“Almost any time,” I said. “Bertha’s landed a job in the city for you.”
“Donald!”
“It’s a fact,” I said.
She came around the counter.
From the back room came the laboured clack-clack-clack of the typewriter as Stephen Dunton wrote out the obituary of the woman with whom gossip had connected his name twenty-one years ago.
In an envelope in my inside coat pocket was a certified copy of the death certificate. The envelope was addressed to Charles Loring Alftmont, Mayor of Santa Carlotta, and, right at present, that envelope was being badly wrinkled by the pressure of Marian Dunton’s body as she hugged me to her, but I thought it would be a touching gesture to hold up mailing the envelope until I could include a clipping from the Oakview Blade.
“Oh, Donald, you darling!”
“Bertha did it,” I said. “The newspaper picture helped — the one with the legs. What’ll Charlie say?”
“Charlie?”
“Charlie, the boy friend.”