Erle Gardner - The Case of the Borrowed Brunette

“ ’Night, Paul,” Mason said, adding in an undertone, “Don’t let the police catch you hanging around the neighborhood.”

Drake paused. “Perry, have a heart! Don’t stick your neck out on this thing. Talk with them, and then notify the police. The police will get them anyway.”

“I’ll probably do that.”

“Promise?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I may change my mind after I hear what they tell me. Here they are, Paul.”

“On my way,” Drake said. “And I think I’ll stay on this streetcar until I get clean out of the neighborhood!”

He gave a shrill whistle and sprinted for the car.

Mason switched on his headlights, turned his car around and, when the two women were abreast of him, opened the door. “Hello, Eva,” he said. “Is that Mrs. Winters with you?”

It was Cora Felton who answered. “Well, I like that!”

Mason laughed. “In this light, all I could make out was just two figures. How about a lift?”

“The apartment’s only two or three blocks away, but that’ll be fine.”

“I want to talk with you a minute before you go to the apartment. You have company there.”

“Who?” Eva Martell asked.

“The police.”

“But we’ve already talked with them. At least I have.”

“They want to talk some more.”

“Good heavens, Mr. Mason, I’ve told them absolutely everything I know.”

“Where’s Mrs. Winters?”

“She went on to her apartment.”

“On that streetcar?”

“No, I transferred. The car we took in front of your office building took Aunt Adelle directly home.”

“Then she’s probably home ahead of you.”

“I’ll say she is. I had to wait ten minutes for a car at the transfer point.”

“Where were you?” Mason asked Cora Felton.

“I happened to be on the same car — just a coincidence. I’d been to a movie. I certainly was surprised when Eva got aboard and told me what had happened.”

“I’ll feel better,” Mason said, “if I get you both out of the neighborhood while we talk. Let’s drive out a little way and park the car.”

“Why do we have to talk? What’s it all about?” Eva asked. “I thought we’d finished everything.”

Mason was driving the car slowly along the road and keeping a watch in the rear view mirror. “You told the police that you had been with Adelle Winters all day?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

“Why did you tell them that?”

“Because it’s the truth.”

“Did you sign a statement to that effect?”

“Yes.”

“Swear to it?”

“Yes. It was an affidavit.”

“I’m not the police. Don’t lie to me. I’m your lawyer — tell me the truth. Now were you with her all day?”

“Yes.”

“Every minute of the time?”

“Well... I... practically.”

“Never mind that ‘practically’ stuff. Tell me the truth.”

“Well, there were a few minutes here and there around the hotel — for instance when she went to the rest room... ”

“But how about before you went to the hotel? — while you were still at the apartment?”

“Well... but, Mr. Mason, what difference does it make?”

Mason was impatient. “Heaven knows why I waste time on you. Do I have to drag the truth out of you with a block and tackle? Go ahead and tell me what happened.”

With a nervous laugh she obeyed. “Well, of course, it doesn’t mean a darned thing, but after we left the apartment and got down to the lobby, we stopped to put through some phone calls from the booth there. After we’d been there a few minutes, Aunt Adelle suddenly remembered that she’d left something of hers in the apartment, and she wanted to go up and get it.”

“What was it?”

“Well, she told me — after we got to the hotel — that it was a .32 revolver. She said she’d had it in a sideboard drawer, had taken it out, then had inadvertently left it on the sideboard, intending to put it in her handbag, and... well, she’d just forgotten it. She didn’t want to leave it there. So I waited in the apartment-house lobby, reading, and she took the key and ran back up to the apartment. Of course, now that she says she never owned a gun... well, I hardly know what to think.”

“How did it happen you didn’t mention this to the police?”

“Isn’t that obvious, Mr. Mason? When we got back to the apartment later and found Hines with a bullet hole in his forehead, Aunt Adelle said the only thing to do was to get in touch with you. And you told us to notify the police. Then Aunt Adelle suggested that there’d be no sense in complicating the situation by mentioning that she’d left something up in the apartment.”

“Did she tell you it was a gun she had left there?”

“Not then. She had told me that back at the hotel.”

“What time was it when she went upstairs for the gun?”

“Around two o’clock. It was just before we left the apartment house. Perhaps ten minutes after two — I’d looked at my watch as we left the elevator, and it was five to two then. We were in the lobby some ten or fifteen minutes, what with one thing and another. It was probably a minute or so past two when she started back to the apartment upstairs.”

Mason said, “Now this is terribly important. Where were you?”

“You mean while Aunt Adelle went back upstairs?”

“Yes.”

“In the lobby.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Not outside, where any person who had been shadowing you could have seen you?”

“No. I waited inside the lobby reading a racing form sheet.”

“How long was she gone?”

“Oh, just a few minutes.”

“Can you make a better estimate than that?”

“Well, perhaps five or six minutes.”

“But it couldn’t have taken so long as that for her just to go up to the apartment and back, could it?”

“It must have — there was no other place for her to go. Mr. Mason, what is the reason for all these questions?”

“Adelle Winters had a gun, and that gun killed Robert Hines.”

“What?”

“That’s right.”

“Are you certain?”

“Practically certain. The Ballistics Department hasn’t given its report yet, but the police found Mrs. Winters’s gun.”

“Where?”

“Where she had been seen to put it, in a garbage pail at the Lorenzo Hotel.”

“And you mean the bullet had been fired from that gun? Why, Mr. Mason, that’s utterly impossible!”

“Although Mrs. Winters had bought some fresh ammunition, she hadn’t as yet reloaded the gun. It was loaded with shells of an obsolete type, and the bullet was quite distinctive — it was exactly the same type that the police recovered from the skull of Robert Hines.”

“Why, that’s absolutely incredible!”

“All right, let’s see what Adelle Winters has to say. Let’s see what her story is about the gun. Did you believe her when she said she didn’t have a gun — that it was all a bluff?”

“No, I didn’t. That’s the funny thing about Aunt Adelle. You have to take some of the things that she says with a... Well, it isn’t exactly that she wants to deceive you; it’s just — well, it’s hard to explain. You see, she’s been a practical nurse, and she’s nursed a lot of persons with incurable diseases. So she got into the way of lying, reassuring them, telling them they were going to get well. Or, if she was nursing someone who’d had a nervous breakdown, she’d lie to keep her patient from worrying, telling things that would help toward the sick person’s recovery. If you could only see Aunt Adelle in that light, you’d understand the whole thing.”

“In other words, she’s a liar!”