?”

“Hear about Ormiston asking to bury his boy in our lot, Mitchell? Cool, wasn't it?”

“Now, George, please don't get started on that again!” She looked as if the subject upset her, and Gamadge created a diversion:

“I hope you won't be annoyed, as you might very excusably be with me, Mrs. Bartram; I've promised Irma one of the Beasley kittens.”

“How awfully kind of you, Mr. Gamadge! It will be just the thing for her. It isn't so easy to keep her happy, when we're all so—”

Her husband interrupted with a chuckle. “I'd like to see anything get Irma down; or keep her down, for more than three minutes.”

“Well, you know,” said Gamadge, “I think she still misses the cat she left behind her in Holland.”

“Of course she does,” agreed Mrs. Bartram. “I'm so glad she's going to have another one.”

“She'll have one if I have to telegraph to the Bide-A-Wee in New York for it; but I think the Beasleys will probably be glad to get rid of one of theirs.”

Irma shot out of the side door, and pranced up to them.

“Uncle Carroll wants you all to come right in the house,” she shrieked. “He has a present for me, and he wants you for winches.”

The witnesses trooped obediently back in her wake, Mitchell falling behind to mutter in Gamadge's ear: “Most confiding feller I ever met in my whole life.”

“He is; it just boils out of him,” agreed Gamadge.

“He ain't overcome with sympathy for his brother—would you say so?”

“Mr. George Bartram will never be overcome with grief for anybody except himself, his wife and his offspring.”

“In the order named?”

“In the order named.”

Estate of Julia Bartram

T
HE BARTRAM SITTING
room or parlor was long and low, with two windows on the west, and the big bay on the south. Between the side windows a white mantelpiece, delicately carved, rose above a smoky brick hearth; a mellow landscape in an old gilt frame hung above it. The mahogany furniture might have been brought from England, in the mid-eighteenth century, by one of the Bartram ships; but the glass and pottery, and the big gilt and lacquer box that stood on a console below the mirror on the north wall, had made a longer journey—they were all from China. The pale Chinese rug was hardly darker than the old white wallpaper, striped with gold, which had suffered with the passing of time; it showed blotches of damp near the ceiling, and a torn strip had been replaced beside the door.

Carroll Bartram sat on a davenport before the fire. His arm lay along the back of it, and his long, fine hand clasped and unclasped the carved rail. A clever-looking, beak-nosed little man stood behind him, and Miss Ridgeman hovered in the rear. She was holding a tray with a tumbler on it, and she looked as if she were afraid to advance and offer it to her employer.

George Bartram led Gamadge around the end of the davenport.

“Let me introduce my brother,” he said, “and Doctor Loring. Carroll, this is Mr. Gamadge.”

Carroll Bartram leaned forward to shake hands with Gamadge. “I hope you'll excuse me for not getting up,” he said, pleasantly. “I'm all right, but for the moment something seems to have got me in the legs.”

“That will go in a minute.” Doctor Loring watched his patient, smilingly. “You're better already.”

“I really feel—” began Gamadge, but his host interrupted him:

“No, I want to see you. How are you, Mitchell? Do sit down.”