Authors: William March
On Monday he sent her mother roses and herself an orchid.
His leave was up on Tuesday, and that morning he came by
the gallery to tell her good-by. He gave her the Modigliani, and said, “I hope you understand the implications, my lass!” Then, in front of all those people, he took her in his arms and kissed her, turned, and went calmly through the door. Her mother died that same winter; the following spring Lieutenant Penmark came to see her, and they were married. Hers had been a most successful marriage, she thought. If she had not married Kenneth, she would not have married at all.
She put away the paper, and went about cleaning her apartment. Already she missed her husband, and although she had become reconciled to these necessary absences, she had never become used to them; and standing quietly in her living-room she thought that all her life she had waited for someone—first her father, and now her husband.
This time, since the trip was to be a long one, they had considered the idea of her accompanying her husband; but regretfully they had abandoned the notion. They told each other it was merely a question of additional expense, that the money could be better used toward the house they planned to build later on. The true reason had been deeper and had been concerned with their daughter. They felt that they could not take the child with them, and they knew that leaving her with another, even another as tolerant and doting as Mrs. Breedlove, was out of the question.
There had always been something strange about the child, but they had ignored her oddities, hoping she would become more like other children in time, although this had not happened; then, when she was six and they were living in Baltimore, they entered her in a progressive school which was widely recommended; but a year later the principal of the school asked that the child be removed. Mrs. Penmark called for an explanation, and the principal, her eyes fixed steadily on the decorative, gold-and-silver sea horse her visitor wore on
the lapel of her pale-gray coat, said abruptly, as though both tact and patience had long since been exhausted, that Rhoda was a cold, self-sufficient, difficult child who lived by rules of her own, and not by the rules of others. She was a fluent and a most convincing liar, as they’d soon discovered. In some ways, she was far more mature than average; in others, she was hardly developed at all. But these things had only slightly affected the school’s decision; the real reason for the child’s expulsion was the fact that she had turned out to be an ordinary, but quite accomplished, little thief.
Mrs. Penmark closed her eyes, and then said quietly, “Has it occurred to you that you could be wrong—that your judgment isn’t necessarily infallible?”
The principal admitted that the thought of her fallibility had occurred to her not once, but many times. It bothered her, in fact, at this precise moment, but not in reference to the thefts, for there was no doubt on that point at all; they had set a trap for the thief and had caught Rhoda red-handed. Her reaction to the child’s acts had not been one of condemnation, but one of sympathy. “We’ve had similar problems in the school before,” she finished, “and so I took Rhoda at once to the school psychiatrist for his opinion.”
Christine sighed, covered her face with her hands, and said in a weak voice, “What was his opinion? What did he suggest?”
The principal waited, and then went on to say that in many respects the psychiatrist considered Rhoda the most precocious child he’d ever seen; her quality of shrewd, mature calculation was remarkable indeed; she had none of the guilts and none of the anxieties of childhood; and of course she had no capacity of affection, either, being concerned only with herself. But perhaps the thing that was most remarkable about her was her unending acquisitiveness. She was like a charming little animal that can
never be trained to fit into the conventional patterns of existence.…
At ten o’clock the postman came. There was a letter from her husband, and as Christine read the closely written pages, she said, “Oh, Kenneth! Oh, Kenneth!” in the soft, deprecating voice with which the pleased accept their flattery. Resolutely she dismissed from her mind the things that troubled her. She felt a wave of irrational happiness, for it seemed to her at that moment that she had everything a woman could desire. She seated herself at her desk to answer the letter, but first she rested her hands against her cheeks, and looked out at the soft, green street, holding on to her happiness, which was wise, for it was the last she was ever to feel.
Mrs. Breedlove lived with her brother on the floor above the Penmarks. There had been a great event in her life, one which she had not been able to forget. In the middle twenties, her husband, not knowing what else to do with her, acceded to her wish that she go to Vienna and be psychoanalyzed by Professor Freud. The story of her analysis was one which she never tired of telling—one whose possibilities she never succeeded in exhausting. It seemed that after her intense initial session with the professor, he had said frankly that her particular temperament was beyond his skill, and had suggested that she go
to London and seek the aid of his pupil Dr. Aaron Kettlebaum. This she had done.
“It was a fortunate suggestion,” she often said; “not that I’m minimizing Doctor Freud’s professional standing in any manner, shape, or form, for I still consider him, in spite of his peculiarities, the great genius of our time; but Doctor Kettlebaum was more—more
sympatico,
if you know what I mean. Freud was so committed to nineteenth-century materialism that it warped his viewpoint, it seemed to me. Then, too, he loathed American women, particularly the ones who were able to stand on their own feet and slug it out on equal terms with men. Now, Doctor Kettlebaum believed in the power of the individual soul, and he considered sex of only trivial interest. His mind was mystic rather than literal—the same as my own. He did much for me, and when he died several years ago, I cabled flowers and cried for a week.”
She had returned to her husband three years later, and at once began proceedings for a divorce, an action which he made no effort to oppose. When she was free again, she decided it was her duty to make a home for her brother Emory, and she did so. She took pleasure in the analysis of his character, analyses that he endured mostly in silence. Of late, she had come to the conclusion, through a series of her own deductions, that Emory was, as she termed it, a “larvated homosexual”; and once during the preceding spring, at one of her big dinner parties, she seized on the new theme and discussed it so freely that the only unembarrassed person at the table was herself.
“What does ‘larvated’ mean?” asked Emory. “That’s one I haven’t heard so far.”
“It means covered, as with a mask,” said Mrs. Breedlove. “It means concealed.”
“It means something that hasn’t come to the surface as yet,” said Kenneth Penmark.
“You can say
that
again!” said Emory, laughing weakly.
He was a plump, ruddy man, a few years younger than his sister. His hair had receded far back on his pink, domed forehead. His belly was small and hard; it had a taut, rounded quality, as though designed by nature as a background for the massive watch chain and emblem. Frank Billings, whom Monica always referred to as “Emory’s canasta friend,” said, “Well, where did you get that idea, Monica? What makes you think that?”
“My opinion,” said Mrs. Breedlove, “is based on the evidence of pure association, and that’s the best evidence of all.” She sipped her wine, puffed her lips thoughtfully, and went on in an earnest voice. “To begin with, Emory is fifty-two years old, and he’s never married. I doubt if he’s ever had a serious love affair.” Then, seeing that she was about to be interrupted by Reginald Tasker, “one of Emory’s true-murder-mystery friends,” she raised her hand and said, “Please! Please!” in a placating voice; and then went on quickly. “Now, let’s look at things objectively. What are Emory’s deepest interests in life; what are the things that occupy his psyche? They are fishing, murder mysteries that involve the dismemberment of faithful housewives, canasta, baseball games, and singing in male quartettes.” She paused and then said, “And how does Emory spend his Sundays? He spends them on a boat with other men—fishing. And are there
ladies
present on such occasions? I can answer that question at once—there are not.”
“You’re damned right there aren’t!” said Emory.
Mrs. Breedlove looked about her, and then realizing for the first time the effect she’d created among her guests, she tossed her head and said in a surprised voice, “I don’t see why the idea shocks you so. A thing so commonplace as
that
! Actually, homosexuality is triter than
incest
! Doctor Kettlebaum considered it was all a matter of personal preference.”
But it would be a mistake to think of this obsessed, garrulous old woman as a fool in most matters. She had taken the lump
settlement that her husband had so cheerfully given her and invested it in real estate, following a system based both on sexual symbolism and the unalterable fact that if the town continued to grow, as everyone predicted, it had to go in the direction of her holdings. She had been successful from the first. She had written a successful cookbook; she was responsible for the city’s psychiatric clinic; she was thought of as the tireless civic worker, the logical, efficient chairman of the charitable drive for funds.
On the day of the school picnic, Mrs. Breedlove telephoned Christine and asked her to lunch. One of Emory’s fishing friends had sent him a beautiful, seven-pound redfish. Emory himself had just called to say that, since it was Saturday, he was closing the plant at noon and would be home for lunch. He’d asked her to fix redfish Gelpi, which she hadn’t done in a long time, and she said she would. “Emory is inviting his friend Reggie Tasker, that true-crime writer you and Kenneth met last spring in our apartment, and he wants you to help entertain him. Now, why don’t you come up early, say around noon, and I’ll show you how to fix the redfish? It’s in the sauce, mostly.”
Later, Mrs. Breedlove decided to serve lunch not in her gloomy, paneled dining-room, but in the little alcove off her living-room where she kept her ferns and African violets; and when her brother and his guest arrived, the table was set there, and ready. The men were talking about a recent murder, one which was being featured in the local papers. Reginald Tasker, it appeared, was going to do it for one of his murder magazines, and was now gathering his preliminary facts. Mrs. Breedlove, hearing fragments of the talk, laughed, tossed her head, and said, “We’re off to the races again!”
The case concerned a middle-aged hospital nurse, a Mrs. Dennison, who had been indicted for the murder, on May first, of her heavily insured two-year-old niece, Shirley. It was then the town remembered that another niece, a sister of the 1952 victim,
had died in 1950, in the same manner, when she had been two years old as well. Nurse Dennison, a woman dedicated to the benefits of insurance, had collected five thousand dollars on the death of the first child; the second niece she had insured for six.
Mrs. Breedlove came into the living-room to welcome her visitor; Christine followed immediately and put a pitcher of Martinis on the coffee table; a moment later they went to the alcove for a final checkup of the luncheon table, and Reggie went on quickly to say that Nurse Dennison’s husband, conventionally true to the family tradition of nausea, burning throat, and convulsions, had passed on in the autumn of 1951, with, of course, the conventional policies on his life.
Christine laughed a little, put her hands over her ears, and said so softly the men could not hear her, that she did not like to listen to such stories. Anything concerning crime, particularly murder, depressed her and made her anxious. She had seen the accounts of the Dennison case, but she could not bring herself to read them; she had merely turned the page, and had gone on to something more cheerful.
“You have a little psychic
block
there!” said Mrs. Breedlove in an intense, pleased whisper. “Now, if you’ll associate to the situation, maybe we can get at the roots of your anxiety.” She straightened her centerpiece, and when Christine did not answer at once, she went on earnestly. “Tell me the first thing that comes into your mind! Tell me, no matter how silly it seems to you!”
Reginald Tasker went on to say that in the forenoon of May first of that year, Nurse Dennison had visited her sister-in-law’s family. She got there in time for lunch. At once she picked up her niece Shirley and began playing with the child. She had meant to bring Shirley a present, she said, but had forgotten, a thing which distressed her so greatly that she went to the country store near by and bought candy and soda pop for the family.
“Nothing comes into my mind,” said Christine. “It’s entirely blank.”
“Actually, Nurse Dennison
had
brought her niece a present,” said Reginald Tasker. “It was the ten cents’ worth of arsenic she’d bought on her way to her sister-in-law’s home. In a way it was more a present for herself than for her niece, since she stood to benefit so greatly if she succeeded in administering it.”
“But what’s on your mind at this moment?” insisted Mrs. Breedlove. They returned to the kitchen, and as Mrs. Breedlove agitated the salad in her big wooden bowl, Christine said presently, “I was thinking how much the Fern sisters are impressed by my father’s reputation. Miss Burgess thinks I look very much like him, although she never saw him in person, and is familiar only with his photographs.”
Mrs. Breedlove said in an uncertain voice, “That’s an unusual association, I must say. I don’t understand it so far.” She narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips, and listened absently to the conversation in the living-room. According to Reggie Tasker’s notes, Nurse Dennison returned with her treat and immediately prepared a drink of orange pop for her niece Shirley. For the next hour or so she observed the child’s convulsions with a most flattering concern; later on, perhaps because the child’s stamina seemed about to triumph over her aunt’s intention, Nurse Dennison said that, in her opinion, what little Shirley needed at this point in her illness was another sip or two of orange pop; it was sure to settle her stomach and return her to her customary bouncing health. She tendered the cup, and Shirley, a sweet, obedient child, drank at her aunt’s bidding.