“Then what did you do?”
“Then I got out into the fresh air, and left the place closed up until you got there,” the witness said.
“I don’t think there’s any need to ask this man any more questions, is there?” the coroner asked.
The district attorney said, “I’d like to ask one question, just for the sake of fixing the jurisdictional fact. The body was that of Fremont C. Sabin?”
“Yes, it was pretty far gone, but it was Sabin, all right.”
“How long have you known Fremont C. Sabin?”
“Five years.”
“I think that’s all,” the district attorney said.
“Just one more question,” the coroner said. “Nothing was touched until I got there, was it, Waner?”
“Absolutely nothing, except the telephone.”
“And the sheriff came up there with me, didn’t he?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Well, we’ll hear from the sheriff,” the coroner said.
Sheriff Barnes eased himself into the witness chair, crossed his legs, and settled back at his ease. “Now, Sheriff,” the coroner said, “suppose you tell us just what you found when we went up there to Sabin’s cabin.”
“Well, the body was lying on the floor, on its left side. The left arm was stretched out, and the fingers clenched. The right arm was lying across the body. Things were pretty bad in there. We opened all the windows and got as much air in as we could... looking over the windows before we opened them, of course, to make certain they were locked on the inside, and there weren’t any evidences that they’d been tampered with.
“There was a spring lock on the door, and that lock was closed, so whoever did the killing, walked out and pulled the door shut behind him. We got the parrot back in the cage, and closed the cage. It had been propped open with a notched pine stick. I took some chalk and traced the position of the body on the floor, and traced the position of the gun, and then the coroner went through the clothes, and then we had a photographer take a few pictures of the body, as it was lying on the floor.”
“You’ve got prints of those pictures with you?” the coroner asked.
“Yes, here they are,” the sheriff said, and produced some photographs. The coroner, taking possession of them, said, “All right, I’ll hand all these over to the jury a little later. Let’s find out, now, what happened.”
“Well, after we moved the body and got the place aired out,” the sheriff said, “we started looking things over. I’ll start with the kitchen. There was a garbage pail in the kitchen; in the garbage pail were the shells of two eggs, and some bacon rind, a piece of stale toast, badly burnt on one side, and a small can of pork and beans, which had been opened. On the gas stove — he had a pressure gas outfit up there — was a frying pan in which some pork and beans had been warmed up quite a while ago. The pan was all dry, and the beans had crusted all around the sides. There was still some coffee, and a lot of coffee grounds, in the pot on the stove. There was a knife and fork and a plate in the sink. There’d been beans eaten out of the plate. In the icebox was part of a roll of butter, a bottle of cream, and a couple of packages of cheese which hadn’t been opened. There was a locker with a lot of canned goods, and a bread box, which had half a loaf of bread in it, and a bag with a couple of dozen assorted cookies.
“In the main room there was a table on which was a jointed fly rod, a book of flies, and a creel, in which was a mess of fish. Those fish had evidently been there about as long as the body. We made a box to put the creel in, got the box as nearly airtight as possible, and put the whole thing in and nailed it up, without touching the contents. Then we checked on the gun and found it was a forty-one caliber derringer, with discharged shells in each of the two barrels. The body had two bullet holes just below the heart, and, from the position of the bullet holes, we figured that both barrels of the gun had been fired at once.
“There were some rubber boots near the table, and there was dried mud on the boots; an alarm clock was on the table near the bed. It had stopped at two forty-seven; the alarm had been set for five-thirty; both the alarm and the clock had run down. The body was clothed in a pair of slacks, a shirt and sweater. There were wool socks and slippers on the feet.
“There was a telephone line running out of the cabin, and the next day, when Perry Mason and Sergeant Holcomb were helping me make an investigation, we found that the telephone line had been tapped. Whoever had done the tapping had established a headquarters in a cabin about three hundred and fifty yards from the Sabin cabin. It had evidently been an old, abandoned cabin, which had been fixed up and repaired when the wiretapping apparatus was installed. We found evidences that whoever had been in the place had left hurriedly. There was a cigarette on the table, which had evidently been freshly lit, and then burnt down to ashes. The dust indicated that the place hadn’t been used for a week or so.”
“Did Helen Monteith make any statement to you about that gun?” the coroner asked.
“Yes, she did,” the sheriff said. “That was only today.”
“Now, just a moment,” the district attorney inquired. “Was that statement made as a free and voluntary statement, and without any promises or inducements of any kind having been offered to her?”
“That’s right,” the sheriff said. “You asked her if she’d ever seen the gun before, and she said she had. She said she’d taken it at the request of her husband, and bought some shells for it; that she’d given him the gun and shells on Saturday, the third of September.”
“Did she say who her husband was?” the district attorney inquired.
“Yes, she said the man she referred to as her husband was Fremont C. Sabin.”
“Any questions anyone wants to ask of the sheriff?” the coroner inquired.
“No questions,” Mason said.
“I think that’s all for the moment,” the district attorney said.
The coroner said, “I’m going to call Helen Monteith to the witness stand.” He turned to the coroner’s jury and said, “I don’t suppose Mr. Mason will want his client to make any statement at this time. She’ll probably decline to answer any questions, because she’s being held in the detention ward on the suspicion of murder, but I’m going to at least get the records straight by letting you gentlemen take a look at her and hearing what she says when she refuses to answer.”
Helen Monteith came forward, was sworn, and took the witness stand.
Mason said to the coroner, “Contrary to what you apparently expect, I am not advising Miss Monteith to refuse to answer questions. In fact, I am going to suggest that Miss Monteith turn to the jury and tell her story in her own way.”
Helen Monteith faced the jury. There was extreme weariness in her manner, but also a certain defiance, and a certain pride. She told of the man who had entered the library, making her acquaintance, an acquaintance which ripened into friendship, and then into love. She told of their marriage; of the weekend honeymoon spent in the cabin in the mountains. Bit by bit she reconstructed the romance for the jury, and the shock which she had experienced when she had learned of the tragic aftermath.
Raymond Sprague fairly lunged at her, in his eagerness to cross-examine. “You took that gun from the museum exhibit?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you do it?”
“My husband asked me for a gun.”
“Why didn’t you buy a gun?”
“He told me he needed one right away, and that, under the law, no store would deliver one for a period of three days after he’d ordered it.”