Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Careless Kitten

“You know, Della, she might have got away with it if it hadn’t been for Amber Eyes. It was shrewdly worked out. She did one stupid thing, though.”

“What?”

“That note, supposedly from Leech, directing us out to the reservoir that she mailed on the way back from the murder. She wrote it as a Jap would, trying to pull Komo in as a red herring to confuse the trail. That wasn’t very smart.”

“But why was Leech blackmailing her?”

“He found out the truth.”

“What truth?”

“Remember the body that was found at about the time Franklin Shore disappeared — the unidentified body?”

“You mean that was Franklin Shore? Why, Chief, that’s impossible. That...”

“No, it wasn’t Franklin Shore. It was Phil Lunk.”

“Phil Lunk?” Della gasped.

“You see, Matilda Shore didn’t love her husband. What’s more he was about to ruin the man she did love. If Matilda could get Franklin out of the way, she would inherit his fortune and be in a position to indulge her lust for power; she could save Stephen Alber financially, and, later on, marry him. Our friend Lunk was her man Friday from the beginning. His brother was dying. They knew that his death was only a matter of days — perhaps hours. Matilda laid her plans with that in mind. When he died, the doctor who had been in attendance came in response to Tom Lunk’s call, and quite properly filled out a death certificate. But the body the undertaker picked up was that of Franklin Shore who had previously been given a dose of quick-acting poison. His body was waiting — probably outside in Lunk’s car, all ready for a quick switch. After disposing of his brother’s body, Lunk whisked Shore’s body off to the East to bury in place of his brother, and later lied about the time he’d left, saying it was before Shore’s disappearance.”

“But he had a mother in the East. Wouldn’t she have known it wasn’t the brother Phil?”

Mason grinned. “You’re still believing everything Lunk told you! I’ll bet you that five bucks I won from you today that when Tragg investigates, he’ll find Lunk never had lived in the place to which the body was taken for burial. Now here’s another clue. George Alber went to Lunk’s shack about midnight. Lights were on, but there was no sound from the inside. Lunk says he was listening to the radio before Franklin Shore came. If that had been true, Alber would have heard either voices or the radio.”

“But how about that post card from Florida?”

“That post card is really as much of a giveaway as what the kitten did,” Mason said.

“How?”

“Don’t you see? Because it was written in the winter of 1931, not the spring of 1932.”

“How can you tell?”

“He said he was enjoying the mild climate,” Mason said. “Florida has a good summer climate; but people don’t talk about enjoying a mild climate except in winter. Then he says, ‘believe it or not,’ he’s enjoying the swimming. He certainly wouldn’t have said that if he’d been writing from Florida in the summer, because then there wouldn’t have been any ‘believe it or not’ about enjoying the swimming.”

“But the card was postmarked in June of 1932.”

“Sure, it was,” Mason said. “But there was no date on the card, only on the postmark. People seldom date picture post cards. Don’t you see? There’s only one explanation. It was a card he’d written Helen when he and Matilda Shore had been visiting there the winter before. He’d probably slipped it in the pocket of one of his suits and had forgotten to mail it. Matilda found it when she was cleaning out his closet soon after his disappearance. It gave her a chance to ring in an artistic touch to the whole case. So six months after the ‘disappearance’ Helen gets a card mailed from Florida. I don’t know how Matilda got it mailed, but it could have been done in any number of ways. Too, that gave her a chance to concoct this story of the mysterious double, which would confuse the police even more when she wanted to arrange for a ‘reappearance’ and make it seem Franklin Shore had really killed Leech.” Mason sucked in a prodigious yawn. “I’m getting sleepy.”

Della Street said, “I think you’re the most baffling and the most exasperating individual I’ve ever known.”

“What’s wrong now?”

She said, “All these clues are so plain once you explain them. That’s what makes it so particularly exasperating. They’re so very, very plain. The answer is obvious, once you really look at them properly arranged. But somehow I can’t ever arrange them and interpret them.”

Mason said, “But it’s all there. The kitten jumping onto the warm bed, the handkerchief with a laundry mark ten years old, the watch that was wound at four o’clock in the afternoon — a time when no person would normally wind a watch. The post card sent in summer, but obviously written in winter...”

“And you’re not going to help Hamilton Burger figure this out?”

“Not a bit of it. Let him fry.”

“Are you going to let her get away with this, and...”

“She won’t get away with it,” Mason said. “Tragg will eventually figure it out. He probably has the kitten angle straight already. He’ll go digging up the body of Phil Lunk, and find it’s really that of Franklin Shore. He’ll begin to wonder who could have driven the car that struck down Tom Lunk, and will reason it out that it must have been the person who had killed Leech, trying to silence the lips of a man who might talk too much. And you have to hand it to Lunk. He played that most deadly efficient of all parts — that of a witness who is smart, but pretends to be stupid. His lying about Franklin Shore’s visit was a masterpiece. But that, of course, is one of the things an investigator has to remember. A murderer will naturally lie, and a person who is clever enough to work out an ingenious murder plan will be clever enough to work out an ingenious lie. Matilda had, of course, helped him. They’d worked that all out in detail. But if it hadn’t been for that kitten, they’d have fooled us — for a while, anyway.

“And believe me, darling, the next time I get in on a case, Hamilton Burger and Tragg won’t tell me the proper place for me is in my office waiting for clues to turn up. They’re going to be in a hot, hot spot for some time now, and when they finally do get it solved, they’ll realize I had the answers all along.”

Della Street confessed, “Well, I’ll tell you one thing. You had me scared.”

“Afraid you were going to get convicted?”

“I... I didn’t know. It seemed so darn hopeless when I saw all that circumstantial evidence piling up.”

Mason took one hand from the steering wheel to slip around her shoulders. “My dear, you should always have confidence in your lawyer,” he told her gravely.