Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Lonely Heiress

“No. I found the door open.”

“Where’s the key?”

Marilyn said, “Heavens, I don’t know. I... I guess I laid it on a table here somewhere.”

Della Street pointed to a little table which held a few magazines, some volumes of phonograph records, and a radio.

The key glinted near the radio.

Mason carefully picked up the key, then blew on the table in order to eliminate any possible outline in case a thin, hardly visible layer of dust might have been covering the table. He dropped the key in his vest pocket.

Marilyn watched him with fascinated eyes.

Mason said, “Marilyn, if I stick my neck out to help you, can you ride along with me and play ball?”

“What do you mean?”

“Can you protect Della and me in case we help you?”

“Yes. I’ll do anything. Why?”

Mason said in a low, kindly voice, “You have too much at stake here, Marilyn. That letter you received this morning would absolutely crucify you. It’s unreasonable to believe that Rose Keeling would have written you a letter like that and then acted the way you said she did.”

“I can’t help it, Mr. Mason. I’m telling you the truth.”

“ I think you are. The point is that no one else would believe it. No jury on this earth would ever believe it. To the police, it would look very much as though you had received that letter, as though you had gone up to see Rose Keeling and had found her packing, found her obdurate, refusing to retract the statements she had made. You knew that if Rose could be kept from changing her testimony, you could use the old testimony she had given when the will was first offered for probate. You knew that if she changed her testimony, your entire inheritance would go out the window. You were in a tough spot. You came to see Rose and found her putting the finishing touches on her packing. She was getting ready to go away. You couldn’t afford to let her go. You killed her, but as an afterthought you put out the tennis things. You knew where she kept them.”

“Mr. Mason, that’s utterly, absolutely absurd. I would never have done anything like that!”

“I’m not talking about what you did,” Mason said. “I’m telling you what the police will think you did. Furthermore, the minute that letter is made public, your chance of inheriting property under Endicott’s will is almost nil.”

“I realize that.”

“Even if Rose Keeling can’t change her testimony, the contents of that letter spread out in the public press will have the effect of antagonizing everyone against you.”

“Yes, I know.”

“And your fingerprints are on the telephone receiver. Evidently the prints of the murderer are on there too, because the murderer must have been the one who picked up the telephone receiver and moved it so the phone would quit ringing.”

She nodded.

Mason said, “There are times when a lawyer throws the rule book away, when he has to go by hunches. There’s some evidence that makes me believe some other person came here in the forty minutes between your talk with Rose Keeling on the telephone and the time when you returned. But that evidence is nothing I can bring into court.”

“Can you tell me what it is?”

“It’s better that you don’t know.”

Mason said to Della Street, “Do you think you can take a jolt, Della?”

She nodded.

“I want you to look here a minute.”

She followed Mason down the corridor, paused in recoil at the door of the bedroom.

Mason said, “Don’t touch anything. Stand here. Take a look. Get it all straight. I think those are cigar ashes in there by the bed. You can see where a cigarette burned a two-inch groove in the hardwood floor there. Notice the clothes that are packed in the suitcase and the folded clothes on the dresser.”

Della Street said, “She was packing up to leave.”

“And taking a bath,” Mason said. “Notice the lingerie laid out on the bed.”

Della Street nodded.

“She wouldn’t have taken a bath before she went to play tennis,” Mason said. “She was evidently killed just as she emerged from the bathroom.”

Della Street looked around at the bedroom, said, “That’s a traveling outfit that was laid out on the bed. She wasn’t intending to play tennis. She was going somewhere. Either she lied to Marilyn about the tennis, or Marilyn was lying to us.”

Mason said, “I think Marilyn is telling the truth — but I can’t see why Rose Keeling would have taken a hot bath just before going out to play tennis.”

“Can we look around any? Open drawers?” Della asked.

He shook his head. “We’ve gone too far as it is. We don’t dare touch a thing, not even a drawer handle. Come on, let’s go back and see what Marilyn’s doing.”

Mason held his finger to his lips for silence, tiptoed down the corridor. Della Street, puzzled, followed behind him.

Marilyn Marlow was seated at the little table which held the telephone. Her lips were a thin line of grim determination, and she was busily engaged in polishing the telephone receiver with a pocket handkerchief.

“What are you doing, Marilyn?” Mason asked.

She gave a sudden guilty start, dropped the receiver, then, realizing she was caught, defiantly picked it up again and continued polishing.

“I’m taking my fingerprints off that receiver.”

Mason said, “You are probably also removing the fingerprints of the murderer.”

“I can’t help that!”

“What have you done with the letter?” Mason asked.

“I still have it in my purse.”

Mason said, “You shouldn’t have taken the fingerprints off the receiver.”

“I’m not going to be connected with this, Mr. Mason! I can’t afford to be.”

Mason said somewhat wearily, “Okay, Marilyn, this is one of the times when I stick my neck out for a client. I suppose I shouldn’t do it. I know damn well I’ll be sorry for it before the case is finished, but when something like this happens, I can’t help it. Circumstances have framed you and put you into an impossible position.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We’re all going out. We’re going to leave the door slightly open. You’re going to get in your car and go home. Della Street and I are going to come back as soon as you’ve driven away. We’ll find the door partially open. We’ll walk up here and find things just as you see them now. Then we’re going to telephone the police.”

“Telephone the police!” Marilyn Marlow exclaimed in dismay.

Mason nodded.

“Why, that will bring them here and link you with it and...”

Mason said, “I can’t help it, Marilyn. I can cut a corner now and then, but I don’t dare to tail to notify the police when I’ve stumbled on something like this. Otherwise I’d be an accessory after the fact. However, when I talk to the police, I’m going to tell them only about my second visit to the flat. I’m going to tell them I came up to see Rose Keeling, that I had Della Street with me, that the door must have been pulled shut but hadn’t quite caught so far as the spring latch was concerned, that we rang the bell and took it for granted that the buzzer would signal for us to come up. We thought we heard that signal, pushed at the door and the door opened, as though the latch had been released by the electric control at the top of the stairs. We went up and to our surprise found no one in the living room. We looked down the corridor, in the bedroom, saw what had happened and telephoned the police.”

“You’re not going to say anything about me?”

“Not unless I’m asked specifically,” Mason said. “Naturally it’s never going to occur to the police to ask me if that was the first time I’d been in the flat this morning. I’ll tell them what happened and it will be the literal truth. I simply won’t volunteer the information that I’d been here once before.”