“Don’t be silly, Lieutenant, I was married to the man for eighteen months.”
“What time did you leave there?”
“I got up early in the morning and slipped out the back door, got in my car and drove away.”
“To Las Vegas?”
“No, not to Las Vegas,” she said.
“Where?”
Mrs. Hastings hesitated, said at length, “I left the house. That’s all that needs to concern you at this time.”
“I want to know where you went,” Tragg said.
“If you don’t mind,” Adelle Hastings said, “I won’t say anything about where I went after I left the house until I’ve talked with Mr. Mason about it.”
“And if I do mind?” Tragg asked.
“I won’t say anything anyway.”
Tragg said, “I’m not going to book you for murder at the present time, Mrs. Hastings; and I’m not even going to take you to headquarters for questioning, but I don’t want you to leave town. Now, can we have a gentlemen’s agreement, Perry. You’ll agree to produce this woman for questioning at any time if I don’t take her to headquarters now?”
Mason turned to Adelle Hastings. “That means that you can’t go back to Las Vegas,” he said.
“For how long?” she asked.
“Forty-eight hours,” Tragg said.
“All right,” she said, “I’ll stay here.”
“Where will you stay?” Tragg asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll go to a hotel.”
“And you’ll keep in touch with Mason?”
“I’ll keep in touch with him.”
Tragg turned to Mason and said, “Now, as far as you’re concerned, Perry, the situation is a little different.
“If you tell me that you put that gun in the drawer in good faith, and that it’s disappeared and you don’t know what’s happened to it, that’s all right as far as I’m concerned. But I warn you, it isn’t going to be all right as far as the district attorney is concerned. Hamilton Burger is going to feel that this is another one of your hocus-pocus flimflams and he’s probably going to give you an ultimatum — either produce that gun or go before the grand jury.”
“I don’t care what Hamilton Burger thinks,” Perry Mason said. “I put that gun in this drawer in the desk.”
“And that drawer’s now empty,” Tragg said.
“That’s right.”
“Any other empty drawers in the desk?”
“No,” Mason said. “This is a drawer that I keep for urgent matters that are pending and demanding immediate attention.”
“That’s very fitting,” Tragg said significantly. “That gun is an urgent matter that is pending, and for your information it needs immediate attention.”
“I’m going to try to find out about it,” Mason said, “but after all, you know the locks on these doors aren’t designed to be burglar-proof. They’re made so that one master key will open any door on the floor.”
“And who has the master key?”
“The janitor, the cleaning woman — frankly, I don’t know. I’ll have to get in touch with the people in charge of the building and run it down.”
“You’d better run it down,” Tragg said over his shoulder as he nodded to Adelle Hastings and walked out.
Mason turned to Adelle Hastings. “Did you kill your husband?” he asked.
“No.”
“There are some things about your story that are highly fortuitous and rather suspicious.”
“I know it,” she said. “I can’t help it. I told you the truth. You can see what happened. Somebody deliberately framed me. Somebody stole my bag. From the bag this person got the keys to my apartment. Whoever stole the bag went back to my apartment, used the keys to get in the apartment, stole the gun and...”
“And used the gun to kill your husband?” Mason asked, as her voice trailed into silence.
“It looks that way.”
“Your husband was killed in bed, presumably while he was asleep.”
She nodded.
“That means,” Mason said, “that the murderer was someone who was in the house, someone he trusted.”
“Or someone who had a key to the house,” she said.
“All right,” Mason said, “you want to direct attention to the purse stealer but you have just told me that your husband kept a key to the house in his office so that if he should telephone and want someone to go and get something out of the house there wouldn’t be any hitch.”
Again she nodded.
“Now then,” Mason said, “that means anyone in the office could have taken a key and gone to the house. How many people are in the office?”
“There must be twenty or thirty people employed there altogether.”
“All of whom would have access to the key?”
“No. The key is kept in a closet, and the key to the closet is supposed to be kept in the desk of the manager.”
“Then, if your husband should telephone the office and want someone to go out and get some papers or something from his house, the manager would have to go?”
“No, no, not the manager, but the manager would take the key and give it to the person who was being sent out.”
“And who would that be?”
“It might be anyone. It might be the office boy, or one of the secretaries.”
“And,” Mason said, “while that person had the key there’s nothing whatever to prevent him or her from stopping in at a key shop and having a duplicate made.”
“Yes,” she said, “I suppose so, except that the people in the office are presumably people my husband can trust.”
“You acted as secretary for your husband before you were married?”
“Yes.”
“He was a bachelor?”
“No.”
“He had been married before?”
“Yes.”
“A widower?”
“No, he was divorced.”
“And what happened to the first wife?”
“She was the second wife,” Adelle Hastings said. “The first wife died. The second wife— Well, there was a divorce.”
Mason regarded her thoughtfully. “The divorce cleared the way for you two to marry?”
“Yes.”
“Who got the divorce?”
“The wife.”
“Friendly?”
“Definitely not.”
“Were you by any chance named as corespondent?”
“Yes.”
“Where was the divorce obtained?”
“Nevada.”
“Las Vegas?”
“No, Carson City.”
“How long ago?”
“About nineteen months.”
“And as soon as the divorce decree was signed, you and Mr. Hastings married?”
“Yes.”
“Now then,” Mason said, “this wife, this divorcee, what about her? Has she forgotten about it and remarried, or—”
“Forgotten about nothing,” Adelle Hastings snapped. “She hates the ground I walk on. She’d do anything she could to make trouble. That’s the reason I... well, I— Well, ever since this business came up of the gun being planted in my bag I’ve been wondering about her.”
“Where is she living now?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s her name?”
“Hastings. She hasn’t remarried.”
“I mean her first name.”
“Minerva Shelton Hastings, and she’s one of the most scheming, two-faced little hypocrites I’ve ever met in my life.”
“Was she in love with Garvin Hastings?”
“Minerva Shelton Hastings has only one real love in her life, and that is Minerva Shelton Hastings. She is selfish, cold-blooded, scheming, grasping, cunning, two-faced—”
“Did she love Garvin Hastings?”
“She loved the thought of getting some money.”
“And I take it she got some money?”
“She certainly did.”
“What was Garvin Hastings worth?”
“Heavens, I don’t know. He had properties scattered all over. He must be worth two or three million dollars.”
“How much of a settlement did Minerva get?”
“Two hundred and fifty thousand.”
“Cash?”
“Spot cash.”
“Then if she didn’t love Garvin,” Mason said, “and she got a good settlement, there’s no reason why she should feel bitter toward you.”
“Oh, yes there is. She had her hooks into him and if it hadn’t been for me she’d have had every cent by this time.”
“How?”
“She’d have poisoned him.”
“You mean she’d have committed murder too—”
“Mr. Mason, don’t misunderstand me. Minerva would stop at nothing. She’s ambitious, audacious, cunning, daring and ingenious.”
“Then this whole deal is about the type of thing she would have engineered?”
Adelle Hastings nodded.
“But why?” Mason asked.
“To revenge herself on me.”
“You mean she’d go to all that trouble and work out that elaborate scheme in order to get even with you?”
“If I were serving a term in prison,” Adelle said, “Minerva would be going around with a smile stretching from ear to ear.”
Mason said, “There may be more to it than that. Did Garvin make a will while she was married to him, perhaps leaving everything to her?”
“Yes.”
“He revoked that will by making a later one?”
“He told me he was going to.”
“When?”
“A few days after we were married.”
“Now then, in the settlement that was offered me by Huntley Banner,” Mason said, “there was a proviso that you were to receive fifty thousand dollars under Garvin’s will, as a beneficiary for that amount.”
She nodded.
“Therefore,” Mason said, “it was intended that your husband would put this in his will.”
“Yes, of course. After I had divorced him, he naturally wasn’t going to have me as the sole beneficiary.”
“But that will hadn’t been executed as yet?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know if he had executed the other will in your favor?”
“Only that he said he was going to do it. He certainly wouldn’t leave the old will in effect.”
Mason said, “In any event your marriage to him would invalidate that other will — provided your marriage was legal.”
“Of course it was legal. Why do you raise the question?”
Mason said, “It’s the curse of the so-called legal mind. You think of all the possibilities. Why did your marriage go on the rocks?”
“He... I... well, he was quite a bit older than I am.”
“How much?”
“Fifteen years.”
“You knew that at the time you were married.”
“Yes.”
“And it didn’t make any difference then?”
“Mr. Mason, it’s very painful for me to have to go into all this, but I was Garvin’s confidential secretary. He married Minerva. Gradually he began to find out what a scheming, selfish, cold-blooded, dangerous woman Minerva was. It was only natural that he started confiding in me and that I should sympathize with him and well, I guess we both were swept along into a situation that— Well, where we were both somewhat hypnotized by circumstances and then gradually we began to realize that a sympathetic understanding had been misinterpreted and magnified and made the basis of a romantic attachment. Mr. Mason, I’m not going to talk about this any more. That’s a closed chapter in my life.”
“You may think it’s a closed chapter,” Mason said, “but before you get done with this thing the book is going to be opened, that chapter is going to be held up to the attention of the public and the pages are going to be ripped out one by one and spread across the front pages of the metropolitan newspapers.”
She looked at him with sheer panic in her eyes, abruptly got to her feet.
“Mr. Mason,” she said, “I’m going to a hotel. I’ll telephone you and let you know where I am.”
“All right,” Mason said, “do that. Be sure now you don’t try to leave town or conceal yourself in any way, because if you do it will give the prosecution just the ammunition it’s looking for. In this state, flight can be construed as an evidence of guilt, and they’d just love to have you start trying to hide.
“That’s the real reason that Tragg didn’t take you into custody or take you in for questioning. He put you on your honor to stay here in the city, hoping that the pressure would build up and you’d resort to flight, or at least start back for Nevada. Then they’d stop you just before you had crossed the state line and bring you back under arrest, and claim that was evidence of flight.”
“And evidence of flight can be used against a person?”
“Yes. It’s considered evidence of guilt.”
“Thank you for telling me,” she said. “I promise you that I won’t make a break for it.”