“She was in town.”
“And Burr was there alone?”
“Yes. You see, Burr absolutely couldn’t move out of that bed. He could, however, use his arms and hands, and there was a telephone right by the bed. As a matter of fact, he really didn’t need a nurse in attendance all the time. He could have got action whenever he wanted to pick up the telephone receiver. I have an inter-room telephone communication in the house. You can press a key on the switchboard and hook your telephone in on one of the outside trunk lines, or you can switch it over to any one of half a dozen rooms in the house, simply by pressing the proper button. Burr could have called the kitchen any time he wanted anything.”
“Tell me about the nurse,” Mason insisted.
“Well, when Burr was first put to bed and the leg set, he had his wife take a bag out of the closet and bring it to him. That bag had some of his fishing flies, a couple of his favorite books, a little flashlight, five or six books of the pocket series, and various odds and ends. He could keep that bag by the side of his bed, reach down in it, and tie flies, look over his reels, or get a book.
“After this nurse came on the job, she told him that she thought it would be better for him to tell her whenever he wanted anything, so she was going to unpack the bag and put the contents over on the dresser. She told him to ask her for whatever he wanted. She said she wasn’t going to have the bag there where she’d stumble over it every time she walked around the bed.
“That infuriated Burr. He said no woman was going to mix his fly-tying stuff all up, that he’d keep his things by the side of his bed, and whenever he wanted them, he’d get them.
“The nurse tried to show her authority, and grabbed the bag. He managed to catch her wrist, and all but twisted her arm off. Then he told her to get out and stay out. He said he’d start throwing things at her if she so much as stuck her head in the door. The nurse telephoned the doctor. The doctor came out, and the nurse, Mrs. Burr, the doctor, and I all had a talk with Burr. The upshot of it was that the doctor and the nurse went back to town. Mrs. Burr went with them to pick up a new nurse. The telephone was left switched on to the kitchen, and the women in the kitchen were told to pay particular attention to see that Burr’s telephone was answered just as soon as he picked up the receiver in his room. It certainly seemed as though it would be safe enough to leave him alone under those circumstances. At least the doctor thought so.”
“And you?” Mason asked.
“Emphatically,” Witherspoon said. “To tell you the truth, I was just a bit fed up with Burr’s going temperamental. I told him, somewhat forcefully, that I thought it would be better for him to go to a hospital. Of course, I had to make allowances for the man He’d been suffering a great deal of pain. He was still very weak and very sick. The danger of complications had not yet passed. He was nervous and irritable. The after effect of the drugs was distorting his mental perspective. Undoubtedly, he was hard to get along with.
“However, I think his actions were very unreasonable, and his treatment of the nurse decidedly boorish.”
“And what connects you with his death?” Mason asked.
“The damn fishing rod. There he was on the bed with the fishing rod in his hands. He’d just started to put it together. He had two joints in his right hand, and the other joint in his left hand. Well, you can see where that leaves me. I’m the only one who could have got the fishing rod, the only one who could have given it to him. I was alone in the house. The dogs were loose. No stranger could have got in. The servants swear they hadn’t gone near the room. The poor devil never stood a chance. There he was, held motionless in bed, and this vase of poison stuck on the table about seven or eight feet from the bed, where he couldn’t possibly have reached it to have knocked it off, or done anything about it.”
“But he could have picked up the telephone?”
“Yes. Evidently the gas took effect too quickly for that. He didn’t even know what was happening. Someone — some friend of his had walked in the room, handed him that fishing rod, probably said, ‘Look, Roland, I happened to find your fishing rod. It wasn’t in Witherspoon’s study at all. You left it somewhere else,’ and Burr had taken the fishing rod and started to put it together. The friend had said, ‘Well, so long. If there’s anything you want, just let me know,’ and dropped some cyanide of potassium into the acid, and walked out. A few seconds later. Burr was dead. It had to be some intimate friend. Well, there you are.”
“From the police viewpoint,” Mason said, “it’s a perfect case. You were about the only one who had the opportunity. How about motive?”
Witherspoon became embarrassed.
“Go ahead,” Mason told him. “Let’s have the bad news. What about the motive?”
“Well,” Witherspoon blurted, “Mrs. Burr is a very peculiar woman. She’s as natural as a child. She’s affectionate and impulsive and — well, lots of things. You’d have to know her to understand.”
“Never mind beating around the bush,” Mason said. “Specifically what’s the motive?”
“The police think I was in love with Mrs. Burr and wanted to get her husband out of the way.”
“What makes them think that?”
“I’ve told you. Mrs. Burris natural and demonstrative and affectionate, and — well, she’s kissed me a couple of times right in front of her husband.”
“And sometimes not in front of her husband?” Mason asked.
“That is the hell of it,” Witherspoon admitted. “No one has been present when she’s kissed me in front of her husband except the three of us. But a couple of servants have seen her kiss me when her husband wasn’t there. Most natural thing in the world, Mason. I can’t explain it to you. Some women are just naturally affectionate and want to be fondled and kissed. I wasn’t making any passionate love to her, the way it sounds when the servants tell it. Mexicans don’t understand anything except passion in lovemaking. I simply slipped my arm around her in a fatherly sort of way — and, well, she put her face up to be kissed, and I kissed her.”
“Can the police trace any of the poison to you?”
“That’s another bad thing,” Witherspoon admitted. “The acid is stuff I keep on the ranch, and I always use cyanide for poisoning ground squirrels and coyotes. Ground squirrels are a terrific pest. Once they get into a field of grain, they eat the grain off. They hang around the stable and eat the horses’ hay. The only way you can get rid of them is to poison them. It’s customary all over California to poison ground squirrels, and cyanide is one of the things that’s used. They use quite a bit of strychnine and other stuff. I’ve got poisoned barley on the ranch, keep it there all the time. I also have a stock of cyanide. Well, there you are. Just a plain damn case of circumstantial evidence, without a thing on earth for the police to go on except those circumstances. It puts me in a hell of a spot.”
“Doesn’t it,” Mason said.
Witherspoon flashed him an angry glance.
“You might turn back the hands of the clock eighteen years,” Mason went on dryly, “and think about how Horace Adams must have felt when the police put him in jail, charged him with murder, and he realized that circumstances had conspired to weave a web of evidence around him. I remember when I told you that circumstantial evidence could be the greatest perjurer on earth, not because the circumstances lied, but because men’s interpretation of the circumstances lied. You were inclined to be rather skeptical then.”
“I tell you,” Witherspoon said, “this is something unique. Dammit, this couldn’t happen again in a hundred years.”