Date with Death

by Zenith Brown

  With neither a pass nor business that authorized him to enter without one (he did not know then that he was in the distinguished company of the wife of a President of the United States, sightseeing incognito, who had not been allowed in either), Jonas had to back into Maryland Avenue and turn down Hanover Street. It was across from St. John’s, on College Avenue, that he finally found a place to park. As he strode along the uneven brick sidewalks back to Maryland Avenue and the gate, he was too preoccupied to notice the roots of the ancient maples until he stumbled over them, or the two most magnificent of Georgian town houses, Chase and Hammond-Harwood, facing each other in stately quietude across the sunlit street, until a couple of women, guidebook in hand, stopped him with some questions to which he could give only the most common of answers, “Sorry, I’m a stranger here myself,” before he hurried on to the Academy gate.

  It was too late by then. He knew it before he passed the guard. The Yard was alive with a thousand young men in blue fatigues and white caps, their books and papers under their arms, streaming in varying degrees of marching order from every direction; enthusiastically converging toward the great pile of Bancroft Hall and food. He cut across in front of the green-copper domed chapel where in the quiet crypt are enshrined all that physically remains of the First Commodore, and hastened down toward Tecumseh Court, already a solid mass of blue and white. There were midshipmen everywhere, streaming up the steps into the great rotunda, or left and right to the nearer entrances to their rooms.

  He was much too late. Across the sea of young men he saw her, already down the steps and hurrying along the walk from the court toward the Santee Basin, bare-headed, the sun glistening on her hair, the midshipmen turning to look at her, some of them waving as she waved back and hurried quickly on.

  Jonas was half-way to the road to the dock when he saw her car pull out and disappear around the sailboat shelter at the shore end of the great building. He turned back and hurried across the Yard to the Main Gate. It was too late to see her before she saw her brother Tom, but she was probably headed home and he could see her there. How he was going to say what he had to tell her was so far not entirely clear in his mind. To barge in and say “It isn’t Philippa Van Holt I’m in love with you, it’s you,” wasn’t as simple as it had seemed when he’d come out of his daze, sitting at his desk, and dashed out into the reception room. Furthermore, in the emotional state she would undoubtedly be in after seeing Tom in Bancroft Hall it was unlikely she’d be particularly interested in anything he had to say on any subject.

  He hurried on, not even stopping to pick up his car. The gate at the Darrells’ side of the court was nearer than his own, and the one she would probably go in, coming up King George Street. As he turned the corner he looked both ways, expecting to see her either already in the drive or close to it. And there was a car in the drive, headed out, however, not in. It was an ancient and dilapidated vehicle, painted red and black, with a raccoon’s tail tied to the radiator cap and both fenders badly in need of repair, and it was coughing, jumping forward and bolting back like an asthmatic and recalcitrant mule. None of which, however, was as startling to Jonas as its occupants.

  “—Damn it all, Olive, can you drive or can’t you drive?”

  Professor Tinsley Darrell in the front seat, jamming his hat back from where the last buck had jolted it to the back of his head, was purple with rage. Miss Olive Oliphant at the wheel reached down and pulled on the brake. She sat back and folded her white gloved hands.

  “Tinsley…” she began. They both saw Jonas. He came up to the window of the car.

  “—Dr. Smith, Professor Darrell is just as provoking as he can be.”

  Miss Olive’s mild china-blue child’s eyes were a little resentful.

  “Damn it all, Smith, she said she’d drive me to the Club. That blasted fool of a Wetherby won’t do it. He’s trying to make me stay in the house so he can clean me at gin rummy. Doctor’s orders! No murderous pill-roller is going to tell me what to do. Can this woman drive or can’t she drive? That’s all I want to know.”

  “Tinsley, you’ve got to calm yourself,” Miss Olive said. She turned to Jonas. “I can drive very well, Dr. Smith. Papa always said I drove as well as any young woman he knew. He didn’t approve of young women driving an automobile, but after Innis died and Papa tried to learn himself, he allowed me to learn, and I drove our automobile until we sold it when Papa got too nervous to let me drive him any more. And if Tinsely doesn’t like the way I drive, I think he ought to drive himself. Or get a taxicab. I only agreed to drive him because I thought he’d work himself into another disorder if he stayed at home.”

  “Damn it all, Olive, I can’t call a taxi. I gave Elizabeth my word I wouldn’t call one.”

  “You gave her your word you’d stay in the house, Tinsley.”

  “That’s a lie. That’s a black lie. I said I wouldn’t call a taxi.”

  “Tinsley, you—”

  “Look… both of you,” Jonas said. He put his hand through the window and patted Miss Olive’s. “Professor Darrell, you oughtn’t to be out. Miss Olive, you shouldn’t have agreed to take him.”

  Professor Darrell’s protruding bloodshot eyes glared at him like an angry horse’s. “Doctor, you mind your business and I’ll mind mine.”

  “Dr. Smith, I wouldn’t have agreed to take him except he was going to drive himself or try to walk. And I think it would look very badly for him to collapse on the street, either driving or walking, and have people say he was intoxicated before he got to the Club. Papa always thought it very poor manners for a gentleman to go to his Club under the influence.”

  “What in the blue-shirted hell does it matter how he gets there, Olive? Your father, Olive—”

  “I’ll thank you to be very careful what you say about my father, Tinsley.”

  Miss Olive spoke with gentle spirit.

  “Papa never minded a gentleman coming home from his Club slightly overcome. But Papa always felt there was a place for everything.—A place for everything, and everything in its place. It was one of my earliest lessons. And if you’re going to speak unkindly to me, Tinsley, I’m not going to drive you anywhere. I’m going to leave you sitting right here in the road. In fact, that’s just what I intend to do, Tinsley.”

  Miss Olive took hold of the door.

  “Olive, if you leave me here…” Professor Darrell controlled himself with a dangerous effort. “Olive, I swear to God—”

  “Papa never allowed blasphemy, Tinsley.”

  Miss Olive opened the door and got out. Her rose-colored lips were pressed firmly together and her fresh clear cheeks delicately flushed.

  “Tinsley, I’m not sure you haven’t already been indulging. Good day, gentlemen.”

  She took a few steps along the drive, a plump little figure striving to maintain her gentle indignation.

  “—Oh, Dr. Smith!” She turned and came back to Jonas, fishing down in her white crocheted bag. “There’s a piece I was reading about urushiol that I cut out for you,” she said brightly. “I thought it would interest you. They’re manufacturing it—synthetically, I believe is the word they use. And some time, doctor, I’d like to come and see you. My insomnia is troubling me again. Perhaps you’ll be able to give me something for it.”

  She found the clipping and handed it to Jonas.

  “Thank you, Miss Olive,” he said. Hoping she was not planning to take synthetic urushiol for her insomnia, he repressed his amusement, took the clipping and put it carefully in his pocket. “Any time you’d like to come around.”

  “Thank you, doctor.” Miss Olive tripped off along the drive toward the street. Jonas turned to Professor Darrell, sitting bolt upright in the front seat of the old car, his stick between his knees, both hands clenched around it.

  “Don’t you think you’d better give up, Professor, and go back to the house? It isn’t safe for you to drive
, and you’re just working yourself up to another crisis.”

  For a moment he thought he’d precipitated it himself. Professor Darrell’s hackles were rising, the blood suffusing his full florid face. Then he let his breath out, like a jet of steam escaping from heavy pressure.

  “I’m not going to walk back, damn it, doctor. Get Wetherby. Tell the worthless scoundrel to come here and get me. It’s his car. I wouldn’t touch the thing. I’ll go back.”

  Jonas looked at him with a sudden curious small twinge of pity stirring inside him. The Professor was still trying to bluster, but the heart had gone out of it. He looked tired. He was tired.

  He managed to glare at Jonas once more. “Damn it all, doctor—I’m not anxious to die.”

  “Why don’t I drive you back?”

  Jonas got in the car and started it up with only a few shuddering spits and jerks. They went around the drive to the front door of the Blanton-Darrell House and came to a stop. Professor Darrell got out.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said. He waited until Jonas got out, and shook hands with him formally and with impressive gravity before he went up the steps and into the house. Jonas stood for a moment, listening.

  “—Wetherby! Get that junk heap out of the front yard! Do you hear what I say? And where is my granddaughter?”

  It was what Jonas wanted to know too.

  “I’ll get it right away, Professor, sir.” Wetherby’s gentle voice came from just inside the door. “You jus’ rest yourself. Miss Elizabeth ain’ comin’ home jus’ yet. She lunchin’ with some of her friends some place. She be home after you take a short rest.”

  “Damn it, Wetherby, I’m—”

  Jonas went along the path to the wing. What a pair, he thought… what a place. If anyone had asked him then why he had come to Annapolis, Maryland, all he could have done was shake his head and say, “You tell me.”

  CHAPTER 17

  He put his hand out to open his own front door, dropped it back to his side and took a long breath to give himself a little moral preparedness for whatever was going to happen now. So far, every time he had gone in the place or come out of it he’d run into something he did not expect. Whether the jinx was naturally on it or whether he had brought it with him was hard to say. Considering his landlord the owner, it was quite possible it was included in the lease, in which case it would not have surprised him to find the devil himself waiting in the reception room.

  Or Elizabeth, he thought. She wouldn’t just walk out permanently. He opened the door and stepped in eagerly, the victim of hope and folly. She was not there. He swallowed his disappointment, cursing himself for being fool enough to give it a thought.

  “Doctor?” Martha came out from the kitchen, Roddy at her heels. “Doctor, you supposed to call Dr. Pardee’s office right away soon as you come in. Then I’ll put your lunch out on a table outside. It’s a pretty day.”

  “Thanks, Martha.”

  In the consulting room Dr. Pardee’s number was written on a piece of brown paper torn off a bag from the grocery store. He dialled it without enthusiasm.

  “Dr. Pardee, please. Jonas Smith calling.”

  “Oh, Dr. Smith. Dr. Pardee isn’t here He’s had to go down in the County for an emergency O.B. I’m his secretary.”

  It was a pleasant efficient voice at the other end of the wire.

  “He asked me to ask if you could go out to St. Margaret’s and take his Maternal and Child Health Clinic for him this afternoon. He’s due there at two o’clock and he can’t possibly make it. He thought you might be able to take it. He’d certainly appreciate it.”

  “All right,” Jonas said. He did not mean to sound ungracious, and as he put the phone down he had to remind himself that he’d come to Annapolis to practise medicine. Nevertheless, the idea of spending a whole afternoon out at St. Margaret’s, away from where anything might happen at any moment, without any chance of seeing Elizabeth and getting rid of the unhappy lump that had settled in the pit of his stomach, was not the one he liked very much. Nor did he feel more cheerful about it when at the end of lunch Martha came out of the house with a telegram.

  “They phoned it in when you was out an’ I said they had to bring it.”

  Jonas tore it open. It was from the Fergusons and the Milmors, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For a moment he looked down at it without seeing it. Somehow he’d forgotten about the Fergusons and Milnors. It came as a slight shock to realize that of course they’d have a personal interest in a murder on their own premises. He should have called them himself.

  The wire was from Joe Ferguson.

  “Congratulations. Didn’t know you knew him too. Have decided to go on to Quebec until all bodies removed and stink blows out and over. Personal alibis respectably established. Girls at Wellesley 75th Anniversary Fund Raising dinner stone sober. Milnor and Ferguson at Class Reunion Dinner also cone stober. Try to evade the Law till we get home to stay you with flagons. Natalie sends love.—Joe.”

  Jonas crumpled the message up and put it in his pocket. So they thought they were funny. On the other hand, it was better than having Mrs. Milnor rushing hysterically back and making a fuss about it. A little mollified at that thought, he fished back in his pocket to take the wire out and read it again. Another piece of paper came with it and fluttered to the terrace. It was Miss Olive’s clipping. He reached down and picked it up with a sudden smile. Cute little old Miss Olive. Her running battle with Professor Tinsley Darrell had probably been going on all their lives.

  “Urushiol Imitated in Synthetic Compound.”

  He read the caption over the double column, and glanced through the rest of it before he put it back in his pocket and went on with his lunch. Up to that time he had barely noticed it was soft crab he was eating. By the time he got through a second serving of strawberry shortcake the prospect of conducting Dr. Pardee’s clinic for the afternoon had even taken on a certain amount of anticipation. After all, the chance to learn from one of the best Public Health setups in the nation was one of the reasons he’d come to the quiet village on the banks of the Severn. He looked at his watch.—Quiet? he thought suddenly. Had he said quiet?

  He thought of it again as he went down College Avenue to pick up his car where he’d left it to go into the Academy Yard. He put his bag on the front seat and waited with the door open. Sergeant Digges was coming down the St. John’s College Hill from McDowell Hall. Under the tulip trees and horse chestnuts in full and glorious bloom, ambling along between the borders of boxwood on either side of the brick walk, a stone’s throw from the six-hundred-year-old Liberty Tree on the Green, Sergeant Digges looked a little anachronistic.

  He saw Jonas and crossed the street. “Hi, doc.”

  “Hi, sarge.”

  They grinned at each other.

  “I’m not leaving town,” Jonas said. “Thought I’d better tell you. I’m just going out to the St. Margaret’s Health Center to pinch hit for Dr. Pardee. It’s his day but he’s down in the County.”

  He got in under the wheel. “What are you doing at St. John’s? You haven’t got time to read the Hundred Books.”

  “They gave me my degree when they still used football players,” Sergeant Digges said amiably. “But I wasn’t up there to read Plato. Just an old Annapolitan custom. If there’s any devilment going on, first thing you do is blame it on the Johnnies. They don’t have to be in bed with lights out at ten, like over the wall. So I was just making a routine visit. It payed off, though.”

  “What do you mean, payed off? Did you rubber-hose a confession out of the President of the Student Council? Or was it the President of the College?”

  “It wasn’t a confession,” Sergeant Digges said imperturbably. “Just a car. And old jalopy, out there in back of Randall Hall. You saw an old jalopy out at the Milnors’ that night, didn’t you, doc?”

  Jonas nodded. He was a little puzzled. “But
there are all kinds of ’em around. I just met Miss Olive trying to drive the Professor up to the Annapolitan Club in Wetherby’s. It’s—”

  He stopped abruptly. Sergeant Digges was looking at him with an odd gleam in his eye.

  “Did you, now?” Sergeant Digges remarked. “I expect I ought to step around and have a look. All I meant about the one up at the College is that the boy that owns it couldn’t find it Saturday night when he wanted to take his drag out for a little ride, after the dance. He figured one of the other fellows borrowed it. It was there all right Sunday morning.”

  He closed the car door. “Well, so long, doc. I’ll be seeing you.”

  Jonas put his car automatically into motion, waited for the light at the corner of College Avenue and King George Street to change from red to green, and crossed the bridge over College Creek in a robot-like trance. His conscious brain centers were actively and acutely preoccupied with something of more immediate importance. After having spent two days and practically landed himself in the local hoosegow trying to keep Digges’s nose off the trail leading to the Blanton-Darrell House, he had shot off his big mouth and fairly shoved him onto it. But he had done more than that. It was the obverse of the coin he himself was looking at, and the pattern stamped on it. What had made him come out so promptly with the information about Wetherby’s car? There was little doubt in his own mind. It was an idea that had registered in his subconscious the instant he had seen Miss Olive Oliphant and Professor Darrell in the battered old vehicle there in the drive, registered and popped out, at an oblique angle, the first chance it got. He recognized it clearly now. It wasn’t the old car itself. It was the knowledge that both Miss Olive and Professor Darrell could drive a car. His own oblique statement was his subconscious forcing him to recognize a fact, and its potential implications, that he had refused to look at because he didn’t want to look at it.

  It was acutely disturbing, and bewilderingly so, for after all neither Miss Olive nor the blustering wicked old inebriate in the Blanton-Darrell House meant anything to him except as they impinged on the lives of Elizabeth and the poor little kid whose life one of them had made such complete hell on earth. Nevertheless, he was disturbed. They could each drive. The St. John’s back campus was less than a block from Miss Olive’s, not more than two from Blanton-Darrell Court. Even then, it was not clear in Jonas’s mind why he should be worried. It was as if some sort of black cloud had sifted in around him, obscuring the daylit windows of his mind.