Weird Tales volume 38 number 03 Canadian (7 page)

THE CRANBERRY GOBLET

return, only to be rebuffed. It was all nicely calculated to drive a sensitive person to the verge of insanity. Tt was all done so subtly that even now I despair of making anyone see just how she gained her ends.

And Michael ? What did he see ? What was he thinking? It was impossible for me to guess. His face was blank most of the time, his manner that of a polite stranger. Gradually a rift appeared between us. Gradually it widened. I couldn't be sure what Coralie was saying to him. I grew more and more uncertain of myself, more and more withdrawn.

While I watched in a sort of sick despair, I saw him grow first wary, then cold, then indifferent to me. I still retained enough reason to blame Coralie for what was happening. But I had no proof. For she was never crude, or careless, or even explicit. There'd be a sly insinuation here, a subtle suggestion there. To Michael. About me. Anything to create doubt.

But Michael, I thought, would never understand this, never blame Coralie for what was happening. Men, they say, are by nature more open, more direct If I went to him, telling him what I suspected, I felt he'd only regard Coralie as misunderstood, and myself as jealous, suspicious—at best, a whining martyr.

Coralie, I knew, was relying on this.

My hands were hopelessly tied. It was impossible to combat her tactics.

1%JY DECISION to kill Coralie was -*-*- not a sudden thing. I think it had been growing on me for weeks. Perhaps in the beginning my mind had rejected the idea in horror, but in the end I grew to accept it. I don't think I was entirely

sane by that time, living as I had been in an atmosphere of suspicion, intrigue, and distrust. But perhaps I was sane enough. Perhaps I'm only trying, now, to rationalize my guilt.

I remember the night my purpose crystallized. It was after a climactic quarrel with Michael. We'd been quarreling frequently, our nerves rubbed raw. But tonight we shouted like drunken tenement dwellers, and at the last I slapped him stingingly. Strange that I can't remember the source of our quarrel. It was like that, those days. We were fighting about nothing at all.

But I can remember thinking how glad Coralie was going to be when she learned of it, as I knew she very shortly would. Mrs. Dunnigan always went to her immediately, I was sure, carrying stories.

Michael slammed out of the house finally, and I dragged myself to the bedroom, and threw myself across one of the twin beds, sobbing stormily. Until at last I grew quieter, and my emotions played themselves out, and I could think.

Was this the way it was going to end? The marriage I'd entered with such high hope? Once I'd loved Michael, and he'd loved me. Somewhere still, I felt the seed of that love yet existed. But unless I did something, soon, even that would be gone.

And I thought, I must kill Coralie. Now. Before it is too late.

TT LOOKS so dreadfully melodramatic as I set it down. / must kill C-erolie. But I felt calm, even happy, at the time. I rationalized. Coralie had been an invalid for years. It would be a mercy-death, really, not murder. I was only sacrificing one for the happiness of two.

THE CRANBERRY GOBLET

I knew just how I must go about it. The capsule Coralie took every morning. One capsule only. I could see those red letters plainly, here on the wall of my darkened bedroom. Every morning Michael and I were in Coralie's room as she took her capsule. It would be so easy for me to drop two of them beforehand into the cranberry goblet. And they left no betraying trace.

"TJOCTOR HADDON—Peter Haddon, ■*-"^ Michael's good friend—was not suspicious. He straightened up from where he'd been bending over Coralie's body, lying there so still among the laces and ruffles of the bed-covering. He stood there a moment, looking down at her, and his dark eyes seemed sad.

Coralie once again looked like the fragile angel I'd first seen upon coming to this house. Except for a thin line of dried saliva running from mouthto chin, she was lovely as a bit of Venetian glass.

I felt no pity. I had no regrets.

Dr. Haddon turned to Michael, who was looking so stricken. (Oh, I'd make it up to him! I would!)

"I'm sorry, Michael," Peter said gently. "I know there's nothing I can say, but— she hadn't much of a life, you know, chained to this bed as she was."

Michael mumbled something. Then, "Will you show Peter out. Ami? I'd like to he alone—with her—for a while."

Out in the ball, Peter drew me away from the door we'd closed behind us. "I'm not saying any tiling to Michael, Ann, but there's something—"

He was suspicious! My heart lurched sickeningly. My hand trembled as it went to my lips.

Peter's face softened. "I know this has been a shock for you, too. But I

thought I'd better tell you. Coralie took an overdose of those capsules."

I breathed again. "Over-dose ?"

He patted my shoulder. "Deliberately, I'm afraid. But no one need ever know. And I thought it was kinder not to tell Michael- We can avoid an inquest—I'll take care of everything. Poor Coralie—"

Luckily, Peter had been away for months, Coralie had never poisoned his mind against me.

But when he was gone, and all during that time until the funeral, I watched Michael walking around like a man in a daze, and wondered if I'd only made everything worse.

But once the funeral was over, I knew that I had not. It was as if a miasma were suddenly lifted from the apartment and both of us in it. Only Mrs. Dunni-gan walked around numbly, watching me covertly.

I'll always remember those two days after the funeral. The happiest days I've ever known. Once more, Michael and I were as we had been that first week we'd met at the lake. All the bitterness and distrust had gone with C«ralie.

And then, on the third morning, happened the first of those weird occurrences that were to follow so frighteningly.

T'D DECIDED, and Michael agreed, that we should dismantle Coralie's bedroom and turn it into a game room. The day before I'd gone in there to see what needed to be done, and the first thing that met my eyes was the cranberry jjoblet.

It seemed to hit me with the force of a blow, glowing there so redly in the sunlight. I didn't want to touch it. I didn't want to remember those two capsules sliding so stealthily from my hand into

THE CRANBERRY GOBLET

its bowl. I didn't want to be reminded of Coralie, and the goblet was a symbol of her.

Perhaps I was being fanciful, but to me the goblet was Coralie. Outwardly she appeared like its stem, pure and white and crystal-clear; but at the core, I'd always believe, she was scarlet as its bowl.

I didn't touch the thing. I called Mrs. Dunnigan and I pointed to it. "Wash that, please, then put it away. We shan't be using it ever again."

I thought the woman looked at me queerly, but she only said, "Yes, Mrs. Whittington," and bore it away.

But now, on this third morning after the funeral, as I went into the room with the man who'd come to measure for the new linoleum floor, 1 saw the cranberry goblet glowing at me again from its place on the bedside table.

I waited till the man had done his measuring and gone before I called Mrs. Dunnigan. "I wanted you to put the goblet away," I said mildly. "Not return it to where it was."

She frowned at it. "But I did, Mrs. Whittington. I put it in the pantry, and I'm sure I don't know—" She picked it up. "Why, it's full of water!"

She brought it to me so that I could see the clear liquid lapping gently against the square sides of the glass. That was the way it had looked the morning Coralie died. When I'd dropped those capsules—

I turned away, feeling a little sick. "Empty it and lock it in the court cabinet m the dining room."

Michael kept his liquors in the cabinet and always locked the door—though this was a gesture, merely, since the key remained in the lock.

The men came just then to remove the

furniture from Coralie's room and I busied myself with other things, forgetting about the goblet

OUT the next morning, when I awoke, -*-^ I was angry. And, I thought, enlightened.

For the first thing I saw was the cranberry goblet on my bedside table. I didn't get up, but by stretching I could see that it was full of colorless liquid.

I thought I had the explanation right away. Mrs. Dunnigan was doing this. I didn't knew what she suspected, or what she hoped to gain, but it seemed obvious she was leaving this reminder constantly about.

I rang for the housekeeper.

*'I thought I told you to lock that in the cabinet," I said, when she was standing before me.

She seemed genuinely surprised when she saw the goblet. I hadn't thought she'd be so good an actress. "I did put it away, Mrs, Whittington. And locked the door."

"You're lying to me," I said flatly.

She opened her mouth, perhaps to deny the charge, then closed it, trap-like. Her eyes seemed to be appraising me shrewdly, and I didn't like the calculating look that flitted across her hard face. I'd had enough of the woman. There had always been veiled insolence in her manner to me.

"I'm giving you two weeks' notice," I said, "With the help shortage what it is, you should be able to find something else by then."

She drew Herself up. "If you'll give me two weeks' salary, I'll leave today. I've not been satisfied here since Miss Coralie—"

I nodded, j

THE CRANBERRY GOBLET

Mrs. Dunnigan went out. "I did lock that goblet away."

"I don't believe you.'*

She continued. "But why does the goblet bother you so much, Mrs. Whit-tington? Do you think it's strange that it's always full of liquid? / do."

"Keep still!"

"Perhaps Miss Coralie is putting it there," she said hastily. "Perhaps she wants you to drink—"

"Get out!" I cried, infuriated.

The woman shrugged, and turned to leave. But at the door she faced me a^ain, with a sly smile. "Are you afraid, Mrs. Whittington?"

I was, suddenly. I think for the first Time I really realized what I'd done. And it must have showed in my face. For Mrs. Dunnigan burst into satisfied, hysterical laughter.

T WAS furious with myself for letting the woman bait me so successfully. It was not only stupid of me, it was dangerous. I couldn't afford to be rousing anyone's suspicions. In the future, I must be more careful.

I dressed, emptied the contents of the goblet down the lavatory drain, and this time locked it away myself in the court cabinet. Then, taking the key, went to drive Michael to the station. He had to go to St. Louis on business for two days.

"Mrs. Dunnigan is leaving," I said casually, as we drove along. I was a little nervous as I didn't know just how attached he might he to the housekeeper, or if he would resent my dismissing her.

Luckily, Michael was preoccupied and asked no questions. "Get somebody else," be suggested shortly, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Evidently her going meant notliing to him.

At the station I gave him the key to the court cabinet, and asked him to put it on his*key-chain with the others. This roused him. "What 7" he laughed. "Are you a secret drinker? Are you locking temptation away?"

"Exactly!" I agreed demurely, lifting my face for his kiss.

So that was that. The cranberry goblet would stay where it was for awhile. Theie'd be no more Mrs. Dunnigan in the apartment, playing tricks. Just as there was no more Coralie.

I shivered suddenly, and for the first time since her death felt a vague depression.

TT WASN'T until the next morning -*■ that I really began to know what fear could be like.

I remember lying there with my eyes still closed, feeling, even at the moment of awakening, a slight uneasiness. Sensing something wrong in the empty apartment, in the bedroom enrply save for myself.

The uneasiness increased. And slowlv the conviction grew upon me that I had only to turn my head open my eyts, to find it there on my bedside table. The cranberry goblet.

It was ages before I could nerve myself to turn my head, inch by cautious inch, on the pillow. Eons, surely, before my reluctant eyelids opened, and—

Yes, it was there! Its contents lapping softly against the sides of the bowl, as if the glass had just been set down.

A sharp intake of breath, the startled leap of my heart. There was someone in the room! I ielt the presence strongly, though I could see no one.

I drew myself up slowly until my back was resting against the headboard

THE CRANBERRY GOBLET

of the bed, My eyes ranged the room warily. Was that a shadow, deeper than the other shadows, over in the corner? Was that my voice calling, "Coralie?"

No answer.

"It is you, Coralie." My head nodded wisely, my voice echoed eerily in the quiet bedroom. "You're trying to play on my .nerves, aren't you? Trying to frighten me into confession." I smiled cunningly. "Well, you won't succeed. You'll never succeed." Bravado crept into my voice. "I'm not so easily frightened."

I don't know how long I crouched there against the tufted satin headboard. But reason came back abruptly. I was like one roused sharply from a bad dream, who duubts the dream. Surely I had been dreaming?

But no. The goblet was there, its contents making a gurgling, contented sound in the stillness. It didn't frighten me now. Mrs. Dunnigan, of course! Somehow she had crept back.

I opened the Venetian blinds so the sunlight might pour in, and dressed swiftly. My spirits lifted with the sun, and I could scarcely credit my superstitious terror of the moment before.

Coralie was dead.

It was in a spirit of defiance then that I emptied the goblet and hid it on the highest shelf of one of the cabinets in the kitchen. To make the hiding place doubly secure, I first buried the glass deep in a canister full of flour.

There. Let Mrs. Dunnigan sneak into the apartment again and try to find it. Let Mrs. Dunnigan try— My smile of satisfaction slowly faded! But I'd locked the door of the court cabinet! And the key—the key was with Michael, in St. Louis!

A cold draught from nowhere played

against my back. The apartment was quiet, dreadfully quiet. I was afraid.