The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree

An hour later, garden chores done and Clyde whistled home from Racer’s pasture, Verna settled down at the kitchen table with a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich and two molasses cookies she’d saved back from the batch she took to the Dahlias’ meeting that afternoon—which were all gone, of course. The Dahlias loved anything sweet, and these were just sweet enough, and spicy. She always put more ginger in them than most people did.

Finished with her meal, she settled down to drink her coffee and read her library book—The Circular Staircase, by Mary Roberts Rinehart. She had already read every single one of the detective novels the Darling Library had on its shelves (not a great many—it was a small library) and was reading the best ones for the second and third time. But that didn’t spoil the pleasure, for it was her opinion that a good novel, especially a good mystery, deserved more than one reading. Verna was especially fond of sleuths like Miss Rachel Innes in The Circular Staircase, who was clear-sighted and practical and knew exactly what questions to ask, even when she was scared half out of her wits. And Maude Silver, in The Grey Mask, by Patricia Wentworth. Miss Silver was a former governess, fond of knitting and quoting Tennyson, who had set up shop as a private inquiry agent. Verna could almost imagine herself in the role of Miss Silver (except that she’d never had the patience for knitting) and fervently hoped that Miss Wentworth would write more books.

Her reading was interrupted by the telephone. Two longs and a short. It was Verna’s ring, although the four other Larkspur Lane families who shared the line—the Wilsons next door, then the Newmans, the Ferrells, and the Snows at the other end of the block (their house fronted on Rosemont, but they were on the Larkspur line)—were probably picking up their receivers and putting their hands over the mouthpieces so nobody could hear them breathing and know they were listening in. This effort at secrecy was silly, of course, because everybody listened in and everybody else knew it. Some folks now were getting private lines, but most of Verna’s friends and neighbors said they would rather be on a party line. How else would they get the news?

The call was from Myra May, on duty at the switchboard in the diner’s back room. There were four operators on the exchange, Myra May, Violet Sims, Olive LeRoy (Maude LeRoy’s youngest daughter), and Lenore Looper (Olive’s friend). Each worked an eight-hour shift, so the board was covered twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. There wasn’t that much telephone traffic, though, so Myra May and Violet also waited tables and handled the counter at the diner, also not a very demanding job, now that the diner’s business had fallen off.

“Verna, is that you?” Myra May asked when Verna said, “Hello.” With so many people sharing a line, it always paid to know who was talking.

“Yes, it’s me, Myra May,” Verna replied. “What’s going on?”

“Doc Roberts called for Buddy Norris. The doc asked me to ask you to go next door and tell Mr. Norris that Buddy’ll be late gettin’ home tonight, but not to worry. Doc Roberts is patchin’ him up. He’ll drive him home when he’s done.”

“Patching him up?” Verna asked, surprised. “Why? What happened?”

“I don’t know the details, but there was some shootin’ out at Ralph Murphy’s place late this afternoon.”

“Shooting!” Verna exclaimed. She knew perfectly well that Myra May wasn’t going to tell her everything all at once. She always strung the story out as long as she could, so that everybody who wanted to get on the line had time to get there, and she didn’t have to repeat. In Darling, this was a much appreciated courtesy.

“Right,” Myra May said. “Shootin’. As in guns. Bang bang.”

“Well, my heavens. Did Buddy get shot? I hope he isn’t too badly hurt.”

“Nope. It wasn’t Buddy that got shot.”

“Well, who?”

“The Negro who busted out of the prison farm. Didn’t kill him, though. At least not so far as Doc Roberts said.”

“What happened to Buddy, then?”

“Ran his motorcycle through Ralph’s corncrib and broke his arm.”

Verna had to stifle a laugh. “The same one that got broke before?”

“Nope. The other one. Jed Snow drove him back to town and dropped him off at Doc Roberts’ office. Guess Buddy’ll have to get somebody to fetch his motorcycle later. It’s still stuck in the wall of Ralph’s corncrib.”

Verna, curious asked, “What was Jed Snow doing out there?”

“Lucy phoned and asked him to come out. I didn’t take that call, it was when Violet was on the board this afternoon, but Violet said that Lucy was half hysterical. Jed is Ralph Murphy’s cousin, you know. On his mother’s side. He’s out there a lot. Him and Ralph go hunting.”