Deadly Nightshade (3 page)

“I see.”

“Yes; the front of the house was blind. It was nearly eleven before he had a chance to go out and look for the boy. He wasn't there. His pail and shovel were on the sand pile, and his hat, and a few of the berries; but Breck, not being country-bred, didn't notice 'em. He wasn't scared at first; strolled round the house, went up and down the road and a little way into the woods, along that cart trail; then he suddenly got into a panic, and sprinted back to the house to tell 'em the boy was gone.

“Miss Strangways came in about then—she'd been down on the beach, clearing out the bathing cabin they have there, and locking it up for the winter. Before that, she'd been in the studio, helping Ormiston. Soon as she heard about the boy she dropped everything, jumped in her little car, and went off to scour the roads. Breck did the rocks and beaches. Mrs. Ormiston—she's a calm sort of lady—she waited with the two other children till the expressman showed up, and sent him off again to get help. Their telephone had just been disconnected, so they didn't get organized till after the Beasley search was under way. Ormiston stayed home, hopping mad because his arrangements had been held up, and everybody had quit waiting on him.

“Tommy was found about one o'clock, by a state policeman. He'd rolled down into a little ravine in the woods, 'way up towards the north edge of 'em. He was half covered with leaves, and not a scratch on him. He was lightheaded, but he wasn't in that coma they end up with—luckily for him.”

“Stupor,” said Gamadge.

“Oh. Didn't know there was any difference. He came around wonderful under treatment, and now he's as well as ever; but the trouble is, we can't get much out of him. He says a lady in a car gave him the berries. Well, anything in skirts is a lady to Tommy Ormiston, and he don't know one car from another. He can't remember a thing about wandering off in the woods. No use taking him down and trying to get him to identify a gypsy; they all say he couldn't do it. He's only six and a half.”

“A child of his size wouldn't see much, looking up at somebody in a car window.”

“If there
was
a car window, or a car, or even a lady. He may have imagined the whole thing; the doctor says this poison makes 'em get mixed up afterwards, and likely to imagine things.”

“Could he have found the berries himself?”

“There are some in the woods, near the edge of the trail; but if he went in there and picked 'em, he must have brought 'em all the way back to the sand pile, and then trekked off again. As for the ones he left behind, they were seen, and identified as nightshade, before he was brought home; luckily for him. The doctor knew just what to do for him. Doctor Dickson, it was; Ames—you remember Doctor Ames?—he's away on his vacation.

“Our next stop is the Beasley farm, which is a nice enough old place, but lonesome. Not a house near it for over a mile, and the tidal river runs in behind it, through the marshes, and cuts it off on the west. Sarah Beasley was one of nine children, but only three of them were home on the farm this summer—Sarah, about seven years old; a girl of fourteen called Claribel; and the baby.

“They have an old hay barn beside the road, screened off with trees and bushes. Sarah's tortoise-shell cat lived there, and brought up all her kittens there. She had six this summer; Sarah put in all her spare time with them. She'd bought six bells and six ribbons for 'em; different color for each cat. Let's see—” Mitchell consulted his notes—“Gold, silver, green, blue, red and purple. She kept 'em on a nail in the barn, and every time she went out to see the cats, she dressed 'em up in the ribbons and the bells.

“On Tuesday morning, few minutes after ten, she went out to the barn as usual. By eleven she hadn't come back, and Mrs. Beasley missed her and went to look for her. The six cats rushed out, the way kittens do, and they had on their ribbons and their bells—all but one; the white one. Her bell was red, and she didn't have it on; nobody's seen it since. Looks as though Sarah was interrupted before she finished the job.

“Well, Sarah wasn't in the barn, and the old cat wasn't there either. Mrs. Beasley looked around, wondering what had become of 'em; and suddenly she noticed some of the berries scattered around on the barn floor. She screamed so, Beasley heard her clear across the cow pasture back of the house, because she knew what they were. They found more of them on a bare knoll that rises up behind the barn, and slopes down in the direction of the marsh. We think Sarah wandered up there, lightheaded; the cat after her. It would complain when the going got rough, and Sarah would pick it up and carry it. If that's the way it was, and they got in the marsh, they won't be found.”

Mitchell sucked at his pipe, removed it, and applied a match to it. When he had it going again, he went on:

“She may have gone into the woods, and met Tommy Ormiston, and got the berries from him; or he may have got them from her. But it's a lot of ground for a child of her age to cover, and Mrs. Beasley says she never went off the farm before in her life. Whatever those two children did do, they never walked those five miles to the Bartram house and back again; but some of the nightshade got there, sometime between eleven o'clock and noon.

“I guess you know the Bartram mansion, even if you haven't had a good look at it; you can hardly see it from the road now, the place is so overgrown and wild. Old lady Bartram—she died last spring—she wouldn't have the grounds touched, hardly, after her husband died, years ago. It's a fine old place, built in the days when the Bartrams owned sailing ships, and imported silk, instead of making it.

“There are two sons—Carroll and George. Carroll, the eldest, runs the silk mills; George sold out to him when the old man died, and went into the importing business abroad; Holland. He married there, and his little girl was born there, about five years ago. He had a nice house, nice business, all his money sunk in it; didn't mean to come back to this country till he retired, if then; but a couple of weeks ago the European situation got too much for him, and scared him out. He managed to get accommodations for his family on some ship or other, and they landed in Canada on Sunday. He bought a car and started for New York, where his partners are. They meant to take the trip in easy stages, stopping off at Oakport on Tuesday for lunch, to see his folks.

“It was a big day in the family, all of 'em except the two men meeting for the first time. Carroll Bartram wanted the two children to know each other. He lost his wife when this little girl Julia was born, seven years ago, their first child. He made a terrible fuss over her—too much of a fuss, Doc Loring says, and the nurse wasn't much better. This trained nurse, Miss Ridgeman, she's been with the little girl ever since she was born. Bartram kept the place open for 'em all the year round, put in a furnace, modern plumbing, I don't know what all. You couldn't beat those nurseries at the top of the house anywhere. He was scared to death of infections and accidents, kept running up here for weekends, spent nearly all summer here. He's kind of dazed by what happened, but I don't know whether I don't feel sorrier for Miss Ridgeman. I don't believe she'll ever get over it.

“What did happen was this: Bartram only keeps one regular indoor servant up here, an old cook; they'd engaged a girl to come in on Tuesday and help with the lunch. It's hard to get extra people for short jobs this time of year, and the girl couldn't come till twelve thirty, on that bus from York; so at twelve Miss Ridgeman put little Julia in her summerhouse, and went to lend a hand in the kitchen. This summerhouse is really a play-house, it's been enclosed by wire netting, and the child used to spend hours there; but she was never left alone in it for any length of time before. It's only a few yards from the house, and Bartram's study is on that side; he was there, looking out papers to show his brother, and he didn't hear or see a thing.

“The George Bartrams arrived about one, and of course the first thing they wanted, after they'd seen Carroll, was to meet little Julia. Miss Ridgeman went out to get her, but she wasn't in the summerhouse; the nurse couldn't find her anywhere. She came running back to the house, nearly crazy, to say the child was lost. Carroll started off through the east grounds, shouting. The Georges couldn't make out, at first, what all the fuss was about—they're used to chasing after this little Irma of theirs, and they didn't see anything to scare anybody in a child of seven wandering off for a short stroll on her own. But George went off through the back gate to the lane that runs behind the place, and Mrs. Bartram took Irma and began hunting around towards the west end of the place.

“As I said, it's very much overgrown, lots of hiding places for a child to crawl into. Mrs. Bartram and Irma went poking around among the trees and bushes, and finally they got right down to the southwest corner of the property.

“There's a big pine tree in that corner, with branches trailing on the ground. All of a sudden, Irma got down on her hands and knees and crawled under a branch; she backed out again, laughing and pointing, and Mrs. Bartram lifted up the branch. Julia was in there, looking as if she was asleep; she had a stalk of nightshade in her hand, and two of the berries were gone.

“She was in that coma, all right—stupor, I mean—although she'd eaten the berries less than an hour before. Mrs. Bartram got her out on the grass, and called the others; George Bartram recognized the nightshade, but nobody knew what poison it was. Miss Ridgeman's training showed; she calmed right down, carried the child into the house and started first aid, Mrs. Bartram helping. Their doctor—Loring—got there in five minutes; he lives in the village. He started in treating her for atropine poisoning, told them to call up clinics and hospitals in Boston to advise on remedies, and got hold of another doctor. He saw she was in a bad way, right from the start. Ames, as I said, is away, and young Dickson was up at the Rocks, by that time, working over Tommy Ormiston; so Loring telephoned to Cogswell, our medical examiner at Ford's Center. You know him. He arrived inside of half an hour, and stayed there right along. She died around half past two; Cogswell says she had an allergy for the poison, and nothing could have saved her.

“The George Bartrams stayed on, naturally. They're having the funeral this morning—early, to escape sightseers and newspapers. Carroll Bartram has been mighty decent about it all; it's pretty near wrecked him, but he helped us a lot, keeping down local excitement and throwing in his weight to protect the gypsies.

“As for them, they've got us licked. Cogswell and Loring went down to the camp Wednesday, to try and find out whether they'd been peddling in the neighborhood on Tuesday; they sell sweet grass and baskets, you know, besides telling fortunes on the beach. They don't go far afield, usually, because they have no transport except the caravan, and it's anchored for the summer—they sleep in it, some of them. But just now they have the use of that old car—you may have noticed it as we went by.

“Cogswell and Loring found that one of the children in the camp was convalescing from something or other; it might or might not have been from atropine poisoning. He's a little boy about seven, and the gypsies say he's had a cold. Cogswell thinks it may have been intestinal flu; and Doc Loring's looking after him. He's weak, and he's sleepy and languid; that's all the symptoms there are. Loring says you can't get a word out of him; cruel to try. He'll be all right in a few days, probably.

“The gypsies swear they were in camp all Tuesday till afternoon, and they swear they don't know what nightshade is like. But, as I remarked before, they'll say anything to keep out of a jam. They'd heard about the berry poisonings; Pottle told 'em. Everybody'd been warned to look out for some crazy person going round giving children poison berries.

“Well, that's the story, Mr. Gamadge. I'll be glad to hear what you think of it.”

What Gamadge Thought

G
AMADGE'S CIGARETTE
, hanging forgotten between his fingers, had been sending a thin blue column of smoke up into the quiet air; he now remembered it, took a puff at it, and asked: “Cogswell an authority on poisons?”

“Not that I know of; but even if he was, he wouldn't let a thing like that go through without getting outside advice. He was right there on the spot, knew well enough what she died of, saw the evidence himself, had all the witnesses on the premises; besides which, the news about the other children had come through. But he persuaded Bartram to let him perform an autopsy, Loring as assistant. Bartram was willing, poor feller; he couldn't believe she'd died of those two berries, in that short time; especially as Tommy Ormiston was getting along all right. He wanted to know what had happened to her. Cogswell and Loring performed the autopsy there in the house, that same afternoon.

“By evening, Cogswell had got in touch with the best analyst in Boston; the analysis was begun on Wednesday, and we got the report yesterday. You ought to see it; I didn't know there were so many poisons in the world. And you ought to see the bill! Bartram paid it.”

“Cogswell had a certain ruthlessness, as I remember him.”

“He don't worry much about folks' feelings, when it's a question of keeping his records clear. The experts said she was allergic to atropine, and Cogswell and Loring signed the death certificate: ‘Death resulting from failure of the heart and respiratory system, caused by the absorption of atropine from berries of the plant commonly called deadly nightshade.' Something like that. He finally let them bury the little girl today, as I told you.”

Gamadge smoked in silence for a minute; then he asked: “Is there an official theory, or are you all waiting for evidence?”

“You can't call it a theory; we've made some guesses.”