“How long was the car gone?”
“About an hour. It was returned shortly before you rented it and the speedometer showed it had been operated some thirty miles.”
“You said nothing about this?” Mason inquired.
“I wasn’t asked,” the witness blurted. “And since it might get me fired, I decided I wouldn’t say anything unless I was asked.”
“Thank you,” Mason said.
Della Street entered the courtroom and handed him a note.
“If the Court please,” Mason said, “a physician states that Miss Corning is unable to take the stand. I think, however, I will call Lieutenant Tragg as my next witness.”
Tragg, who had been whispering at the counsel table with Hamilton Burger, started for the stand. But the district attorney got to his feet, took a deep breath and said, “Your Honor, it will not be necessary. I wish to move at this time for a dismissal of the case against Susan Fisher and ask that she be released from custody.”
Hamilton Burger sat down.
There was a moment of stunned silence, then reporters, who had in some way been alerted to the fact that there would be spectacular developments, started pellmell from the courtroom in such an exodus that Judge Elmer had to wait for a few seconds before smiling down at Susan Fisher and saying, “The motion is granted. The case against the defendant is dismissed... and thank you, Mr. Prosecutor, for your attitude in the matter.”
Mason got up, picked up his briefcase, turned, and was suddenly smothered by a veritable avalanche of feminine enthusiasm as Susan Fisher, with her arms around his neck, crying and laughing at the same time, said, “Oh, you wonderful, wonderful man!”
Della Street, standing slightly to one side, smiled and said, “So say we all of us.”
“But I can never, never, never pay you,” Susan Fisher said tearfully. “Heaven knows how much you’ve spent and—”
“Don’t worry about that,” Della Street said. “He had a hunch. He said all along that Miss Corning would pay the bill.”
Mason said, “When a veteran trial lawyer examines a witness, Lieutenant, he gets a pretty good idea of whether that witness is telling the truth. When I asked Endicott Campbell about that money in the shoe box and about his son, I suddenly found that his answers were ringing true.
“I had cast him as the villain in the piece because he was a typical smug, overbearing little man trying to be big by bullying the office help. But it happened that on that shoe box full of money he was telling the truth.
“If he was telling the truth, then Elizabeth Dow had to be lying. And once that possibility confronted me, I suddenly saw the facts of the case in an entirely new perspective. It’s like one of those optical illusions where you see a flight of black stairs going up and then suddenly something snaps in your brain and you find you’re looking at a flight of white stairs going down.
“One of the two spinsters had to be an impostor. We had assumed the first one was, but she was adept in the use of the wheelchair, and the minute I learned she had checked out of the hotel in order to make a secret trip to Mojave I realized that she had to be the genuine one. A spurious Miss Corning would never have wanted to go to Mojave.
“Once it dawned on me that Elizabeth Dow was lying and that the real Amelia Corning had disappeared, I suddenly remembered that my investigations had disclosed Elizabeth Dow had a friend who was a nurse and whose physical appearance dovetailed exactly with that of Amelia Corning.
“As soon as I reasoned that far, I knew all the answers.
“Lowry had told me he thought he could recognize the voice of the woman who had given him his instructions over the telephone and had acknowledged receipt of the money from time to time. That woman quite naturally would want him out of the way. Campbell talked to Lowry on the telephone. Lowry told him he had told me everything. Elizabeth Dow was sitting where she could hear Campbell’s end of the conversation — enough to know that Lowry had to be disposed of immediately.
“Quite naturally, she wanted to blame the crime on Sue Fisher. Everyone was casting Sue in the role of a crook and it was only natural for the finger of suspicion to point to her.
“So Elizabeth Dow hurried to a pay station, called Lowry and told him to come to Los Angeles at once, to go to a designated spot in Hollywood and wait for her if she wasn’t there when he arrived.
“Then the two women really hatched a diabolical plot. They got Sue to dress in a distinctive costume, to rent a car, put herself in an incriminating position and then return the car. Then Elizabeth Dow, dressed in the same distinctive costume, picked up her fellow-conspirator, who was posing as Miss Corning but who was going to have to disappear because Miss Corning’s sister was going to arrive. And, of course, her disappearance couldn’t look like flight. It had to have sinister overtones so that when the body of the real Amelia Corning was discovered that also would reflect back on Sue Fisher.
“As soon as the car Sue had rented was returned, they picked it up, met Lowry at the appointed place, drove him out to the place where they had planned his body to be found. Remember that Lowry was a loyal employee. He only knew Elizabeth Dow from her voice. He thought she was the head of the subsidiary he’d been working for. He would recognize her voice and follow her instructions to the letter.”
“Any guess what those instructions were?” Tragg asked.
“Only a guess,” Mason said. “But a pretty darn good guess.”
“What?”
“Well,” Mason said, “Elizabeth Dow probably told him that her companion was Amelia Corning, the owner of the company. That they had decided to destroy some of the books of the company and wanted him to witness the destruction. They said what had been done might have been wrong, so they were going to burn the books and put the money in as income and pay taxes on it.”
“That’s a guess?” Tragg asked.
“That’s a guess,” Mason said. “Make your own guess, if you don’t like it. Put yourself in Lowry’s position. He was in an automobile with the woman he felt was the big boss of the overall company, and, in addition, the woman who had been giving him instructions which he had been following faithfully all these months. He was going to do whatever they told him to do.”
“Which one killed him?” Tragg asked.
Mason shrugged his shoulders and said, “They were both in on it so it doesn’t make any difference. In all probability Elizabeth Dow was the one who struck the fatal blow with the letter opener — although I have an idea that when you put the pressure on them they’ll each try to blame the other and claim the murder came as a surprise. However, Elizabeth Dow was the one who had the most to lose because he could recognize her voice. She also was the stronger and more athletic.”
Tragg’s eyes narrowed. “If that is correct,” he said, “and if you surprised the murderers at the job, why didn’t they simply toss a match to the gasoline and burn up the evidence?”
“Because they didn’t want it burned up,” Mason said. “They wanted to make it appear plans had been made to burn up the evidence, but they wanted to be sure the gasoline-soaked body and books tied in with the gallon of gasoline Sue Fisher had bought at the service station.
“The whole thing had to be planned by someone who lived in the neighborhood, who knew the locality, who knew that the branch of the car agency would check out mileage on the rented car when it was returned and then leave it sitting at the back of the lot with the key in the lock. It had to be someone who lived in the neighborhood and it had to be someone who was a close friend of Elizabeth Dow. It’s like all those optical illusions — once you see them in their proper perspective you—”