“Trouble?” Marian laughed. “Good heavens, no! Do you know what he wanted to ask me when he requested me to remain behind?”
Bertha Cool said, “It’s an even money bet he asked you to marry him.”
Marian laughed and said, “No, not that — not yet. He’s a very conservative young man, but he did ask me to go to dinner and a show tonight.”
There was silence for a while. Marian kept looking at me as though waiting for a question.
Bertha Cool asked it. “What did you tell him?” she asked.
Marian said, “That I had a date with Donald.”
Bertha Cool sighed, and then, after a moment, said, in an undertone, “Can me for a sardine.”
Chapter Fifteen
It was all more or less routine to the coroner. He had some witnesses who identified the body as that of Flo Danzer, the night-club hostess, but I explained to him that that was a name taken by Aunt Amelia after she’d left John Wilmen. I put the whole history together for him. She’d left Oakview as Mrs. Lintig, had taken her maiden name of Amelia Sellar, had secured a Mexican divorce, had married John Wilmen, had left John Wilmen, taken the name of Flo Danzer, and more recently had gone back to using the name, Amelia Lintig. I told him about her trip to Oakview, and the clerk and the porter at the hotel, whose expenses to the city had been donated by the agency, identified the body absolutely.
After the autopsy, they turned the body over to me. I went with it to Oakview for interment. Quite a few people turned out for the funeral. That wasn’t so good. I explained that I thought the mourners were sincere, but there were a lot of curiosity-seekers and morbid persons who had attended the funeral, so I was going to keep the coffin lid closed. I thought Aunt Amelia would want it that way.