by Zenith Brown
“That’s it. I remember the feel of it now. Oh, Elizabeth!”
She flung the revolver from her and threw herself into her sister’s arms. “Oh, I thought it was Grandfather… I thought he did it for you!”
Elizabeth held her, staring down at the gun on the floor. “That’s it—that’s the one he had the night he gave it to me…”
“Of course,” Philippa said. “It wasn’t loaded. It wasn’t loaded Saturday night either. My husband was a fool but not that big a fool. He was also afraid of going to jail again. He gave me his other one.”
She turned to Sergeant Digges.
“You’re pretty smart, aren’t you. I did stand outside the window, and he was surprised when he saw me with the gun in my hand. He was tight but not so tight he couldn’t see I’d had enough of… of everything. And that, my friends, will be Miss Van Holt’s defense. I dare say my brother-in-law will be glad to help me make it stick.”
Jonas had reached down and picked up the lethal bauble of chased silver and mother-of-pearl from the floor.
“I’ll take that, please,” Philippa said. “I’d like it as a… a souvenir.”
Sergeant Digges’ hand reached out. “I’ll just keep that, doc,” he said tranquilly. He broke it open. “You say your husband carried it empty?” He let the shells slip into the palm of his hand. “There’s a little charge of the attempted murder of Jonas Smith you’ve got to face too, Miss Van Holt. I got a bullet—from this, I guess—out of his wall this morning. It’s not going to be as easy as you think, Miss Van Holt.”
He dropped the ornate weapon into his coat pocket.
“If you’d stuck to your line, and told me about this poison ivy, doc we’d have got there sooner. But no hard feelings, doc.” He looked at Miss Olive. “You hadn’t ought to have tried to hoodwink me the way you did, ma’am. Last Sunday you swore up and down she never left the house, and I never figured a lady like you would deliberately lie to me. That was before I knew about her husband and his brother switching names, so the only motive I figured on then was her husband being out with another girl. I didn’t get around to him being the legal owner of the Foundry and her being his heir at law till last night. You being a respectable witness and giving her an alibi like you did sort of foxed things up, Miss Olive. You could get yourself in a lot of trouble doing a thing like that.”
Miss Olive tightened her lips and blinked the tears out of her eyes like a child who had been unfairly rebuked.
“I thought it was better if everybody just decided the man had done away with himself, Mr. Digges,” she said. “I didn’t think anybody Would think it was Jenny who did it. And I didn’t want her to shoot me. That’s why I left my house until she got out. I know I haven’t been welcome here, but I thought even Tinsley would rather have me here than have me dead.”
“Not at all, not at all.” Professor Darrell came out of a dazed fog, and bowed to her. He turned and looked at Sergeant Digges and Philippa Van Holt as they went out. “Too bad, too bad. Handsome woman. Called me a blustering old fool.”
He stood unsteadily in the middle of the room a moment, and turned to his granddaughters. “Elizabeth, are you going to marry this man Olive calls a horse doctor?”
“Tinsley, I did not call him a—”
“Yes, Grandfather. I am if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind. I don’t mind if Jenny’ll stay with me. If Jenny don’t mind putting up with a… a blustering old fool.”
“Oh, Grandfather, I’d love it! I’ll take care of you! I’ll do my very best!”
Her starlit eyes, the breathless poignancy of her voice, startled even Professor Darrell. He looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time in all the years of her life.
“Good girl,” he said. “Good girl. I didn’t care for your mother, but I dare say she was a good girl, or my son wouldn’t have married her.”
He patted her head clumsily. “You’ve got the Darrell eyes.”
As he looked at Jonas, the Professor Darrell glare was coming back into his own.
“You two plan to go on living in the wing?”
“Yes, sir. I imagine so.”
“You plan to go on paying the rent?”
“Yes, sir. Of course.”
Professor Darrell put his hand out and shook Jonas’s cordially.
Elizabeth gave Jonas a quick mischievous smile. “But we’ve got to have a new furnace, Grandfather. And the hyphen. So we can have a dining room.”
Her grandfather glowered at her.
“You don’t either, Elizabeth,” Jenny said. “The furnace is old, but it’s perfectly good. You can have the hyphen, but you’ll have to pay more rent for it. Grandfather can’t afford to do anything more over there. Can we, Grandfather?”
Professor Darrell put his arm around his new granddaughter.
“Good girl,” he said. “Sensible girl.”
Jonas grinned. “Elizabeth, let’s go over to Gregory’s and eat. Do you realize we’ve never had a meal together?”
Elizabeth Darrell caught up her bag. On the front porch of the Blanton-Darrell House she stopped and smiled up at him. “Jonas—I’m the fledgling… they’ve pushed me out of the nest. But I have some place to go, haven’t I?”
“Oh, darling, forever and forever.”
He bent down and kissed her. From out of the living room, he could hear Miss Olive’s plaintive voice:
“Tinsley, I never said Dr. Smith was a horse doctor.”
“Olive, I heard you with my own ears.—Wetherby! Where’s that black scoundrel? Wetherby, we need a drink.—Olive, you called my grandson-in-law…”
Jonas and Elizabeth ran down the steps.
“You’ll never get over it, Jonas. It’s something new for them to quarrel about… I hope you don’t mind.”
Wetherby was in the kitchen door as they went around the corner of the house.
“Congratulations, doctor! Congratulations, Miss Elizabeth!”
He shook hands with both of them.
“Doctor, the Professor he’s in there. He’s callin’ for his liquor. Do I give it to him, or do I not?”
“You do not,” Jonas said. “You certainly do not. The Professor is off liquor.”
“Yes, sir, doctor. The Professor he don’t know it, but he’s off his liquor till you say he’s back on.”
Wetherby made a discreet bow and backed into the kitchen. “Thank you, doctor, sir.”
Jonas grinned at Elizabeth. “That, Miss Darrell,” he said, “that will teach your grandfather to call me a horse doctor.”
He bent his head and kissed her again.