Date with Death Read online

  “Well, here we are, Sergeant,” he said. They drew up at the entry door. Jonas got out. The Simple Truth, he was thinking… but how to tell it? How to tell it so Sergeant Digges would get the picture of the kid trapped in a lonely house on the deserted creek with a guy who’d been drinking and knew what he wanted. How could he give the right meaning to the muddy prints by the phone where Jenny Darrell had called her brother for help, the stains in Natalie’s bedroom where she’d ripped off her torn dance dress . . .

  He threw open the door into the living room and stopped short, so unexpectedly that Sergeant Digges bumped into him from behind. The front door onto the terrace was open. Just outside it, as surprised to see him as he was to see her, was Myrtle, the Fergusons’ colored maid. And the floor was spotless. There was no sign of dried mud or silt, no visible print of the small slender foot of a frantic and terrified young girl.

  “Doctor? ’Deed, doctor, I wasn’ ’specting you today. It was my understanding you was gone into town and was planning to stay there. That was the wrong information I received. That’s what I been telling this woman who been callin’ you up ever five-ten minutes the las’ hour and one half.”

  Her eyes moved past Jonas to Sergeant Digges in the door behind him. The friendly ebony shine on her broad cheerful face dimmed as if it had been a bright mirror someone had blown his breath on. Its lightness and gaiety congealed to a stolid and resentful defensiveness.

  Nor was Sergeant Digges’s approach, Jonas thought, in his best manner.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m doing my job, that’s what I’m doing. You jus’ ask th’ doctor if you don’t believe me.”

  Myrtle Hawkins’s defense was spirited and equally tactless.

  “I been on my vacation while he been here, and I’m cleanin’ up th’ mess he left. Because I got to go in town and help my uncle until Miz’ Ferguson get home when she get home.”

  “Your uncle?”

  “Yes, my uncle. My uncle’s Mr. Wetherby work for Professor Darrell. Everybody who is anybody knows my uncle an’ Professor Darrell. The Professor he sick. That’s why I’m going in help out. You can ask my uncle if you don’t believe me.”

  “Did he tell you to clean—”

  “He didn’t tell me nothin.’ Nobody have to tell me what I got to do. I know my own self. I been around here all my life. I know my job. An’ I know how a man an’ a dog eatin’ an’ sleepin’ an’ in an’ out’s goin’ to leave things. An’ Miz Ferguson tol’ me to have the place ready when she get back.”

  “And thanks a lot, Myrtle.” Jonas went on into the room. “I’m afraid we did leave it a mess. You can finish up and go along. I’ll see you at the Darrells’, and we’ll settle up then if that’s okay with you.”

  “That’s okay with me, doctor.” She glowered at Sergeant Digges. “I jus’ don’ like people make pretence I’m somewhere I ain’ got no business to be doin’ somethin’ I ain’ ought to be doin’.”

  She marched across the room to the kitchen door.

  “I know one thing. I ain’t goin’ round murderin’ people. Nobody ain’ goin’ to accuse me of it. I was home in the bed asleep when it happened. I don’ know nothin’ at all about it.”

  She banged the door behind her. Jonas looked at the Sergeant.

  “Okay. So I lost my temper,” Sergeant Digges said. “It was my mistake. I never got any place getting mad yet, and I expect I’m a little old to start. Now where was it you said you were, doctor?”

  “I was in bed asleep. Like Myrtle. Back here.”

  Jonas went to the passage door and opened it. The pine floor was shining clean.

  “I woke up at eighteen past one by the clock on the table there.”

  He pushed open the door of the end bedroom and pointed across the bed to the pine table beside it.

  “I went out on the porch and saw a light at the Milnors’. I thought I’d better go over and have a look. They asked me to keep an eye on the place. I went across the marsh and through the orchard—”

  “The dog go with you?”

  “No. I left him here.”

  “What gun did you take?”

  “None. I didn’t happen to have one here in the first place. I’m a peace-loving guy in the second, Sergeant. I never pack a gun unless I plan to shoot something with it.”

  “I see,” Sergeant Digges said. He went deliberately back along the passage into the living room, and stopped in front of the gun cupboard next to the fireplace. He tried the locked door.

  “The key’s under the clock on the mantel,” Jonas said. “But be careful. Ferguson doesn’t like people monkeying around with his private property.”

  Sergeant Digges turned and gave him a wry and skeptical half-smile.

  “You seem mighty cheerful to me, all of a sudden, doctor,” he said. “If there’s some joke I dare say I could use it too.”

  Jonas sobered his face abruptly. There was no denying it. The reprieve from the Simple Truth given him by Myrtle’s devotion to her duty and respect for her uncle Mr. Wetherby had buoyed him up immensely. Nevertheless he had not meant to be so obviously transparent as all that.

  “I don’t know any jokes, Sergeant.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Except—”

  The sudden jangling of the telephone cut him off.

  “Three rings?”

  Sergeant Digges took a quick step and glanced at the dial.

  “That’s you. Better answer it.”

  Jonas had planned to let it ring. There was only one woman he could think of whose voice he would like to hear, and that not with Sergeant Digges around. But Elizabeth Darrell would not be likely to call him there. Maybe her grandfather… He went quickly to the phone and picked it up.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Jonas! Angel… you poor lamb! What have I done!”

  It was Philippa Van Holt. Her voice was high-pitched, urgent in spite of the exaggerated persiflage that veiled it, and it resounded from the country instrument through the room. Sergeant Digges could have been on the porch and not have missed a word.

  “Look, Jonas! Believe me, I had no idea the gendarmes were going to haul you in when I said I thought the description the fisherman was giving sounded like you! I’d never have said it if I’d thought! And I never mentioned Agatha. I left her and that beautiful character my brother-in-law entirely out of it. And I’m appalled! I’m stricken! I was just on my way to see you when I ran into Tom Darrell on his way back to the Academy. He told me that grim creature had taken you off somewhere. My God, you can’t believe I think you knew anything about it! It never crossed my mind, I swear it didn’t.—I haven’t made it awkward for you, darling, have I? Tell me I haven’t!”

  —Not as awkward as you’re making it now, Jonas thought dismally. He pressed the ear piece closer to his head to try to cut off the metallic reverberations of her voice.

  “Not at all, Philippa,” he said. “Not in—”

  “Oh, thank the Lord! I’d never forgive myself.” She was breathlessly off again. “I tried to back water the minute I’d said it, and I thought I’d got away with it. But he’s—”

  “Look,” Jonas put in firmly. “He’s right here. Better be careful what you say about him. It might be awkward—”

  “Oh, dear! I’m so sorry! Well, good-bye. Give him my love, and I’ll see you tonight. ’Bye!”

  Jonas put the phone down. His eyes were fastened out of the window on the end of the pier. The Milnors’ rowboat that he had left tied there the night before was gone. He hadn’t noticed it till then. He turned away from the window, perplexed and not without a vague sense of misgiving, waiting for Sergeant Digges to make some comment on Philippa Van Holt’s airy lack of discretion.

  But Sergeant Digges apparently had no comment to make.

  “You and I were talking about some joke,” he said instead
, going back to where Philippa’s unfortunate interruption had come in. “I was just afraid maybe you were making some mistake. I thought I’d like to set you straight, in case you were.”

  “Mistake?” Jonas asked.

  “Yeah. We all make ’em, doctor.” Sergeant Digges went on deliberately. “I thought maybe you might be making one. I thought maybe you were thinking I hadn’t been around here early this morning, and not being in the big time hadn’t bothered to make pictures, and get a cast of the lady’s foot. So I just wanted to set you right. Who was she, doctor?”

  CHAPTER 10

  “—Who was she, doctor?”

  There was no surface change in the deliberation and apparent friendliness of Sergeant Digges’s manner, but the change was there. Jonas sensed it with a subtle quickening of all his perceptive faculties. The time had come, and seriously, for him to fish or cut bait. If he was going to tell the Simple Truth, now was the time to tell it. But he hesitated, not because of any fundamental confusion but because, in some curious and involved way, he suddenly had the impression that something was going on in Sergeant Digges’s mind, in spite of all his canniness and insight, that was going to make the Simple Truth as Jonas had it to tell come as a hell of a shock to him.

  “Maybe I’d better say right here and now, doctor, that we don’t believe in killing people in Anne Arundel County,” Sergeant Digges said evenly. “And nobody’s getting away with it—not even if it was my own mother. I thought I’d just better make that clear, doctor. So I think we’d better quit all this horsing around. There was a woman here last night. She either shot this Darcy Grymes and came over to use the telephone, or she came here before he was shot. It was either one way or the other, I figure. And if I was in your place, doctor, and had anything to say, I’d say it. It doesn’t look to me like you’re in a very good spot right now. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I wasn’t going to have to ask you to come along with me for a few days, until we find out just which way it was.”

  “You mean you think I had a hand in shooting Darcy Grymes, Sergeant?” Jonas inquired coolly.

  “I’m asking you who the woman was who came here last night, used your telephone and got clothes out of Mrs. Ferguson’s closet. Clothes maybe but shoes for certain. She was in her stocking feet when she went in there, and there’s no sign of her staying or coming back, and there’s a pair of those sandals in there that don’t have any heels, just a strap, and one of them’s black suede and the other’s dark blue. So it looks like in a hurry she made a mistake and grabbed two that weren’t mates, standing next to each other on the rack by the baseboard. That’s just what we call routine investigation, doctor. So what I’m asking you is, who was she?”

  “Who was she… or else. Is that it, Sergeant?” Jonas went on quickly. “Assuming that I know her and that I was here and not already on my way across the marsh, if I don’t tell you you’ll throw me in the can? In that case, Sergeant, the answer’s easy. Nuts to you, my friend. I’ve never been in jail, and it might be an interesting experience.”

  “Not if you figure on practicing medicine around here, doctor.”

  “I don’t know. Doctors aren’t allowed to advertise. I’m not sure this wouldn’t do the trick.” Jonas grinned easily. “There are a lot of angles to things, Sergeant.”

  Sergeant Digges regarded him calmly for a moment. Then he said, “Miss Van Holt’s a very attractive young woman, isn’t she?”

  “She’s a knock-out,” Jonas agreed. “Of course I don’t know her well. I just met her this noon.”

  “So you told me, I believe. Or she did, one. I always figured comforting the widows and orphans was the preacher’s job, not the doctor’s. Maybe things have changed. Do most women call you angel and darling three hours after they first meet you, doctor?”

  “And bring me sandwiches?” Jonas added tranquilly. “It looks like it, doesn’t it, Sergeant. But as you said, we all make mistakes. If you think Miss Van Holt, or Mrs. Darcy Grymes, is an old friend of mine, you’re making one. It’s just my sympathetic manner, Sergeant.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  Sergeant Digges turned toward the door. “And you say you never knew her husband.”

  “Never.”

  “Okay. Then let’s go. You say you went over the marsh and through the orchard? And didn’t take either your dog or a gun?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You didn’t happen to go by car?”

  “I walked in,” Jonas said. He paused an instant. “But I came back by boat, in case you’re interested. I see you’ve taken it away from the end of the pier. Or is that just routine investigation too?”

  “That’s right,” said Sergeant Digges. “Along with sending fingerprints over to Washington to the FBI. In case you’re interested.”

  It was the second time a warning signal clicked on and off in the back of Jonas Smith’s mind.

  “I don’t know why I should be, particularly, Sergeant. Do you?”

  “In that case there’s no use your worrying. Come on, doctor. I’d like to see just how it was you got over to the Milnors’.”

  They did not, to Jonas’s relief, cross the marsh. After one trial it was apparent that in ordinary shoes neither of them could have kept his footing on the cross-sections of the row of creosoted pilings that formed the barrier for the Ferguson-Milnor terrapin venture.

  “We’ll play it safe and take the car, doctor,” Sergeant Digges said.

  Jonas said nothing. It was as clear as daylight that if the Sergeant believed him at all, it was with so many reservations that anything he could say would sound as if he did too much protest. In the broad light of day he wondered himself how he had managed the crossing, in the moonlight, without slipping off into the mud and mallows and moccasins. And it was not until they had gone back and gone in the long way that Sergeant Digges referred to it again.

  “I don’t say anybody couldn’t go over there that way, doctor—in the dark and all. A lot of people do things under what you might call emotional strain they couldn’t do in a lifetime of their right senses.”

  “I don’t get you,” Jonas said coolly. “If it’s me you’re talking about I wasn’t under any emotional strain.”

  “That’s just what I’m saying.” Sergeant Digges could not have been more placid. “I never did like to go on circumstantial evidence. I like to have facts to back it up, myself.”

  He had brought the car to a stop in the Milnors’ lane at the end of the old wagon track through the woods and was opening the door to get out. Jonas glanced at him abruptly, started to speak and decided to shut up, wondering how many times Digges was going to have to hit him over the head with it before he finally got the word. He had it now. For some strange and to Jonas unknown but not unstaggering reason, Sergeant Digges appeared to think he was accessory before as well as after Gordon Darcy Grymes’s sudden and violent departure from this life. He not only seemed seriously to think it, but apparently he had every intention of acting upon it. Incredible as it seemed to Jonas himself, it suddenly occurred to him that nobody but a fool and a dolt could go on overlooking the fact as if it did not exist.

  “Look here, Sergeant,” he said curtly. He’d got out of the car and was standing in the lane waiting for Digges to come around on his side. But Sergeant Digges was waiting for Roddy bounding up the road to join them.

  “Come on, boy—come on!” he called. He turned and came over to Jonas.

  “What were you saying, doctor?”

  —What was he saying? Jonas thought. His momentary indignation had obscured the fact that what he had intended to say was pointless unless he said the whole thing. If he said the whole thing now, having not said it before, he would be in the not very admirable position of having stuck by Elizabeth’s little sister Jenny up to the point where he was on the spot himself… So far and no farther. He looked at the Sergeant, his jaw tigh
tening. It was probably precisely and exactly what he was counting on. More of his damned pseudo-psychology… and it had come damned close to working.

  “Nothing,” he said shortly.

  It was clear, he decided, that he had better move more warily, or he would find himself behind a camouflaged eight-ball, if he didn’t in fact find it attached to one ankle by a short heavy chain.

  “Nothing at all,” he said. “This is the way we go, if you still want to know how I came over last night.”

  “That’s what we’re here for, doctor.”

  “I came out right along here, beyond the Milnors’ jalopy by the big woodpile.”

  Sergeant Digges’s face was expressionless. “Okay. You show me.”

  Jonas strode forward briskly. He was still irritated, at himself for a bungling fool and at Sergeant Digges for his air of tacit unbelief whether genuine or assumed, and his kind of galling patience that seemed to imply he had all the rope in the world and time to play it out until Jonas Smith chose the proper moment to hang himself with it. He was coming along behind him now, throwing an occasional stick off into the woods for Roddy to retrieve, as if they were on an outing of the Crabtown Wildlife, Debating, Chowder, and Marching Society. And as the wagon road curved around a clump of holly and dogwood trees, Jonas took a final step over a lush glossy cluster of poison ivy entwined with honeysuckle in the middle of the road, and came to an abrupt halt.

  In front of him, at the right hand side of the road, was the woodpile. The woodpile was where it had been the night before. The old broken-down jalopy that had been parked beside it was not there.

  “This it?”

  Sergeant Digges was just behind him.

  “Yes,” Jonas said. He looked around him, perplexed, and down the road. “This is it. Did you people move the Milnors’ old car? It was here last night. Right here by this woodpile.”