Tragg stepped forward. “Looking for something?”
She started to sweep past him.
Tragg pulled back his coat, showing her his badge.
“I’m looking for apartment seven-oh-two,” she said.
“Who are you looking for?”
“Mr. Carver Clements, if it’s any of your business.”
“I think it is,” Tragg said. “Who are you and how do you happen to be here?”
“I am Mrs. Carver L. Clements, and I’m here because I was advised over the telephone that my husband was maintaining a surreptitious apartment here.”
“And that was the first you knew of it?”
“Definitely.”
“And what,” Tragg asked, “did you intend to do?”
“I intend to show him that he isn’t getting away with anything,” she said. “If you’re an officer, you may as well accompany me. I feel certain that...”
Tragg said, “Seven-oh-two is down the corridor, at the comer on the right. I just came from there. You’ll find a detective there in charge of things. Your husband was killed sometime between seven and nine o’clock.”
Dark-brown eyes grew wide with surprise. “You... you’re sure?”
Tragg said, “Dead as a mackerel. Someone slipped him a little cyanide, in his Scotch and soda. I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that?”
She said slowly, “If my husband is dead... I can’t believe it. He hated me too much to die. He was trying to force me to make a property settlement, and in order to make me properly submissive, he’d put me through a softening-up process, a period during which I didn’t have money enough even to dress decently. His idea was that that would make the settlement he was prepared to offer look practically irresistible to me.”
“In other words,” Tragg said, “you hated his guts.”
She clamped her lips together. “I didn’t say that!”
Tragg grinned and said, “Come along with us. We’re going down to an apartment on the sixth floor. After that I’m going to take your fingerprints and see if they match up with those on the glass which didn’t contain the poison.”
Chapter five
Louise Marlow answered the buzzer.
She glanced at Tragg, then at Mrs. Clements.
Mason, raising his hat, said with grave politeness and the manner of a total stranger, “We’re sorry to bother you at this hour, but...”
“I’ll do the talking,” Tragg said.
The formality of Mason’s manner was not lost on Aunt Louise. She said, as though she had never seen him before, “Well, this is a great time...”
Tragg pushed his way forward. “Does Fay Allison live here?”
“That’s right,” Louise Marlow beamed at him. “She and another girl, Anita Bonsal, share the apartment. They aren’t here now, though.”
“Where are they?” Tragg asked.
She shook her head. “I’m sure I couldn’t tell you.”
“And who are you?”
“I’m Louise Marlow, Fay Allison’s aunt.”
“You’re living with them?”
“Heavens, no. I just came up to be here for... for a visit with Fay.”
“How did you get in, if they weren’t here?”
“I had a key, but I didn’t say they weren’t here then.”
“You said, I believe, that they are not here now?”
“That’s right.”
“What time did you arrive?”
“Around one o’clock this morning.”
Tragg said, “Let’s cut out the shadowboxing and get down to brass tacks, Mrs. Marlow. I want to see both of those girls.”
“I’m sorry, but the girls are both sick. They’re in the hospital.”
“Who took them there?”
“A doctor.”
“What’s his name?”
Louise Marlow hesitated a moment, then said, “It’s just a simple case of food poisoning. Only...”
“What’s the doctor’s name?”
“Now you listen to me,” Louise Marlow said. “I tell you, these girls are too sick to be bothered, and—”
Lieutenant Tragg said, “Carver L. Clements, who has an apartment on the floor above here, is dead. It looks like murder. Fay Allison had evidently been living up there in the apartment with him and...”
“What are you talking about?” Louise Marlow exclaimed indignantly. “Why, I... I...”
“Take it easy,” Tragg said. “Her clothes were up there. There’s a laundry mark that has been traced to her.”
“Clothes!” Louise Marlow snorted. “Why, it’s probably some junk she gave away somewhere, or...”
“I’m coming to that,” Lieutenant Tragg said patiently. “I don’t want to do anyone an injustice. I want to play it on the up-and-up. Now then, there are fingerprints in that apartment, the fingerprints of a woman on a drinking glass, on the handle of a toothbrush, on a tube of toothpaste. I’m not going to get tough unless I have to, but I want to get hold of Fay Allison long enough to take a set of rolled fingerprints from her hands. You try holding out on me, and see what the newspapers have to say tomorrow.”
Louise Marlow reached an instant decision. “You’ll find her at the Crestview Sanitarium,” she said, “and if you want to make a little money, I’ll give you odds of a hundred to one, in any amount you want to take, that—”
“I’m not a betting man,” Tragg said dryly. “I’ve been in this game too long.”
He turned to one of the detectives and said, “Keep Perry Mason and his charming secretary under surveillance and away from a telephone until I get a chance at those fingerprints. Okay, boys, let’s go.”
Chapter six
Paul Drake, head of the Drake Detective Agency, pulled a sheaf of notes from his pocket as he settled down in the client’s chair in Mason’s office.
It was ten-thirty in the morning, and the detective’s face showed signs of weariness as he assumed his favorite crosswise position in the big leather chair, with his long legs hanging over one overstuffed arm, the small of his back propped against the other.
“It’s a mess, Perry,” he said.
“Let’s have it,” Mason said.
“Fay Allison and Dane Grover were going to get married today. Last night Fay and Anita Bonsal, who shares the apartment with her, settled down in front of the fireplace for a nice gabby little hen party. They made chocolate. Both girls had been watching their figures, but this was a celebration. Fay felt she could really let loose. She had two cups of chocolate, Anita had one. Fay evidently got about twice the dose of barbiturate that Anita did. Both girls passed out.
“Next thing Anita knew, Louise Marlow, Fay’s aunt, was trying to wake her up. Fay Allison didn’t recover consciousness until after she was in the sanitarium.
“The rest of the stuff you know pretty well.
“Anyhow, Tragg went out and took Fay Allison’s fingerprints. They check absolutely with those on the glass. What the police call the murder glass is the one that slipped from Carver Clements’ fingers and rolled around the floor. It had been carefully wiped clean of all fingerprints. Police can’t even find one of Clements’ prints on it. The other glass on the table had Fay’s prints. It’s her toothbrush. The closet was filled with her clothes. She was living there with him. It’s a hell of a stink.
“Dane Grover is standing by her, but I personally don’t think he can stand the gaff much longer. When a man’s engaged to a girl and the newspapers scream the details of her affair with a wealthy playboy all over the front pages, you can’t expect the man to appear exactly nonchalant. The aunt, Louise Marlow, tells me he’s being faced with terrific pressure to repudiate the girl, publicly break the engagement, and take a trip.
“The girls insist it’s all part of some sinister overall plan to frame them, that they were drugged, and all that, but how could anyone have planned it that way? For instance, how could anyone have known they were going to take the chocolate in time to—”