Fer-De-Lance

I nodded and went back to facts. I was ready for golf. Peter Oliver Barstow had not been a zealot, she said. He had rarely played at the university, and not oftener than once a week, occasionally twice, during the summer. He had nearly always gone to Green Meadow, where he was a member; he of course had had a locker and kept his paraphernalia there. He had been quite good, considering the infrequency of his play, averaging from ninety-five to a hundred. He had played usually with friends his own age, but sometimes with his son and daughter. His wife had never tried it. The foursome of that fatal Sunday, E.D. Kimball and his son Manuel and Barstow and his son Lawrence, had never before played together, she thought. Probably it had been an accident of propinquity; her brother had not mentioned whether it had been prearranged, but she knew that he did sometimes have a game with Manuel. She especially doubted that the foursome had been arranged beforehand because it had been her father’s first appearance at Green Meadow that summer; the Barstows had come to Westchester three weeks earlier than their custom on account of Mrs. Barstow’s condition, and Barstow had expected to return to the university that Sunday night.

When she had said that Sarah Barstow stopped. I glanced up from my notebook. Her fingers were twisted together and she was staring off at the path, at nothing. She said, not to me, "Now he will not return there at all. All the things he wanted to do-all he would have done-not at all-"

I waited a little and then shook her out of it by asking, "Did your father leave his golf bag at Green Meadow all year?"

She turned back to me. "No. Why-of course not, because he sometimes used them at the university."

"He had only the one bag of clubs?"

"Yes!" She seemed emphatic.

"Then he brought them with him? You only got here Saturday noon. You drove down from the university and the luggage followed in a truck. Was the bag in the car or in the truck?"

It was easy to see that I was touching something raw. Her throat showed muscles and her arms pressed p ever so little against her sides; she was tightening up.

I pretended I didn’t notice it, just waited with my pencil. She said, "I don’t know. Really I don’t remember."

"Probably in the truck," I said. "Since he wasn’t much of a fan he probably wouldn’t bother with it in the car. Where is it now?"