“You had no idea she was dead until the body was discovered?” I asked her.
“None.”
“Why did you come on to San Francisco after her death?”
“Because, for one thing, Betty had all my baggage and I had hers. The trunks had been checked through to San Francisco. I had to come here to get hers. And then — well, I heard from New Orleans.”
“About the shortage in the company where you’d been working?”
“Yes.”
“You hadn’t embezzled anything?”
“Of course not.”
“You weren’t short in your accounts?”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“You didn’t see Betty in New Orleans, tell her you were in a jam — that you were short in your accounts and didn’t know what to do and she advised you to come with her and take her name?”
“No. Certainly not.”
“Any other reason for coming to San Francisco?”
“The president lives here.”
“Who’s the president?”
“Mr. Ruttling.”
“You mean the president of the chemical company?”
“Yes. He’s quite a big shot, Benjamin Colter Ruttling.”
“Seems to me I’ve seen the name in print. Did you think you could get in touch with him; get a personal interview or the like?”
“I feel certain of it.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Well...” she hesitated and shifted her position.
“Go ahead.”
“Well, I don’t know just how the company is organized. It’s a national organization, but the different state units are incorporated separately, and then, there’s some holding company or something that co-ordinates all the activities of the state companies, and Mr. Ruttling is the president of this company. They put on a contest between the different companies and the different states for a certain type of efficiency. And, while the Illinois company won first place, the New Orleans company was second; and there was a banquet in New Orleans and some speech-making and dancing — and the president was there.”
“And you met him?”
“Yes.”
“You mean there was a little dancing and some joke-cracking, — and the president thought you were attractive and danced with you and handed you a line?” I asked.
“Well, in a way, yes.”
“And you thought he’d remember you?” I asked.
“I’m quite certain he would.”
“Why?”
“Well... after the formal part of it was over — the dinner and the speeches and that stuff — the president told me he was bored stiff with so much formality and said he’d heard a lot about New Orleans and some of the more unconventional night clubs, and wanted to know if I knew any of the spots and I told him I knew where they were. So he suggested that he’d like to go and look around. He didn’t want to go alone and wouldn’t I break away and go with him.”
“So you did.”
“I certainly did. I’d been curious about some of those places myself. One or two of them I’d been in, and there were others I wanted to go to. And then, of course — well, the president.”
“I see. So you and the president went out and looked the town over?”
“That’s right.”
“And he told you that you were a very smart girl, and a very clever little girl, and a mighty good-looking little girl; and didn’t you think, perhaps, you were wasting your talents working for one of the state companies in New Orleans, and that if you came to San Francisco didn’t you think you might be able to better yourself...?”
“Why, yes. That was almost exactly what he said. He said that he thought he could get me a position in the parent company where there was a chance for advancement.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Oh, perhaps four or five months.”
I said, “It’s a fifty-fifty bet whether he’ll remember you. What is he, a pompous old stuffed shirt?”
“No. He’s... he’s nice.”
“And you came up here to see him?”
“Well, in a way, yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought he might do something about that New Orleans situation and keep the company manager down there from telling a lot of lies about how I was short in my accounts.”
“Are you bonded?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, did any bonding company guarantee that you wouldn’t be short in your accounts?”
“Why, I don’t think so.”
“No application for a bond was made when you went to work for the company?” I asked.
“Noo that I know of.”
“You haven’t seen the president since you came here?”
“No.”
I said, “All right, now, let’s get down to brass tacks, Daphne. There was money in the purse Betty Crofath gave you, wasn’t there?”
She nodded.
“How much?”
“Quite a little.”
“How much?”
“A hundred or two hundred dollars.”
“How much?”
“Over four hundred dollars.”
“How much?”
She got mad again. “Four hundred and fifty-eight dollars and thirteen cents — if it’s any of your damn business.”
“And there was no money in the purse you gave her?”
“She told me to take my money out and put it away, and that I was to use her money for expenses.”
“Then she must have had some more money?”
“I guess so.”
I said, “Let’s look at it the other way. You were short in your accounts in New Orleans. You were trying to get away. You knew that the officers were hot on your trail. You took the name of Hazel Deering. You got on the train and noticed the girl in the next section looked a lot like you. You noticed she seemed prosperous. You wished you were in her shoes. Then the idea occurred to you that you might get in her shoes. In your purse, you had some poison that you’d picked up through the chemical company where you’d been working. You decided that you’d never go to jail. If the police caught you, you’d take poison. Then the girl you’d been looking at came to you and asked you if you had any sleeping medicine. You said you had. You started to give her some. Perhaps by accident, perhaps deliberately you gave her the poison. If by accident, you happened to wake up along toward morning and realize you might have given her the wrong tablet. You went to her berth to see if she was all right. She was dead. The car was quiet; everyone was asleep. You switched identities with the dead woman. Later in the morning, the porter discovered the body. At the time, everyone thought it was a natural death. Later on, when the question of poison entered into it, the porter remembered what he’d seen. He didn’t go to the police. He went to you. He wanted more than you were willing to give. You pulled a gun on him, tied him up, gagged him, and were wondering what to do with him when I knocked. Later on, you went back and killed him. It was your only way out.”
“I did nothing of the sort,” she said. “I was so frightened, I never went back to that room.”
“What did you do?”
“Betty had told me about her cousin here. I walked the streets for a while — after I got out of the room in the hotel by pointing the gun at you. Then I remembered about Jen. I came up here and told her — everything.”
I looked across at Genevieve.
“Check,” she said.
“If I’d done the things you said,” Daphne went on, “I wouldn’t have known anything about Jen.”
“Unless you got her address from a book in Betty’s purse.”
Genevieve said, “I don’t think she did. I think Betty told her about me.”
I asked Daphne, “Did you ever meet a man named Herb Rendon?”