“All right,” she said bitterly. “If you want the truth about her, I’ll give you all the truth about her. She killed him!”
“You mean she killed Benjamin Addicks?”
“Of course she killed him. She wanted to kill me more than she wanted to kill him. That’s one of the reasons that Benny decided we’d make it appear that... well, that I was already dead.”
“It seems to me,” Mason said, “that’s an unduly complicated way of trying to find a solution to a simple problem.”
“The problem wasn’t simple.”
“Why didn’t he clear up that marriage problem with his first wife?” Mason asked, his casual manner masking the fact that he was taking a shot in the dark.
“Because he couldn’t.”
“Why?”
She shrugged her shoulders said, “Suppose you do the talking for a while?”
Mason said, “All right. I’m a lawyer. The only possible solution that I can think of why Mr. Addicks wouldn’t have acknowledged you publicly as his wife is that he didn’t have the legal right to do so, and the only reason I can think of why he didn’t have the legal right to make you his wife is that he had another wife living, a wife who had perhaps thrown the hooks into him for alimony, and who had refused to give him a divorce.”
She shook her head.
“Not right?” Mason asked.
She said bitterly, “The newspapers have given him a lot of publicity from time to time. They’ve published his picture plenty of times. You haven’t heard anyone come forward and say that she was his wife. You haven’t learned of any prior marriage.”
“That’s one of the things that puzzles me,” Mason admitted reluctantly.
She said, “It puzzled me, but I cared enough about him to ride along and take things the way they came.”
“You cared that much for him?” Della Street asked.
She regarded Della Street speculatively and said, “He was good to me. I was willing to let it ride along on any kind of a basis that he wanted as long as — as long as it only affected the two of us.”
“I still don’t get the story,” Mason said.
“You’re not going to get it.”
Mason glanced at Della Street, said, “For some reason the man didn’t feel he was at liberty to marry, and yet when it became necessary for him to marry in order to give his child a name, and to give you some measure of protection he went ahead and married. But before he did that he went through an elaborate rigmarole to make everyone think that you were dead. That must have meant that he — oh-oh, I believe I have it.”
“What is it, Chief?” Della Street asked.
“He felt that any woman whom he married would be in the greatest danger.”
“But why?” Della Street asked.
Mason held up his hand. “First,” he said, elevating his forefinger, “he didn’t feel that he was legally free to marry. Second, he felt that any woman in whom he took a serious interest would be in great danger. That spells a certain pattern to me, Della — as a lawyer.”
“I don’t get it, Chief.”
Mason looked at the woman in the wrapper. “Perhaps Helen can tell us.”
“And perhaps Helen won’t.”
“All right,” Mason said, “let’s make a stab at it, Della. At some stage in his life Addicks had married. That marriage had never been dissolved by death or by any decree of divorce. Now why not?”
Della Street shook her head. “There isn’t any reason. If he’d married he’d have been divorced. No matter what it cost him he’d have bought his way out of that and got into the clear. He might have been very cautious about taking a second adventure in the field of matrimony, but he certainly would have secured his legal freedom.”
“If he could have,” Mason said.
“What do you mean, if he could have?”
“There’s one legal situation, one very interesting legal situation under which he might not have been able to accomplish what he wanted.”
“What?” Della Street asked.
Mason said, “In many states it is impossible to divorce a woman who has been adjudged insane.
“Now then, suppose that Benjamin Addicks had married. Suppose that woman had been adjudged insane. Addicks’ hands were tied. And furthermore, suppose that woman developed a form of insanity that would make her dangerous, that would — I think we’re getting somewhere, Della.”
Mason inclined his head slightly toward the woman in the wrapper.
She was having trouble with her face. A spasm of grief contorted it, then she suddenly said angrily, “Damn you! What are you? A mind reader? Do you have to go prying into peoples’ lives and...?”
“I think,” Mason said, “you’d better tell me about it, Helen.”
She said, “I went through ten thousand hells. You have no idea what it meant.”
“Who is this woman?” Mason asked. “Where is she confined?”
“That’s just the point,” Helen said. “She isn’t confined. She escaped. She’s at large. She’s a homicidal maniac. Do you see what that means?”
Mason narrowed his eyes in thoughtful concentration.
“She’s absolutely, utterly insane. She’s jealous. She traced Benny and blackmailed him. She told him that if he ever married or tried to marry she’d kill the woman. And she meant it. My marriage to Benny isn’t any good legally.”
“Then why go through the marriage ceremony?”
“For what it might be worth to give the child a name.”
“Where’s the first wife?”
“No one knows.”
“Why wasn’t she kept confined somewhere?”
“You can’t keep her confined anywhere. She escaped every time she was locked up. That’s why Ben had to keep his affairs in such shape that he could give her cash quickly. The woman is utterly, ferociously mad. She’d kill him and she’d love to kill me.”
“She didn’t kill him?”
“No, Josephine Kempton did that — but if you’ve told the newspapers about my marriage, or even if she thinks I am the mother of Benny’s child, she’ll hunt me out and kill me. She’s diabolically ingenious and utterly vindictive.
“You see, she’s still insane as far as the law’s concerned. There wasn’t a thing Benjamin Addicks could do. An action for divorce wouldn’t lie, and he couldn’t even clarify their property matters. And if he tried to do anything, it would necessarily have disclosed his true name and his true past.”
“What about his past?”
“He killed a man.”
“I thought that was his brother.”
“No. There was some garbled gossip to that effect. Benny kept track of Herman, but Herman thought Benny was dead.”
“Did your husband actually kill a man?”
“He claimed he didn’t really know. He never told me the details. When I learned how he felt I never asked for them.”
“But his wife kept in touch with him?” Mason asked.
“Certainly.”
“How?”
“The phone would ring. It would be a call from a pay station. It would be her voice. She’d direct him to put a certain amount of money in the form of cash in a package and leave the package at a certain place. It was all done as mysteriously as though she had been getting ransom for kidnaping.”
“And Addicks had some messenger he could trust who delivered the money?”
“Yes.”
“Certainly he didn’t dare to put you in that situation.”
“No. It was Mortimer Hershey who did that. Sometimes it was Nathan Fallon.”
“Did they know what they were doing?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Mason. I don’t think they did. Benny was so afraid of being blackmailed. Heavens, I’m telling you this whole story and I had no intention of doing it, but I’ve been so lonely, and then — now Benny’s gone. He’s all I had a tie to and...”
“Now wait a minute,” Mason said, “let’s control the emotions for a little while, Mrs. Barnwell. Let’s get down to brass tacks on this thing. What about Josephine Kempton? Did she know about you and Mr. Addicks?”