“Anything else?”
“That’s all. Don’t touch anything in the room. Get Mrs. Faulkner out of the bedroom and into the living room, then keep her there.”
Mason waited until Sally Madison had left the room, then, moving backward away from the bathtub a few inches at a time, he carefully studied every part of the room, taking great care, however, not to touch any object with his hands.
On the floor, slightly to one side of the body, was a pocket magnifying glass consisting of two lenses, each approximately an inch and a half in diameter, hinged to a hard rubber case so that they would fold back out of the way when not in use. Back against the wall, almost directly under the washstand, were three popular magazines of approximately nine by twelve inches.
Mason bent over to notice the dates on the magazines. The top one was a current magazine, the one underneath that was three months old, and the bottom one four months old. On the top magazine was a smear of ink about half an inch in width by three or four inches in length and slightly curved in shape, trailing off almost to a point as it approached the end of the three-inch smear.
On a glass shelf over the washstand in the bathroom were two sixteen-ounce bottles of peroxide of hydrogen, one of them almost empty, a shaving brush, a safety razor, to the edge of which soapy lather was still adhering, and a tube of shaving cream.
The man had apparently been shot in the left side over the heart and had died almost instantly. When he fell he had apparently upset the table on which the goldfish bowl had been placed. One of the curved segments of broken bowl still held about half a cup of water.
On the floor, beneath the body of one of the goldfish was a pocket checkbook, and near by, a fountain pen. The cap of the pen lay some two feet away. The checkbook was closed, and bloody water had seeped against the edges of the checks. Mason noticed that about half of the checks in the book had been torn out, leaving the stubs of approximately half the checks in the front part of the book.
Faulkner had apparently been wearing his glasses when he was shot and the left lens had been broken, evidently when he had fallen, as the fragments of curved glass from that lens of the spectacles lay within an inch or two of the head. The right lens had not been injured and it reflected the bathroom light in the ceiling with a glitter which seemed oddly animate in the face of the death that tarnished the floor of the bathroom with its crimson stain.
Mason regarded the overturned table, stepping carefully backward and bending over to get a good look at it. There were drops of water on this table, and a slight blob of ink, partially diluted with water. Then Mason noticed something that had hitherto escaped him. A graniteware cooking pan of about two-quart capacity was in the bottom of the bathtub, lying on its side.
As Mason finished his careful inspection of the contents of the room, Sally Madison called to him from the bedroom. “Everything’s been done, Mr. Mason. Mrs. Faulkner is waiting in the living room. Mr. Drake is on his way out here, and I’ve notified the police.”
“Lieutenant Tragg?” Mason asked.
“Lieutenant Tragg wasn’t in, but Sergeant Dorset is on his way out.”
Mason said, “That’s a break,” and then added, “for the murderer.”
7
A siren, at first as muted as the sound of a persistent mosquito, grew in volume until as the police car approached the house it faded from a keen, high-pitched demand for the right-of-way to a low, throbbing protest, then lapsed into silence.
Heavy steps sounded on the porch and Mason opened the front door.
Sergeant Dorset said, “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Reception committee,” Mason announced briefly. “Do come in.”
Men pushed into the room, not bothering to remove their hats, gazing curiously at the two women; Sally Madison calm and collected, her face as expressionless as that of a doll, Mrs. Faulkner, her eyes red from crying, half sitting, half reclining on the davenport, emitting low, moaning sounds which were too regular to be sobs, too low in volume to be groans.
“Okay,” Sergeant Dorset said to Mason, “what’s the story this time?”
Mason smiled suavely. “No need to run a blood pressure, Sergeant. I didn’t discover the body.”
“Who did?”
Mason inclined his head toward the woman on the davenport.
“Who’s she, the wife?”
“If you wish to be technically correct,” Mason said, “and I’m certain you do, she’s the widow.”
Dorset faced Mrs. Faulkner, and by the simple process of tilting his hat toward the back of his head, gave her to understand that she was about to be interviewed. The other officers, having spilled through the house in a questing search for the body, congregated almost at once at the entrance to the bathroom.
Sergeant Dorset waited until Mrs. Faulkner glanced up. “Okay,” he said.
Mrs. Faulkner said in a low voice, “I really did love him. We had our troubles, and at times he was terribly hard to get along with, but...”
“Let’s get to that later,” Dorset said. “How long ago did you find him?”
“Just a few minutes.”
“How many? Five? Ten? Fifteen?”
“I don’t think it’s been ten minutes. Perhaps just a little more than five.”
“We’ve been six minutes getting here.”
“We called you as soon as I found him.”
“How soon after you found him?”
“Right away.”
“One minute? Two minutes? Three minutes?”
“Not as much as a minute.”
“How’d you happen to find him?”
“I went into the bedroom and — and opened the door to the bathroom.”
“Looking for him?”
“No. I had let Mr. Mason in and...”
“What was he doing here?”
“He was waiting at the door as I drove up. He wanted to see my husband.”
Dorset turned to glance sharply at Mason.
Mason nodded.
“We’ll talk about that later,” Sergeant Dorset said.
Mason smiled. “Miss Madison was with me, Sergeant, and had been with me for the last hour or two.”
“Who’s Miss Madison?”
Sally Madison smiled. “Me.”
Sergeant Dorset looked her over. Almost unconsciously his hand strayed to his hat, removed it and placed it on a table. “Mason your lawyer?” he asked.
“No, not exactly.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, I hadn’t fixed things up with him — you know, retained him, but I thought perhaps he could help me, thought he would, you know.”
“Help you what?”
“Get Mr. Faulkner to finance Tom Gridley’s invention.”
“What invention?”
“It has to do with curing sick fish.”
A voice from the bedroom called, “Hey, Sarge. Look in here. He’s got a couple of goldfish swimming around in the bathtub.”
“How many goldfish are swimming?” Mason asked.
“Two of ’em, Sarge.”
Sergeant Dorset said angrily, “That wasn’t me who asked you that last question. That was Mason.”
“Oh,” the voice said, and a broad-shouldered officer came to the door to stare belligerently at the lawyer. “I’m sorry, Sergeant, I thought it was you.”
Mrs. Faulkner said, “Please, I want to have someone come to stay with me. I can’t bear to be here alone after all this. I... I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Hold it, lady,” the officer in the bedroom said. “You can’t go in the bathroom.”
“Why not?”
A certain delicacy caused the officer to keep silent.
“You mean you aren’t going to... to move him?” Mrs. Faulkner asked.