She laughed, went to the mirror, adjusted her lips for a moment, and then said, “There’s someone at the door to the outer office now.”
“I’ll see the reporters out there,” Mason said.
He followed her to the outer office, greeted two reporters who had arrived simultaneously. While he was passing cigarettes a third arrived, and then a fourth.
“What’s the big news?” one of the reporters asked. “I hope it’s good. We certainly broke our necks getting over here. Your secretary intimated it was red hot.”
“It is red hot,” Mason said.
“What is it?”
“You have the information about the holographic will that Benjamin Addicks left?”
“Hell, yes. I hope you didn’t think that was news. Hardwick, Carson and Redding released information about that two hours ago. It’s in the late edition.”
“That’s fine,” Mason said. “The will’s no good.”
“What do you mean, it’s no good?”
“Just what I said,” Mason told him. “He didn’t make provisions for his wife.”
“His wife? Benjamin Addicks was a bachelor.”
“That’s what some people would like to have you think.”
“You mean he wasn’t?”
Mason shook his head.
“What the devil? — Don’t kid us, Mason. Good Lord, Benjamin Addicks was an important figure. He was nutty as a fruit cake and he was all goofy over this idea of the gorilla experimentation, but, after all, the guy was prominent. If he had married anyone the newspapers would have played it up. Not too big, but at least they would have played it up. Everything the guy did was news on account of his money and on account of his private zoo of gorillas.”
“You’re forgetting that there’s a big gap in his biographical data,” Mason said. “The man was married.”
“Where did he get married?”
“Here and there.”
“Come on, come on, give us the low-down.”
“Benjamin Addicks,” Mason said, “lived with a woman as his wife.”
“Where did he live with her?”
“In the house with him a part of the time.”
“Are you going to claim that Josephine Kempton...?”
“Not so fast,” Mason said. “The wife was Helen Cadmus. I’ll give you fellows the addresses of some motels where they registered as man and wife, and I can tell you there’s been an absolute photographic identification. You can take a picture of Helen Cadmus and check on it if you want to.”
“Aw, forget it,” one of the men said. “He was playing around with his secretary. That doesn’t mean he was married to her or that it makes the will invalid.”
Mason grinned. “You fellows are good investigators. Go look up these things. Look up the fact that the registrations at auto courts show that the parties were registered as Mr. and Mrs. B. F. Barnwell.”
“Barnwell?”
“That’s right.”
“Well,” one of the reporters said, “That’s your answer right there. In order to have a common-law marriage it’s necessary to show...”
“Who talking about a common-law marriage?” Mason asked.
“You are, aren’t you? And I understand there isn’t any such thing in this state anyway. Even if there were, a man would have to use his right name, and...”
“What was Addicks’ right name?” Mason asked.
“Why, Addicks, of course.”
“Was it?”
“Why, of course. He — say, wait a minute, where did you get that name of Barnwell?”
Mason merely smiled.
“What about common-law marriage?” one of the men asked.
“In some states it’s recognized,” Mason said, “and in others it isn’t. But where a man travels with a woman as his wife he may well find himself in a state that recognizes common-law marriage.
“But what you fellows may be overlooking is that right here in this state when two people live together as husband and wife there’s a disputable presumption of marriage. That’s a rule of evidence, a legal presumption.”
The reporters exchanged glances.
Mason opened a book, placed it on the desk. “There it is, Subdivision 30 of Section 1963 of the Code of Civil Procedure.”
“But how about the will?” one of the reporters asked.
“He didn’t mention Helen Cadmus. If they lived together as husband and wife there is an evidentiary prima facie presumption of marriage. He doesn’t mention her in his will. Therefore the will is open to attack.”
“But he didn’t have to mention Helen Cadmus. She was dead.”
“Who told you so?”
“I suppose you think she just walked on the water. Come on, give us some facts if you want us to publish anything.”
“I don’t give a damn whether you publish anything or not,” Mason said, “but Helen Cadmus didn’t committ suicide.”
“You mean she was murdered?”
“She wasn’t murdered.”
“What the devil do you mean?”
Mason said, “I mean that for reasons that suited Benjamin Addicks and Helen Cadmus, she decided to disappear. You can draw your own conclusions.”
There was a stunned silence for a moment.
“You mean she took time out to have a baby?” one of the men asked.
Mason shrugged his shoulders and said, “After all, I’ve only been in this case for a few hours, but I’m constantly receiving new information which I am correlating and checking. I thought that you fellows would like to start from scratch on this and...”
“Start from scratch is right. If you’ve got anything to hang this theory on, it’s going to make headlines. Gosh, what a sob story, what a sensation!”
“All right,” Mason said, “use your own judgment. Who saw Helen Cadmus aboard the yacht the night of the storm? Who saw Helen Cadmus after the boat pulled out?”
“Crew members, didn’t they?”
“Name one,” Mason said. “The only person who actually saw her was Benjamin Addicks.”
“And Josephine Kempton.”
“Not Mrs. Kempton,” Mason said. “She heard the clack of a typewriter in the other stateroom. The typewriter kept clacking away. Anyone could have pounded a typewriter — Addicks, for instance. Mrs. Kempton had taken a dose of sleeping medicine and she went to sleep. When she wakened in the morning there was this story about Helen Cadmus having disappeared.”
“You got anything to pin that on?” one of the reporters asked.
“Sure,” Mason said. “I have the diaries of Helen Cadmus, remember.”
“And what does she say about having a baby?”
“I’ll show you a passage,” Mason said.
He picked up the diary, opened it to a page which Della Street had located and which he had marked with a bookmark. “Here it is. In the handwriting of Helen Cadmus:
I told B. the news today. At first he was very much upset, and then as he began to think it over I realized everything was going to be all right. He’s going to be very proud of him.
The newspapermen studied the page very carefully.
“Say,” one of the men said, “let’s have these diaries. We can go over them in your law library and perhaps we can find things that...”
Mason shook his head. “That’s it boys. That’s the lead for your story.”
“That isn’t a story. That’s just a theory with a little stuff to go on. We can’t publish that.”
“The hell you can’t!” Mason said. “How much proof did you have as a basis for an accusation that Josephine Kempton had murdered Helen Cadmus?”
“We didn’t say she’d murdered Helen Cadmus. We said the authorities were making inquiries.”
“That’s right,” Mason said. “Now you can assure your readers that on the strength of this entry in the diary, the Drake Detective Agency has dozens of operatives out combing this section of the country trying to establish my theory that the passage in the diary means something definite. And if you go back and reopen the Helen Cadmus case you’ll find that there wasn’t a single member of the crew that saw Helen Cadmus after the boat left port.