The Case of the Daring Divorcee (12 page)

"How?"

"She'd have poisoned him."

"You mean she'd have committed murder too-"

"Mr. Mason, don't misunderstand me. Minerva would stop at nothing. She's ambitious, audacious, cunning, daring and ingenious."

"Then this whole deal is about the type of thing she would have engineered?"

Adelle Hastings nodded.

"But why?" Mason asked.

"To revenge herself on me."

"You mean she'd go to all that trouble and work out that elaborate scheme in order to get even with you?"

"If I were serving a term in prison," Adelle said, "Minerva would be going around with a smile stretching from ear to ear."

Mason said, "There may be more to it than that. Did Garvin make a will while she was married to him, perhaps leaving everything to her?"

"Yes."

"He revoked that will by making a later one?"

"He told me he was going to."

"When?"

"A few days after we were married."

"Now then, in the settlement that was offered me by Huntley Banner," Mason said, "there was a proviso that you were to receive fifty thousand dollars under Garvin's will, as a beneficiary for that amount."

She nodded.

"Therefore," Mason said, "it was intended that your husband would put this in his will."

"Yes, of course. After I had divorced him, he naturally wasn't going to have me as the sole beneficiary."

"But that will hadn't been executed as yet?"

"I don't know."

"Do you know if he had executed the other will in your favor?"

"Only that he said he was going to do it. He certainly wouldn't leave the old will in effect."

Mason said, "In any event your marriage to him would invalidate that other will-provided your marriage was legal."

"Of course it was legal. Why do you raise the question?"

Mason said, "It's the curse of the so-called legal mind. You think of all the possibilities. Why did your marriage go on the rocks?"

"He… I… well, he was quite a bit older than I am."How much?"

"Fifteen years."

"You knew that at the time you were married."

"Yes."

"And it didn't make any difference then?"

"Mr. Mason, it's very painful for me to have to go into all this, but I was Garvin's confidential secretary. He married Minerva. Gradually he began to find out what a scheming, selfish, cold-blooded, dangerous woman Minerva was. It was only natural that he started confiding in me and that I should sympathize with him and well, I guess we both were swept along into a situation that Well, where we were both somewhat hypnotized by circumstances and then gradually we began to realize that a sympathetic understanding had been misinterpreted and magnified and made the basis of a romantic attachment. Mr. Mason, I'm not going to talk about this any more. That's a closed chapter in my life."

"You may think it's a closed chapter," Mason said, "but before you get done with this thing the book is going to be opened, that chapter is going to be held up to the attention of the public and the pages are going to be ripped out one by one and spread across the front pages of the metropolitan newspapers."

She looked at him with sheer panic in her eyes, abruptly got to her feet.

"Mr. Mason," she said, "I'm going to a hotel. I'll telephone you and let you know where I am."

"All right," Mason said, "do that. Be sure now you don't try to leave town or conceal yourself in any way, because if you do it will give the prosecution just the ammunition it's looking for. In this state, flight can be construed as an evidence of guilt, and they'd just love to have you start trying to hide.

"That's the real reason that Tragg didn't take you into custody or take you in for questioning. He put you on your honor to stay here in the city, hoping that the pressure would build up and you'd resort to flight, or at least start back for Nevada. Then they'd stop you just before you had crossed the state line and bring you back under arrest, and claim that was evidence of flight."

"And evidence of flight can be used against a person?"

"Yes. It's considered evidence of guilt."

"Thank you for telling me," she said. "I promise you that I won't make a break for it."

Chapter Six

As soon as Adelle Hastings had left Mason's office, the lawyer motioned to Della Street.

"Call Paul Drake, Della," he said. "Ask him to come down here as soon as possible."

Della Street put through the call, hung up the phone, said, "He's coming right away."

Thirty seconds later Paul Drake's code knock sounded on the door of Mason's office.

Della Street opened the door.

"Hi, Beautiful," Drake said, and then turning to Mason said, "Do you want to get any more background on the owners of those two Nevada cars, Perry?"

"I don't know yet," Mason said. "I've got an emergency job for you."

"Such as what?"

Mason said, "I had a gun in this drawer in my desk. Somebody stole it sometime during the night or early in the morning before the office opened up. I want to find out who stole it and I want to get that gun back."

"How important?"

"Damned important," Mason said. "Unless I get it back, I'm going to be charged with suppressing evidence."

"Can they make it stick?"

"I don't know," Mason said. "My story sounds almost as improbable as that of my client, and by the time you put the two stories together we have a fairy tale that a good sarcastic district attorney could shoot as full of holes as a Swiss cheese."

"And I take it," Drake said, "there's a good sarcastic district attorney who will be loaded for bear and waiting for the opportunity."

"There is," Mason said.

"Any ideas?" Drake asked.

"I think," Mason said, "it had to be someone who had a pretty good idea of what he was doing. I hate to say this, Paul, but I have a very strong suspicion that my client, Adelle Hastings, is the one who got in here and stole the gun."

"What gives you that idea?"

"She knew where it was, for one thing."

"If you had a gun," Drake said, "there are two places where it would ordinarily be. One of them would be in the safe and the other would be in a drawer in your desk."

"I know," Mason said, "but there's no indication that there was a general search of the office."

"There was no need for a general search," Drake pointed out. "If I'd been looking for a gun I'd have gone to the upper right-hand desk drawer, first thing."

"Well," Mason said, "I don't think it was the job of a professional burglar. I don't think the locks were picked. I think someone got in here, either last night or this morning. Now, no one could have got up to this floor in the evefling unless they signed a register in the elevator saying where they wanted to go, and marking down the time. Then they would have to sign out when they left the building."

Drake nodded.

"If it was in the evening," Mason said, "it might have been any one of a number of people. There are a lot of lawyers who come in after dinner for conferences with clients and to look up points in the law library, but somehow I have a hunch it was early this morning. So the first thing to do is to look on the elevator register and see what names are on there for early in the morning."

"How early?"

"Start at two or three o'clock in the morning," Mason said. "Hang it, Paul, start with the first name that's on the register."

"Okay," Drake said, "I'll get busy. It won't take but a few minutes to look at that register. I can bring it down here if you want."

"Go ahead, get it," Mason said. "Now, here's something else. I want you to look up Minerva Shelton Hastings. She was the second wife of Garvin Hastings. His third wife, Adelle Hastings, is my client, and for your information, Garvin Hastings was found dead in bed this morning. He had been murdered. Two shots had been fired into his head while he was sleeping. I'd like to find out something about Minerva's background."

"Okay," Drake said. "I'll start some men working on her and I'll get that register and come right back, if you want."

"I want," Mason said.

Drake left the office, and Mason, frowning thoughtfully, started pacing the floor."It darn near has to have been this morning," Mason said half to himself, his eyes on the carpet as he paced the floor.

Abruptly he turned. "Della, do you know when they clean the offices?"

"You mean these offices?"

"Yes."

"On this floor they do it in the morning. On the floor below, at night. The same cleaning women have the job for both floors."

"I had an idea they cleaned them in the morning," Mason said, "because we're in here at all hours of the night and I've never yet run into any cleaning women."

"I think they try to clean here around six in the morning," Della said.

"What about the cleaning women? I wonder if they could be bribed-or victimized."

"Probably victimized," she said. "I doubt if they'd be open to a bribe. They're pretty responsible people."

The lawyer nodded, resumed pacing the floor.

Drake's knock sounded on the door.

Della opened the door.

Drake said, "I think we've struck pay dirt, first rattle out of the box, Perry."

"How come?"

"My detective bureau is open twenty-four hours a day," Drake said. "I keep it open so men who are on the job can have a place to call in and file their reports. Actually we almost never see anyone between ten or eleven o'clock at night and seven-thirty or eight in the morning.

"I try to get in by eight o'clock every morning and I like to have the night operatives have a report on file when I get in, so quite a few of the men come in around sixthirty to seven in the morning, type up their reports, then go out to breakfast."

"Mason nodded.

"Now, this morning at six o'clock the register shows there was a Sidney Bell who signed in on the register as coming to my office, but Sidney Bell is a stranger to me. I don't know anyone by that name and I don't have any operative of that name.

"However, the pay-off is that my own office records show that no Sidney Bell came in at six o'clock this morning; in fact there was no one in my office except two or three operatives who came in to type reports."

"We have Sidney Bell's signature there?"

"That's right, right here. Sidney Bell came in at six-ofive and left at six-fifteen."

"And gave his destination as your office?"

"That's right."

Mason said, "Let's find the cleaning woman who does this office, Paul. Get hold of her address and get hold of the elevator operator and see if we can get a description of Sidney Bell."

"I've already done that," Drake said. "One of the assistant janitors runs the elevator early in the morning. He remembers Bell very well. He was a tall man wearing a dark suit and carrying a brief case. Moreover, he was wearing dark glasses. That impressed the assistant janitor. He thought it was pretty early in the morning for a man to be wearing dark glasses."

"Not at all," Mason said. "In this case dark glasses seem to be a universal disguise-and actually it's a damned effective disguise. What about the scrub woman, Paul?"

Drake grinned. "I haven't overlooked that either. Her name is Maude G. Grump. She has a telephone and I saved you a little money there."

"How come?"

"I interviewed her over the telephone. She describes the tall man in the dark suit, wearing dark glasses, who came in with a brief case when she was cleaning your office. He had an air of complete assurance. He said, 'Good morning. I have to go to Arizona on an early plane and want to get some papers. I guess you don't mind getting up early in the morning but it's quite a hardship as far as I'm concerned.' "Wait a minute," Mason said, "the door to the office would have been closed. They don't leave the office doors open when they're cleaning."