Date with Death Read online

  Jonas caught the girl’s shaking arm firmly and pushed her back onto the sofa. “Take it easy. Here—drink this.”

  He put his julep to her lips. She gulped part of it down and pushed the cup away.

  “Miss Olive—what happened?”

  “Yes, for God’s sake, Olive, you old fool, don’t just sit there! What happened?”

  Jonas glanced for an instant at the two girls across the room. They were motionless, their faces blank unrevealing masks, curiously isolated, as if they were not there at all.

  “I can’t see that I’m half as much of an old fool as you are, Tinsley,” Miss Olive’s placid childlike voice was only mildly reproving. “I can’t understand why you’re all acting this way. I haven’t said anything you all wouldn’t have known if you’d listened to our little radio station this morning as I did. Perhaps I shouldn’t have brought it up at all. Papa always said good conversation is impersonal, you ought never to mention death and politics in society when there are strangers present. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

  “Perhaps you’d better go on, now, Miss Oliphant,” Jonas said. “What was the rest of it?”

  He didn’t need to look at Elizabeth or Jenny. He could feel them coming to some kind of life again.

  “Well, that was all there was to it, Dr. Smith. It said that Gordon Darcy’s body was found dead out in the cottage that belongs to those new people that everybody thinks are so attractive, that came here five years ago and bought the Lacy place on Charles Street before they bought the place out in the country. And it must be very embarrassing for them. Though the man on the radio said they were away, and that just makes it worse in my opinion. And it didn’t say he committed suicide, but for his own sake and theirs I hope nobody thinks he didn’t, because it’s not very attractive to think anybody else did it. I’ve lived in Annapolis all my life, and I’ve never heard of anyone we know setting out to murder any one else.”

  Miss Olive paused and looked at Philippa Van Holt.

  “And of course I had no way of knowing you were going to be so upset about it. I knew he was a friend of yours, but I didn’t know he was a close friend.”

  Philippa Van Holt’s eyes were closed for a moment. She opened them then, staring down at the floor. When she looked at Miss Olive the expression on her face was a mixture of bitterness and pity, slowly rising anger and contempt.

  “He was more than a close friend, Miss Olive.” She spoke slowly and with deliberate emphasis. “It’s something you wouldn’t understand. I loved the guy. In fact, Miss Olive, I was married to him.”

  “Oh dear… oh dear me!” Miss Olive said hastily. “I…I had no idea—”

  “No, you wouldn’t have. You don’t have any idea of anything. I’m telling you I was married to him. We both had our jobs to do. In a place like this you get along better if you look glamorous and unmarried. People do more for you. If you’re just another couple you can shift for yourself, or go to hell—nobody cares. And we didn’t lie about it. In New York or Hollywood anybody who knows anything knows about us. All you had to do was look in any writers’ Who’s Who.”

  She bent her head, took her handkerchief out of her bag and raised it to her eyes. When she looked up again the mascara from her wet lashes was in dark smudges.

  “I had a job to do. I had to get material for my story. None of the men around here would have taken me out if they knew I was married and Gordon was just around the corner.”

  She put her head down in her hands. After a moment she pulled herself forward and got to her feet.

  “Where is he, does anybody know? Where can I find him?”

  “Well, I imagine the police would know.” Miss Olive was happy again, and helpful. “And I imagine Dr. Smith would be glad to go along with you. I don’t think it’s quite suitable for a young woman, even if she is a widow, to go by herself. My—”

  “Oh, stop it!” Philippa turned on her angrily, and caught herself. “I’m sorry.—Go with me, will you? Please.”

  “Of course.” Jonas was aware of the quick movement of Elizabeth’s head as she turned it toward him, and the sound of her breath as she drew it in sharply.

  “Let’s go then.”

  Philippa went blindly to the door. She stopped there and turned back.

  “But listen to me, all of you. You too, Miss Olive. You listen to me.” Her voice rose sharply. “Gordon did not commit suicide. It’s the last thing in the world he’d ever have even thought of doing. Somebody did kill him—here in Annapolis, Miss Olive—and somebody’s going to pay for it. And just because you think suicide is nicer than murder, Miss Olive, is no sign anybody’s going to write this off. Come on, Dr. Smith.”

  As Jonas followed her across the hall Miss Olive’s voice floated like childish thistledown after them. “Dear goodness, Tinsley. It just goes to show—”

  “Olive, will you shut your fool mouth? Wetherby! Where’s that black scoundrel?”

  Jonas looked back to see the old Negro crossing the hall, with another silver cup on another silver tray.

  “Here I am, Professor, sir, an’ here’s your las’ drink. An’ you best mind yourself, black as your heart is, you best mind yourself what you’re doin’ an’ what you’re sayin’.”

  As Jonas opened the door for Philippa Van Holt he was glad there was another person in the Blanton-Darrell House who was not afraid of its owner.

  “You drive, will you?”

  She spoke with an apathetic bitterness that he thought was more disturbing than if she’d broken down and wept. She sat hunched forward, her mouth set, one hand rubbing her ankle, her eyes narrowed, staring moodily at the instrument panel, a determined and bitter young woman. He didn’t doubt that she meant somebody was going to pay and that she’d be ruthless in seeing that somebody did.

  He got in under the wheel. Coming around the curve up the center of the cobblestone drive were the two midshipmen he’d seen come earlier and leave. They were two troubled and unhappy young men, obviously on a mission that was hard for both of them.

  He switched on the ignition. “Tell me about Tom,” he said.

  “Tom? You mean Tom Darrell?”

  She came slowly back from the dark place her mind had been in. In the mirror over the windshield Jonas saw the midshipmen slow down, waiting for him to move along before they came on to the house.

  “Where to?” he asked. “Do you know where we go? Is East-port the nearest headquarters?”

  She didn’t answer at once. She was staring down at her lap and the dark wet stain that had spread over her knees and almost to the hem of her flared skirt.

  “Home, so I can change, I guess. I’d better not go over there reeking of whisky. They’ll think I’m drunk.”

  “All right. Where’s that?”

  She glanced at him with a faintly ironical lift of her brows.

  “I forget you’re a stranger here. I live with that screwy dame, in her father’s house, over on St. John’s Street across College Avenue. Miss Olive’s ancestral mansion. Papa’s been dead a thousand years but he still lives there. Or his ghost does. You know, it’s crazy, but sometimes I think if she quotes the old gentleman again I’ll scream. And her facts. I’ve learned more unrelated and inconsequential nonsense from her than I ever knew existed. Birds don’t have any red or blue pigment in their feathers. I’ll bet you didn’t know that. It’s just the light.”

  She closed her eyes and took a long deep breath.

  “You go up Prince George Street to College Avenue. It’s the little yellow brick house behind the State Archives Building.”

  Moving the long car around the curve and past the brick walk leading to his own front door in the wing, Jonas saw the midshipmen reflected in the mirror go up the steps, their white caps off, and go on in. They looked like a pair of reluctant Job’s comforters, one holding back for the other.

  “You ask
ed me about Tom. He’s okay. Midshipman First Class, a three-striper if you know what that means. It means he’s what they call high grease, a good all-around guy, academics and aptitude, one of the top midshipmen of the Brigade. He graduates this June.”

  She stopped a moment. Then she said less apathetically, “I hope to God he’s not in trouble.”

  “What makes you think he is?”

  Jonas asked it as casually as he could. He had been thinking about it more seriously than he would like Miss Van Holt to know.

  “I’ve got eyes. Haven’t you? Something’s wrong. Usually that place swarms with midshipmen on liberty after Chapel Sunday noon. Tom’s always home unless he has the duty, and you heard Professor Darrell tell Jenny she was lying because he had it yesterday. It didn’t take microscopic powers of observation to see that both Jenny and Elizabeth were scared out of their wits. If you’re a doctor, you ought to be able to see that as well as me. I’m just a writer, but it’s my job to see things. Elizabeth was sitting on ground glass waiting for him to come. She forgot all about Miss Olive’s making her look like a fool, springing the job business out in open meeting. Or didn’t you notice that either?”

  She gave him a mocking sidelong glance.

  “Are you the strong silent type, Dr. Smith? Or is it just the extension of your bedside manner, acquired with long years of suffering and patience?”

  “Meaning, Miss Van Holt…?”

  “Meaning you didn’t open your mouth twice at the Darrells’. You just sat like a—”

  “Bump on a log, is the usual—”

  “I avoid the usual as much as possible, doctor. That doesn’t apply, anyway. You’re alive. I don’t think you miss much. That’s why I’d like you to be on my side in what I’m going to do.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  She was silent for a moment. “I haven’t figured that one out yet. When I do I’ll let you know. Turn right. That’s the house down there. Couldn’t you guess it even if you didn’t know?”

  Jonas drew up in front of a small weatherbeaten yellow brick house half hidden in a snowy avalanche of silver moon roses, the white picket fence a misty cloud of blue and violet irises.

  “I thought it and Miss Olive were enchantingly picturesque, when I perjured my soul to get her to rent me two rooms,” Philippa said moodily. “I told her I was one of the Van Holts, whoever the hell they are. They must be okay, she even lets her maid get breakfast for me. And I’m allowed Papa’s sanctum to receive my… my gentlemen guests in.”

  She caught her breath in a quick laugh that was more like a sob than laughter, and fumbled in her bag for her key. Before she got it in the lock the door opened. A colored maid with her hat and coat on stood aside for them to come in.

  “There’s somebody here to see you, Miss Van Holt,” she said stolidly. “He’s waiting in the library. I detained myself from a previous engagement to go to church. He wouldn’t go, and Miss Olive don’t want strangers messing around in her things when she’s out.”

  “Thank you, Elsie.”

  Philippa took a dollar bill out of her bag. The girl took it, only partly mollified, and went on out, letting the screen door bang behind her.

  “I think Elsie knows I’m not one of the Van Holts,” Philippa remarked. “And about Gordon, too. It’s funny how much they know, isn’t it?”

  Jonas opened the door. It was an idea that had crossed his own mind at the Darrells’ as he’d watched the immaculate and aristocratic figure of old Wetherby.

  “This is the library. It’s where Papa’s ghost—”

  Philippa pushed open the small door at the left of the narrow hall next to the wrought-iron umbrella stand.

  “Oh,” she said. She stood poised, half-way across the worn threshold.’ “Oh,” she said again.

  Jonas Smith came to an abrupt stop behind her. He caught his breath. It took all the self-control he could muster not to do more. Before, he had merely looked over Philippa Van Holt’s sleek perfumed shoulder. He stared over it now, at the man who was standing motionless behind the marble-topped table in the center of the room. It was a ghost standing there, but not the ghost of Miss Olive’s father. The man was very tall and strikingly handsome, with a suntanned face and wavy blond hair. Jonas’s eyes went mechanically down to his hand, to see if he still wore the green scarab ring and the gold bracelet. He had last seen this ghost lying in a pool of his own blood, quite dead, on the green-tiled floor of the Milnors’ cottage on Arundel Creek. Gordon Darcy then wore expensive and perfectly tailored evening clothes. His ghost had somehow changed to a blue chalk-stripe business suit, as expensive looking and as perfectly tailored.

  “I thought buzzards only operated from a sense of sight,” Philippa Van Holt said calmly. “It’s one of Miss Olive’s favorite cut-out facts.”

  She went on into the room. The brown eyes of the man behind the table moved with her until she said, “Dr. Jonas Smith… my brother-in-law Gordon—I mean Franklin—Grymes. And Grymes is their name, not Darcy. Dr. Smith, Mr. Grymes.”

  CHAPTER 6

  “How do you do?” Jonas said. He spoke as calmly as he could, hoping his recovery was quick and adequate. As he had never, so far as Philippa Van Holt knew, seen the dead man, a startled amazement at seeing his living replica could only seem strange to her to say the least. To his relief, Franklin Grymes gave him a look almost as startled as his own.

  “I see you people have heard about each other,” Philippa said easily. She put her bag and gloves on the table. “I didn’t know people like Agatha Reed told their old beaux about their new ones and vice versa.”

  “Leave Miss Reed out of this, Philippa.”

  Jonas breathed an inward sigh of relief. If Franklin Grymes was engaged to Agatha Reed, if that fact explained his shocked surprise to Philippa’s satisfaction, it was very good with him.

  “Congratulations,” he said, with no regrets at all.

  “Thank you.” Grymes turned back to his sister-in-law. “What’s happened, Philippa? What are the police doing in Gordon’s room?”

  “You haven’t heard? You were down at his hotel room and didn’t ask anybody?”

  “Damn it, Philippa, of course I asked.” His face turned a slow brick-red. “I asked, but you know what hotels are like. They don’t want anybody to know if there’s been trouble. I didn’t want to get mixed up with the police until I found out what the hell’s going on.”

  “Affectionate brother and faithful friend,” Philippa said deliberately. “It wouldn’t be because…”

  She looked at him in silent appraisal for a moment.

  “You know one of Miss Olive’s facts?”

  “Who the hell is Miss Olive? What—”

  “Keep your temper, darling. Miss Olive’s my landlady. She knows a lot of facts. Not of life but about it. One of them might be interesting to you. Even to the police—who knows?”

  She shrugged her shoulders lightly.

  “It’s about fingerprints. The right hand prints of identical twins resemble each other much more closely than the right and left hand prints of the same individual twin. That’s interesting, isn’t it? She read it in a book.”

  The Gothic walnut clock on the mantel, under the portrait of a forbidding and tight-lipped gentleman with a bald head and mutton-chop whiskers, ticked loudly and ominously in the silence there in the small room. Grymes was looking at his sister-in-law, his eyes narrowed. He looked steadily at her, the clock beating a deliberate tick, tock, once to every twice Jonas could count the pulse beat in the vein along his right temple. Philippa looked at him as steadily. The animosity between the two was as alive and as feline as the grey tiger cat who had been lying on the window seat in the sun and was now rising, arching its back, sharpening its claws on the linen cushion it had been lying on.

  Franklin Grymes broke the silence.

  “Just what in the hel
l do you think you mean by that, Philippa?”

  He spoke slowly and distinctly. There was a dangerous quiet about his voice that was as ominous as the clock ticking in the silence had been before.

  “I don’t mean anything, dear.” Philippa’s voice was even. “Miss Olive’s facts never mean anything. They’re always unconnected with anything that’s going on at the time she produces them. I’m keeping in the tradition. Any implication is in the mind of the hearer. However, if it should be of any interest to you—since you yourself are an identical twin—let me be the first to tell you that your brother’s fingerprints are a matter of public record.”

  She paused for an instant. “—I don’t suppose he mentioned that to you when you had dinner with him last night, did he?”

  Franklin Grymes had not taken his burning eyes off her face.

  “You devil,” he said softly. “You she devil.”

  “All right! Call me a devil if you like!”

  She turned on him as if he had lashed her into the proof of it.

  “But my husband’s dead! Somebody killed him! And if you cared anything about him you wouldn’t be here now. You wouldn’t have sneaked away from his hotel room and come here! If you’d cared about anybody but yourself you’d have gone straight to the police where I’m going now. You were down here last night and you’re down here now. Where were you the rest of the time?”

  “I was in Baltimore. I can prove it!”

  “You needn’t shout it at me.”

  Her tone was suddenly so matter-of-fact that it made him seem to be shouting much louder than he was.

  “You don’t have to prove anything to me. It’s the police who’ll want proof, not me. And Dr. Jonas Smith isn’t interested in our little family quarrels. Unless he thinks he’d better warn Miss Agatha Reed what a… Oh well, the hell with it.”

  She broke off and went quickly to the door.

  “I’m going to change my dress, and then I’m going to the police. Dr. Smith is going with me. You can go wherever you like. Back to the hotel room if you think it’ll do you any good. But get out of my sight. I don’t want ever to see you again. You look like him, but you’re not like him. And I can’t bear it. Do you hear? Get out! Get out of this house!”