Erie Gardner - The Case of the Crying Swallow

Mason said, “You saw her go into that orange trailer that was parked down in the trees. You watched her—”

“It wasn’t orange. It was green.”

Mason grinned at her.

“All right,” she said. “Don’t think you’re trapping me. I just happened to notice Marcia riding, and then I saw a house trailer parked in the trees.”

“Did you see her go in?”

“I saw her tie up her horse and walk over toward the trailer. I wasn’t interested. I returned to the poetry I was writing.”

“How long was she in there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why did you watch her?”

“I didn’t watch her. I was looking at birds.”

“You had a pencil and a pad of paper up there with you?”

“Yes, of course. I told you I write poetry. One doesn’t write on the walls, Mr. Mason. I keep pencil and paper in the drawer of the table up there.”

“You used the binoculars to get the license number of the automobile. You marked it down, didn’t you?”

“No.”

“When were you up there last writing poetry?”

“Why... why, today.”

“Do you go up there every day?”

“Not every day, but quite frequently.”

“Have you been up every day this week?”

“I... I guess I have. Yes.”

The telephone rang, a sharp, strident, shrill summons.

Mason waited, listening, heard the butler answer it. Then the butler walked with unhurried dignity across the library to the drawing room and said something to Mrs. Winnett. She arose and went to the telephone. Mason heard her say, “Hello, Claude darling... Yes, dear... he’s here... I’m afraid. Claude, that there has been some misunderstanding. Mr. Mason’s activities are hardly such as one would connect with a mining matter. He has shown quite an interest in what Marcia—”

Mason walked over, gently pushed her aside, took the receiver from her hand and said into the telephone, “Okay, Major, I’ve got it now. Get out here at once.”

Major Winnett’s voice was harsh with anger. “Just what do you mean, Mr. Mason? I’m afraid that you and I—”

Mason interrupted. “Your mother is trying to protect somebody. Daphne Rexford is trying to protect somebody. There’s only one person I can think of whom they’d both go to such lengths to protect. That’s you. If you get out here fast, we may be able to beat the police to it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know damn well what I mean,” Mason said and hung up.

Major Winnett’s limp was more noticeable as he moved across the drawing room to confront Perry Mason. “I don’t know exactly what’s been going on here,” he said angrily. “I don’t know what prerogatives you have assumed, Mr. Mason. But as far as I’m concerned, our relationship is ended.”

Mason said, “Sit down.”

“I’m waiting to drive you to town, Mason, in case you don’t have a car. If you do, I’ll go with you to your room and you can pack up.”

Mason said, “As nearly as I can put things together, you had previously discovered the trailer parked down in the trees. You were suspicious. You went up to the observation tower and saw Marcia go to the trailer and then later on saw the car and trailer go away. You took down the license number of the car. You looked up the man who owned that car. After that you kept a pretty close watch on what was going on.

“You didn’t say anything when Marcia canceled the insurance on her jewelry and then had such an opportune burglary. You were very careful not to call the police because you knew the police would tab it as an inside job. You let your wife think it was because your mother didn’t want any notoriety, but you got the jewelry and hid it in that twelve-gauge shotgun. After that you kept a pretty good watch on your wife. Where did you get the jewelry?”

“Mason,” Winnett said coldly, “in case you don’t leave this house at once, I’m going to call the servants and have you put out.”

Mason brushed aside Major Winnett’s angry statement with a gesture. “You’ll have to hire more servants, then,” he said, and went on. “When the trailer came back on Wednesday and Marcia went down there the second time, you decided to investigate. When you got down there, you found you had a fight on your hands. You killed Harry Drummond. Then you locked up the trailer, came back to the house and waited until dark. Then you took the trailer with its gruesome evidence of murder, drove to a trailer camp—”

“Mason, watch what you’re saying. By heaven, I’ll throw you out myself!”

“—parked the trailer,” Mason went on, as smoothly as though Major Winnett had said nothing, “but only after some difficulty, then got out and went home. Then you felt it would add an artistic touch to have two shots fired so the time of the killing could be definitely fixed. So you went back, sneaked into the trailer park, stood in the dark outside the trailer and fired two shots in the air.

“You didn’t realize that Marcia had been following you, and when she heard those shots she naturally thought you had killed Drummond out of jealousy, decided that she loved you too much to let you take the rap, and so skipped out. That’s the reason you didn’t go to a detective agency to get someone to try to find your wife. You wanted a lawyer who specialized in murder cases, because you knew there was going to be a murder case.”

Major Winnett snapped his fingers. “A lot of half-baked theories!”

“You see,” Mason went on, “you made a couple of fatal mistakes. One of them was that the first shot you fired missed Drummond and went clean through the trailer, leaving a hole in the double walls that clearly shows the direction taken by the bullet. When you parked that trailer in the automobile camp under the eucalyptus trees, it was dark and you didn’t take the precaution of noticing where a bullet fired under such circumstances would have hit. That was a mistake, Major. As it happened, the hole in the trailer was lined up absolutely with the window of an adjoining trailer.

“At first the police will think the shot might have been fired from the other trailer. Then they’ll make a more careful investigation and find that the direction of the bullet was the other way. Then they’ll know that the murder wasn’t committed there at the trailer park. There’s another little thing you hadn’t thought of. At the time you moved the trailer, the body had been dead for some time but the pool of blood hadn’t entirely coagulated. Near the center of the pool there was blood that was still liquid. It spread around when the trailer swayed from side to side in going over irregularities in the road. That is what gives the pool of clotted blood the peculiar appearance of having little jagged streamers flowing from it.”

Major Winnett was silent and motionless. His eyes were fixed on Mason with cold concentration. The anger had left his face, and it was quite plain the man’s mind was desperately turning over Mason’s words.

“So,” Mason went on, “you knew that when the police started to investigate, they would find the dead man had been Marcia’s first husband. You knew they would then start looking for her. When they found that she had skipped out, you knew what would happen. And so, you came to me.”

Major Winnett cleared his throat. “You made a statement that Marcia had followed me. Do you have any evidence to back that up?”

Mason said, “It’s a logical deduction from—”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Come to my room. I want to talk with you.”

Mason said, “You haven’t much time. The police have found the body. They’re going to be out here looking for Marcia as soon as they have completed an identification and checked up on the man’s history.”