“I... well, I really didn’t see her.”
“What do you mean, you didn’t see her?”
“She...”
“Yes, go on.”
Sergeant Holcomb said irritably, “I tell you, we’re not going to get anywhere with the dame! She’s giving us the runaround. We’ve got everything we need on her, everything that happened. We know everybody who came and went, and the time they came and went, thanks to this witness.”
Marilyn Marlow said desperately, “I tell you, she was dead when I got there!”
The room suddenly became tense with a sudden silence. No one moved. No one spoke. It was for the moment as though no one breathed.
Marilyn Marlow plunged on desperately. “I went there to see her, I went up, and — well, she was dead.”
“How did you get in the door?”
“I had a key, but I didn’t have to use it. The door was open when I got back.”
“Who gave the key to you?”
“Rose. She wanted me to come up and go play tennis with her. She gave me a key so I could walk right in and go up the stairs.”
“What did you do with the key?”
“I left it on the table.”
“Then what happened to it?”
“I don’t know. I guess... someone could have taken it — anyone."
“Sure, sure!”
“I tell you, anyone could!”
“Okay. Let’s forget the key for the moment. What happened after you got in?”
“She was dead.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this before?”
“I... I didn’t want to get mixed up in it.”
“Well, you’re mixed up in it now. You’d better come clean What happened?”
“She was lying there on the floor just as... just as you found her.”
“Come on, come on,” the sneering voice said. “Don’t forget that we’ve got a tab on everyone that came and went. We want to know the truth with no more runaround. You’d better explain while the explaining is good!”
She said desperately, “Well, Mr. Mason came there at my suggestion.”
Once more there was one of those sudden tense silences.
“Go on,” the sneering voice said.
That silence had been too abrupt, too exultant. It suddenly occurred to Marilyn Marlow that she had given them information they had not had before, that in some way this thing was a plant. She said, “I don’t think I care to tell you anything else.”
“Now, ain’t that something!” the sneering voice said. “She traps herself. She admits she’s in the room with the murdered person. She admits she was there when the crime was committed and now she goes hotsy-totsy and says she doesn’t care to discuss it with us. Wouldn’t that jar you?”
“I wasn’t there when the crime was committed!”
“Oh, yes, you were, sister. Don’t try to lie out of it now. It’s too late.”
“I tell you I wasn’t!”
“Yeah, you claim you came in there afterwards. What did you do with the knife?”
“I tell you I didn’t have any knife. I didn’t have anything to do with it. I...”
“So you go call up Perry Mason,” Sergeant Holcomb interrupted. “And what did Mason do?”
“I tell you I’m not going to talk about things any more. If you want to get any statements out of me, I insist that I see my lawyer before I say anything.”
“No use locking the stable door after the horse’s been stolen,” Holcomb said. “You’ve admitted you were there. You’ve admitted you called Perry Mason and got him to come. Now then, what did you two hatch up? How did it happen that Mason slipped you out of there?”
“I’m not saying anything.”
“You said you called Mason up. How does it happen your fingerprints weren’t on the telephone receiver?”
She clamped her lips shut in a tight line.
Questions were coming at her now, thick and fast. Her eyes were weary from the pitiless glare of the brilliant light. Her ears ached with the words that were being bounced off her eardrums. Her nervous system was raw and quivering from the beating it had taken, and these incessant sneering questions pounding in on her consciousness made her cringe as though from a series of actual blows.
“How about that letter you got from Rose Keeling? What’d you do with it? Why did you destroy it? Who told you to destroy it?”
She tried to assume an external appearance of calm disdain.
“Come on,” Sergeant Holcomb said, “let’s hear the rest of it. You knew that if she changed her testimony you were licked on the whole will case. Your only hope was to murder her so that she couldn’t change her testimony.”
“Yes,” the sneering voice said. “Then you could use the testimony she’d given at the probate, of the will and get by on that.”
Marilyn Marlow sat silent.
“Notice that she isn’t denying it,” the voice taunted. “We’ve accused her of murder, and she hasn’t denied it. Remember that!”
“I do deny it!” she stormed.
“Oh, you do? We thought you’d quit talking.”
“I’m denying that I murdered her.”
“But you do admit you were in the apartment after she was dead, and you didn’t notify the police.”
“I...”
She realized suddenly she was being trapped into further conversation, and clamped her lips shut.
“Come on,” Sergeant Holcomb said, “let’s have the rest of it.”
She sat silent, quivering inwardly, but trying to preserve a calm exterior.
“Okay,” Sergeant Holcomb said, “let’s let the newspaper reporters take a crack at her.”
Someone opened the door. Men came pouring into the room. Someone said, “Look up a little, Marilyn.”
A flashlight blazed into brilliance, but her eyes were so accustomed to the glare of the big light that she hardly noticed the flash bulb.
Other flashlights shot off in succession. Photographers moved about, pointing cameras. Then a newspaper man said, “Okay, Miss Marlow. How about a little statement? It isn’t going to hurt you any, you know; give you an opportunity to get your side of the case presented to the readers.”
“No comment,” she said.
“Come, come, Marilyn, don’t be like that. That’s being dumb. That’s not going to do you any good. A lot depends on public sentiment and public sentiment goes a lot according to first impressions. Get your story before the readers right at the start of the case. Look at all these gals who kill ’em and get off. Every one of them took the newspaper readers into their confidence right at the start.”
“No comment,” she said desperately.
They hounded her for some five minutes more, trying every expedient to get her to talk.
Then they took more photographs and left.
The police started on her once more, and Marilyn Marlow, by this time so thoroughly weary that her very soul felt numb, could hear her own voice mouthing words which sounded as if the words were emanating from her mouth through the medium of some ventriloquist saying from time to time, “No comment... No comment... I will not discuss the matter until my attorney is here... I demand that you call my attorney.”
They were at her like a pack of yapping dogs, worrying the heels of some high-strung, nervous horse. She felt that she wanted to run, if only some avenue of escape would open up...
A door opened. She sensed a tall figure standing in the doorway. A man’s quiet voice said, “What’s going on here?”
Sergeant Holcomb said, “We’re getting a statement from Miss Marlow.”