All for the Love of a Lady by Zenith Brown & Leslie Ford

Author:Zenith Brown & Leslie Ford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2018-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

14

“Tell Colonel Primrose anything you can, Flowers,” Courtney said. “And don’t be alarmed.”

“I ain’t alarmed, miss, I’m just plain scared,” he said. “All them police downstairs . . .”

“They won’t hurt you,” Colonel Primrose said quietly. “When did you take the sandwiches to the library?”

“Eight o’clock on the dot, Colonel, sir. And that was the last time I saw Mr. Durbin, the very last time. He told me to get the hell out and downstairs and stay till he rung, and he ain’t never rung. I didn’t come out of the cellar till you kep’ on ringin’ the doorbell, and I thought he’d be out and raisin’ cain, which is why I come up then.”

“No one else came?”

“No, sir.”

“When did the two gentlemen leave?”

“I don’t know is they left,” Flowers said emphatically. “I didn’t hear nobody come, or nobody go. And that’s the truth, Colonel, sir.”

“What about the other servants——”

“There ain’t no other servants, sir. They left, and they’re not coming back. The cook put the dinner in the icebox and went home. The maid and Mis’ Durbin’s maid left right afterwards. They say they don’ use to work for crazy people.”

Courtney shrugged her shoulders.

“You can’t blame them.”

She got up slowly and stood there for a moment.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to go to bed,” she said. “I’m very tired. In the morning I’ll talk to you again, but now I’m tired.—Mr. Durbin’s life was something I knew almost nothing about. He never discussed his business, or his family. . . . May I go now?”

I don’t mean to sound as feline as I know I must, and it isn’t feline, actually, as much as it’s just a sound crimino-sociological observation, in view of the next few minutes. But Courtney Durbin all but had Colonel Primrose and Inspector Bigges making a rose-garlanded litter to bear her up the stairs. There was something so fragile and intangibly wistful in her appeal. It was so without artifice. She was tired, which was no doubt true, but the impression was she’d stay there till she dropped if they really wanted her to, which I’d have bet practically everything wasn’t true. Only a brute could have said, “Hold everything, lady. You wait till we’re through with you.” She looked so ingenuous and so entirely in their hands, without laying on one thousandth of an inch more than the traffic would bear.

The men had got to their feet.

“Sure, you ought to try to get some rest,” Inspector Bigges said hastily, because it was he she was looking at. He looked as if he felt like a dirty dog, keeping her there that long.

She took a step or two toward the door, and then, as if it had just occurred to her, she turned back, glancing at Colonel Primrose.

“It wouldn’t disturb anyone if I turned on the victrola upstairs, would it?” she asked.

She went over to the open phonograph, picked up the records on the turntable as if she’d been playing them before all this, and started back to the door.

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