“Within a month.”
“Now then, Mr. Driscoll, I’ll ask you if a letter was written by you and sent to Mrs. Prescott in which you suggested she leave her husband and get a divorce.”
“The letter itself is the best evidence,” Mason objected.
Cuff smiled. “I understand Mr. Mason’s objection perfectly,” he said. “But questions and answers will never incriminate this witness because he’s completely innocent. Go right ahead and answer the question, Jimmy.”
Driscoll said, “I wrote such a letter, signed it, put it in a stamped, addressed envelope, and mailed it to Mrs. Prescott. That was, I believe, four or five days ago.”
“In this letter you advised Mrs. Prescott to leave her husband?” the coroner asked.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t feel friendly toward him?”
“I did not. I thought he was a crook and a cheat.”
“You were jealous of him?”
“In a way, yes.”
“You had reason to hate him?”
“Frankly, I did.”
The coroner glanced appealingly at Cuff, then over to the deputy district attorney, and said, “I’ve never heard anything quite like this.”
Overmeyer nodded. Rodney Cuff said cordially, “Go right ahead, your Honor. You’re doing fine. Or would you prefer to have me ask the questions?”
“No,” the coroner said, “I’ll ask them. Now, you were in Walter Prescott’s house yesterday morning, Mr. Driscoll?”
“Yes.”
“At about what time?”
“At about the time mentioned by Mrs. Anderson. I didn’t look at my watch, but it was just a few minutes after eleven when I arrived.”
“Did Walter Prescott know you were coming?”
“No.”
“Had he invited you to visit his house?”
“No.”
“You went there for the purpose of seeing his wife?”
“Yes.”
“You saw her?”
“Yes.”
“And you armed yourself before going to the house?”
“I did. Walter Prescott had threatened to kill her. I considered him fully capable of doing just that. I intended to protect her from him.”
“By using that weapon?”
“I didn’t think I’d need to use it, but I wanted her to have it so she could use it if she had to in order to defend herself.”
“Did you make any protestations of love or affection to Mrs. Prescott?”
“I did,” Driscoll said, with some feeling. “I couldn’t bear the thought of her being unhappy. My emotions got the best of me. I took her in my arms and told her I still loved her; that I had always loved her.”
He was leaning slightly forward in the chair now, breathing rapidly. Press photographers pushed forward. Cameras clicked audibly.
The coroner said, “Let’s not have any misunderstanding about this, Mr. Driscoll. Did you kill Walter Prescott?”
“I did not.”
“Did you know he was dead?”
“Not until long after I had left the house.”
“Will you describe just what you did in the house after, let us say, eleven-thirty?”
“I was talking with Mrs. Prescott about her financial aflairs and the embezzlement of some twelve thousand dollars of her money by her husband. He had deliberately manipulated her affairs so he could steal this money.”
“Do I understand you communicated these sentiments to Walter Prescott’s wife?”
“Exactly,” Driscoll said with feeling. “He’d swindled her, lied to her and cheated her. He only married her for her money. I felt that he’d forfeited any rights he might have had as a husband.”
“But you knew the law regarded him as her legal husband and still clothed him with the rights of a husband?”
“Yes.”
“You knew there’d been no suit for divorce filed?”
“Yes.”
“And yet, before you left that house, you were planning to run away with this woman?”
“I was planning to take her to Reno, where she could institute a divorce action. At first I intended to let her go by herself. Later on I decided to join her on her trip.”
“And you did so?”
“I did.”
“Did you know Walter Prescott was dead when you left the house?”
“I did not.”
“Let’s get back now to what you were doing after eleven-thirty.”
“I lost my self-control and took Mrs. Prescott in my arms and told her that I loved her. Mrs. Anderson, watching from the adjoining house, can bear witness to that.”
Stella Anderson nodded vigorously.
The coroner said, “Never mind, Mrs. Anderson. You’re not on the witness stand now. You’ve already given your testimony. Go ahead, Mr. Driscoll. Tell us what happened after that.”
“After that I stepped into the other room to telephone the airport to get a reservation on the plane for Mrs. Prescott. I had just about finished telephoning when an automobile accident occurred in front of the place. I ran out to render what assistance I could, and then returned. Knowing that, because of the accident, I might be subpoenaed at any moment as a witness to that accident, and not wishing to leave Rosalind Prescott unprotected, I took the revolver from my pocket and gave it to her. That’s the Smith & Wesson .38 caliber revolver which has been introduced in evidence here. It was my revolver, but at the time I gave it to Mrs. Prescott it had not been fired. She told me that her husband had threatened to take her life, and I wanted her to have some means of protecting herself.”
“Then what did you do?”
“Then I left the house and ran into a couple of radio officers. They took my name, license number, and address, and told me I might be a witness. I told them I’d been telephoning at the time and hadn’t seen anything of what had occurred, but that didn’t seem to make any difference with them. Then I returned to Prescott’s house, told Rosalind Prescott that my identity had been discovered and I was afraid Walter would make some trouble, so I suggested we both leave at once for Reno.”
“What did she say?”
“She agreed.”
“Did she pack a bag?”
“Just a little overnight bag, some creams and things. She changed her dress, and we left at once by the side entrance.”
“Was there any conversation about what Mrs. Anderson might have seen?”
“There was. Mrs. Prescott felt certain Stella Anderson had been spying on us; that she’d seen what had taken place.”
Stella Anderson jumped to her feet and exclaimed indignantly, “I wasn’t spying! I never spy. I mind my own business and—”
The coroner’s gavel banged into silence. “You’ll have to be seated and keep quiet, Mrs. Anderson,” he said, “or else leave the room.”
Jimmy Driscoll seemed to pay no attention whatever to the interruption. With the air of a man who has an unpleasant duty to perform, but is determined to discharge it faithfully, he said, “Before our departure, we had some discussion about what we could do to prevent Mrs. Anderson from telling Walter Prescott what she had seen. Rosalind conceived the idea of having her sister come over, dress up in the same dress Mrs. Prescott had been wearing, and appear at the window where Mrs. Anderson could get a good look at her face. We telephoned Miss Swaine from the airport. I listened to Rosalind Prescott’s conversation, and heard the instructions she gave Miss Swaine.”
“Then what did you do?”
“Then we flew to Reno.”
“Did you know Walter Prescott was dead at that time?”
“No — what’s more,” Driscoll said calmly, “I can prove that I didn’t kill him, and that I didn’t have anything to do with his death.”
Cuff got to his feet belligerently and said, “I demand that my client be given an opportunity to prove his innocence.”
“No one’s stopping him,” Scanlon said good-naturedly.
Overmeyer said, “I want the record to show, and Counsel to understand, the attitude of the district attorney’s office is that of making an impartial, independent investigation. We’re not trying to pin this crime on anyone. We want the facts, that’s all.”