“That’s why I came back out here.”
Sellers regarded her with an amiable grin. “That’s swell, Bertha. Sometimes when you’re making sarcastic comments about how long it takes the police to get an idea through their heads, you might remember that even the best of private detectives require two or three days for simple matters like that to percolate through their skulls. Now, how did you happen’ to look in this particular garage?”
“Well, I came out to look the situation over to see where she might have gone — to see what might have happened. I discovered the streets were double blocks on the right and on the left; then I knew she couldn’t have turned the corner and doubled back on me. She must have disappeared before she got to the corner.”
“You didn’t notice that about the double blocks before?”
“To tell you the truth, I didn’t,” Bertha admitted somewhat shamefacedly. “I thought it was just a routine shadowing job, one of those things that’s particularly unimportant to everyone except the guy who’s paying for it. When a man gets to the point that he’s hiring a stranger to shadow his wife, he might just as well write his marriage off the books, and it doesn’t make much difference whether she’s philandering with Tom, Dick or Harry.”
“Nice philosophy,” Sellers said. “I’m sorry I haven’t time to discuss marital philosophy with you right now, Bertha. Why did you consider the shadowing job unimportant?”
“I thought it was just a routine job.”
“Then why didn’t you notice they were double blocks?”
“I was just too damned mad. I was mad at myself and mad at the woman. She’d stalled along, driving so steadily and leaving herself so wide open for a trailing job that she had me half day-dreaming. I was following along more or less mechanically, and had my thoughts a thousand miles away. Then all of a sudden she pulled this fast one. Well, I was mad, and it just never occurred to me that she might have ducked into a garage somewhere.”
“Until later?”
“Until later,” Bertha said.
“You didn’t double back and look the garages over on Wednesday?”
“No, I didn’t. I looked the driveway over. I thought she might have swung the car into a driveway and gone into one of these houses.”
“And if in the driveway, why not in a garage?”
“I don’t know. It just didn’t occur to me at the time.”
“Another idea that took three days to germinate?”
“Yes, if you want to be so damned sarcastic about it.”
“Just giving you a taste of how it feels,” Sellers said.
“Well, it doesn’t feel so good.”
“Too bad. Did you see the paper that was on the floor of the automobile?”
Bertha hesitated.
“Yes or no?”
“Yes.”
“Touch it?”
“Yes.”
“Read it?”
“Yes. That is, I just glanced at it — the way one will.”
“The way one will?” Sergeant Sellers repeated.
“What the hell! You didn’t think I was going to find a woman dead and not look around, did you?”
“You know that we don’t like to have people messing around, leaving fingerprints when they come on corpses.”
“Well, I had to find out she was dead, didn’t I?”
“That’s what I’m getting at. You lost her here — let’s see, when was it — Wednesday?”
“Wednesday about noon.”
“I see. You find her just as it’s getting dark Friday night. She’s slumped over in the automobile and, as you expressed it, you could smell the odour of death. You touched her and she was cold. You spoke to her and she didn’t move. And then you-picked up this paper and read it in order to convince yourself she was dead.”
“Well, I—”
“Go on.”
“How the hell did I know what was on it? It might have been something important. Something she wanted done.”
“Something that would have brought her back to life?”
“Don’t be sarcastic.”
“What I’m getting at,” Sergeant Sellers said, “is that there are a couple of very excellent fingerprints on this piece of paper — and I suppose,” he said, his voice suddenly weary, “they’ll turn out to be the fingerprints of Bertha Cool — just when I think I’m really getting somewhere.”
“I’m sorry,” Bertha said.
“So am I, Bertha.”
“Did she die of monoxide poisoning?”
“It looks that way.”
“What do you make of it?”
“A very neat little trap,” Sergeant Sellers said. “Someone writes the woman poison-pen letters until she gets so interested she’s virtually hypnotized. Put yourself in her position. She has every dime there is in the family; perhaps she’d like to keep it. The evidence indicates that as a wife she was useful to her husband more as a depository of property than an object of affection. The chances are, she’d have liked to wash her hands of the whole business. Naturally, she’d like to keep as much of the property as possible. You can’t blame her for that. Her husband has his earning capacity. He can go out and make more money. She’s thrown out on the world. If she can find another husband, who can support her, she can get along. If she can’t, she’s going to be faced with the old routine of a separated wife, men who play around but don’t contemplate matrimony, a slender stock of cash dwindling from day to day — every day finding her that much older, her looks—”
“What are you trying to do,” Bertha interpolated sarcastically, “make me cry?”
“Make you think.”
“I don’t get you.”
“I’m looking at it from her standpoint — as her mind was moulded by her mother.”
“You think her mother was in on it?”
“The records show that Tuesday afternoon she had a long-distance telephone conversation with her mother in San Francisco. Then about six-thirty her mother sent her a telegram saying she was coming down and for her to meet the train.”
“What was the conversation about?”
“I asked Mrs. Goldring and she was evasive, but finally I pinned her down. Mabel had rung up to tell her about having received a letter stating that her husband was having an affair with a woman she’d employed as a maid. Mrs. Goldring told her to wash her hands of the whole business, walk out on Everett, and leave him holding the sack. Mabel wasn’t entirely certain that was the right thing to do. She mentioned over the telephone to Mrs. Goldring that the property really and truly wasn’t hers; it was her husband’s, and she thought there should be some settlement. That made Mrs. Goldring furious. She argued with Mabel for a while on the long-distance telephone, then decided to take the night train down and handle the situation personally. She was going to engineer a family smashup.”
“Mabel got the wire?”
“That’s right. Carlotta was there when the wire was delivered. The records of the telegraph company show it was delivered over the telephone, and that Mrs. Belder asked to have it repeated to be sure she got the train on which her mother was arriving. Then she told Carlotta and they arranged to meet the train. Everett Belder was entirely unconscious of the storm that was brewing. His wife asked him that night to take her car to the service station next morning, have the car filled up with gas, and the tyres checked, and have it back before eleven.”
“Wait a minute,” Bertha said. “She didn’t leave the house until eleven-twenty-two Wednesday morning. Wasn’t the train due before that?”
“It was due at eleven-fifteen, but it was late and didn’t get in until considerably after that.”
“How did it happen Carlotta and Mrs. Belder didn’t go to meet the train together?”
“Carlotta had some things she had to do uptown. Mrs. Belder liked to sleep late in the mornings. Carlotta said she’d do her shopping uptown and meet Mrs. Belder at the depot. We can assume Mrs. Belder telephoned to find out if the train was on time. Now, the point is that the train was first reported as being on time, then as being due at twelve-fifteen. If Mrs. Belder didn’t leave the house until eleven-twenty-two, she must have had the twelve-fifteen report, and she couldn’t have intended to do very much before meeting the train. Actually, the train didn’t get in until one o’clock.”