“But Sis — why — you shouldn’t have waited all this time—”
“There’s a mob out front, Del — it’s awful — come this way—”
They made it to the back stairs and clattered down, and near the bottom were overtaken by Dillon and Pellett, panting. In the basement they took a narrow side hall and came to a back door, closed, with a man standing there. Dillon handed the man something, and the door opened and they passed through. The large paved court where parking was reserved for officials’ and employees’ cars was almost deserted and they hurried across it to a maroon sedan which Delia recognized as Dillon’s.
He told her, “Pile in!”
Delia balked, shaking her head. “I’m not going home.”
They stared at her.
“I mean not now. Not first. First I’m going to see Doctor Toale.”
“Holy smoke!” said Uncle Quin. “Listen to her!”
“You’re not going to walk, are you?” Ty demanded. “Pile in anyway!”
They all climbed in, Ty taking the wheel. The engine roared and the car leaped forward, circled careening, and scooted for the gap leading to the street. Delia caught a glimpse of many faces as they swept by. She demanded of Clara’s ear, “But why a mob? Not after me!”
“Sure they are.” Clara squeezed her arm. “They want to give you three cheers and carry you home on their shoulders. The radio said you were being questioned as a witness and would soon be released. What’s this about going to see Doctor Toale?”
“I’m going, that’s all.”
Clara opened her mouth to reply, but the car careened again, turning a corner, and she grabbed for the strap; and then, apparently, thought better of it. Three minutes later the car rolled to a stop at the curb, under a tree on River Avenue, and Ty Dillon, behind the wheel, twisted himself around to face the back seat.
“Now,” he said, with a challenge in his tone. “The place for you is home. I thought you said you had been doing some thinking the past two days?”
“I have, Ty.” Delia didn’t quicken to the challenge. “Of course the place for me is home. But first I’m going to see Doctor Toale.”
Pellett demanded, “What for?”
“Not for anything foolish, Uncle Quin. I know you all think I’m a fool. I’ve been locked up in a jail, and you think as soon as I get out I want to do something mysterious and dramatic, but I don’t, I swear I don’t. What I’m going to do is quite simple and straightforward. You can drive me home and I’ll take my car — where is my car? I left it on Halley Street.”
“It’s home in the garage,” said Clara. “Frank Phelan had it brought around yesterday.”
“Then if you’ll drive me home I’ll take it—”
“Nothing doing,” Ty declared shortly. “If nothing else, with that open car you’ll collect a crowd wherever you go. Damn it, you’re a sensation! The whole town thinks you shot Jackson and you’ve been turned loose through Sammis’s influence. I’m telling you, you ought to go home and lock the door. What do you want to see Toale for?”
Delia shook her head. “I’ve changed, Ty.” She frowned into his eyes. “Really I have. But before I go into that house again that was Dad’s house, where my mother died, I’m going to do something and I know what it is, and it’s all right.”
He looked at her. “Okay.” He twisted under the wheel. “We’ll drive you there and we’ll wait out front.”
The comfortable and attractive parsonage occupied by the Reverend Rufus Toale, widower, was at the rear of the church, on Maltbie Street. The table on which he ate his modest evening meal, when he had no guest, was in the bay window of the sitting room, which he preferred to the dining room at that time of day because it was cooler, and because from his chair there he could see the tinted enlarged photograph of his deceased wife hanging on the wall. He was gnawing fragments from a lamb chop bone when his housekeeper entered to announce that Miss Delia Brand wished to see him.
“Who, Mrs. Bonner? Are you sure?”
“I am, sir.”
“Praise God! Seat her in the library.” He slowly and methodically wiped his fingers on his napkin, his lips moving in silent prayer, took a drink of water, arose and buttoned his coat, and went to the library, a smaller room across the hall.
Delia was standing up with her eyes fixed on the door, awaiting his entrance.
He stopped three paces short of her. “Sit down, my child.”
She shook her head, swallowed, and said nothing. She swallowed again and said, “I just came to tell you something.”
“But you can tell me sitting. Guests and friends who talk, children of God—”
“I’m not a guest or a friend, Doctor Toale. I’m not a child of God either — not your God—”
“My poor child, you are overwrought with this ordeal—”
She blurted, “You told Sheriff Tuttle today that it was you I wanted to kill.”
“So I did. I had tried to see you—”
“You were right.” She stood with her back straight, her arms straight at her sides. “I did want to kill you. I even thought I was going to kill you. I decided to. But I’ve been seeing into parts of me that I never saw into before and I don’t think I would ever have done it. I think I was hysterical. I think I was a false alarm and a four-flusher. Anyway, that is all past and everything that is gone is past. I want to tell you that I know you killed my mother, I don’t know how or why, but I know you did, and that’s all I want to say. And I don’t care whether you are punished or not, because when I was lying there on a cot I was looking at Mrs. Welch and thinking about it — and something she said to me — about evil and wickedness and mercy. I couldn’t ask for mercy for you, even if there was anybody to ask, but I’m not going to be a faker and a four-flusher any more and try to pretend that I... that I—”
She faltered. Her lips were working but not saying anything, and she couldn’t stop them.
The Reverend Rufus Toale stepped forward with a hand outstretched. “My poor child! God bless you—”
“Don’t you dare to touch me!” she gasped, and turned and fled from the house.
He stood in the hall five minutes, his lips moving silently, looking at the front door she had left open. Then he went and closed the door, returned to the table in the bay window of the sitting room, glanced up at the tinted picture of his wife and, glancing down, saw that the other lamb chop was cold and greasy.
Chapter 11
County Attorney Ed Baker was laying down the law to two of the three men who were seated in his office with him. “You can either keep your mouth shut, Chambers, or get out. I didn’t send for Hurley in order to badger him, but to get information from him. You keep out of it unless you get an invitation. Understand?”
The Sheriff of Silverside County allowed grudgingly, “I guess I do.”
“Okay — and you, Hurley, if you find it painful to have any contact with Sheriff Chambers—”
“It makes me puke just to look at him.”
“Then keep your head this way and you won’t see him. I’m letting him stay because it will save time if I want to ask him something. As I told you, the first thing I want to know is exactly what happened Tuesday evening. I know you’ve told it before, but it’s a different setup now. It’s not as simple as I thought it was. Now go ahead and don’t leave anything out.”