“Not now,” he told her, frowning, and starting once more to pace the floor. “I’m going back to first principles and building up from there. Now then, let’s look at the victim — Walter Prescott — an unsocial individual — selfish, cruel, cold, ruthless— In short, just the type of person who could commit a murder.”
“But he didn’t commit a murder, Chief. He was murdered.”
Mason said, “That’s the puzzling part of it, Della. He should have been the murderer instead of the corpse.”
“This,” Della Street pointed out, “isn’t getting us any nearer China.”
“I think it is,” Mason said thoughtfully. “It sounds foolish, and yet I think it’s getting me some place. It’s paradoxical. The man who was murdered isn’t the man who was murdered, but the man who committed the murder. Now, if we can follow that contradictory premise through to a logical conclusion, Della, we’re certainly going to be one jump ahead of the police, because that’s a starting point of deductive reasoning which would never suggest itself to them.”
“No,” she admitted with a smile, “you win on that.”
“Now then,” Mason said, “let’s suppose that Walter Prescott is a murderer. Let’s suppose that what Jason Braun, alias Carl Packard, saw in the window of that house didn’t have to do with the murder of Walter Prescott but did have to do with the murder of someone else — someone Walter Prescott was killing.”
Della Street said, “You also win on that, Chief. I can’t conceive of the police being able to follow you into that line of reasoning.”
“It’s goofy,” he admitted, “and yet, somehow or other, I feel that I’m getting on the track of what really happened. Somehow, putting all these possibilities in words takes away that feeling of fumbling around in the dark. Now then, with that as a starting point, and considering that Packard saw something connected with a murder, who was the victim? If Walter Prescott had killed someone, who would he have killed? If he’d tried to kill someone, who was that someone, and what could Packard have seen— Wait a minute, Della— good Lord!”
Mason paused in his pacing, to stand in the middle of the floor, his legs spread apart. “Della,” he said slowly, “if what I think happened is actually the real solution, then—”
A series of knocks sounded on the door which led to the corridor. Mason said, “That’s Paul Drake. Let him in, Della, and see what he wants.”
Della Street crossed the room and opened the door.
“Hello, folks,” Drake said. “What’re you doing?”
“We’re engaging in a new form of logic,” Della answered with a grin. “It’s swell. It solves murders and everything.”
“Gimme,” Drake said, entering the room.
“Well, it goes like this,” Della said. “Because you’ve come in the room, you must have been the person going out of the room. Therefore, having gone out of the room while you were coming into the room, someone who saw you in the corridor coming into the room, would have known you were going out of the room, and—”
“Oh, I see,” Drake said, “like a puppy chasing his tail, huh?”
“Exactly,” Della agreed, “only the puppy catches his tail. Then, having swallowed himself, he becomes, so to speak, completely self-contained.”
Mason chuckled and said, “Don’t mind her, Paul. She’s filled with travel bugs. She’s been down picking out light whatnots to wear in tropical countries.”
“Not only in the countries,” Della Street said, “but on shipboard, under the stars, and in the moonlight. Think, Chief, of sailing down below the equator, with the Southern Cross blazing overhead, the wind a warm caress on the skin, the wake of the boat streaming out behind in a white path. The scent of spices in the air, the hiss of water past the bow. Over on the right—”
“Starboard,” Drake interrupted. “By the time you’ve gone below the equator, you’ll know the nautical terms.”
“Okay,” she said, with a sweep of her arm, “over on the starboard is an island, the crests of the volcanic mountains silhouetted against the stars. Down lower against the water, where the palm trees fringe the lagoon behind the barrier reef, is a native village. And, from the deck of the ship you can hear the rhythmic throb of the native drums, the peculiar wail of primitive music—”
“No,” Mason interrupted, “you’re wrong again. The captain wouldn’t be standing in that close to an island after dark. He’d be out where there was plenty of sea room and—”
Della Street shook her head sadly. “Pardon me! My mistake! What we should talk about is murder — corpses with battered heads — clues, circumstantial evidence, bloodstained bullets, perjured testimony, and the beautiful things in life. Murderers who are corpses, corpses who are murderers. Now you, Paul Drake, get a load of this: Tomorrow the Chief and I are going to sail on the President Monroe on a round-the-world cruise. We have our staterooms all engaged, our tickets bought and paid for. There’s only one thing standing between us and the gangplank and that’s this Rita Swaine, who drifted in here with a lame canary and a hard luck story and got the Chief all tangled up in a mess. Now, you two get busy and straighten it out. But just remember that tomorrow—”
Drake, who had slid into his favorite position in the big leather chair, shook his head mournfully and said, “That’s what I came to tell you about, Perry. It’s all over except the shouting. You can sail any time you get ready.”
“What’s happened?” Mason asked.
“Your client’s confessed.”
“You mean Rita?”
“Yes.”
“What did she confess to?”
“Oh, a lot of things — going upstairs to change her clothes, stepping into the bedroom, finding Walter’s body, going through his pockets, taking a letter out of his wallet, and all that sort of stuff. After the contradictory stories she’s told, plus the fact that she forthwith skipped out of the state and fought extradition, a jury will bring in a first-degree murder verdict without leaving the box. You can probably get her life imprisonment if you change her plea from not guilty to guilty, and right now that’s the best thing you can do for your client. Then you can catch your ship and go bye-bye.”
Mason stood staring down at the detective. “How did you hear about this, Paul?”
“One of the newspaper boys tipped me off. The district attorney released a statement. The thing will be on the street in half an hour. Hell, Perry, they had the goods on her, anyway. They had her fingerprints on the wallet, and they’ve found bloodstains on her shoes and had reconstructed enough of the charred fragments in the fireplace to know what letter had been taken from Prescott’s pocket and burned. The D.A. was holding all that stuff back, getting ready to slap you in the face with it when you walked into court.”
“Did she,” Mason asked, “admit that she killed him?”
“I don’t know. I think she’s still holding out on that.”
“Anything else?” Mason asked. “What have you found out about that Rosa Hendrix?”
Drake said, “Hell, Perry, you know the answer to that without me having to tell you. If you want to be mean about it, you’ll have a chance to do it tonight.”
“How so?”
“She’s leaving for Reno tonight.”
“You mean Rosa Hendrix?”
“No, not Rosa Hendrix, but Diana Morgan, the rich young divorcee who has the swell apartment in the Bellefontaine.”
“Certain about that?” Mason asked.
“Yes.”
“Okay. What else?”
“Something’s happened to whatever it was Trader delivered to the garage. He says he can’t remember exactly, a couple of boxes, and he thinks a barrel. At any rate, the stuff disappeared. Trader says he set it just inside the door, as Prescott had instructed him to.”