“Don’t condense that part of it, Paul,” Della Street said. “I like to hear you dwell on this paragon of secretarial efficiency. I find that secretaries are uniformly underestimated.”
“This one wasn’t,” Drake said. “Both Higley and Jennings appreciated her. I think both were in love with her. Higley was a fourflusher. Wesley Jennings was married. Rose Farr liked Wesley. But someone tipped off Wesley’s wife. The latter used that as a means of trying to grab all of Jennings’ property, forcing him to sell his interest in the partnership and all that.
“You know how those things go. When a marriage splits up and a man tries to tell his story it sounds pretty drab because he can’t remember all of the little things that come up in daily married life. But when a woman gets on the witness stand she remembers every time the husband found a button off his shirt and kicked over the dressing table in protest.”
Della Street, smiling, said, “You may condense that part, Paul.”
“Hell, it’s the truth,” Drake said. “Any woman can take just two months of an ordinary marriage and, by keeping a notebook and embellishing things a little bit, make a man sound like a perfect brute.
“Well, anyway, Wesley Jennings’ wife turned out to be a bitch. She wanted money, lots of money and more money. She wanted to force a dissolution of the partnership and wanted Jennings to liquidate everything so she could get it in the form of cash.
“So Jennings stalled things along as best as he could and he and Rose Farr worked together trying to raise as much cash as they could in a secret fund so that he could offer his wife an attractive cash settlement. Rose Farr, knowing the business the way she did, was helping Wesley Jennings all she could. They were, of course, planning to get married just as soon as Mrs. Jennings would make a property settlement and get a divorce. That was another lever that Mrs. Jennings was using to get more and more cash.”
“Go on,” Mason said. “What happened? In view of the fact that Nadine bears her mother’s name I am assuming—”
“You’re assuming right,” Drake said. “Wesley Jennings shot himself. Seven and a half months later Nadine was born.”
“Why in the world did he commit suicide and leave Rose Farr to face a situation like that?” Della Street asked.
“Well,” Drake said, “when you look at it one way it’s reasonable. It could have been that when Rose Farr found she was going to have a baby, Wesley Jennings knew he was licked. His wife was just looking for something that would give her a good excuse to nail a charge of adultery on top of mental cruelty.”
“What happened after that?” Della Street asked.
“Rose Farr left the business. No one knew what happened to her. She had her baby, then died after a few months.
“Now here’s the point, Perry. Rose Farr wrote a letter. She sealed it. She left it with a bank to be delivered to her daughter, Nadine, when Nadine reached her eighteenth birthday. No one knows what was in that letter. It was delivered to Nadine. In all probability Rose Farr took that opportunity to tell Nadine that she was an illegitimate child, but she also told her some things that caused Nadine to do a lot of thinking.
“Within thirty days after Nadine had that letter she looked up Mosher Higley. Higley thereupon took Nadine in to live with him and started giving her an education. There was no affection between them. In fact, Higley hated her, and the way things look now he probably feared her.”
“In other words,” Mason said, “there was something in that letter that changed the entire picture.”
Drake nodded. “There must have been.”
Mason’s voice was speculative. “It could have been that Higley had cheated his partner’s estate in settling up the partnership. It could have been that there was something a little fishy about Wesley Jennings’ death. Perhaps it wasn’t suicide. Perhaps Higley was the one who pulled the trigger and made it look like suicide. Hang it, Paul, I’ve got to find out what was in that letter.”
“You and the district attorney,” Paul said.
Mason said, “This is a case where we don’t seem to be able to get any of the breaks, Paul. That letter can’t be used as evidence to prove any facts we might want uncovered, but it can be used against Nadine to establish a motive.
“Look at the thing from the viewpoint of the district attorney. Here’s an illegitimate child, the offspring of an illicit affair. She reaches the age of eighteen. She opens a letter from her mother. There is information in that letter which enables her to go to Mosher Higley and blackmail him.
“If Mosher Higley were alive we could at least attempt to prove the truth of any facts stated in that letter. But now we can’t go into those facts. But that letter can establish motivation.
“From the district attorney’s viewpoint, Mosher Higley had no affection for Nadine Farr. She had no affection for him. She uncovered information that enabled her to move in on him. She forced him to send her to school and college. She lived in his house. John Locke fell in love with Nadine. Mosher Higley was a friend of the Locke family. He didn’t want John Locke to fall for an illegitimate child who was also a blackmailer. He tried to be a gentleman. He didn’t go to Locke’s family and tell them the story. He simply told Nadine to get out. So a few days later Mosher Higley gets cyanide of potassium in his chocolate and Nadine sobs out a confession to a doctor that it was all a horrible mistake.”
Paul Drake pinched his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger. “And how the hell can you counter anything like that, Perry?”
Mason shook his head. “If I could think of the answer to that, Paul, I’d be more than a lawyer. I’d be a wizard.”
“Can the police get all that information?” Drake asked.
“You got it,” Mason said.
Drake thought that over, then nodded. “Yes, I suppose the same sources of information are open to them if they think about it.”
“They’ll think about it, Paul.”
“But,” Drake said, “you’ll have one advantage — you can get Nadine to tell you what was in that letter.”
“So can the police, Paul.”
“How?”
Mason put his two fists together and twisted them as though wringing out a wet rag.
Chapter Fourteen
Mason sat in the visitors’ room at the jail. On the other side of the heavily meshed screen, Nadine Farr, looking complacent and more beautiful than ever, regarded Mason with calm, thoughtful eyes.
“Are you going to put me on the witness stand?” she asked.
Mason studied her thoughtfully. “Let’s get it straight, Nadine. If I put you on the witness stand, you’re going to have to tell about the letter your mother left for you.”
She was silent for several thoughtful seconds.
“So,” Mason said, “I’m going to have to know what was in that letter.”
She shook her head. “I told you I’d never tell that to anyone.”
“As your lawyer I’m going to have to know these things,” Mason told her.
Again she shook her head.
“Perhaps,” the lawyer went on, “you don’t appreciate just how desperate the situation is. Hamilton Burger is going to accuse you of blackmail. He’s going to claim that you blackmailed Mosher Higley into giving you a home, into giving you an education, into making you a residuary legatee under his will.”
“And then what?” she asked.
“And then the jury will be so prejudiced against you that if there is any evidence whatever that you poisoned Higley they’ll return a verdict of first-degree murder.”
“So what do we do?”
“So we counter,” Mason said patiently, “by showing them that you didn’t blackmail Mosher Higley.”