Date with Death

by Zenith Brown

  Jenny, Elizabeth, Philippa… Sergeant Digges’ watcher in the shrubbery must be slightly confused by this time. Jonas’s face brightened suddenly. Maybe Philippa’s parting gesture was going to be funnier than she thought. It was hardly likely Sergeant Digges or any of his men would overlook the possibilities involved in a tender scene between the dead man’s widow and their chief suspect. That, Jonas thought, should fox them up completely. He sat quietly at his desk. The idea that his shadow had been out there while Philippa was talking about Jenny’s date with Gordon Darcy Grymes he could dismiss without alarm. Roddy had been in and out too many times.

  An idea came to him, and he gave a low whistle. Roddy flashed back from the insubstantial fields and streams of his buried life.

  “Go find him, boy.”

  Jonas jerked his thumb toward the window behind him. Roddy lit out. In a second Jonas heard him paw open the gate in the hedge. He sat there with a pleased grin on his face, listening, waiting for Roddy’s excited bark at the sight or sound of the intruder. There was nothing. After a moment Jonas got up and strolled through the window across to the swinging gate. The moon was up but dimmed by a wreath of clouds. It took him several minutes to make out the dog’s loping figure coming back across the gardens from the direction of the entrance gate. He was coming happily, his tail wagging.

  “—Oh, oh,” Jonas thought. Roddy had met a friend, and Roddy’s friends among the Anne Arundel County Police were limited. Jonas went slowly back into the house. If Sergeant Digges was interested enough to take up the watch himself, maybe it was not as amusing as he had thought it was. As he locked the window and turned off the lights to go up to bed, he wondered whether it was wise to take anything for granted. He was trying to think back to Roddy’s sorties in and out while Philippa was talking. It would be pretty funny if all he was doing was going out occasionally to speak to his friend the Sergeant.

  CHAPTER 15

  “I don’t know whether you expected me this morning or not, Dr. Smith. Miss Olive says it was firmly understood that I wanted a job and you’d given me one. I’ll be glad to go home in case she’s wrong.”

  It was the second time Jonas Smith had opened the front door to find Elizabeth Darrell on his steps. If he had been staggered the first time, when she came for a sleeping tablet for her younger sister, he was, this time, five minutes to nine o’clock Monday morning, more than staggered. He was reduced to a lump of inarticulate red-faced clay. She stood there cool and poised, her gold hair drawn in an efficient-looking bun at the back of her head, her crisp grey-and-white striped cotton dress precisely what the well-dressed office assistant should wear. The only thing that was missing was a smile to indicate that the intra-office relationship between doctor and assistant, employer and employee, would be on a reasonably cordial and friendly level. While he couldn’t exactly blame her, he didn’t know any way of explaining the episode of Miss Van Holt the night before, especially as the cook his sisters had got him was busily dusting the reception room at that moment, and more especially as he had a pretty definite idea Elizabeth Darrell was not at all interested, in who he kissed or why. And why she was there was confusing enough to Jonas Smith. She couldn’t want a job that badly. But there she was.

  He stepped aside from the door. “Come in,” he said. “I hoped you’d show up, but I wasn’t sure on account of your grandfather. How is he this morning?”

  “He’s fine. He’s up, but Wetherby’s playing gin rummy with him, so I hope he’ll stay reasonably quiet. Miss Olive’s gone home, which ought to help, and Jenny’s gone to school.”

  For a moment he wondered if she was there because she wanted an excuse to get out of the big house too, but it didn’t seem reasonable.

  “In here, Miss Darrell,” he said.

  “Good morning, Martha.” Elizabeth greeted the old colored woman, who stopped dusting promptly and looked at her with wide eyes.

  “You ain’ sick, is you, Miss Elizabeth? I thought it was the Professor was sick.”

  “No, I’m going to work here too, Martha.”

  She put her bag on the small desk between the windows and looked at Jonas. “Now if you’ll explain how you want things done, Dr. Smith.”

  “Well,” Jonas said, “I don’t guess we’ll be stampeded, exactly, this morning, Miss Darrell. In fact, I was going in to read the papers.”

  “Then go ahead. I probably know as much about this end of it as you do anyway—I worked in Dr. Pardee’s office last summer. So why don’t I just see what’s here and what we need, and get Martha’s cleaning schedule settled so she’s through here by nine.”

  “Swell,” Jonas said. As he sat down at his desk and opened the morning paper he listened to her low business-like voice coming through the closed door with a pleasantly radiating sensation of warmth and contentment all around him. He didn’t know why she was there, but she was there. That was enough. He grinned. Maybe she’d decided to put up a fight for her man. It didn’t hurt him to dream it, did it?

  His face sobered abruptly as he turned to the back page of the paper, “Prominent Baltimorean Questioned in Shore Murder of Brother.”

  “Franklin Grymes, head of the Grymes Foundry and Construction Company, was being questioned last night in connection with the death of his brother Gordon Darcy, Hollywood publicity and public relations man, who was shot to death late Saturday night in a secluded shore retreat in Anne Arundel County near Annapolis.

  “No explanation was given by the police. Interest was roused, however, when reporters learned that Mr. Grymes’s car was missing from the garage operated by the apartment house in which he lives. Mr. Grymes dined with his brother at the Annapolis Yacht Club and returned the car to the garage at approximately 10:30, when he is said to have retired for the night, leaving word he was not well and was to be called only if his brother, or his fiancée Miss Agatha Reed, prominent in Baltimore social circles, called him.

  “George Browne, of the 1400 block East Eager Street, garage attendant, discovered the car was missing some time before midnight. As four cars have been stolen from the garage in recent weeks, he tried to call Mr. Grymes and failing notified the police. The matter was dropped when the car reappeared between 3:30 and 3:35 A.M. while Browne was absent picking up another car. It is understood Mr. Grymes has informed the Anne Arundel County Police that he returned to his apartment at 10:30 and did not leave it after that time.

  “Special interest is attached to the case in the Baltimore area as Mr. Grymes is the fourth of that name in direct line from the Scotch-Irish indentured servant Isaiah Grymes, who established the foundry which has been a landmark in East Baltimore from 1785 until the present time. Its original form is now hardly recognizable, due to the enormous changes made before and during the War, when it became one of Baltimore’s outstanding industries under the leadership of the present Franklin Grymes, to whom it passed at the death of his uncle Franklin Grymes III, a colorful figure in Baltimore life of the last quarter century.

  “Franklin Grymes III is especially remembered by members of various civic and historical societies, whose efforts to purchase and preserve the Old Foundry he indignantly resisted. A delegation sent to interview him was confronted by a cannon made by the firm, used against the British in the War of 1812. It was set up in the courtyard of the Old Foundry, with Mr. Franklin Grymes at the business end. He gave the delegation to understand that if they insisted upon making a monument out of it, it would fittingly contain them and any further of their emissaries. His faith in the Old Foundry was more than justified during World War II, when the Army and Navy ‘E’ flew proudly from its flagstaff. The cannon is still in the courtyard.

  “Gordon D. Grymes, who was shot and killed Saturday night in an abandoned summer cottage on the shore, is unknown in Baltimore. A spokesman for the firm told reporters last night that he had never had any connection with it.”

  Jonas put the paper down. “Well, well,�
�� he thought. When little Jenny threw a stone into the pond the ripples spread out far and wide. He reached into his pocket for his pipe, and took his hand out hastily. There was some one in the reception room—an emergency case, from all the commotion.

  “I’ve got to see the doctor immediately, do you hear?”

  It was a woman, her voice high-pitched and hysterical.

  The door opened. “There’s a woman here—” Elizabeth began.

  “Jonas!”

  The woman brushed her aside and was in the room. Jonas sat staring at her. It was Franklin Grymes’s fiancée Miss Agatha Reed. But a different Agatha… never would Jonas have believed Agatha Reed could look so much like a maenad, hatless, her brown hair pushed wildly back, her perfect nose pinched and sharp, her eyes distended.

  “Jonas! Send her out of here—I’ve got to talk to you!”

  Jonas pulled himself together. “Would you mind, Miss Darrell…”

  Elizabeth glanced at him, and drew the door shut behind her.

  Agatha Reed’s eyes had flown to the paper on his desk. “Jonas—you’ve seen it! You’ve—”

  He interrupted her. “Take it easy, Agatha. Sit down. You’ll—”

  “I can’t sit down, I’m out of my mind. It’ll ruin him.”

  She threw her handbag on the desk, put both hands to her temples and pressed hard, her eyes closed, biting her lower lip. “It’s ghastly. Everybody in Baltimore already thinks he did it. And he didn’t, Jonas! He didn’t! And you’ve got to help me. That policeman said you were out there. He said you were trying to protect some woman. He must think it was me. He kept asking all sorts of questions, over and over again till I thought I’d go mad! And then, this morning—that.”

  She thrust a finger at the paper on the desk, recoiling as if it were some noxious thing.

  “—They didn’t tell me they knew the car was gone!”

  “It was gone, then?”

  “Yes! But not the way they think.”

  She tried to steady herself, and came over to him. She took his arm and shook it urgently.

  “Listen, Jonas. This is what happened. Gordon’s been trying to make trouble for Franklin. Franklin’s been trying to see him. He’s been coming down here, calling him up—doing everything he could to get things settled.”

  Jonas took a deep breath. “What things?”

  “I don’t know. Something about the business. But that’s not important. Saturday Franklin came down just on a chance, and he did see him. They had dinner together. Gordon wouldn’t say one thing or the other, but he was friendly. Franklin came back to Baltimore. When he called me up he was tired and going to bed, but he sounded so depressed and low that I suggested he come and pick me up and we’d go somewhere and have a drink. He did come, and we went for a drive, and when he said how friendly Gordon was I suggested we come down here and see him—maybe if I met him too we could make some sort of arrangement. Because the firm belongs to Franklin.”

  Jonas blinked at her.

  “Was Gordon saying it didn’t?”

  “Oh, I don’t know the details.” She brushed him off impatiently. “He parked out in front as near the hotel as he could. Franklin went up to his room to see if he’d come out with us. He wasn’t there, but his door was unlocked and Franklin went in. The phone was ringing and he answered it. It was some girl. She wanted to know if somebody was there. Franklin didn’t hear who it was, but this girl said, ‘Are you sure, because I’m going to ask the manager to come up and see.’ Before Franklin could say anything she’d hung up, and he decided he’d better leave as quick as he could. He didn’t want to get mixed up in any of Gordon’s kind of trouble. And they look so much alike.”

  “I…I know,” Jonas said. “What happened then?”

  “Nothing.” There was a faint flush over her high cheekbones. “Nothing at all. We went back to Baltimore. But because the car wasn’t in, the police don’t believe us, and we don’t want to… to have to—”

  The flush in her cheeks deepened.

  “—Agatha!” Jonas said. “You—”

  “Oh, stop it!”

  Agatha Reed stamped her foot, her eyes burning. “It’s all your fault! You always made fun of me for being a prude… and all I did was to go to his apartment and have one creme de menthe—but if anybody finds out that I was there at three o’clock in the morning I’ll be the laughing stock of all Baltimore!”

  Jonas shook his head. “—Of that small part of it that your friends make up,” he thought. But of course that was what Agatha meant by “all Baltimore,” and anyway he felt a slight twinge of pity for her.

  “—But it’s not that, Jonas! I’ll tell if I have to, no matter who laughs at me or what anybody thinks. But that’s not it. It’s Franklin. He just can’t get mixed up in this, he just can’t! It’ll ruin him! And you can help us. You know we weren’t out there. The girl you were with can’t matter that much, Jonas. If you tell the police who she was, maybe they’ll let me and Franklin alone. You can’t just sit and let them ruin us, Jonas—it wouldn’t be fair!”

  She was pleading with him suddenly, her face raised to his, tears streaming down her cheeks. “—You don’t hate me that much, Jonas!”

  “—Oh dear God,” Jonas thought. He could only shake his head. He didn’t hate her, and it wasn’t fair. He took out his handkerchief and put it in her hand.

  “Don’t cry, Agatha.”

  And somehow Miss Agatha Reed was in his arms, sobbing bitterly, and he was comforting her the best he could.

  For Elizabeth Darrell to open the door, at exactly that moment, was perhaps inevitable… but the squeak of the hinge as the wicket swung open and the shadow that preceded the solid substance of Sergeant Digges onto the terrace were no doubt what the young St. John’s students at Gregory’s would have put down to Aristotle’s hubris, followed quickly by Nemesis in person.

  “Excuse me, doctor,” said Sergeant Digges. “I’ll come back when you’re not busy.”

  “Excuse me, Dr. Smith—you have another patient.”

  Elizabeth Darrell glanced at Sergeant Digges’s retreating form. She pretended not to see Miss Reed at all.

  “It’s Miss Olive. Shall I tell her to come back, or will you see her now?”

  “Ask her to come back, if she doesn’t mind.”

  Jonas gently disengaged Miss Reed. “I’m going out for a few minutes. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

  Elizabeth closed the door.

  “Powder your nose, Agatha,” Jonas said. “And get out of here and go back to Baltimore. Just sit tight for a couple of days and let’s see what happens. Where’s Franklin now?”

  “In Baltimore.”

  Agatha dabbed at her nose with the feather puff she took out of her bag. “I drove down. My car’s outside. He’s… he’s taking Philippa Van Holt to lunch. She’s Gordon’s wife. He thinks maybe she’ll be more reasonable.”

  She did not say more reasonable than what, and Jonas did not say what he was thinking, which was that Franklin Grymes could not be very bright. He said, “Come on, I’ll take you out to your car.” What he needed was more time to think. “We can go this way.”

  He led her through the window out on the terrace and through the wicket.

  “Which gate did you come through?”

  “The one over there.”

  They crossed the Darrells’ garden to the entrance past the big house. On his way back he glanced up at the sick room of the Blanton-Darrell House. Through the open window he could see Professor Darrell’s iron-grey head and his heavy shoulders in a striped dressing gown.

  “Gin!” Professor Darrell roared, at that moment. For an instant Jonas thought he was crying out for sustenance, but he was wrong. “That’s only two dollars and forty-six cents I owe you now, you thieving scoundrel! Tell me I’m going to die, will you!”

  Profe
ssor Darrell leaned triumphantly back in his chair and Jonas crossed the grass quickly and quietly. He went through the wicket, across the’ terrace and inside and sat quietly down at his desk again. He wanted to think. In fact he had to think. And it was not easy. He sat there with his elbows on the desk and his head in his hands. Agatha said it wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t. He had got to that point and no farther when the telephone on the desk beside him buzzed. He reached out mechanically and picked it up.

  “—Dr. Smith’s office.”

  He had just opened his mouth to say “Hello” when he heard Elizabeth Darrell’s voice. It was a nice voice, and the sound of it cleared the scowl off his face. He held on to the phone to hear it without the detached if not frosty note it had had each time it had been addressed to him that morning.

  “Elizabeth? Tom. Can I talk to you now?”

  “Yes. He’s gone out. I’m here alone. Is it… is it… have you seen the Commandant?”

  Her voice came quickly, breathlessly urgent.

  “I just saw him. I just got out. He’s okay, but it’s no soap.”

  Tom Darrell’s voice was subdued but firm.

  “They’ve got to put me out. The papers are going to Washington, to the Secretary, and I’ve got to see the Supe this afternoon. They’ve got to throw the book at me. It’s not their fault. I’ve—”

  “Tom, listen to me! There’s no use… I’ve got to see you, before you see the Admiral—before they send the papers to Washington. It’s no use, Tom. We’ve got to do what Dr. Smith said. He’s just giving us the chance before he does it himself. He’s trying to be as decent as he can, Tom, but he can’t help it. He told me about it last night. He’s fallen in love with Philippa. He said it was a coup de foudre—that means a thunder-clap—so he’s got to do whatever she wants him to. I’ll tell you about it. I’ll come over before noon lunch formation. I’ve just been waiting here till you called. I wouldn’t have come except I told you I’d be here.”