“Does she know that Marvin Adams is the son of the man who was hanged for murder?”
“I’m almost certain she doesn’t. At least, she didn’t say anything about it. Of course, Sarah died before Mrs. Burr came to El Templo. She’s only been there two or three weeks. I don’t think the name Adams meant a thing to her.”
“And you didn’t tell her?”
“No, of course not.”
“All right,” Mason said, “that explains how you found out about me. Now go ahead and tell me what you wanted to see me about.”
She said, “I–I wanted to get something off my mind.”
“Wait a minute. One more question. Did you know Milter, the detective who was investigating this thing?”
“I have seen him a couple of times, although he didn’t know it. I never met him, in the sense that you mean. I never actually talked with him.”
“What time did you leave El Templo, Mrs. Dangerfield?”
“Early this morning.”
“Where’s Mr. Dangerfield?”
“He’s staying on in El Templo. I left a note telling him I was going to take the car and be away for the day. He was snoring peacefully when I left. He likes to stay up late at night and sleep late in the morning. I’m just the opposite. I’ve trained myself so I can go to bed and go to sleep. He can come in without disturbing me. Quite frequently I get up in the morning and go out, long before he’s wakened. I like to take walks in the early morning. I find that exercise before breakfast helps a lot.”
Mason leaned back once more in the swivel chair and again closed his eyes as though trying to reconstruct mentally some event from the past. “So you made an investigation to make certain that your husband wasn’t in Reno?”
“My husband. Oh, you mean David. Yes.”
“Who made the investigation?”
“A friend.”
Mason said, “Every time you’ve referred to that investigation, you’ve used the expression ‘a friend.’ Don’t you think that’s rather indefinite? You have never used a pronoun in referring to this friend. Is that because you are afraid to do so?”
“Why, Mr. Mason, what are you getting at? I don’t understand you. Why should I be afraid to use a pronoun?”
“Because it would have had to be either him or her, and that would have indicated the sex of this friend,” Mason said.
“Well, what difference does that make?”
“I was just wondering if this ‘friend’ might not have been your present husband, George L. Dangerfield.”
“Why... why...”
“Was it?” Mason asked.
She said angrily, “You have the most unpleasant manner of trying to...”
“Was it?” Mason repeated.
Abruptly she laughed and said, “Yes. I can realize now, Mr. Mason, how you’ve made such a reputation as a cross-examiner. Perhaps I was trying to cover that up a little bit, because of the fact that it might sound — well, a little — well, a person might have drawn an erroneous conclusion from it.”
“The conclusion would have been erroneous?” Mason asked.
She was in complete possession of her faculties now. She laughed at him and said, “I’ve told you, Mr. Mason, how much I cared about my husband, and how afraid I was that I might lose him. Do you think a woman who felt that way would take chances with some other man?”
“I was merely interested in uncovering something which you seemed to be trying to cover up. Perhaps it’s merely the instinct of a cross-examiner,” Mason said.
She said, “I had known George L. Dangerfield before our marriage. He had been — rather crazy about me; but he hadn’t been in Winterburg City for more than two years prior to the time I wired him. I had only seen him once after my marriage, and that was to tell him definitely and positively that my marriage terminated everything between us.”
Mason repeated her words slowly. “Terminated everything between us.”
Once again she was angry; then she caught herself and said, “You do have the most unpleasant manner of prying into a person’s mind. All right, if you want it that way, the answer is yes.”
Mason said, “You left El Templo before the papers came out this morning?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Just why did you come here?”
“I told you it was my conscience that sent me here. I know something that I didn’t ever tell anyone about.”
“What?”
“I wasn’t a witness at that old trial, so nobody asked me. I didn’t volunteer this information.”
“And what was the information?”
“Horace Adams and David had a fight.”
“You mean an argument?”
“No, I mean a fist fight.”
“What was it about?”
“I don’t know.”
“When?”
“The day David was murdered.”
“Go ahead,” Mason said. “Let’s have it all.”
She said, “David and Horace had a fight. I think David got the worst of it. He came home and was terribly angry. He went to the bathroom and put some cold towels on his face; then he fooled around in the bedroom for a while and went out. It wasn’t until sometime afterwards that I began to wonder what he’d been doing in the bedroom. I remember having heard a bureau drawer open and close. As soon as I thought of that, I ran to the bureau and opened the drawer where David always kept his gun. The gun was gone.”
“Whom have you told about this?” Mason asked.
“Not a soul on earth except you. Not even my husband.”
There was a long silence in the office while Mason turned her statement over in his mind; then he glanced over at Della Street to make certain Della had taken it all down in shorthand.
Della nodded almost imperceptibly.
The silence made Mrs. Dangerfield uneasy. She started pointing out the obvious. “You see, Mr. Mason, what that would mean. If Horace’s lawyer had said frankly that they’d been fighting, if it had appeared that David had pulled a gun and Horace had struck him over the head — who knows? It might have been self-defense, and he’d have gone free. In any event, it wasn’t the kind of murder they hang men for.”
“And what did you intend to do?” Mason asked.
She said, “Understand one thing, Mr. Mason. I’m not going to make a howling spectacle of myself. I’m not going to have people pointing the finger of shame at me. But I thought that I might sign an affidavit, and give it to you, to hold in strict confidence. Then, if this business about the old case should begin to ruin Marvin Adams’ life, you could go to the girl’s father — in strict confidence, of course — and show him this affidavit, tell him of your talk with me, and Marvin could — well, you know, live happily ever after.”
She laughed nervously.
Mason said, “That’s very interesting. Twenty-four hours ago it would have been a simple solution. Now it may not be such a simple solution.”
“Why?”
“Because now the record of that old case may come out in public, in spite of anything we can do.”
“Why? What’s happened within the last twenty-four hours? Has Mr. Witherspoon...”
“It was something that happened to this detective, Leslie L. Milter.”
“What?”
“He was murdered.”
For a moment she didn’t grasp the full significance of Mason’s words. She said mechanically, “But I’m telling you that if his lawyer had...” She caught herself in the middle of the sentence, straightened in her chair. “Who was murdered?”
“Milter.”
“You mean someone killed him?”
“Yes.”
“Who — who did it?”
Mason once more picked up a pencil from his desk, slowly slid his fingers up and down the polished shaft of wood. He said, “That is quite apt to be a question which will become increasingly important as time goes on — a question which will have very important bearing upon the lives of several persons.”