Date with Death

by Zenith Brown

  Suddenly, and again without any logically arrived at reason for doing it, he took his foot off the gas and slowed to a stop on the tarred shoulder of the road. He reached into one pocket and took out his pipe, and into the other and took out the clipping Miss Olive had given him. He stuck his pipe between his teeth and unfolded the clipping. Through a glass darkly… He had said that to Sergeant Digges, out at the Milnors’ cottage. He was saying it to himself now. It was only the frantic honking of a speeding car passing a truck on a last minute dash to the two o’clock ferry that roused him from a grimly concentrated and not entirely effectual revery, and sent him back on the road, going at top speed to keep his appointment at the Health Center a couple of miles ahead of him. There was something knocking insistently on a basement door of his mind, but until it clicked open the lock he was wasting his time trying to identify it.

  It was not until six o’clock that he listened to the last small black chest and gave a tick shot to the last small white arm. It was twenty minutes past when he parked his car outside Blanton-Darrell Court. The afternoon at his legitimate profession had been as therapeutic for him as it had been for some twenty-seven mothers and their assorted offspring. He was whistling as he came through the iron gate into the Court, with a buoyant step and a cheerful mind.

  “—Oh, hello. This is the second time I’ve been to see you.”

  Jonas came to an abrupt halt. If he had been tied to a B-29, walking away from it, he could not have been yanked back any more violently or with greater speed than the sound of Philippa Van Holt’s voice and the sight of her tall slender figure yanked him back from a professional to a personal level. He’d been breathing the antiseptic atmosphere of another world, and been lost in it. In a split second he was back where he’d started from at half-past one, nothing settled, nothing changed.

  She was waiting for him on the steps of the wing, Roddy wagging his tail beside her.

  “Hi,” he said. He looked at her a second time. “Been to California or going there?” he asked with a grin.

  Philippa looked down at her cinnamon-colored slacks, beautifully cut and perfectly tailored, and smiled back at him.

  “These are my working clothes. I should have told you I’m a writer. The words have to appear in letters of ink and gold come hell or high water. I guess I should have changed before I came out.”

  “You look okay to me. How are you?”

  As a matter of fact she did not look particularly okay, not from the chin up. She looked tired and a little drawn. The discouragement in her sherry-colored eyes belied the smile on her red mouth and the little gaiety of her voice.

  “Take that diagnostic glint out of your left eye, doctor,” she said lightly. “I’m just pooped, is all. I’ve been to Baltimore, which always depresses me. It’s so full of bricks. It always makes me think of an attic nobody’s ever gone through and called the Salvation Army to lug the junk away.”

  “You’re speaking of the city I love, madam.”

  “Then you can have it—but take it away, will you?”

  She turned her head and looked up at the wooden dome of the State House above the trees.

  “This I like. It’s a lovely town… a sort of palace of green with enchanted towers. I never much liked it until I got back from Baltimore today and had to write five hundred words about it. But that isn’t what I wanted to see you about.”

  She smiled at him again.

  “I’ve got to go to dinner tonight, down at the Yacht Club. Some people are having a party, and the show’s got to go on. I’ve got to cover the waterfront. I can’t go alone—will you go with me? We don’t have to stay late.”

  “Your hosts are casual, I take it,” Jonas remarked.

  “I was supposed to bring a man.”

  She didn’t say the man she had expected to bring was dead.—Or was he? Jonas backed quickly away from the dilemma of which was Gordon, which Franklin Grymes, who was dead and who was not. He did not want to get into that supremely futile rat-race again. She looked unhappy enough just then, for him to feel a sudden compassionate twinge, and a small twinge of conscience at his own reluctance to say, Sure, I’ll go with you. Instead he said, “Let me give you a call. I want to look at my book first.”

  “Okay.”

  The book he wanted to look at was the Annapolis Telephone Directory. Inside at his desk he turned it quickly to the “D’s” and dialled the Darrell number, with neither hesitation nor compunction. He felt sorry for Philippa, but it was Elizabeth Darrell he needed to see and had to talk to. The painful lump that had been in his heart, and that had disappeared while he was on the job at the Clinic, was back again. He was like one of the mothers out there who had the misery all over. He had it almost unbearably as he listened to the ringing signal at the other end of the wire, hoping so intently it would be her voice that answered that Wetherby said “Professor Darrell’s residence” two and one-half times before he said who he was and could he speak to Miss Elizabeth. And he couldn’t. She and Miss Jenny were out, to a tea, and they were going to stay out for dinner.

  “But Miss Olive, she’s here, doctor. She up playin’ double Canfeel with the Professor. You want to talk to her?”

  “No, thanks,” said Jonas hastily. “How is the Professor this evening?”

  “Better. Right smart better, if’n Miss Olive jus’ go home. She goin’ to drive him to the Black Bottle if’n she don’t. She wears him to the bone.”

  Jonas put down the phone, the smile that started to break out dying still-born as he stood, perplexed, thrown back into the quandary that had bogged him down so inexplicably on the side of the Ferry Road on his way to the Health Center. There was something almost maddening about it, something he ought to be able to reach out and take hold of but that eluded and escaped him, like playing hide and go seek with a phantom in a boxwood maze. The small spark that Wetherby’s protest at Miss Olive’s constant presence struck in his mind was useless to kindle any fire that would enlighten him; he had no idea whether it was something new, or the habit of years that had only then become an irritant to them all.

  It was a futile search in a barren field. Jonas shrugged his shoulders, turned to the “O’s” in the phone book and dialled Miss Olive’s number.

  “Philippa? Jonas Smith. I’ll be glad to go with you. I’ll pick you up. What time?”

  “Oh, good—you’re a lamb. I don’t know what I’d do without you. Seven-thirty.”

  Then Philippa Van Holt laughed. It was an irrepressible lilting flicker of mirth.

  “She’s out, isn’t she? Too bad, sweetie. If you’d just asked me, I could have told you.”

  “You devil.”

  Jonas laughed too but without the same kind or degree of amusement.

  “—She devil. If you must quote my brother-in-law please do it accurately. He said worse than that today. Okay, I’ll see you at seven-thirty.”

  Jonas put the phone down, his brows contracted into a heavy scowl. Her brother-in-law? He began seriously to try to take one logical step in the confused relationship of the Brothers Grymes. If the one in Baltimore was Gordon, and he was Philippa’s brother-in-law, she was married not to Gordon but to Franklin. That was a simple statement of it. Whether she knew it or not was a different matter. Then, suddenly, he had a flash of intelligent memory. She did know it. He closed his eyes to shut out everything but the scene he was reconstructing in his mind’s eye. It was at Miss Olive’s, in Papa’s sanctum. Philippa Van Holt was introducing him to Franklin Grymes.

  “—my brother-in-law Gordon—I mean Franklin—Grymes…” He had thought then it was a slip of the tongue, the two of them being so extraordinarily alike. Now he wondered. He opened his eyes, and looked absently in front of him. Unless… she really was married to Gordon Grymes, and Gordon Grymes had, in some way, changed places with Franklin… and Franklin being killed left Philippa Van Holt, in that case, not a wid
ow but a woman whose husband was pretending to be engaged to Agatha Reed.

  Jonas rubbed his hand slowly across his forehead to try to smooth out some of the creases in the confused grey matter behind it. None of this made sense. Nevertheless, there was something going on that had the strong smell of decayed and sinister fish. No wonder, he thought, they were all in such a panic of apprehension and despair, shouting ruin at the top of their collective lungs. Jenny Darrell’s shot had torn far more than a lethal hole in the body of one Franklin Grymes.

  CHAPTER 18

  At quarter past seven Jonas, clad, suitably he hoped, in a freshly laundered white linen suit, closed his front door behind him and went along the brick path under the rose-covered trellised arch toward the gate, to get his car to go to Miss Olive’s to pick up Mrs. Gordon, or was it Mrs. Franklin, Grymes nee Philippa Van Holt. As he rounded the mass of great old box on the other side of the rose trellis he half-stopped, and continued on.

  She was coming home. She and Jenny were coming through the iron gate into the Court. He scarcely saw Jenny, except as a dark foil for the softly golden sheen of the girl beside her. They were laughing at something, and as Jonas readjusted his momentarily dazzled and enchanted vision, he saw they were laughing because Jenny was spilling water out of the glass bowl she was carrying in both hands. It was a goldfish bowl, and Jenny, seeing him first, said, “Hello, Dr. Smith. These are for Miss Olive. She can’t bear to be without her fish. I think she feeds them to her cat when nobody’s looking.”

  Her voice trailed off as voices do when they are telling a story to someone whose attention is obviously somewhere else. She looked quickly from Jonas to her sister. Her eyes widened, her laughter was gone. Elizabeth had stopped even more abruptly, and she and Jonas were face to face, the tension between them so electric it was almost tangible.

  “Wetherby said you were going out for dinner.”

  It sounded as if he were accusing her, not Wetherby, of deliberate intent to deceive him maliciously.

  “We did go out. We went to Gregory’s, to make less work at home.”

  She spoke abruptly, her cheeks flushing.

  “And I have a message for you from Cousin Andy—Sergeant Digges. He tried to get you out at the Health Center, but you’d left. He said to tell you he had to go to Baltimore, so you don’t have to worry about him being around tonight.”

  She took Jenny’s arm and started to go past him and on to the Blanton-Darrell House. Then she paused an instant.

  “And I’d like to tell you I’m sorry I had to dash off before you got back this morning. I had to help Wetherby with Grandfather. And I won’t be able to come any more, but I have a friend who’d like a job. I’ll ask her to come and see you if you want me to.”

  “Thanks, you needn’t bother,” Jonas said stiffly.

  He was angry, and she was angry. Jenny, holding the goldfish bowl in both hands, looked blankly from one of them to the other, not understanding any of it.

  “And I’ve got something to say to you,” Jonas added. He knew he was being a tactless fool, and went ahead. He turned to Jenny. “Go on, will you, Jenny? I want to talk—”

  Elizabeth tightened her grip on Jenny’s arm.

  “No, stay here. Dr. Smith hasn’t anything to say to me that you can’t hear.”

  Her eyes were stormy, the flush deepened along her cheekbones.

  “What is it you’d like to say, Dr. Smith? We’re in a hurry…”

  “It won’t take long.”

  Jonas controlled a desire to take her by the back of the neck and shake some of the nonsense out of her.

  “It’s just this. I was back there, when you left this morning. I heard you talking to your brother Tom. I eavesdropped. And I’m not apologizing. I’m just telling you.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to apologize, Dr. Smith. And I’d expect you to eavesdrop. You seem to have a genius for it.”

  Jonas flushed, his irritation heightened by her obvious references to Saturday night at the Milnors’ cottage on Arundel Creek.

  “That’s a little below the belt, isn’t it, Miss Darrell?” He forced himself to speak evenly and coolly. “What I’m trying to tell you, if you’d shut up and listen, is that you’re making a bad mistake. You knew what I meant last night when I was talking about a coup de foudre. You knew who it was I meant, and you knew it wasn’t Philippa Van Holt. It’s you, and you know it.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Elizabeth—don’t! Oh, Elizabeth!”

  Jenny holding the goldfish bowl still was able to shake her sister’s arm holding on to hers. “He’s telling you, Elizabeth… he’s telling you he’s in love with you! That’s what he means by—”

  “You keep out of this, Jenny. One thing you ought to have learned is not to believe every man who tells you he’s in love with you. I thought you’d learned that the hard way, sweetie.”

  She looked swiftly back at Jonas.

  “I’m sorry if I was wrong. I was just giving you the benefit of the doubt, after I saw you and Philippa Van Holt saying good night here in the Court. I’m leaving out the girl in the office this morning. But let me assure you, Dr. Smith, that I’m neither touched nor flattered by your coup de foudre. You’re at liberty to make love to every girl you see, which is what you seem to do. But not to me. I didn’t like it in Gordon Grymes, and I don’t like it in you. And as for my brother, I might as well tell you right now. Nothing I said made any difference to him. He’s going to be out of the Navy, and we’re going through with it. I’d hate to have to testify that I saw you kissing Gordon Grymes’s widow, but I’ll do it if you force me to.”

  Elizabeth Darrell flashed quickly around. Her slim body went taut, her chin came proudly up.

  “Here comes one of your friends now. Will you let us by, please. Come on, Jenny.”

  “Oh, don’t go, Elizabeth.” Philippa Van Holt quickened her step. “Don’t let me interrupt. We’re in no hurry, are we, Jonas? I’ll just run in and say hello to your grandfather.”

  “I’m sorry.” Elizabeth made a startling reversal from fire to ice as she moved aside, ignoring Jonas Smith’s large presence in the middle of the driveway. “Grandfather can’t see anyone after supper. It gets him excited and he doesn’t sleep. Some other time would be better. I’m sure Dr. Smith doesn’t want to be kept waiting anyway. Come on, Jenny. Good-bye.”

  Philippa turned to Jonas, standing there motionless. Being put in a class with Gordon—or was it, he thought even then, Franklin—Grymes was hard to take. Having Philippa appear just when he was getting the coup de grace in his self-elected role of good Samaritan was even harder.

  “Dear me.—I hope I didn’t upset anything.”

  Philippa spoke with a curdling mixture of triumph and contrition.

  “I just thought I’d come by and maybe we could walk down to the Club. I adore the Market Space, and you never really see it in a car. But I’m frightfully sorry. You look as if you’d like to throttle me.—Or is it Elizabeth? Or both of us?”

  “Both of you,” Jonas said curtly.

  Especially, he thought, Elizabeth Darrell. In a sort of delayed visual reaction he was seeing Jenny, breathless joy star-lighting her face, before she shrank back in stricken silence at Elizabeth’s cutting reminder of what she should have learned the hard way about protestations of love at the Milnors’ cottage on Arundel Creek. It was a searing lash applied to a glowing tender heart at its most vulnerable moment… and from the hand that had symbolized the only secure and protective love the small heart knew. It was a cruel thing to do, and as much his fault as Elizabeth’s, for goading her into it, and undoing in a single flash everything they both had done to try to restore Jenny’s faith and confidence in herself. She would be sure, now, that she was destructive and malign, a blight on the lives of all the people she loved and had no wish to hurt.

  Jonas turned silently a
nd looked at her, following her sister across the garden to the front door of the big house. Elizabeth was like a burning golden arrow. Behind her Jenny moved pale and wooden-limbed, holding the absurd glass bowl of goldfish in both hands in front of her, like an enchanted priestess blindly performing the ritual of some curious and unearthly cult. Jonas could feel his heart moved with pity and compassion for the kid. And anxiety. He felt a sharp twinge of anxiety, a sickening sense of utter helplessness in the face of it.

  CHAPTER 19

  “Relax, Jonas. It can’t be as bad as all that, angel.”

  Philippa put her hand on Jonas’s arm. “Come on. A walk will do you good.”

  Jonas gave his head a shake to free it from foreboding and dark presentiments.

  “I’m sorry,” he said brusquely. “The hell with it. Come on.”

  He looked down at Philippa then. She was still in her cinnamon slacks, but the chunk of rose tourmaline set in a gold lotus leaf at her brown throat, the chartreuse corduroy jacket embroidered with brown and rose woolen birds and tropical flowers, gave her a festive dressed-up air.

  “Pretty snappy outfit.” He surveyed it and the figure it did nothing to conceal with a critical and appreciative eye.

  “Thanks.—You know, it’s a damned shame, really.”

  “What is?”

  “The Darrell temper. They’ve all got it—except poor little Jenny. I guess it was stomped out of her from birth. Or driven underground… so she’ll probably be the one to go berserk and really do somebody some damage some day.”