“What did you think it was?”
“Delia thought it was some kind of hold he had got on mother, she couldn’t guess what, and he was deliberately torturing her. I thought he was torturing her too, I could see he was, but on account of her long effort, all the time and energy and money she spent, trying to find out who had killed father. He preached a sermon on the wickedness of revenge soon after he started coming to see mother. He’s a fanatic, you know. It got worse and worse with mother, it got so she would hardly talk to us about anything or hardly eat. Then one morning Delia went in her room and found her. Of course Delia’s reaction was different from mine, because we are different, but I think another reason was that it was Delia who took a cup of coffee to her room and found her dead.”
“So you think — when she told me she intended to shoot a man — she meant Toale.”
“I’m sure she did.” Clara locked her fingers together. “Another thing, I’m afraid I made it worse, just recently. One evening two weeks ago he came here to see me. Delia didn’t want me to let him in, but I did, and I let him talk to me then and two or three times since, because I thought maybe he would let it out about mother. I asked him pointblank what he had talked so often with mother about and he said her secrets rested with her in the grave. He said he wanted to labor with me to return me to God. I hadn’t been going to church since he had started coming to see mother. I couldn’t stand it to sit and look at him and listen to him.”
“How did that make it worse?”
“Because... I got a notion that Delia thought Rufus Toale was beginning to do to me what he had done to mother. I told her I was sort of stringing him along, or trying to, but I should have realized, the condition she was in about Rufus Toale, that that wouldn’t reassure her. Mother had evaded our questions about him for two months.”
Dillon gazed at her, frowning deeply, considering.
“But,” he offered finally, “while she may have hated Toale enough to want to kill him, what if she hated Jackson that much too?”
“Why should she?”
“Well, what if... what if she...?” He couldn’t get it out. He demanded savagely, “Did you read the paper? Did you get all the hints? Do you know what the whole damned town is saying? About Jackson and women?”
“What has that got to do with Delia?”
Dillon blurted, “Is she a woman?”
“Oh, you mean... Oh.” Clara compressed her lips, then opened them to say, “You’re a swell lover, you are. You’re a hot one. First you accuse her of murder and now you accuse her of being one of Dan Jackson’s women—”
“I don’t accuse her of anything!” The misery in his eyes was in fact anything but accusatory. “But good God, what am I going to think? What am I going to believe? What do you suppose I came here for? What in the name of heaven was she doing in Jackson’s office at night with a gun in her hand?”
“The gun was there on a chair and she picked it up.”
“What was she doing there?”
“She went to give Jackson a note, signed by Mr. Sammis, instructing him to keep me employed there. Jackson had fired me.”
“Who told you that?”
“She did and Mr. Sammis did.”
“Did you see the note?”
“No, I think the sheriff has it. But anybody who thinks Delia had anything to do with Jackson — that’s utter nonsense. Or me either. I got those dirty hints in the paper, but I thought they were aimed at me. Neither Delia or I would have let Dan Jackson touch us with a ten-foot pole — what’s the idea?”
He had jumped to his feet and pounced at her. “Shake!” He seized her hand and crunched the bones. “Put it there! What the hell! Dear sweet darling beautiful Clara! I’m going to set that—”
“I’m not your darling and you broke my knuckles.”
“Okay. Excuse me.” He grabbed her hand again, planted a kiss on the back of it and sat down on the bench opposite her. “There. Now I can fight with my heart in it. If I can make my brain work. What was it— Oh, yes! You say the gun was there on a chair. How did it get from her handbag onto the chair?”
“Her handbag was there too, lying on the desk.”
“All right, who took the gun out?”
“She doesn’t know. Nobody knows. The handbag with the gun and cartridges in it had been stolen from the car in the afternoon while it was parked on Halley Street.”
“Who says so?”
“She does.”
“How did she get it back?”
“She didn’t get it back. The first she saw it again, when she went to Jackson’s office to give him that note, he was there dead and the handbag was on the desk and the gun was on a chair.”
Dillon stared with bulging eyes. “She didn’t take the handbag to the office at all?”
“Certainly not, how could she? She didn’t have it. It had been stolen.”
“And it was there when she... and the gun... good God.” Dillon’s mouth worked. “Then look here. It’s worse even... so that’s what it’s like! And you’ve turned her over to the mercy of Lem Sammis.”
“You said something like that before,” Clara protested. “He wouldn’t do anything to hurt Delia. I’m sure he wouldn’t.”
“Maybe not. You may be sure, but I’m not. That kind of man feels about people the way a general feels about soldiers. He loves them and he’s proud of them, and he’s especially proud of them when they die for the side he’s leading. That’s natural; it’s part of the make-up of a good general. Jackson was Sammis’s partner and son-in-law. There’s no telling what politics or what kind of plot is behind this. I said we’ve got to do something, and I say it now louder than ever. The chief thing I came here for — I got more than I expected and thank God I did — the chief thing was that I want to be Delia’s counsel.”
“You mean her lawyer?”
“That’s it.”
“But Mr. Sammis has already engaged Harvey Anson.”
“I know he has, but listen. In the first place, no matter what you think, you can’t be sure of Sammis, especially with that planting of her handbag. I tell you she’s in terrible danger. In the second place, that paper I spoke of that she read to me yesterday — my name was on it and it was a long question about the consequences of committing murder. If I’m her counsel I can’t be asked about it and I think I could keep it out of evidence, and if I don’t it would convince any jury that she did actually premeditate murder. Of course you could go on the stand and testify that it was really Rufus Toale she thought she wanted to kill and give the reasons why...”
Clara closed her eyes and shuddered.
“Sure, I know,” Dillon said. “But what else could you do? And the chances are the jury wouldn’t believe you anyway. It’s a pretty queer story if you don’t know Delia and all the circumstances. It would be a big advantage if we could keep that paper and her visit to me out of it. Maybe you think I’m too inexperienced to trust her life to, but the firm would be counsel of record — Escott, Brody and Dillon and old Escott is as good as Harvey Anson any day. You’re her nearest relative and you can designate the firm — shall I answer that?”
It was the phone ringing in the front room. Clara nodded and said, “Yes, please.”
While he was gone she sat twisting her fingers in and out, gazing at the egg on the table. She knew she should have been thinking, preparing an intelligent decision for the problem he had put, but she couldn’t manage her brain. It felt tired and battered. There was that egg. Less than twenty-four hours ago she and Delia had been there eating eggs together, and while they hadn’t been precisely gay, still they had been together and healthy and free...