“Don’t be silly. But you must know you’re looking a lot better, and I think you’re feeling a lot better. Now that you have something to interest you.” She turned to Lieutenant Tragg, and said, “Rebecca spends too much time in her darkroom, and she stays in the house too much of the time. I keep trying to persuade her to get out, and take more exercise, but I don’t have much luck.”
“Well, sakes alive, what’s a body going to do?” Rebecca demanded. “I never stand a chance at getting the family car — even if I knew how to drive, which I don’t. And as far as walking is concerned, it isn’t any pleasure to get up and pound your feet to pieces on the cement sidewalk while automobiles go whizzing by and spewing a lot of poison gas into the atmosphere. I don’t see why they allow automobiles on residential streets, Lieutenant. I think it’s an outrage and a menace to health.”
“It may be at that,” Tragg agreed. “Are there any new developments?”
Mrs. Gentrie shook her head.
Rebecca, having started to talk, rambled on. She said, “Mr. Mason was out here just about an hour ago. He was making what he called a final check-up.”
Tragg’s finely chiseled features lost some of their boyish look. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Mr. Mason. He’s been out here several times, hasn’t he?”
“Well, off and on,” Rebecca said.
Lieutenant Tragg was looking at Mrs. Gentrie. “I wonder just what Mason’s interest is in the case,” he said.
“Why, what do you mean?”
Tragg said, “Mason is a lawyer. He doesn’t go around solving mysteries. He isn’t particularly interested in apprehending murderers. He’s interested in making fees, and he makes fees because he represents some one client. I haven’t been able to find out whom he’s representing in this case. He hasn’t said anything, has he?”
Mrs. Gentrie said, “Well... no. I can’t say that he has.”
He frowned. “Rather strange. Mrs. Gentrie, I am going to have to talk frankly with you about rather a disagreeable matter.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’s about your oldest son.”
“Yes.”
“I’m wondering if you’ve found him always truthful?”
Mrs. Gentrie said somewhat defiantly, “Junior is a good boy.”
“Of course he is,” Tragg said. “But I am asking you if you have found him entirely truthful.”
Rebecca, who had been squirming uneasily on her chair, anxious for an excuse to enter the conversation, said, “Of course, Florence, you must admit that since he’s started going...”
Florence turned to her. “Please, Rebecca,” she said.
Tragg was apologetic, but insistent. “This is rather embarrassing to me,” he said, “but I think your sister-in-law was commenting on the exact phase that I wanted to bring up, Mrs. Gentrie.” He turned to Rebecca. “You were going to say that since he became interested in that stenographer next door, he’s been a little secretive, weren’t you?”
Rebecca sniffed. “Secretive’s no name for it. There’s no good going to come of it, if you ask me. A young boy like him running around with a woman that’s so much older. They certainly didn’t do anything like that when I was a girl.”
Mrs. Gentrie said doggedly, “Rebecca, I think it would be better if you left Junior out of it.”
Rebecca said, “It isn’t anything against Junior as much as it is against that little minx. She has that butter-won’t-melt-in-my-mouth manner of looking at you. And she says” — and here Rebecca’s voice changed entirely to assume a startling likeness to that of Opal Sunley — “ ‘Good moahning, Miss Gentrie — ahnd how’s all the fahmily today?’ I feel like up and giving her a piece of my mind, just coming right out and saying, ‘They’d be very well, thank you, if you’d just leave your painted finger hooks out of Junior and let him grow up as a normal boy should.’ ”
Mrs. Gentrie said sternly, “Rebecca! Stop it!”
Tragg flashed Mrs. Gentrie his best smile. “I’m sorry. I’m quite certain it was my fault. I led her into it, and, as you probably realize, I did it with a purpose. Mrs. Gentrie, are you absolutely certain that your son was in bed when that shot was heard next door?”
Mrs. Gentrie said slowly, “No. I’m not certain he was in bed.”
“Are you perhaps certain that he wasn’t?” Tragg asked, his voice quietly insistent.
“I don’t know. What makes you say that?” she asked.
“I’m not certain that I know myself,” Tragg observed, still smiling, “only it impresses me that you’re a very efficient mother, that you keep an eye on your children, that in the event you heard something you thought might be a shot, your first idea would be to look for the safety of your children. And, as I understand it, Junior’s bedroom is between your room and the head of the stairs.”
Mrs. Gentrie met his eyes steadily, and asked, “Is there some particular reason why you’re trying to drag Junior into this?”
“I’m not trying to drag him into it, Mrs. Gentrie, but I think it’s only fair to tell you that the two fingerprints on the telephone in Mr. Hocksley’s house are those of your son.”
Mrs. Gentrie started to say something, then changed her mind and was silent.
“The paint-smear fingerprints on the telephone were made by someone who had touched the paint your husband had placed on the garage door. He didn’t finish that painting until around nine-thirty at night as I understand it. Obviously then, your son, who was out at the time, returned home sometime after that, entered this house, probably in the dark, went down to the cellar for some purpose. Without realizing that the garage door had been painted, he came groping his way toward it. I think you follow me, Mrs. Gentrie. If he’d been using a light, or if a light had been on in the cellar, he’d have seen the fresh paint on the door, and, moreover, wouldn’t have been groping along with his hands outstretched.”
Rebecca said, “I think you’re quite right, Lieutenant. Personally, I thought I heard someone moving around here in the corridor just about the time the noise of the shot wakened me.”
“Someone moving around in the house?” Tragg asked her.
“Yes.”
“And you said you thought you heard someone moving, Mrs. Gentrie?”
“No. I heard Mephisto, the cat.”
“Yet you got up and got your husband to go downstairs?”
“Well, yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I was worried.”
“About what?”
“I thought that noise might have been a shot.”
“You didn’t think it came from this house?”
“Well, no — that is, I didn’t think very much about it.”
“You got your husband to get up and investigate things here in this house?”
“Yes.”
Tragg remained silent for several seconds, letting the significance of those questions and replies soak into Mrs. Gentrie’s mind; then he went on smoothly, “Your son went downstairs in the dark. He groped for the garage door, opened it, and went into the garage. Then he opened the other door and went across to Hocksley’s flat. In groping for the garage door in the dark, he got paint on the fingers of his left hand. After he got over to Hocksley’s flat, he struck matches to light his way. Your husband is left-handed. Your son, however, is right-handed. He was taking matches from his pocket with his right hand and striking them with his right hand. So he didn’t touch anything with the fingers of his left hand until he picked up the telephone over in Hocksley’s flat. The paint on his fingers was still wet. It’s obvious that must have been within a very few minutes of the time he got his fingers in the paint on the garage door. When he came back, he...”