“You recognized him at once?”
“Yes. There had been certain things which hadn’t been exactly... consistent with the character he had assumed. Since our marriage, I had found myself watching him with a vague uneasiness, because the man simply didn’t fit into the character of a failure. He was a man who couldn’t have failed at anything in life; he had too much quiet force of character, too much intelligence, too much native shrewdness; and he seemed too reluctant to touch any of my money. He kept putting that off, saying that he had a little money of his own saved up, and that we’d use that to live on until it was gone, and then he’d take mine.”
“But you didn’t suspect that he really had great wealth?” Mason asked.
“No,” she said, “I hadn’t crystallized any of the doubts in my mind into even being doubts. They were simply little things which remained lodged in my memory, and then, when I saw his picture in the paper, and read the account of his death, those things all clicked into place. I’d been prepared for it in a way when I read in the morning paper about the mountain cabin... and saw the photographs of that cabin.”
“Of course,” Mason said, “you’d been without letters for the past week?”
“On the contrary,” she said, “I had received a letter from him only this Saturday, the tenth. It had been mailed from Santa Delbarra. He said he was negotiating for a lease on what seemed to be an ideal storeroom. He seemed to be very enthusiastic, and said he hoped to be back within a few days.”
“I presume,” Mason said, “you aren’t entirely familiar with his handwriting, and...”
“I feel quite certain,” she said, “that the writing is that of Mr. Sabin... or George Wallman, as I knew him.”
“But,” Mason said, “the evidence shows that the body was lying in that cabin — you’ll forgive me for being brutally frank, Miss Monteith, but it’s necessary — the evidence shows that he was murdered on September sixth.”
“Can’t you understand?” she said wearily. “He was testing my love. He wanted to keep in the character of Wallman until he knew I loved him and wasn’t after money. He wasn’t looking for any lease. He planted these letters and left them to be mailed from various places on different dates.”
“You have that last letter?” Mason asked.
“Yes.”
“May I see it?”
She made as though to open her purse, then shook her head and said, “No.”
“Why not?”
“The letter is personal,” she said. “I understand that, to a certain extent, my privacy must of necessity be invaded by authorities making an investigation, but I am not going to surrender his letters, unless it becomes absolutely imperative.”
“It’s going to become imperative,” Mason said. “If he left letters with someone to be mailed at various times and places, that someone may have been the last person to have seen him alive.”
She remained silent.
“When were you married?” Mason asked.
“August twenty-seventh.”
“Where?”
She hesitated a moment, then tilted her chin and said, “We crossed the border into Mexico and were married there.”
“May I ask why?”
“George... Mr. Sabin said that for certain reasons he preferred to be married there... and...”
“Yes?” Mason prompted as she stopped.
“We were to be married again,” she said, “in Santa Delbarra.”
“Why there?”
“He... he intimated that his former wife had secured a divorce, that the interlocutory decree had not yet become final, and there might be some doubt as to the validity of the marriage. He said that it would... After all, Mr. Mason, this is something of a private matter.”
“It is in part,” Mason said, “and in part it isn’t.”
“Well, you can look at it in this way. I knew at the time I married him that the marriage was of doubtful legality. I considered it as a... as a gesture to the conventions. I understood that it would be followed with a second and more legal marriage that was to have taken place very shortly.”
“Then you thought your first marriage was illegal?”
“No,” she said, “I thought that it was legal... Well, when I say it was of doubtful legality, I mean that it was a marriage which would have been illegal if it had been performed in this country... That’s rather difficult to explain... and I don’t know that I care to try.”
“How about the parrot?” Mason asked.
“My hus — Mr. Sabin had always wanted a parrot.”
“I understand that. How long had the parrot been with you?”
“Mr. Sabin brought him home on Friday, the second, I believe it was. It was two days before he left.”
Mason stared in frowning contemplation at the determined profile. “Did you,” he asked, “know that Mr. Sabin purchased this parrot in San Molinas?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the parrot’s name?”
“Casanova.”
“Did you read about the parrot which was found in the mountain cabin?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know anything about that parrot?”
“No.”
Mason frowned and said, “You know, Miss Monteith, this just doesn’t make sense.”
“I understand that,” she admitted readily enough. “That’s why I think it’s a mistake to try and judge Mr. Sabin by what has happened. It means we simply haven’t all the facts.”
“Do you know anything about that mountain cabin?” Mason asked.
“Yes, of course, we spent our honeymoon there. My hus— Mr. Sabin said that he knew the owner of the cabin, and had arranged to borrow it for a few days. Looking back on it now I can realize how absurd it was to think that this man who claimed to be out of a job and... Oh, well, he had his reasons for doing what he did, and I respect those reasons.”
Mason started to say something, then checked himself and frowned thoughtfully for several silent seconds. “How long were you at the cabin?” he asked at length.
“We just stayed there over the weekend. I had to be back on my job Monday night.”
“You were married in Mexico, and then drove to the cabin?”
“Yes.”
“And did your husband seem to know his way around the cabin pretty well — that is, be familiar with it?”
“Oh, yes, he told me that he’d spent a month there once.”
“Did he tell you the name of the man who owned the cabin?”
“No.”
“And you made no attempt to find out?”
“No.”
“You were married on the twenty-seventh of August?”
“Yes.”
“And you arrived at the cabin on the evening of the twenty-seventh?”
“No, the morning of the twenty-eighth. It was too long a drive to make that first night.”
“You left some clothes there?”
“Yes.”
“Did you do that deliberately?”
“Yes, we left rather hurriedly. One of the neighbors came to call, and Mr. Sabin didn’t want to see him. I suppose he didn’t want the neighbor to know about me — or was afraid I’d learn his real identity through the neighbor. Anyway, he didn’t answer the door, and then we hurried into the car and left. Mr. Sabin told me that no one else would be using the cabin, and that we’d return sometime within the next month.”
“During the time you were there in the cabin, did Mr. Sabin use the telephone?”
“He put through two calls.”
“Do you know whom the calls were to? Did you listen to the conversation?”
“No.”
“Do you have any idea who might have killed him, any inkling whatever as to...”
“Not the slightest.”
“And I don’t suppose,” Mason went on casually, “that you know anything about the weapon with which the murder was committed?”