Date with Death

by Zenith Brown

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Of course I am. What the—”

  “Just don’t get excited, doctor. I’m asking you a civil question, that’s all.”

  “I’m not excited,” Jonas said. “I’m just telling you. The Milnors’ car was here last night when I came up through there.”

  He pointed to the right of the road farther along the lane.

  “That’s interesting, now, doctor. Not the Milnors’ car. It’s over in the garage at the end of the road—where it was last night, with the rear end propped up on a couple of old orange crates. The wheels off, and the engine out.”

  Jonas listened silently.

  “I expect if there was a car here, it didn’t belong to the Milnors. And it wasn’t here when we came out last night. I was down along here myself and I didn’t see it.”

  Sergeant Digges paused and looked at Jonas.

  “You’re sure it wasn’t your own car you saw, doctor? The colored people over the way say they heard three cars come in and only two go out. Of course they don’t have any way of knowing who they belonged to…”

  “I forgot to tell you,” Jonas said equably. “I walked over.”

  He moved along a few steps and looked around. The poison ivy and honeysuckle along the grass strip between the bare wheel tracks was flourishing and apparently undisturbed. He kept in the tracks and went forward to where he had come up from the shore through the woods, Sergeant Digges following after him.

  “I came up this way,” he said. “If you want to go down and look, maybe you’ll see my tracks. I doubt it, though—I jumped from the last pile to the dry bank.”

  He looked back along the wagon road to the woodpile. The car had been there, a solid fact, no illusory trick of moonlight and shadow. Furthermore, he had heard it when it left. It came back to him now. It was when he’d got the beach bag and was leaving Natalie Ferguson’s room. He remembered going out on the porch, listening, and looking across the marsh, waiting to see the headlights shine through the trees, thinking it might be the police, wondering if someone else had called before he had, and then dismissing the whole thing because he saw no lights.

  What he had heard must have been the jalopy. Thinking of that, Jonas Smith scowled. It was a new factor in the situation, and a disturbing one. Whoever had driven that car in and hidden it off the lane in an unused wagon road might have done it for their own purposes… but they had not left without headlights for fun. Nobody would risk driving the narrow lane through the trees and over the marsh—even a white oyster-shell lane in the moonlight—without headlights except for some compelling reason; and the wagon track to the main lane had no oyster-shell and was ticklish at best. Jonas felt a sudden chill at his heart, thinking what might have happened. There could be another person around, an actual eyewitness perhaps, some one—maybe some two—who had been there and who knew enough to have felt the urge to get out as quietly and unobtrusively as possible before anyone caught them there.

  He listened to Sergeant Digges and Roddy crashing through the woods down to the marsh shore and back again. So far, whoever it had been had laid low and said nothing. That was a dangerous thing to count on. If whoever had been there did know something, had perhaps seen what he had seen or any part of it, they might keep still for a time, out of fear, perhaps, in case they themselves had no right to be there… and consciences might start to work just when Jenny, and Tom and Elizabeth, thought she was safe with no more worries. Or, at the other end of the scale, there was a thing called blackmail.

  Sergeant Digges was coming out of the woods back to the wagon road.

  “What time would you say it was you came through here, doctor?”

  “Half-past one or so,” Jonas said shortly. “I didn’t keep a stop watch on myself. It was twenty minutes past one when I waked up. Eighteen if you want it to the dot. Half-past would be pretty close.”

  “And you say you saw a car here in the road?”

  “That’s right. I took it for granted it was the Milnors’ old bus.”

  “And no one in it.”

  Jonas thought a moment. “I didn’t see anyone in it.”

  “And then you went through the orchard?”

  Jonas nodded. “That’s right. Like this.” He went along the road, as he had done in the early hours of the morning, until it came to an end at the Milnors’ clearing among the neat rows of young peach trees set out in the sunny slope to the creek. They went through the orchard and came to the oyster-shell road leading down to the cottage on the point.

  Gordon Darcy Grymes’ car was still where he had left it. Two blue-uniformed officers were sitting on the fenders, talking to a khaki-clad State trooper balanced on his motorcycle beside the county police car. A colored boy of about sixteen was sitting on the front bumper.

  Sergeant Digges nodded to them. He followed Jonas across the road and into the woods. They came up to the three-pronged tulip tree.

  “I stood right here,” Jonas said.

  He pointed down. There was no doubting someone had stood there. A pink lady-slipper was trampled into the ground and the branches of a small huckleberry at the base of the big tree were bruised and broken.

  “I didn’t want to go barging in if it was some friend of the Milnors who knew it was all right to come out when they were away. The car was just there, with the lights off. There was a light in the house, but everything was perfectly quiet. I stood here a while. Then I went over to the kitchen window to look in.”

  He went through the clump of dogwood and holly and across the cleared space under the pines to the cottage. He pointed down again.

  “I sure wrecked their mint patch.”

  The mint growing under the window and around the outdoor icebox against the whitewashed wall was crushed into the earth. One large flat foot with a ridged sole marking was firmly imprinted in the moist ground.

  “That’s mine. I looked in here. The door of the kitchen was open and the guy was stretched out on the floor. He looked dead to me, with blood all over the place. When I went inside and looked at him he had a gun by his hand—in it, as far as I could see. There wasn’t any question in my mind—he’d died instantly.”

  He was thinking as coolly and quickly as he could. By leaving out the three Darrells and telescoping events he could stick to the truth, even if it was not the whole truth. He could have done it with more inward assurance if he had not been haunted by the new knowledge that somewhere in the shadows, and no telling how near to him, someone else may have been watching too… that Jonas Smith may have been not only the observer but the observed.

  “And what time would you say that was, doctor?”

  “How the hell would I know, Sergeant?” He spoke irritably, and checked himself. “I keep telling you I didn’t have a stop watch with me. You could figure it out. It couldn’t have been very long.”

  “I’m just asking you.”

  Sergeant Digges turned to the group in the road. “Roy—come here.”

  As the colored lad got up from the bumper and started over, a car came through the wooded lane and braked to a dramatic stop half-way down to the cottage. The policemen straightened up, including Sergeant Digges. Dr. Jonas Smith straightened up too. Except for the car, and the stylish foot and elegant leg that first came out of it, he would not at the moment have recognized Philippa Van Holt. She had changed her clothes and taken off her makeup. She wore a black dress, unrelieved except for a short string of pearls around her throat, but it was one of those black dresses that did not need relief, especially on Philippa Van Holt. As a modern version of a widow’s weeds it was extremely effective, and with much of its suntan washed off her lovely face had a new pallor that was equally so. The violet shadows under her luminous brown eyes made them larger and appealingly sad.

  CHAPTER 11

  “You shouldn’t have come out here, Miss Van Holt.”
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br />   Sergeant Digges had left Jonas and the colored boy and was helping her the rest of the way out of her car.

  “I had to come some time, Captain. When Dr. Smith said you were out here, now seemed the best time. After all, you know, I’m not what you call the… the shattered type. I can take it.”

  “Where the hell does she get the brave little woman stuff?” Jonas thought. He had to admit it was effective. Even the colored boy was giving her a gloomy wall-eyed tribute. The two uniformed policemen had slid off the fender to their feet and the State trooper was standing beside his motorcycle. Jonas shook his head. Perhaps he was the one who was out of step. Just because he had seen her as sophisticate and she-devil was no reason for him to mistrust her present role, now that enough time had elapsed, very likely, for her to have an honest reaction from shock and bitterness to genuine grief and unhappiness. And she seemed anxious about him too. She smiled wanly. Then she came over to him and said softly under her breath, “I’m sorry as hell if I’ve got you mixed up with red tape. I didn’t mean to—believe me.”

  She turned quickly away from him, her eyes widening.

  “That’s… his car, isn’t it?”

  She looked at Sergeant Digges. “He must have driven out himself. Was somebody with him? Or did he meet someone out here? I don’t understand. He told me he was going to bed early because he wanted to be in Baltimore the first thing this morning.”

  “We’re not sure, Miss.” Sergeant Digges was grave. “What time did you see him last?”

  “At five o’clock. I went down and had a cocktail with him in his room. I didn’t stay long, because his brother was coming to have dinner with him at the Yacht Club, and his brother and I aren’t awfully good friends. Anyway they had some business to talk about and I had a dinner engagement of my own. But I talked to him again around ten. He said he was practically in bed then, and he certainly didn’t sound as if he had any idea of going out. I’m sure he would have told me, because we have sort of a… well, I don’t know what you call it, and it must sound odd to anybody who lives in a sweet place like Annapolis. What I mean is, we always told each other what we were doing. You see, Captain Digges, we understood each other.”

  She turned away quickly for an instant.

  “But I guess that doesn’t make sense to anybody but me. You see, in our jobs each of us had to be free to live his own life.”

  Jonas glanced at Sergeant Digges. His face had the same slightly wistful expression it had had when they were crossing the Severn Bridge, with everybody having Sunday off to go fishing except Sergeant Digges.

  “I just can’t imagine him coming out here to meet anybody.”

  Philippa looked at his car again.

  “And he must have. Or they’d have taken his car and ditched it somewhere, wouldn’t they?”

  “—Except that we can’t find his car keys,” Sergeant Digges said. “And unless whoever shot him was in walking distance, or got a lift from somebody who was… You didn’t give anybody a lift into town, did you, doctor? You see I’m still trying to figure out what made you leave so quick.”

  “I told you why I left,” Jonas said patiently. “And I didn’t give anybody a lift. I went in alone—me and Roddy. And I don’t particularly get your logic, Sergeant.”

  He had to raise his voice a little. Roddy, having left the rabbit he had been tracing through the orchard, was down on the pier, running back and forth along it, barking excitedly at something in the water, stopping and bracing himself to dive, changing his mind, whining and barking again.

  “You say two cars went out of here. I don’t see you need to bring mine in at all.—Shut up, Roddy! Quiet!”

  “What’s he after, do you suppose?”

  Sergeant Digges started across the lawn toward the pier. Roddy, silenced, was still trying to make up his mind to jump.

  “Go get it, boy! Get it, Roddy!”

  The dog dived off into the creek. His tail was a feathered black-and-white spotted sword of Excalibur waving up over the muddy churning water. Jonas’s heart sank to a new and dismal low.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Sergeant Digges said. “—Excuse me, miss. He’s got something. Come on, boy. Bring it. That’s a boy.”

  Roddy, wading up out of the shallow mud-bottomed creek to the shore, stopped to shake himself, bounded happily up the bank and across the grass to his master, and laid Gordon Darcy Grymes’ sodden pigskin key case at his master’s feet.

  “Good boy,” Jonas said cordially. He could gladly have strangled him. “Go away. You’re wet. Go away, boy.”

  Roddy was shaking himself all over Philippa Van Holt’s gossamer-sheathed legs. She did not appear to notice it. She was staring fixedly down at the mud-soaked key case with stamped gold letters that spelled out “Gordon Darcy” plainly visible through the silt that blackened it. She stood motionless, her lips parted a little. Sergeant Digges looked from her to Jonas before he bent down and picked the case up.

  “Is this your husband’s, miss?”

  Philippa nodded, her eyes still fixed on the ground where it had been. She nodded again without speaking.

  “And you didn’t seem particularly surprised at what your dog brought up, doctor. You didn’t throw it there yourself, by any chance, did you?”

  “I didn’t throw it there, Sergeant,” Jonas said calmly. “And I’m as surprised as you are. I’m just not the demonstrative type.”

  The Sergeant had opened the case and was scraping the silt off the keys.

  “Sergeant Digges,” Philippa said slowly. Jonas noted she had given up the “Captain.” Her voice was flat and colorless, and she was still looking down at the ground. “Was… had my husband been drinking?”

  Sergeant Digges spoke reluctantly. “He had an empty flask in his pocket. There’s a glass on the table. I guess he’d been drinking some.”

  “Then I can tell you what happened.”

  Her voice was still quiet and even.

  “He threw his own keys in the Creek. And he was with some girl. It’s… it’s an old routine of his. I know it very well. You’ll find another set of keys under the hood. And I think I’d like to go now. I’m—”

  “—There wasn’t no girl with him when I saw him, miss.” The colored boy spoke up, bright-eyed and alert. “There wasn’t no girl any place around.”

  Philippa turned and looked at him with expressionless eyes.

  “What time was that, Roy?”

  It was evident from the way Sergeant Digges asked it that he knew the answer he was going to get. Jonas waited warily, sensing some sort of tightening in the devious net the Sergeant had been patiently weaving.

  “It was fifteen minutes before one o’clock,” Roy answered promptly. “I was looking at the clock, because some people was late supposed to come from New York, and I was off at one o’clock, and if they didn’t come I wouldn’t take up their bags and I wouldn’t get no tip and I was looking for half a dollar. That’s how I know the time it was, because that’s when they came and that’s when I saw Mr. Darcy come a hurryin’ out of his room ain’t looking to the right nor to the left.”

  “Sure it was Mr. Darcy, Roy?”

  “Sure’s I’m born to die. I know Mr. Darcy. I’m always takin’ him ice and soda and cigarettes. He knows how to tip the boys. He don’t throw you no nickels and dimes. He don’t know nothin’ less’n a quarter. I ain’t likely to make no mistake about Mr. Darcy.”

  “You saw him come out of his room alone. How do you know there wasn’t somebody in his car?”

  “Because he didn’t get in his car. His car’s always parked behind the hotel, and he went out front, he didn’t go out back. I saw him go down the front steps when I was raisin’ the window for the people from New York. I saw him plain as I’m seein’ you.”

  Sergeant Digges was looking steadily at Jonas. “—So that if Dr. Smith says he heard
a shot at eighteen minutes past one, and saw Mr. Darcy in on the floor there ten or fifteen minutes later, it means he must have got out here mighty fast.”

  “He was goin’ mighty fast,” the colored boy said. “He was goin’ down them front steps like a streak of greased lightning.”

  Jonas Smith saw and deliberately avoided Philippa Van Holt’s sherry-brown eyes as she moved them unobtrusively his way. There was no use revealing either to her or to Sergeant Digges that Roy had made a mistake. It was not Gordon Darcy Grymes he had seen. Gordon Darcy Grymes was out at Arundel Creek with Jenny Darrell at quarter to one.

  “You’re sure it was Mr. Darcy, Roy?” Philippa asked slowly, glancing away from Jonas. “You’re sure it wasn’t his brother? They’re very much alike.”

  “Franklin Grymes?” Sergeant Digges said. “No. He was in Baltimore. He called me up this morning. He left right after they had dinner and got back to his apartment at ten-twenty. I checked with the girl at the switchboard there. But he’s president of the Grymes Old Foundry Corporation. He’s a prominent and respected citizen…”

  “Oh, I’m sure of it. But so is Dr. Smith.”

  A faint smile lighted Philippa’s eyes.

  “The only reason I asked is it’s so hard to tell the two of them apart. I couldn’t always do it myself, not at a distance. You know they were identical twins. But I’m not insisting. Except that if it happened by any chance that my husband’s brother was in his room while he was away, I’d certainly like to know it. Especially—”

  She broke off abruptly. “Sorry. It sounds as if I thought he wasn’t telling the truth.”

  Sergeant Digges was watching her, intent and alert.

  “It’s just the keys,” she said quietly. “They confused me. You see, I knew my husband very well. It’s just that old technique of his, pretending to throw his keys away when he was a little tight and on the wolf prowl that confused me. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be unjust to him… not now.”