“I sure do, and what’s more, so did Hardwick. I think I could have secured a bigger verdict out of a jury, but it might have been set aside and a new trial granted, and... well, we’re satisfied with twenty thousand dollars, aren’t we, Josephine?”
Mrs. Kempton smiled her patient, tired smile, but she was looking at Perry Mason rather than her lawyer. “Very, very much satisfied,” she said.
“I thought I’d let you know,” Etna said, “that I have charged Josephine five thousand dollars and she is keeping the fifteen thousand.”
“That’s fine,” Mason said.
“And I want to pay you some of that fifteen thousand,” Mrs. Kempton said. “I feel that I should. If it hadn’t been for you, Mr. Mason...”
Mason shook his head.
“But you did a lot of work in the case. You dug through those diaries and worked out a theory, and...”
“No, please sit down,” Mason told her. “Let’s get informal and friendly right away. I don’t want a dime from either one of you. I’m glad that you were able to make a good settlement. I think your lawyer made a very fine settlement. I agree with Mr. Etna that while you might have recovered more from a jury, that once Addicks had been brought into court he’d have fought the thing all the way through to the highest court in the land. After all, the thing that bothered him more than anything else was being ridiculed in the press and placed in the position of a wealthy man who had tried to make it impossible for a working woman to make a living.”
“That’s the way I felt about it,” Etna said.
“Now,” Mason said, “you can do something for me, Mrs. Kempton.”
“Anything in the world.”
“I want to know something about Helen Cadmus.”
“Well, she was a little — I don’t know how to describe it.”
“Go ahead, do the best you can. Do I gather that she was peculiar?”
“She’d had some terrific heartbreak in her life, I know that.”
“How long did you work out there with her?”
“Somewhere around two years I guess it was.”
“And your employment was terminated very shortly after she disappeared?”
“Two days later.”
“Was there anything in the termination of your employment that had anything to do with Helen Cadmus or her disappearance?”
Mrs. Kempton shook her head. “He fired me for stealing.”
“Think back,” Mason said. “Let’s try and get this thing straightened out. After all, it’s rather a coincidence that...”
“No,” she said. “Mr. Addicks was terribly upset about Helen. I think he was fond of Helen, and I think that...”
“Now wait a minute,” Mason said, “you say he was fond of Helen. Do you think that there was anything...?”
“Well — I don’t know. There was the relationship of employer and employee, and then a friendship on top of that. I don’t think — Benjamin Addicks isn’t an emotional type.”
“Well, let’s talk about Helen first.”
“Helen was very decorative and she knew it. She was very, very proud of her figure. She liked to be photographed and she liked to look at herself in the mirror. I know. There was a full-length mirror in her room, and several times I’ve noticed that she... well, she was proud of her figure.”
“What about the mirror?” Mason said.
“She stood in front of it and looked at herself quite frequently.”
“How do you know?”
“I’d open the door and come in and she’d be there.”
“You mean that she was fond of clothes, that she was looking at herself in the mirror and the way she wore clothes?”
Mrs. Kempton smiled. “All the clothes she had on you could have covered with a postage stamp.”
“Nude?” Mason asked.
“Not nude. Those bathing suits. She loved to take two or three squares of material and knot them around so that they’d make a cute, clever bathing suit. Of course, it wouldn’t have stood any swimming, and it wouldn’t have stood any great amount of wear and tear.”
“Did she wear those on the yacht?”
“Occasionally.”
“When there were mixed gatherings?”
“Well, people she knew. She wasn’t — I’ll put it this way, there wasn’t anything modest about Helen. She was a frank sort of a girl, and I know that she loved to be out in the sunlight. She had a body that was one of the most beautiful bronzed bodies you’ve ever seen. She’d tanned herself until she was just, well, just a beautiful bronze.”
“Except, of course, where the bathing suit came?” Mason asked.
“That was the thing that annoyed her more than anything else, having white streaks on her body. No, Mr. Mason, she had a sunbathing place on the roof, and she would sunbathe in the nude. She wanted her body to have a uniform tan. I think she was even more proud of her tan than she was of her... well, of her curves. And her curves were all right and were all in the right places.”
“Wouldn’t it be unusual for a girl like that to have committed suicide?”
“Very unusual.”
“Where were you when the suicide took place?”
“I was on the yacht.”
“On that cruise?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to know something about that. What can you tell me?”
“I’ll tell you all I can. Mr. Addicks wanted to go over to Catalina. He nearly always took Helen with him on his trips, and very often he took me.”
“Who took care of the house while you were gone?”
“We had quite a staff of servants that came in by the day. I had over-all charge and supervision. I also had supervision of keeping things up on the yacht, and, believe me, that’s a job, Mr. Mason. You can have all the sailors in the world to keep the thing shipshape outside, but the things on the inside, the staterooms and the... well, cleaning up, cleaning out the ash trays, getting rid of all the mess that they’d have in the big room after they’d been out on a cruise. Cigars and cigarette stubs, glasses, empty whisky bottles, all of that. It was quite a chore.”
“Did anyone help you?”
“No. I handled that by myself. Of course, you understand that even a big yacht is more or less crowded, and there isn’t room to carry a large staff of servants, particularly women servants. The men can bunk together up in the front of the boat, but with the women it’s different. We had to have rooms of our own.”
“All right, let’s get back to what happened that day.”
“Mr. Addicks wanted to go to Catalina. He telephoned down and had the yacht all ready. He expected that we’d take off about two o’clock in the afternoon, but he was delayed with some important business matters that came up, and didn’t get down there until about five o’clock. By that time one of those sudden, terrific windstorms had come up. There was a storm warning out for small craft, but Mr. Addicks went out anyway.”
“And then what happened?”
“Well, it was quite a storm. We finally had to heave to and just take it. We didn’t get into Catalina until the next morning.”
“Now how did you go down to the yacht? In automobiles?”
“Yes.”
“You went down with Mr. Addicks?”
“Yes.”
“And Helen went down with him?”
“No, she left about — oh, I don’t know, about an hour before. She drove the sport convertible down and went aboard. She had some typing to do. That was what had caused the delay in the first place. Some business matter had come up, and Mr. Addicks dictated a lot of stuff to her. I believe there were some agreements and some confidential letters that went with them.”