“All right.” Evelina looked annoyed. “Don’t start an argument. Her shooting Dan Jackson was nothing more nor less than a blessing. I’m surprised Lem didn’t do it himself years ago. My Amy is in a state fit to be tied, but she’ll get over it. As soon as Pete gets here I’ll put my shoes back on and go back over to Amy’s and see if she’s eating yet. She’s going to be a different woman. After all, she’s half Sammis and half Freyvogel— There’s that damn bell again.” She got up with a grunt.
“I don’t want to see anyone, please,” said Clara as Evelina made off in her stocking feet.
But it became evident in less than a minute that Evelina had met her match at the front door. Her raised voice was heard, and other footsteps approaching down the hall, and when Clara lifted her head a young man was standing there.
“Oh.” She nodded.
As the man opened his mouth to speak Evelina appeared. “He shoved past,” she declared indignantly. “I grabbed for him, but he tore loose—”
“It’s all right, Mrs. Sammis,” said Clara. “This is Mr. Dillon. Tyler Dillon.”
“Oh, Phil Escott’s fellow from the coast?” She put out a hand and they shook. “Looks like a smart colt. If he’s staying I guess I’ll be getting back over to Amy’s. Would you mind handing me those shoes?”
Dillon stooped for them, gallantly offered to put them on and did so, using the handle of a teaspoon. She thanked him, stamped with each foot, grimacing, told Clara not to worry and that she would phone in case she heard anything from Lem, and departed. Dillon went to open the front door for her. When he returned he moved the kitchen chair around and sat on it and said, “That was Mrs. Lemuel Sammis?”
Clara nodded.
“I hear she’s clever.”
“I guess she is.”
“What did she want?”
“She’s my godmother. Delia’s too. She wanted to cheer me up and make me eat.”
Dillon frowned. He looked as if he needed fully as much cheering up as Clara did. “I tried to get you on the phone three or four times.”
“I haven’t been going to the phone. Mr. Sammis told me not to.”
“When did you see him?”
“Down at the sheriffs office about seven o’clock. They had me there asking me questions, and when he came he made them stop.” Clara shifted on the bench to look straight at him. “He advised me not to see anyone, too. I don’t mind seeing you, but I suppose I shouldn’t be answering questions. Have you seen her?”
“No. Sammis has frozen me out. Harvey Anson has been retained as her lawyer. They won’t let me see her. I didn’t learn about it until breakfast time, when I looked at the paper. It damn near laid me out, after—” He stopped.
“After what?”
“Nothing. I’ve been trying to get to her for over two hours. Welch, the deputy warden, told me a little while ago she was asleep and his wife was with her. Have you seen her?”
“Yes.” Clara swallowed. “They let me be with her nearly half an hour, after Mr. Sammis came.”
“What did she say?”
“She said — she told me where she went and what she did last evening, and of course she said she didn’t shoot Jackson, but any fool would know that.”
Dillon stared. “Do you mean to say you think she didn’t do it?”
Clara stared back and said with quiet bitterness, “My God.”
“My God what?”
“Do you think Delia would murder a man?”
“No. I didn’t think so. But maybe I know things about it you don’t know. Have you seen your uncle? Quinby Pellett?”
“Yes, I saw him at the jail. What about him?”
“Didn’t he tell you anything?”
“He told me he knew Delia didn’t shoot Jackson. Naturally, since he has a decent share of brains. What else could he tell me?”
“Nothing if he didn’t want to. Do you know where Delia’s handbag is? Did she have it with her and did they take it?”
Clara’s mouth opened and then closed again. She regarded him with narrowed eyes. “What do you know about her handbag?”
“I know there was a paper in it that would help to convict her, with my name on it.”
“How do you know that?”
“In my office yesterday morning she took it from the handbag and read it to me and put it back again.”
“A paper that would help... to convict her?”
“Yes.”
Clara shoved the untouched plate away, so suddenly that one of the eggs skidded onto the table. Throughout her childhood and girlhood it had been a truism in the Brand family that Clara had no nerves, but she too had tragically lost a father and a mother... and now this... Disregarding the egg, she slid off the end of the bench, stood up, and said quietly, “I think you had better go. If you’re a big enough fool to think she did it, or a big enough something — I don’t know what. Go and look for that paper you want that will help to convict her.”
Dillon stayed on the chair and said with equal quietness, “I’m not a fool. I love her.”
“You certainly sound like it. You’d better go.”
He shook his head. “I can’t go. I’ve got to do something and I can’t do it without you. You know I love her and you know she turned me down, and I love her so much I think I always am going to love her, and I think by God I’m going to marry her some day. If that makes me a fool, okay. She came to my office yesterday and said she was going to shoot a man. Kill him. She wanted legal advice. She said she had just bought a box of cartridges. She had a gun in her handbag, she took it out and I saw it. She said it was her father’s gun. I accused her of being dramatic. You know? And she walked out on me with her shoulders up. You know how she can walk with her shoulders up?”
“But she couldn’t... she couldn’t...” Clara sank onto the end of the bench. “She couldn’t possibly have meant it.”
“That’s what I thought. Though I did go to your uncle and put it to him. I should have followed her or taken her to you or done something! How do you think I felt when I saw that headline in the paper?”
“I don’t believe it. She never did it. And anyway, if she had intended — if she had hated anyone that much, it wouldn’t have been Jackson.”
“Why not? Who would it have been?”
“I don’t... I don’t know. But it couldn’t have been—”
“You do know. You know something. Who?”
She slowly shook her head.
He exploded. “Damn it, Clara, I tell you I love her and I tell you she’s in terrible danger! I tell you I’ve got to do something! If it’s her secret, or yours, I’ll keep it. You’ve left her to Sammis just because he’s your godfather. How do you know you can trust him? Jackson was his partner, and he’s as ruthless as a mountain cat when he wants to be. I’ve got to know all there is to know. If Delia wanted to kill somebody and it wasn’t Jackson, who was it?”
“She never told me she wanted to kill him.”
“She told me. Who was it?”
“Rufus Toale.”
He gaped in astonishment. “Toale?” He stared. “The preacher?”
“Yes.”
“Good lord, why?”
“Because she thought he drove my mother to suicide. So did I.”
“Drove her how?”
“By talking to her.” Clara pressed her teeth to her lip and was silent. In a little she continued in a controlled voice, “I don’t want — you have no idea — how excessively painful it is to talk about it.”
“Oh, yes. I have. I’ve learned a few things about pain myself. What did he talk to her about?”
“I don’t know. Mother had always been a member of his church, but with no special — nothing special. She just went there to church and had him to dinner once or twice a year. Then about three months ago, when mother had begun to get more — well, healthier — about father’s death, Toale began coming to see her. They had long confidential talks, day after day. From the time it started she began to look like — I don’t know how to say it — there was doom and death in her eyes. She wouldn’t tell Delia and me about it, not a word. We tried to eavesdrop, to sneak where we could hear, but they were too careful. We never found out.”