Date with Death

by Zenith Brown

  He entered the Court through the iron gate marked “Private, Keep Out, No Dogs Allowed” that was at the opposite end of the place from his, and out across the Darrells’ back garden to go in through his back door. Roddy sprang on ahead of him, and made a sharp detour, wagging his friendly tail.

  “Oh, hello!”

  Less than forty-five minutes before, his heart would have leaped a mile at the sight of Elizabeth Darrell sitting on the stone bench in front of the myrtle tree. Now it only gave a jolt upward to become a sudden lump in his throat as he saw her there, Jenny beside her, both of them startled at his barging in, disturbing what had obviously been a troubled private conference.

  “Hello.”

  Elizabeth got up, not stiffly, but so nearly that it could reasonably be called that. Jenny Darrell drew back a little, her eyes larger and more haunted than ever. Then she managed to get up too, her small brown hand creeping like a child’s into her sister’s.

  She moistened her lips. “Hello, Dr. Smith.”

  Jonas went across to them. He wished they wouldn’t act as if he were an ogre of some kind, and throw up a hedge of thorns and a wall of glass every time he came near them. It was irritating, considering the spot he was in on account of both of them. And then he was ashamed of himself. They were scared. They were badly scared, and pathetically on the defensive, waiting for their whole world to crash down around their heads.

  “I want to talk to you two,” Jonas said soberly. He looked around the garden.

  “We came out here so we could talk, without the nurse or Wetherby hearing us,” Elizabeth said quietly. “We had the radio on. They’re hunting a girl…”

  Jonas nodded. “They’re hunting a girl,” he repeated, “—but not the right one. They still don’t know what time Gordon went out to the Milnors’. They think it wasn’t till after one, because the bellhop saw him in the hotel. But don’t get your hopes up on that one. Digges hasn’t seen Franklin Grymes yet. He’s just talked to him. The minute he sees him it’s going to bust wide open. They’re identical twins, and even Philippa says she couldn’t tell them apart. She probably could, but I sure couldn’t. When it breaks, Digges is going to start back at the beginning. And there’s one thing I think I’ve got to tell you. You might as well know the worst.—Somebody else was out there last night. There was a car over on the old wagon-road. I saw it, and I heard it go out after you all left. It went without any lights, and it looks as if somebody wants…”

  He stopped, aware of the tightening of Jenny’s grip on Elizabeth’s hand, and some imperceptible but definite communication between them. He looked from one of them to the other.

  “Look. There’s no use leaving me in the dark, if you know something I don’t. I’m the guy they’ve got on the griddle at this point. I can make fewer errors and more runs if I know what the score is.”

  “Tell him, Jenny.”

  The younger girl moistened her lips again. “I don’t know. Dr. Pardee gave me something and made me lie down. I guess I was dreaming. I was out there, and Gordon was there… but there was somebody else. I just sort of… sort of knew it. I was just standing in the room, and I knew it. I don’t know how, but it was so… so plain I woke up—”

  “She woke up screaming at the top of her lungs,” Elizabeth said quietly. “I thought it was just a dream. But I don’t know…”

  “I don’t either,” Jonas said.

  He looked intently at Jenny. It could be. It could be something she’d heard in a moment of shock and buried deep in her unconscious mind that had come up in a dream state. But that in itself was terribly important at the moment.

  “You haven’t heard from anybody?”

  “No.”

  A tremor shivered through Elizabeth’s slim body.

  “But it’s a ghastly sort of feeling,” she whispered. “What if somebody starts ringing up…”

  Jenny pulled her hand away from Elizabeth’s and looked desperately up at Jonas.

  “I’m going to go and tell them. Please make her see it isn’t right for me not to! Please! I don’t want you to be in trouble, or anybody else. It’s my fault, it’s me that ought to suffer. I did it. And it can’t hurt anybody, now. It won’t hurt Grandfather, he’ll never know. Elizabeth was just afraid he’d throw me out of the house, and there’d be no place for me to go without her having to leave him here alone, and something dreadful happen to him… but it’s happened anyway. Please, Dr. Smith, make her see!”

  It could have been the Hubris that leads the gods to strike at pride and arrogance, or Nemesis pursuing the whole lot of them. Whatever it was, it chose its moment, Jonas thought, with pathetic irony.

  “Miss Darrell! Miss Darrell!”

  The shade in the window of the corner bedroom snapped up, the white figure of a frantic nurse leaned out.

  “Miss Darrell! Come quickly! Your grandfather!”

  “Oh, no!”

  Elizabeth’s clenched fist went up to her mouth, her eyes blinded with tears.

  “Oh, no, no!”

  She started forward. Jonas was already half-way across the garden to the back door. He took one more step, and came to an irresistible halt. Through the upstairs window, hoarse and weak and full of the authority of life, not death, he heard a familiar bellow:

  “Wetherby! Where’s that black scoundrel? I want a drink!”

  CHAPTER 13

  “You must go in, Jenny. You’ll catch cold, sitting out here.”

  It was a vapid thing to say when his heart was moved with so much compassion, finding her still out there on the stone garden bench, a frail small ghost in the deepening shadows, so pitifully alone and secluded while inside the lighted house everything was robust excitement and lusty tumult.

  Jonas Smith wiped the cold sweat off his brow. He was glad to be out of it and let Dr. Pardee try to beat some sense into the old devil’s head. With Wetherby and Elizabeth and himself all worn out trying to make Professor Darrell stay in bed, the nurse dudgeoning off, Dr. Pardee dudgeoning in, Jonas wondered why the hell they just didn’t let him get up, go to his blasted poker game, drink a hogshead of Maryland rye if he wanted to and be done with everything permanently. And Miss Olive Oliphant’s appearance with her cat and her overnight bag and a startling bit of information to the effect that jimson weed was used in ancient Mexico to discover thieves was not what Jonas would have prescribed as a soporific.

  In the welter of cross-purposes and passions he had forgotten Jenny until Professor Darrell had ordered him out of the house and coming back he saw her still huddled on the stone bench.

  “You’ll just make yourself sick, Jenny,” he said gently. He sat down beside her and took her limp cold hand in his.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she whispered. “I wish he didn’t hate me so. It’s because I look like my mother, and he hated her worse than he does me. Her father was just a workman over in the Academy Yard, and my father was the regimental commander when he was a midshipman, and it nearly killed Grandfather when he married a Yard workman’s daughter. He wouldn’t ever let her come in the house here. She died out in China when I was born, and my father had to bring us back here, and Grandfather liked Elizabeth and Tom because they looked like my father, but I was dark like my mother. And her name was Jennifer, so everything he does to me he’s sort of taking his revenge out on her. And if I ruin everybody’s life—Tom’s, and Elizabeth’s—he’ll never forgive me… or her. So I don’t know what to do. I don’t know any place to go. That’s… that’s why I liked him… Gordon, I mean. He was so nice to me…”

  “There, there…” Jonas patted her hand awkwardly. He would have liked to put his arms around her as he would a small miserable child, but if he had done so Sergeant Digges would have been certain to turn up. On the other hand it was a good thing for her to talk and get some of it out of her system so she could sleep and rest.

  “He sort
of… fascinated me,” she went on wretchedly. “I was a terrible fool. At first I just thought it was accidental when he’d come by places I was and pick me and the kids up, because he was taking my sister out. Then…I don’t know. She got mad, and he said it was just because she was jealous, and I guess…I guess it sort of went to my head. And I started… meeting him places. Then I got scared. I had a, date with him Saturday, and I called him up and said I couldn’t come because I had to go to the hop with my brother, and he was just as nice about it as anything. It didn’t seem to make any difference to him, and I was sort of ashamed and thought I’d been imagining things. So when he was outside the Number Three gate, I thought it would look crazy if I didn’t let him take me home. Because Tom had the duty and got his roommate to drag me, but he hadn’t signed out to drag, so he could come and get me but he couldn’t take me home past the gate. I had to walk home by myself when everybody else was with somebody, and I felt silly on the street all by myself, so I was really glad when I saw him.

  “He said what about dropping in at the St. John’s dance, he thought Elizabeth was going to be there. I said I had to come home, but nobody was here, and it seemed sort of easier to go than sit on the porch and wait, because he said he didn’t want me to go in the big house all by myself, and when he said the Milnors were expecting him to pick them up I thought it would be all right. I didn’t want to be silly, and… act like I didn’t have experience, and couldn’t take care of myself, or anything. Don’t you know?”

  “I know,” Jonas said.

  “And you know Philippa.”

  “Philippa?”

  “Philippa Van Holt. Of course I didn’t know he was married to her. She’s always been terribly nice to me, but she made me mad too. She saw him drop me up on the Circle about a week ago, and she waylaid me the next morning, just pretending she was up that early, and she said she wanted to give me some good advice. I said I didn’t want any, and she said if she saw me with him again she’d tell my brother, and if that didn’t help she’d tell my grandfather and that would fix me. She said it was for my own good. I got real mad, and she said Okay, I could be a damned fool if I wanted to. Then she said, ‘Look, kid—you just haven’t got the stuff to bat in his league,’ and… I don’t know, I guess I just wanted to show her. People are always telling me what I should do and shouldn’t do… everybody. Anyway, that’s what happened. And out there… when he wouldn’t let me go, and threw the gun over at me…”

  “Did you get mad then, Jenny?”

  She didn’t answer for so long that he turned and looked at her. She was shaking her head back and forth slowly, tears glistening in her great dark eyes.

  “No,” she whispered. “I was… I was too scared to get mad. I’ve never had a gun in my hands before. Grandfather taught Tom and Elizabeth how to shoot but he’d never let me touch a gun. He said I was such a fool that I’d kill somebody. And I wouldn’t do anything he didn’t want me to. He doesn’t like me, but maybe he will some day. I love him very much. And I guess he was right—only I didn’t mean to kill anybody. I just had the gun in my hand, holding it out. I was almost as scared of it as I was of him. And then it went off. There was a horrible crack, and he did like they do in the movies, sort of went double, and he… he was lying on the floor, and I just stood there. And then I threw it down and ran. I didn’t know what to do till I saw the boat down on the shore and I remembered the Fergusons’ phone. And… that’s the way it happened…”

  He gripped her hand harder to keep it from shaking.

  “But you see,” she said quickly, “—but no, you can’t see. You can’t because you don’t really know. Grandfather won’t ever believe me. He’ll say I’m a… a slut, just like my mother. He calls her dreadful things, just as if she weren’t Tom and Elizabeth’s mother just as much as she is mine. And he knows they aren’t true. My father told me it took him ever so long to make my mother marry him, on account of Grandfather. And I’d rather die than have him say everything I know he’ll say. I just can’t stand it, having him think I’d do anything horrible. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m such a coward. I’m such a horrible little coward, or I’d have… I’d have done something to myself a long time ago, to keep from being so much trouble to…Elizabeth and Tom and… everybody.”

  “Look, Jenny,” Jonas said quietly. “Up to now you’ve made sense. Now you’re not making any sense at all. I don’t like it. In the first place, you’re not a coward. But you’d be a coward if you even thought of doing anything to yourself. You’re a wonderful little girl… and how do you think Elizabeth and Tom and Wetherby would feel if you threw in the sponge at this point? Don’t you know, Jenny, we’re all proud as hell of you, just for having guts enough to put up a fight—”

  “But it was my fault. Grandfather says it was Mother’s fault she married my father. He says she led him on. That’s what I did to Gordon. I led him on.—What’s the matter?”

  “The night air… it chokes me,” Jonas said. He knew that laughing at her would be as near fatal as anything he could do. He coughed again and composed himself soberly.

  “You didn’t lead him on. He didn’t need any leading on, honey. Get that firmly out of your little head. Try to think of it the other way. Think of the number of girls you’ve kept from doing what you did… or what you didn’t do. Let’s be philosophical about it. Let’s just forget it ever happened.”

  “That’s all right to say, but—”

  “I know. But let’s sit tight. Sergeant Digges thinks I did it, and I’m damned if I’m not going to let him go ahead thinking so. The more I hear of Mr. Gordon Darcy the more I’m in favor of what happened to the skunk. You just leave it to me, will you? We’ll fox the whole lot of them.”

  “Sergeant Digges is my mother’s second cousin,” Jenny said.

  “What?”

  “Sergeant Digges is my mother’s second cousin.”

  “That’s what I thought you said. Well…”

  “—Well?”

  “Well, I’ll be darned. I guess that’s what I was going to say.” Jonas grinned down at her. “How does he get along with your grandfather?”

  “Oh, dear,” Jenny said. “Grandfather would probably horsewhip him if he ever came near the house.”

  “Oh, well, then.” He got to his feet. “What are we worrying about?”

  He pulled her up, tucked her arm into his and marched her toward the big house.

  “You’re going in, and you’re going to sneak quietly up to your room and go to bed and to sleep. No pills, no nothing. You’re going to go fast asleep. And tomorrow—”

  “Should I go to school?”

  “School?”

  “High school. I’m a senior in high school.”

  “Oh.”

  For some reason, Jonas had never thought of what she did on week days. Gordon Darcy Grymes’s stock, already subterranean, took a new and lower nose-dive.—A kid, a school kid at that, he thought, with complete and final contempt.

  “Sure, I’d go to school. I’d act just as if nothing had happened. Avoid Grandpa. If he’s going to have another stroke, let’s let Sergeant Digges give it to him.”

  “Oh, you shouldn’t say that.”

  Nevertheless Jenny giggled. Jonas steered her across the porch and into the house considerably relieved in his mind. If she could giggle, she was in no immediate danger of doing anything to hurt herself.

  “Now scoot along. I’ll see you in the morning. You’re going to sleep like a log. Good-night.”

  He bolted back across the porch and down the steps. The plump figure of little Miss Olive had emerged out of the living room into the front hall. At the moment Jonas was in no mood for abstract knowledge. Nor did he wish to hear again how Miss Olive had been present, with and without Papa, at every birth and death in the Blanton-Darrell House since the affecting demise of the Professor’s grandfather, who had imbibed ev
en more freely than the Professor, nor would she under any circumstances fail them now. The fact that the current Tinsley Darrell apparently had no intention whatsoever of dying now or in the foreseeable future deterred her not at all. Miss Olive was set for the night.

  Jonas cleared the steps in one jump, glanced up, and ducked.

  “—Wetherby! For the love of God, give me just one drink! This stuff is poison!”

  The tumbler of water hurled through the sick-room window crashed and splintered on the brick at his feet.

  “You’re killing me, you black devil! You want to see me die! Where’s Miss Elizabeth? Elizabeth! Where’s my granddaughter?”

  “There, there, now, Professor, sir. Just ca’m yourself. Ca’m yourself down, sir, an’ drink this. You going drink it if’n you bus’ every glass in this here house. It ain’ nothin’ but water, Mr. Tinsley, an’ it ain’ never hurt anybody yet.”

  “You’re killing me! Ugh, the nasty stuff! It’ll rot my liver! It’ll rust my kidneys! It’s not fit to drink! Get out of here! Elizabeth!”

  “See now—you ain’ hurt none. Now you just set back an’ rest yourself. Rest yourself to your content. Miss Elizabeth, she tired. She lyin’ down.”

  As Jonas stepped over the broken glass, the Professor’s shuddering groan sounded in his ears.

  “Horrible! Horrible! Ugh!”

  If recovery was not complete, the prognosis, Jonas thought, was distinctly and highly favorable. He went on a little way across the grass.

  “—Dr. Smith… where’s Jenny?”

  Elizabeth Darrell came running from the kitchen wing. Her hair had come loose from the black ribbon that held it molded to her head and was falling in a long pale gold bob around her shoulders, making her look almost like a child herself except for the sheer panic in her drawn white face.

  “—I’ve looked all over the house… I can’t find her any—”

  “She’s okay. She stayed out here. I’ve just sent her in to bed.”

  “Oh, thank goodness!” She stopped, reached out for the corner of the porch to steady herself, and drew a quick relaxing breath. She pushed her hair back from her face. “I forgot all about her until just now, and I get so scared… I’m afraid she’d do something crazy, like running away… or something.”