“So you put that mud on?” Mason asked.
She nodded, said, “I called up the pay station at the drugstore from the booth in the hotel, and I was even smart enough to call up a few minutes before six-fifteen so that it would look as though someone else had cut in on my program. I had been using a very sweet, dulcet voice when talking to him under the name of Rosalind, and this time I used a voice that was lower pitched. I’ve always been good at changing my voice and mimicking people...”
“Go on, go on,” Mason said, looking at his watch. “We only have a few minutes.
“I take it you left the envelope with the key for Conway to pick up?”
“That’s right.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I just framed that murder on him, Mr. Mason. I felt that he could get out of it a lot better than I could. He had money for attorneys’ fees, he had position—”
“Well, tell me exactly what you did,” Mason said, “so I can get it straightened out.”
“Jerry Conway would have recognized me. He had, of course, seen me a good many times. So I put all of this mud on my face and wrapped a towel around my head, and then I took my clothes off.”
“Why the clothes off?”
She smiled archly. “Well, I felt that a man wouldn’t concentrate so much on my face if he — if I gave him other things to look at.”
Mason grinned. “As it turned out, that was pretty good reasoning. Was the body in 729 when Jerry came up there?”
“No, no, I didn’t dare take that chance. I thought, of course, I could make him take the gun.
“He fell for my scheme hook, line and sinker. He entered the room, and then I came out and apparently was surprised to see him there. I told him I was Rosalind’s roommate, then pretended to get in a panic. I opened the desk and grabbed this gun and cocked it and let my hand keep shaking, and, of course, Jerry Conway did the obvious thing. He was too frightened to do anything else. He grabbed the gun and got out of there.”
“And then?” Mason asked.
“Then,” she said, “I washed my face, I put on my clothes, I waited until the corridor was empty, and then I tiptoed in and picked up the body... Mr. Mason, it was terrible!”
“You could carry the body all right?” Mason asked.
She said, “I’m strong, Mr. Mason. The girl didn’t weigh over a hundred and eighteen pounds, and I had had a course in first aid as a nurse. I got the body as far as the door, and then was the most awful two or three seconds of my life. I had to take that body across the corridor arid into Room 729. I just had to take a chance that no one would come up in the elevator, and of course there was a possibility someone might open a room door and come out into the corridor. I had to take that chance, but it was only a few feet, and — well, I made it. You see 729 is a suite, and the door of the bedroom was right opposite the door of 728. I just rushed the body in there, dumped it on the bed, then went back, kicked the bedroom door shut. Then I arranged the body on the bed. After that I stepped out in the corridor and went across to 728 to make sure I hadn’t overlooked anything.
“That was when I found the second gun.”
“The second gun?”
She nodded and said, “It was under the bed.”
“What did you do?”
“I put it in the hatbox. And believe me, after that I went over every inch of that room just as carefully as could be, making certain I had everything cleaned out.”
“And then?” Mason asked.
“Then,” she said, “I hurried back to put the finishing touch on things in 729. The body had started to stiffen pretty badly. She looked as though she had been dumped on the bed instead of lying the way she should. I just forced her left arm down so it dangled, and moved the head over so the hair was hanging down.
“Then I closed the door, went across the hall to Room 728, and very calmly telephoned the desk and told them to send up a bellboy, I wanted to check out.”
“And the bellboy came up?” Mason asked.
“The bellboy came up, and I walked down and checked out. Since Rose had rented the room in the morning, and I was checking out early in the evening, I had to make some explanation. So I told the clerk that my father was critically ill in San Diego and I had to go to him. I said a friend was driving me down. That’s all there was to it.”
“No, it isn’t,” Mason said. “What about that second gun?
She said, “You came here and asked me questions that night, and you remember you said you wanted to use my phone. That phone goes through a switchboard downstairs, and we are charged with calls.
“I was wondering what to do about that gun. After you left, I went downstairs and got the switchboard operator to give me the number you’d called. I called that number and, when the person answered, he said it was the Glade- dell Motel. I did some quick thinking and asked him if a Mr. Jerry Conway was registered there, and he said yes, in Unit 21, and did I want him called. I said no, not to call him, that I was just checking, and hung up quick before they could ask any questions.
“So then I waited until after midnight. I drove down to the motel. Jerry Conway’s car was parked in front of Unit 21, and I slipped the phony list of stockholders’ proxies under the seat of his car, then walked over to the back of the lot. I’d taken a little trowel with me, and I buried that second gun. By that time I didn’t know which gun had been used in committing the murder. But I felt that if things got to a point where I needed to, I could give the police an anonymous tip, saying I was a woman who lived near the motel and that I’d seen someone burying some metallic object that looked like a gun out there in the lot.”
“So,” Mason said, “you were willing to have Conway convicted of murder in order to—”
She met his eyes and said, “Mr. Mason, my husband framed me for murder, and believe me, because of the way things went I was framed for murder. Don’t ever kid yourself, I could have gone to prison for life, or gone to the gas chamber. I had every motive in the world. The murder had been committed with my gun. I had been seen leaving the room where the murdered girl lay. I was up against it. I felt that I could frame enough of a case on Jerry Conway so the police would quit looking for — any other murderer, and I felt absolutely certain that a clever lawyer could keep Jerry Conway from being convicted. I suppose I’ve been guilty of a crime, and now you’ve trapped me. I don’t know how you found out about all this, but I’m coming clean and I’m throwing myself on your mercy.”
Mason looked at his watch and said, “All right, I can’t wait any longer. Paul Drake is serving you with a subpoena to appear as a witness for the defense. Serve the subpoena on her, Paul.”
Paul Drake handed her a subpoena.
Della Street, who had been taking surreptitious notes, looked up and caught Mason’s eye. He raised his eyebrows in silent question, and she nodded, indicating that she had the statement all down.
“All right,” Mason said to Drake, “come on, we’ve got to get back to court.”
“You’re forgetting one thing,” Myrtle Lamar said.
“What?” Mason asked.
“My face,” she said. “It’s got to be fed.”
Chapter Fifteen
Driving back to the courthouse, Mason said to Paul Drake, “Paul, this is a damned good lesson in the importance of circumstantial evidence.”
“What do you mean?”
“Circumstantial evidence is the best evidence we have,” Mason said, “but you have to be careful not to misinterpret it.