“Now, look at the circumstantial evidence of the food in the stomach. Doctors are prepared to state that death took place within approximately two hours of the time the food was ingested. Because they know that the woman in Room 729 had food delivered to her around four-thirty, and presumably started eating when the food was delivered, they placed the time of death at almost exactly six-thirty-five to six-forty-five, the exact time that Jerry Conway was there.
“The only difference is the waiter didn’t think there were peas on the dinner menu but peas were found in the stomach of the murder victim. Everyone took it for granted that it was simply a slip-up, a mistake on the part of the waiter in preparing the tray and in remembering what he’d put on there. Actually, it’s the most important clue in the whole case. It shows that the woman whose body was found in 729 couldn’t have been the woman who ordered the dinner which was delivered at four-thirty.”
“Well,” Drake said, “we knew what happened, but how the devil are you going to prove it? A jury isn’t going to believe Mrs. Farrell’s story... Or will it?”
“That depends,” Mason said, “on how much other evidence we can get. And it depends on who killed Rose Calvert.”
“What do you mean?”
“The point that Mrs. Farrell completely missed was that Giff was trying to make it appear that Rose’s death was a suicide. He entered the room, he found the body, there wasn’t any sign of a gun. That was because the murderer had kicked the murder weapon under the bed — unless he threw it there deliberately. Probably he dropped it and then had kicked it under the bed without knowing what he had done. Or perhaps he just kicked it under the bed hoping it wouldn’t be found right away, or not giving a damn and just wanting to get rid of it.”
“You mean, you don’t think Gifford Farrell is the murderer?”
“The evidence points to the contrary,” Mason said. “Why would Gifford Farrell have killed Rose and then discharged another gun into the underside of the mattress so there would be an empty shell in that gun and then have left the gun on the floor by the corpse?”
“So as to implicate his wife,” Drake said.
“But don’t you see,” Mason pointed out, “if he’d done that, he’d have taken the other gun? He wouldn’t have left it there.”
“Perhaps he didn’t know it was there.”
“I’m satisfied he didn’t know it was there,” Mason “said. “But if he had killed her, he would have known it was there, because that was the gun with which she was killed.”
“Oh-oh,” Drake said. “Now I see your point.”
“Therefore,” Mason said, “Gifford Farrell was a victim of circumstances. He tried to make the crime appear a suicide. He was carrying that gun with him, probably for his own protection. He discharged it into the mattress and dropped it by the side of the bed.
“If Mrs. Farrell hadn’t got in such a panic, she would have realized that Gifford was trying to set the stage for suicide. He could very easily have told the authorities that this gun was one he had taken home from the Texas Global, that he had given it to Rose for her own protection, that she had become despondent and had committed suicide. But when Mrs. Farrell saw that gun, and saw her husband leaving the room after having heard the shot — which must have been the shot he fired into the underside of the mattress — she became panic-stricken and immediately felt that he was trying to frame the murder on her. So she led with her chin.”
“And then she tried to frame it on Conway?”
“That’s right,” Mason said.
“Well, you can mix the case up all to hell,” Drake said, “but the trouble is, Mason, you’ve got too much of a reputation for mixing things up. The jury is pretty apt to think all this is a big razzle-dazzle, cooked up by a lawyer to mix things up so his client won’t be convicted. If you can’t shake this damned hotel clerk in his testimony that Rose Calvert was the one who checked into Room 729 claiming she was the secretary for Gerald Boswell, you’re hooked.”
Mason said, “What I’ve got to do is to find out what actually happened.”
“When do we eat?” Myrtle Lamar asked.
Mason said, “Myrtle, you’re going to have to feed your own face.”
“What?”
“We’ll give you money for the best lunch in town,” Mason said, “but we’re going to be busy.”
She pouted. “That wasn’t the way it was promised. Paul was going to take me to lunch. I want to have lunch with him.”
“I have to be in court,” Drake said.
“No, you don’t. You’re not trying the case — and I’ll tell you one other thing, you hadn’t better leave me alone, running around here. I know too much now. You’ve got to keep me under surveillance, as you detectives call it.”
Mason laughed, said, “You win, Myrtle. Paul, you’re going to have to take her to lunch.”
“But I want to see what happens in court.”
“Nothing too much is going to be happening in court,” Mason said. “Not right away. The district attorney is stalling, trying to find some way of accounting for that bullet in the underside of the mattress. He wants to prove that I shot it there and he’s just about ready to call Inskip so they can lay a foundation to involve me in the case as an accessory.
“So you can count on the fact that he’ll stall things along just as much as he can, and this time I’m inclined to play along with him because I want to find out what happened.
“Someone murdered Rose Calvert. I want to find out who.”
“Well,” Drake said, “don’t ever overlook the fact that it could well have been Mrs. Gifford Farrell. She had the room across the corridor from the girl. She hated the girl’s guts. She was seen by a chambermaid coming out of the girl’s room... Good Lord! Perry, don’t let her pull the wool over your eyes by telling a convincing story which, after all, has for its sole purpose getting herself off the hook.”
“I’m thinking of that,” Mason said.
“And,” Drake went on, “she’s the one who buried the murder weapon down there at the motel... Hang it, Perry! The more you think of it, the more logical the whole thing becomes. She must have been the one who committed the murder.”
“There’s just one thing against it,” Mason said.
“What?” Drake asked.
“Circumstantial evidence,” Mason told him.
“Such as what?”
“Why didn’t she give Jerry Conway the murder weapon instead of the weapon that Gifford had planted there to make the death appear suicide?”
Drake tugged at the lobe of his ear for a moment, then said, “Hell’s bells, Perry! This is one case I can’t figure. Things are coming a little too fast for me. Where do I take Myrtle to lunch?”
“Someplace not too far from the courthouse,” Mason said.
“Well, let me out here. This is a darned good restaurant. We’ll take a cab and come to court when we’re finished... How much of a lunch do you want, Myrtle?”
“Not too much,” she said. “I’ll have two dry Martinis to start, then a shrimp cocktail, and after that a filet mignon with potatoes au gratin, a little garlic toast, a few vegetables on the side such as asparagus or sweet corn, then some mince pie a la mode, and a big cup of black coffee. That will last me until evening.
“Believe me, it’s not very often that one of us girls gets an opportunity to look at the left-hand side of the menu without paying a bit of attention to what’s printed on the right-hand side.”
Mason glanced at Paul Drake and nodded. “It may be just as well to keep her out of circulation until the situation clarifies itself.”
Mason stopped the car and let Paul and Myrtle Lamar out.