Erle Gardner - The Case of the Haunted Husband

“The calls charged to Homan’s phone?” Tragg asked.

Mason smiled. “That’s poetic justice.”

“Go ahead.”

“It was sometime late Tuesday night when Tanner definitely found out they were at Homan’s mountain cabin. Greeley took a plane to Fresno, hired a car, investigated, found Homan and his wife were there. He couldn’t steal Homan’s car without leaving his hired car for them to get away in. So he drove back, hired a car with a driver, got out on the highway somewhere within a mile or so of Homan’s mountain hide-out, took Homan’s car, so as to leave the lovers abandoned in their love nest.”

“Why didn’t he bust in on them and call for a showdown,” Tragg asked.

“For one reason, he wasn’t ready for a showdown. For another, they weren’t there.”

“I don’t get you.”

“They were back in town Wednesday afternoon. There is only one answer. They must have spotted him snooping around on his first visit, telephoned for a plane, and rushed back here. It is less than two hundred miles in an air line. I don’t know, mind you, but I shall bet twenty to one that there is some sort of landing field near that cabin. There has to be.”

“Why the hell didn’t they take Homan’s car? Why leave it and take a plane?”

“Time, for one thing. Then they knew Greeley had actually seen the car. The best way to establish an alibi was to rush back by plane, and report the car as stolen.”

“Why wasn’t Greeley ready for a showdown?”

“Because of Mrs. Warfield. He already had a wife. It would be rather embarrassing for him to sue for a couple of hundred thousand dollars, and then have some smart lawyer bring Mrs. Warfield into court. This way, he steals the car and thinks he is leaving them marooned in the mountains. Back in Los Angeles, he will abandon Homan’s car and go home. His wife won’t be there. She will show up after a while, very much alarmed, and with some plausible lie that he will certainly be able to disprove when the time comes. But as it turned out, it was he who did the hitchhiking.”

“He wanted Mrs. Warfield to get a divorce?” Tragg asked.

“At first,” Mason said. “Later on, I think he decided to kill her.”

Tragg snorted. “Next thing I know you will be trying to prove self-defense.”

“Well... let us say she beat him to the punch, if that is what you mean. Understand, Tragg, I am not a mind reader. I am only giving you a solution which fits the evidence. If you can punch any holes in it, go ahead.”

Tragg scratched his head and thought things over. Then he said suddenly, “But Mrs. Greeley talked with her husband in San Francisco.”

“No. After Greeley died, she said she did.”

“She talked with someone.”

“Sure. Part of her alibi. She telephones some friend from a pay station and arranges for the second station-to-station call. That way, she establishes the fact, by the telephone company records, she was in Los Angeles, and doesn’t have to drag her friend’s name into it.”

“How do you know all this?” Tragg asked.

Mason said, “I don’t, but it’s the only way the evidence fits together.”

Tragg pushed his hands down deep into his pockets, stood staring down at the tips of his shoes. “Anything else?”

“A lot of minor corroborating facts,” Mason said. “Greeley, of course, was having detectives keep an eye on Mrs. Warfield. When they reported she was coming to Los Angeles to take a job with a Mr. Drake, Greeley was waiting for her at the bus depot — keeping out of sight of course.”

“And he followed you folks to the hotel?”

“Yes.”

“And how about Mrs. Greeley?”

“She must have followed Greeley. Maybe she even saw the wire reporting Mrs. Warfield’s arrival. Remember, she was watching her husband like a hawk on those days because she suspected he knew of her affair.”

“How about that stained shirt?”

Mason smiled. “Now comes the touch of real comedy. You will remember, Homan and Mrs. Greeley rushed off to their love nest at night after Mrs. Greeley found her husband was going to be detained in San Francisco. Homan didn’t stop to change his dinner jacket, but just threw some other clothes in a bag. Now, when they were getting out of the cabin, they must have been in a panic, grabbing things right and left. In the confusion of packing, Homan’s stiff shirt got put in Mrs. Greeley’s bag. When Mrs. Greeley found that shirt, the logical place to hide it was in her husband’s laundry bag. She dropped it in there, intending to dispose of it later.

“After her husband’s death, she realized that I was working on the Warfield angle, and checking up pretty closely on Homan. She and Homan were both in a panic for fear I would bring out the evidence of their little affair. The best way to head all that off was to get Stephane Claire acquitted. One way to do that was to prove that Greeley had been driving the car. So she went to his laundry bag, grabbed the first stiff shirt she came to, smeared lipstick on it, and brought it to my office. Poor girl, it was a last desperate attempt. By that time her mind must have been going around in circles, or she would have remembered Homan’s shirt.”

“Why did you come here, Mason?” Tragg asked.

“To check on the identity of the woman who had registered immediately after Greeley.”

“But evidently you knew that already.”

“I surmised it.”

“Any idea where Mrs. Warfield is?”

“She might be on Homan’s yacht. Remember, his brother Horace wanted to use it, but Jules suddenly refused to let him.

Tragg studied him thoughtfully. “What is that stuff on the bed?”

“Some papers Mrs. Greeley brought — correspondence between her husband and Mrs. Warfield, stuff she found after his death.”

“Well, I guess... hello, what’s this?”

Tragg’s eyes had come to rest on the gun lying on the floor.

“Mrs. Greeley dropped it.”

“Dropped it?”

“Yes. She is hysterical and has an idea that someone is trying to kill her. I made her promise she would go to her doctor and get him to give her some sleeping stuff.”

Tragg picked up the gun. “A small caliber automatic.”

“Yes. It fits nicely in her bag. Do you want it?”

Tragg studied it for a moment, then dropped it into his hip pocket. “Mason, I congratulate you.”

“I haven’t done anything,” Mason said, “except put the evidence together.”

“That’s enough, isn’t it? It is a triumph for you.”

“I don’t want any of it, Tragg. You take the credit. All I want is to have Stephane Claire acquitted of that negligent homicide.”

Tragg’s face flushed. “Gosh, Mason, that is damned white.”

Mason said, “I am an amateur. You are the professional. You turn up the murderer. I shall get my client off.”

Tragg turned toward the telephone. “I will get headquarters and...”

“Wait a minute.”

“What’s the idea?” Tragg asked.

“There is no hurry.”

“The devil there isn’t! We have really got something on Mrs. Warfield now — if she is on Homan’s yacht...”

Mason broke in, “There are a couple of angles I want to check, and I have been hoping something would turn up here in the hotel. Let us go have a drink, Tragg, and check the evidence over carefully.”

Tragg’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the idea?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Mason said, “only before you talk to the...”

Tragg suddenly snatched up the telephone. “Get me through to headquarters,” he said. “Yes, police headquarters. This is Lieutenant Tragg. Rush that call!”

Mason said, “Don’t do that, Tragg.”

Tragg looked at him over the top of the telephone. “Damn you, Mason! You had me sold. The only thing that tipped me off was the way you tried to keep me from sticking my neck out just now... Hello, headquarters. This is Tragg. Get the dispatcher to throw out a dragnet for Mrs. Adler Greeley. We have her description and photograph... Yes, first-degree murder... Her husband and Ernest Tanner. And cover all drugstores in the vicinity of the Gateview Hotel, and see if a woman answering her description has tried to buy poison. Get that started at once. I will call back later with details.”