“You’re not going off today?”
“No,” I promised.
She stood the gaff pretty well all afternoon. Of course, there wasn’t much heartiness in the way she laughed at herself between attacks when the sneezing and yawning hit her, but the thing was that she tried to laugh.
Madison Andrews came between five and half-past. Having seen him drive in, I met him on the porch. The ruddiness of his face had been washed out to a weak orange.
“Good evening,” he said politely. “I wish to see Mrs. Collinson.”
“I’ll deliver any message to her,” I offered.
He pulled his white eyebrows down and some of his normal ruddiness came back.
“I wish to see her.” It was a command.
“She doesn’t wish to see you. Is there any message?”
All of his ruddiness was back now. His eyes were hot. I was standing between him and the door. He couldn’t go in while I stood there. For a moment he seemed about to push me out of the way. That didn’t worry me: he was carrying a handicap of twenty pounds and twenty years.
He pulled his jaw into his neck and spoke in the voice of authority:
“Mrs. Collinson must return to San Francisco with me. She cannot stay here. This is a preposterous arrangement.”
“She’s not going to San Francisco,” I said. “If necessary, the district attorney can hold her here as a material witness. Try upsetting that with any of your court orders, and we’ll give you something else to worry about. I’m telling you this so you’ll know how we stand. We’ll prove that she might be in danger from you. How do we know you haven’t played marbles with the estate? How do we know you don’t mean to take advantage of her present upset condition to shield yourself from trouble over the estate? Why, man, you might even be planning to send her to an insane-asylum so the estate will stay under your control.”
He was sick behind his eyes, though the rest of him stood up well enough under this broadside. When he had got his breath and had swallowed, he demanded:
“Does Gabrielle believe this?” His face was magenta.
“Who said anybody believed it?” I was trying to be bland. “I’m just telling you what we’ll go into court with. You’re a lawyer. You know there’s not necessarily any connection between what’s true and what you go into court with–or into the newspapers.”
The sickness spread from behind his eyes, pushing the color from his face, the stiffness from his bones; but he held himself tall and he found a level voice.
“You may tell Mrs. Collinson,” he said, “that I shall return my letters testamentary to the court this week, with an accounting of the estate, and a request that I be relieved.”
“That’ll be swell,” I said, but I felt sorry for the old boy shuffling down to his car, climbing slowly into it.
I didn’t tell Gabrielle he had been there.
She was whining a little now between her yawning and sneezing, and her eyes were running water. Face, body, and hands were damp with sweat. She couldn’t eat. I kept her full of orange juice. Noises and odors– no matter how faint, how pleasant–were becoming painful to her, and she twitched and jerked continually in her bed.
“Will it get much worse than this?” she asked.
“Not much. There’ll be nothing you can’t stand.”
Mickey Linehan was waiting for me when I got downstairs.
“The spick’s got herself a chive,” he said pleasantly.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s the one I’ve been using to shuck lemons to take the stink out of that bargain-counter gin you bought–or did you just borrow it, the owner knowing you’d return it because nobody could drink it? It’s a paring knife–four or five inches of stainless steel blade–so you won’t get rustmarks on your undershirt when she sticks it in your back. I couldn’t find it, and asked her about it, and she didn’t look at me like I was a well-poisoner when she said she didn’t know anything about it, and that’s the first time she never looked at me that way, so I knew she had it.”