“He was shot in the forehead?” Mason asked.
“Yes — right between the eyes.”
“Did you notice any powder burns?”
“I didn’t look for them, but I didn’t see any.”
“I understand he was shot with a .32 revolver.”
Mrs. Winters shrugged her shoulders.
“You had a .32 revolver, I believe, Mrs. Winters. You’d better—”
“Who? Me?”
“You did have one, didn’t you?”
She threw back her head and laughed. “Good heavens, no!”
“Why, I thought you said that... ”
“Oh, that’s just one of my little ways of running a bluff, Mr. Mason. I’ve never yet seen the man that I had to be afraid of, but it doesn’t do any harm to let them think they’re dealing with a hellcat, so I always tell ‘em that I’m carrying a gun. It’s a good bluff.”
Mason frowned. “You told me you carried a gun and had no permit to do so. I told you to get rid of the gun or else get a permit to carry it.”
Her eyes twinkled at him. “And you remember I wasn’t a darn bit worried about not having a permit for it. That’s because I didn’t really have any gun — so naturally I wasn’t worried at all.”
Eva interrupted. “But I always thought you carried a gun. You told me you did, several times, Aunt Adelle.”
Mrs. Winters chuckled delightedly. “Well, it made you feel safer because I told you that, didn’t it? I’ll run a bluff, but when something like this comes up, there’s no percentage in sticking your neck out.”
Mason was watching her with a puzzled frown on his forehead. “Now, let’s be frank about this,” he said. “If you did have a gun, the police are pretty likely to find out you had it. Then-if you deny it... ”
“Good heavens, Mr. Mason, what a fuss you make over what was just a plain bluff! I never carried a gun in my life.”
“That’s your final answer?”
“Of course it is. It’s the truth.”
“How long had Hines been dead when you found him?”
“Well, I couldn’t say. The body was still warm, but... well, sort of lukewarm. It’s pretty hard to tell about the temperature of a body without putting your hand inside the clothes somewhere. I just touched his wrist. His coat was hung on the chair.”
“Felt for his pulse?”
“That’s right.”
“Touch anything else?”
“No.”
“You didn’t go through the clothes at all?”
“Good heavens, why should I go through his clothes?”
“Were you with her all the time?” Mason asked, turning to Eva Martell.
“What’s the idea of asking questions like that?” Adelle Winters exclaimed irritably. “That’s the same sort of stuff the police have been asking.”
“I was just trying to find out.”
“Yes, I was with her all the time,” Eva Martell said.
“How about when you were telephoning to me?”
“Well, that was just a second or two.”
“And you’ve been together all day?”
“That’s right.”
“Every minute of the time?”
“Every single solitary minute.”
“Well, that’s going to help.”
“That’s the way the police looked at it,” Adelle Winters said.
“Did the officers ask you how you happened to be living in that apartment?”
“Of course they did.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Told them the complete truth.”
“You told them all about Hines and how he had hired you?”
“Yes.”
“To impersonate Helen Reedley?”
“We weren’t impersonating anyone,” Adelle Winters said. “We took a job and he asked us to take a certain name for the job.”
“But you told them about me?”
“That’s right.”
“About how I got in touch with Helen Reedley?”
“Well, no,” Adelle Winters said. “We didn’t tell them too much.”
“What did you tell them?”
“We told them that we had this job and that you told us you didn’t want us to go ahead with it until you were positive it was all right, so that we wouldn’t be guilty of any crime. So we said you investigated and reported that it was all right; so then we went shopping, had dinner, and returned to the apartment. And when we returned, we found the body.”
“You didn’t tell them about being shadowed?”
“No.”
“And did you tell them anything else?”
“What else is there to tell? We just were hired and went to work, and that’s all there was to it. We didn’t know what the job was, but we certainly weren’t impersonating anyone. And we didn’t defraud anyone.”
“Did the police seem to think there was some scheme back of it?”
“No, to tell you the truth, Mr. Mason, the police didn’t seem so interested in that part. They seemed to know Hines — he had a police record for racetrack gambling. They didn’t even ask us for the phone number where we’d been calling him, and so we didn’t give it to them. I think they’d talked with some of the men who had been shadowing us. I don’t know for certain, but I think so. I saw one of them waiting there in the apartment house and thought he was waiting to be questioned.”
Mason said, “I guess they probably already had a statement from him. As a matter of fact, those were two detectives who had been hired to keep an eye on you. They’d been following you everywhere you went ever since you’d been on the job.”
“Well now, isn’t that something!” Adelle Winters exclaimed. “Great goings-on when a couple of respectable women are trying to make an honest living and detectives start traipsing around after them.”
“Did the police tell you to keep in touch with them?”
“No. I told them I’d be at my apartment, and Eva Martell told them she’d be back with Cora Felton. The police took the addresses and said they’d get in touch with us if there was anything else they wanted. But they seem to think it was a gambling murder.”
“Oh,” said Mason. “Well, I guess that’s about all, then.”
Adelle Winters got to her feet and nodded to Eva Martell. “We thought we’d drop in and tell you, Mr. Mason — you’ve been so nice to us.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“I guess... Well, Cora Felton hired you to see that everything was all right with us, and I guess now... Well, I guess there’s nothing more to do. We don’t want to run up too much of a bill, you know.”
Mason laughed. “You won’t.”
“But we don’t want you to be loser either, Mr. Mason. There isn’t anything more to do now, is there?”
“It’s hard to say just what the situation is.”
“Well, I think it would be better if you just — you know — let the whole thing drop and tell us how much we owe you, and that’ll be that. We’ll pay up. And how about this extra money we got from Hines? The amount that was over what we had coming to us?”
“Did you tell the police about that?”
“Well, no, I didn’t. I told them he’d paid us up to date, and they didn’t ask me how much, so I didn’t tell them.”
“Well, that’s right. You are paid up to date. In any event, the police won’t have anything to do with that phase of it. That will be up to the executor of Hines’s estate.”
“You mean that we don’t need to tell anyone just how much we received?”
“Not until the executor asks you. And then you can tell him that what you got was as a payment for services performed and in the nature of a guarantee that the contract would be carried out — so that if anything interfered you’d be assured of your money.”