Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Fenced-In Woman

“Now, just to keep matters from reaching an impasse, I’m asking you to go right back through that entranceway and out the side door. You can get in your car, drive back to Eden’s part of the house and wait for me there. On your way, Counselor.”

Mason bowed. “Because of the restraining order, and because Mrs. Carson knows she doesn’t need to make any statement at this time, I will be only too glad to leave.”

“And to wait at Eden’s place until I get over there,” Tragg reminded him.

“And to wait,” Mason said, catching Vivian Carson’s eye and frowning slightly as a warning to her.

It was twenty minutes later when Tragg returned to Eden’s side of the house. He found Mason and Eden in the living room.

“How was the interview with Mrs. Carson?” Mason asked.

“Not very satisfactory, thanks to you,” Tragg said. “However, the lady told me quite a few things. She gave me more information than she realized.”

“I see,” Mason said. “Now how would you like me to give you some more?”

“I don’t think I’d like it,” Tragg said. “I fear you when you’re bearing gifts, but go right ahead.”

Mason said, “I would like to call your attention to the fact that Carson’s shirt sleeves are wet up to the elbow, but the coat sleeves aren’t wet except on the inside where water presumably soaked in from the shirt.”

“And how do you know all this?” Tragg asked.

“I know,” Mason said, “because a newspaper reporter told me so.”

Tragg said, “You have very carefully called my attention to this thing. Just what do you think it means?”

Mason said, “There is a swimming pool on the place and we have a man whose shirt sleeves are wet up to the elbow. I think the two things go together.”

“All right,” Tragg said, “we’ll look around.”

Tragg started toward the swimming pool, then turned as he noticed that Mason and Eden had fallen in behind him.

“I don’t think I’ll need either of you to help me look, Counselor,” he said.

“My client,” Mason said, “will need me to keep track of what you find.”

“Well, your client’s wishes don’t control me in the matter.”

“All right then,” Mason said, “I’ll put it up to you this way. Do you have a search warrant?”

“I don’t need one. There’s been a murder committed and I can look around for evidence.”

“That’s quite right,” Mason said, “and you have a right to keep all people away who may obscure or remove the evidence, but when you leave the vicinity of the murder and start prowling around the premises without a search warrant, the legal representative of the owner of the premises is entitled to—”

“All right, all right,” Tragg conceded irritably, “I’m not going to argue with you. Come along, but don’t interfere and don’t try to remove or suppress any evidence.”

Tragg walked out to the swimming pool, surveyed the barbed-wire fence stretched in a taut line across the surface of the pool and across the patio.

“That’s quite a job,” he said. “Quite an engineering job, also.”

Mason nodded.

“You’d have to dive to get under that fence,” Tragg said. “The wires are too tight and too close together for a person to crawl through. Well, let’s look around.”

Tragg took off his coat, rolled up his sleeve, got down on his hands and knees and started feeling his way along the side of the swimming pool, his right hand in the water, exploring every tile of the swimming pool to the depth of his elbow.

“Just what did you think would be here, Mason?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Mason said. “I thought it was significant that the man’s arms were wet.”

“Of course it’s significant,” Tragg said, continuing to grope his way around the pool.

Vivian Carson, standing in the doorway of her side of the patio, asked, “May I inquire just what it is you’re looking for?”

“Evidence,” Tragg said curtly.

Tragg completed his circuit of the swimming pool on that side of the barbed-wire fence. “Well,” he said, “I guess there’s nothing here. We’ll try the other side — although I don’t see what you’re getting at, Mason.

“Would you mind placing a chair next to the barbed wire on your side, Mrs. Carson? I’ll place a chair on this side... right on the tile border of the pool will be all right... Thank you very much. In that way I can make an inspection without going all the way around.”

Eden brought out a straight-backed chair which he placed on his side of the fence. Mrs. Carson brought out a similar chair.

Climbing to one chair and then stepping over the taut wire to the other chair, Tragg let himself down on the other side of the fence and completed his inspection of the pool.

“I don’t seem to find a thing,” he said, his manner thoughtful.

Mason pointed to the cement steps leading up from the shallow end of the pool. “Did you feel all around those, Lieutenant?”

“I felt all around those steps.”

“And in back of the steps? From here it looks to me as though the first cement step isn’t right up against the swimming pool.”

“Well, what about it?” Tragg asked.

“Under ordinary swimming-pool construction,” Mason said, “I thought—”

“Okay, I get it,” Tragg said impatiently.

The police lieutenant got down on his knees again, said, “I’ll probably have worn out the knees on these pants by the time I get done with this thing. I... You’re right, Mason! There’s a crack between the upper step and the back of the swimming pool. I can get my fingers in it. But that doesn’t mean anything.”

“No?” Mason asked.

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute,” Tragg said. “There’s a ring here.”

“What sort of a ring?”

“A metal ring and it’s on a cord. I’m going to pull it, Mason, and...”

Tragg braced himself with his left hand, pulled with his right.

“This thing is moving,” Tragg said. “It’s on a cable. It... Well, what do you know, what do you know?”

Some ten feet back from the swimming pool a tile raised on a hinge, disclosing a square receptacle.

Tragg let go of the ring, jumped to his feet.

“So that’s it,” he said, “a concealed strongbox. Let’s see what’s in it.”

“You stay here,” Mason told Eden, then climbed up on the chair and over the wire fence to Mrs. Carson’s side of the house. He hurried over to join Tragg. They looked down into a steel-lined recess that was nearly eighteen inches square and some two feet deep.

“Not a darn thing in it,” Tragg said.

Vivian Carson, standing behind them looking down into the dark interior, asked, “What in the world is all this?”

Tragg looked up. “Suppose you tell us, Mrs. Carson.”

She shook her head. “It’s all news to me.”

Tragg’s brows knitted thoughtfully.

“Carson built this house, Mason?” he asked.

“That’s my understanding.”

“And the swimming pool?”

“The whole house, swimming pool, patio and everything.”

Vivian Carson said, “So that’s it! That’s where he was concealing his money.”

“What money?” Tragg asked.

“He jockeyed things around so that it was impossible to get any kind of a property accounting out of him,” she said breathlessly. “Judge Goodwin knew that my ex-husband had been concealing assets and he was trying to force him to disclose them. He examined him at great length about whether he had any savings accounts, any safety deposit boxes, anything that... That’s what he was doing when he constructed this house; he made this secret safe and he put cash and securities in here.”