Deadly Nightshade (6 page)

“No, gentleman.”

“I understand that you're taking the little fellow who had flu to Whitewater Beach with you.”

“On Monday, if Doctor Loring says he is strong enough.”

Gamadge followed Georgina to the farthest tent, the flap of which had been fastened back. It was hot inside, and the dark-eyed, crop-haired little boy who lay on a comfortable-looking cot within had pushed off his coverings. The woollen bathing suit he wore revealed him as sturdily built, and far from emaciated by his illness. He lay relaxed, staring peacefully at nothing.

“He'll do,” said Gamadge. “What's his name?”

Georgina mumbled, as well as she could for lack of teeth: “Elias.”

“Hello, Elias.” The dark eyes turned to him, and wandered sleepily away again.

“Sleeps most of the time,” lisped Georgina.

“Very wise of him. I know what one's like after flu—a rag. Well, thank you very much, Mrs. Stanley. See if you can persuade William to remember something about the lady in the car. Just a tourist, I suppose, but even if she was, my offer stands. I'll give the baby a miss, but here's its lucky piece.”

He placed a quarter in Georgina's hand, which instantly became a claw to receive it, and laid another on the listless palm of the invalid. No attention was paid to this gift by the small dreamer, who continued to gaze at nothing with every appearance of dreamy contentment.

Mitchell awaited Gamadge in the car, and Pottle stood with a leg over his machine. Gamadge, with his foot on the step, turned to make his farewells.

“I miss young Trainor around here,” was the form they took. “Miss him very much.”

The gypsies all looked deeply concerned. William said, in a low voice: “He fixed my toe.”

Martha spoke for the first time, in a thin, childish voice:

“He went to school with Charlie.”

“Too bad; and so unnecessary.” Gamadge climbed into the car, and they drove off; Pottle escorting them, and the gypsies watching their departure with interest. At the entrance to the short cut Mitchell stopped.

“See if you can't get something out of the boy about that woman in the car,” he admonished Pottle.

“The minute I start asking them anything, they freeze up.
I
can't throw quarters around.” Pottle was annoyed. “And that reward of yours is going to get you a fine crop of lies from those gypsies, Mr. Gamadge. They'll do anything for money.”

“Well, I hadn't offered anything when William came through with his information,” replied Gamadge, mildly.

“He certainly gave those women away! I knew they knew all about nightshade.”

“Whatever he told us doesn't matter to the gypsies. You can be pretty sure of that. They hadn't warned him off any of those subjects, and I don't think they'd ever heard about the woman in the car before. Wild horses wouldn't drag a family secret out of William Stanley. I don't believe,” he added, “that they know a thing about the nightshade poisonings; if little Elias handed any of it around, they aren't aware of it.”

“Who in time is Elias?” demanded Mitchell.

“The sick boy. I don't think he's had a long or serious illness, but he's not talking yet. When he is, I think he'll have forgotten all about the nightshade, if he ever knew about it. It's a long lapse of time for a child of that age.”

“You handed the old lady a new one,” remarked Pottle, starting his machine. “After this, all her customers are going to be companions of Serious.”

“I hope it will be good for trade.”

“What'd you think of Martha?”

“Very attractive.”

“She's sixteen years old. When she gets to be Georgina's age—twenty-five, I think—she won't have any teeth, either. Well, so long.”

He rode off, and Mitchell turned into the short cut.

“A Curse on the Place”

“L
ADY IN A CAR!
Lady in a car!” grumbled Mitchell. “Of course she was a tourist. I bet Tommy Ormiston saw her, and got her mixed up with everything else that happened to him on Tuesday morning.”

“She certainly does keep cropping up, doesn't she?”

“You brought her up, this time. I don't butt in on your system—not any more; but I should think you could have got something a little more definite out of William Stanley.”

“It was no use trying, with his family standing around like basilisks. They didn't know what I was getting at. Let them think it over, and perhaps they'll let William earn his bicycle.”

“You going to buy that boy a wheel?”

“I saw a very nice little one in a window as we went through the Center; marked down. Secondhand goods. It was only seven dollars.”

“We won't let Bartram offer any rewards, yet. We knew he'd get a lot of fake information and crank letters.”

“The gypsies won't write us any letters, whatever else they may do.”

“I wouldn't be too sure.”

They passed abruptly from dazzling sunlight to a glimmering dusk; trees met overhead, branches swished wetly against their mudguards, tires sank into watery channels between the ruts. Mitchell observed that it was hardly ever dry in here. Gamadge braced his feet, enduring the bumps in silence. A wagon track on their left disappeared into what looked like virgin forest.

“Where does that go to?” he asked.

“No place, unless it comes out on the upper road. Wood choppers use it, I guess. Here we are.”

Coarse grass on both sides of the road bloomed with the bright colors of wild orchids, fireweed and lady's-eardrops. Mitchell stopped the car, and they got out.

“There's where he was found, just where that rock sticks out of the bank. He pitched onto it, smashed his head. Brake was on, and his legs weren't clear of the bike.”

Gamadge walked to the spot, and stood with his hands in his pockets, glancing about him. “Looks as if about six cars had skidded,” he said.

“There was a good deal of trampling before we got here.”

“I see that; but there's a great swipe smoothed over.”

“Yes; it does seem to run pretty continuous under the tire marks and the footprints.”

Gamadge and Mitchell were not fond of wasting words in vain surmise; moreover, they were usually able to communicate, when facts confronted them, without any words at all. Neither of them said anything more about the great swipe; it extended from motorcycle tire marks that stopped abruptly beside the road, across the ruts, to the rock itself. The place was a mass of churned mud and leaves, but this wide swath was clearly discernible.

“Obviously a skid,” said Gamadge.

“Troopers ain't supposed to have such accidents.”

“All part of the Tuesday upset, no doubt.” As Mitchell said nothing, Gamadge asked: “What was the verdict? Misadventure?”

“What else could it be?” Mitchell spoke with unaccustomed sharpness. “I went over this place on my hands and knees, almost. It's a bad road, but it's used as a highway; and it's always in a mess. You can see how the tires cut it up and splash the water, and the dead leaves drift across. And there's all this grass in the middle.”

“I can see what it's like. Was Trainor's lamp working?”

“It was in working order; but it got smashed when he did—only part of his machine that did get smashed, naturally enough.”

They returned to the car, and drove on amidst a delicious fragrance of pine, spearmint, dead leaves and wet earth. The road widened and became smoother, and the car emerged from the woods and rolled along between stretches of russet marsh. Farms and cottages suddenly sprang up on the left against a background of dark trees, their gardens blazing with dahlias and asters. They passed a filling station, and a neat white house just beyond, which Mitchell pointed out as state police headquarters.

“But of course you know it,” he said. “Here's the crossroads.”

Beyond the crossroads weather-beaten sheds and wharfs prepared the traveler for the fish-laden atmosphere of Oakport Village. The car rumbled over an ancient wooden bridge, and entered a somnolent and ever-dusty square.

“Everything but the post office and Picken's drugstore kind of folds up from now on,” said Mitchell. “The village caters mostly to summer trade. If you want city goods, you have to go to Ford's Center.”

“Do the doctors fold up, too?”

“Young Dickson goes south—he has a connection somewhere in Florida. Ames and his family live in Bailtown; they're there except three months in the summer. Loring stays right here. He says it's just what he likes—plenty of doctors at the Center to take care of the farmers, and nothing for him to do but play chess with his cronies, and write pieces for the magazines. He isn't exactly what you'd call lazy, I guess, but I wouldn't say he had much ambition.”

“Perhaps he's ambitious as a writer. What sort of stuff does he write? Medical? Philosophical? Or just plain whimsical?”

“I don't know.”

They left Oakport Village behind them, and entered a broad, elm-shaded street lined on both sides with stately houses, pillared and green-shuttered.

“Seafaring people built those.” Mitchell waved his arm. “This was a big port, once; China and India trade. The Bartrams owned a good deal of property here, and they kept enough of it to protect 'em from close neighbors. Here's their place now.”

For the last few minutes they had been climbing, steadily if gradually. Mitchell turned the car left, and they entered a narrower road, bordered on the east by a hilly meadow of goldenrod, scrub oak and sumac, and on the west by a picket fence and a high privet hedge. Behind these, straggling lilac bushes and tall trees formed a screen for the big white house that could be dimly discerned, a pattern of light and shade, beyond.

The car rounded a bend in the road, and Mitchell stopped it in front of a gate. “Here we are,” he said, sliding out from under the wheel. Gamadge also descended, to follow him up a long flagged walk, bordered with flower beds that would have been the better for weeding. The façade of the house rose before them; wide and low, of white-painted brick, with the inevitable green shutters. A broad, shallow flight of steps led up to a portico with fluted columns, and a door with a handsome fanlight. Mitchell climbed the steps, but Gamadge paused on the flagged walk to glance about him.

“Lovely old place,” he said. “I haven't seen a trellis like that in years; and the red honeysuckle on it—I bet that's been growing there for the best part of a century.”

He strolled eastward, where flower beds of which the plants had ceased to flower stood up like immense pincushions from the coarse grass of the surrounding turf. Little ornamental wire railings enclosed them, and bordered the winding gravel paths. Ironwork seats and settles, with grapevine backs and arms, rusted under the syringa bushes and mountain-ash trees; and a thick box hedge, dying in patches, was designed to conceal the kitchen garden and drying ground.

“Coming?” asked Mitchell, his hand on the old-fashioned brass bellpull.

“Just a minute.” Gamadge crossed the walk, and wandered a few paces to the west of it. Here the trees—evergreens and maples—grew thickly enough to form a grove. He could see glimpses of sunlight beyond, but he did not penetrate to it. He stood quietly sniffing the air.

“Smells good,” he explained. “There's a tang of salt in it.”

“The shore isn't far off.”

“I've never been up this way before. Lovely old place—lovely. Dozing, isn't it? They've let it run right to seed. Too much greenery, besides. Just a little too damp and dim.”

He joined Mitchell at the door, on which a brass plate bore the name BARTRAM in rubbed letters. Mitchell pulled the bell; they heard a far-off tinkle, and after a while the door opened a crack.

“The family is out,” said a quavering voice.

“All right, Annie; you know who I am. Let us in,” said Mitchell.

The door opened halfway. Gamadge saw a scared, wrinkled face, pale-blue eyes, and a small bent figure in dark blue, with a white apron.

“The family is not at home,” Annie repeated.

“None of 'em?”

“Only the nurse and the little girl.”

“Where are they all?”

“They're at the funeral.”

“Funeral! I thought they were going to have the funeral early.”

“A grand Boston funeral. Late, it was—an hour late.”

“I hope they didn't find much of a crowd at the cemetery.”

“'Twill be like a fair.”

“Not so bad as that, I hope.”

“But Ormiston will not be at the graveyard.”

“Never you mind that; let us in, will you? I want my friend Mr. Gamadge to meet Miss Ridgeman, and he may like to have a word with you.”

The door opened wide. As he entered the square hall Gamadge turned to the small creature at his elbow, and asked: “Was Mr. Ormiston expected at the funeral? I didn't know the Bartrams knew him.”

Annie replied in a grudging tone:

“They know him, but it's little or nothing we've seen of him since the old gentleman died. Didn't he telephone down, though, on Tuesday, when he didn't know if his little b'y would get well, and ask the master would we have him in our graveyard?”

“Have Tommy Ormiston in the Bartram graveyard?”

“I took the message meself.”

“What in the world did he do a thing like that for?”

“Ormiston has no graveyard. Where would he put the little b'y? And wouldn't it be like him to borrow a grave?”

“I suppose it would, if you say so.”

“Mrs. Ormiston is a good, kind woman. She was down here, askin' if she could help us; and she's at the funeral now. It was herself told Mrs. George that Ormiston couldn't wait to get back to the city to his paintin', and he was half crazy with the delay. What's a little b'y to him?”

“You seem to have it in for him, all right,” said Mitchell.