“It’s not quite that bad.”
“Well, am I free to leave here?”
“No.”
“Is she?”
“No.”
“That makes us prisoners, doesn’t it?”
“Let’s call it material witnesses.”
“Why did you make me come back?”
“I thought you might be going to call the police.”
She glanced at Daphne.
Daphne said, “He killed the man, Jen, he must have killed him. He was starting for the bathroom when I left. If he’d going to... well, just find out who was making the noise in the bathroom, he’d have turned the man loose. He didn’t. He turned on the water and cut his throat... Ugh!”
Genevieve Hotling looked at me with a certain impersonal appraisal. “Yes,” she said, “you’d have turned the man loose if you hadn’t — done that other.”
“Want to try listening to me for a while?” I asked her.
“Yes.”
I said, “I met Daphne on the train. She gave me an assumed name. I located her in San Francisco after Betty Crofath was found dead. Daphne drew a gun on me and got out of the room. I found this porter bound and gagged in the bathtub. I took the gag out of his mouth and asked him questions. He was too frightened to talk. When he started to yell, I shoved the gag back in his mouth. I turned on the water so the room below would telephone in to the office and they d investigate. That would give him a chance to get out, after I d got in the clear.”
She glanced at Daphne but didn’t try to interrupt.
I said, “It didn’t work that way. I walked out of the room and smack into the arms of the house detective. I had to think up a good stall, and had to think it up quick. I had Betty Crofath s driving license. I beat the house detective to the punch by pretending to be from the Motor Vehicle Department.”
Her eyes met mine steadily. “And just how do you happen to be so interested in the girl who was my cousin? Why were you on the train? Why did you follow Daphne to the hotel?”
“I didn’t follow Daphne to the hotel. I went there to see Betty Crofath. I didn’t know the woman who was found dead on the train was Betty Crofath. I only knew Betty Crofath had reserved a room in the hotel and had registered and gone to that room.”
“Then you must have — wanted to see Betty,” Genevieve said.
“I did.”
“On the business that brought her up here?” she asked.
“You might put it that way.”
Daphne said, in sudden panic, “Then why was he on the train, Jen? He must have gone there to... kill her.”
“Or to protect her,” I said.
“You didn’t do a very good job,” Genevieve flashed back at me.
“The train was late. I didn’t have a chance. Daphne had already slipped her the poison. She was dead when I boarded the train at Tucson.”
Genevieve looked speculatively at Daphne.
“Damn you!” Daphne said to me.
I took a drag at my cigarette.
“You don t know Daphne — or her relations with my cousin,” Genevieve said. “If you did, you wouldn’t make accusations like that.”
“Perhaps not.”
“Tell him,” Genevieve said to Daphne.
“Damn him! I’ll tell him!”
“Tell him,” Genevieve interrupted her insistently.
Daphne hesitated, met Genevieve’s eyes and started talking.
“I first got acquainted with Betty two years ago. We were working in the same office. Betty wanted to go places and do things. She went. I stayed on and worked. Betty wrote to me from time to time. She wrote she was coming back from South America and wanted to see me.”
I met her a short time after she docked in New Orleans. She told me she had something very important that I could do, something that would fix it so I didn’t have to keep on working in the routine of an office job. She made it sound very fascinating. She looked exceedingly prosperous and well-dressed, and had acquired a certain poise and polish. It made me feel I’d been missing a lot. So I told her I’d go along with her.
“On the train, she told me for the first time what she wanted. When we got to San Francisco, I was to take her identity, go to the Pelton Hotel, get her baggage, wear her clothes.”
“Suppose you met someone you knew?” I asked.
“She didn’t know a soul in San Francisco — except Jen.”
“And what were you to do?”
“She was to give me instructions from time to time.”
“How did you get her purse?”
“She gave it to me.”
“When?”
“That night on the train. We exchanged purses. I took hers and she took mine. We kept out, of course, the personal things we wanted — lipstick and things of that sort — but we exchanged everything that would identify us.”
“When did you see her last?”
“That night about eleven o’clock.”
“What time did she go to bed?”
“That was when she went to bed — when we had that conversation.”
“Did you know she was going to take a sleeping tablet?”
She hesitated. “Yes,” she said.
“Did you see her take it?”
“Yes.”
“Were you near her when she took it?” I wanted to know.
“Yes. We stood at the water cooler. We both had a drink. She...”
“Go on,” I said, as she hesitated.
“The sleeping tablets had been left by mistake in her purse — the one she’d given me. She said she needed them, that she forgot to take them out. So I took them out. She drew a glass of water and held out her left hand. I unscrewed the top of the bottle and tapped one of the tablets out of the bottle into the palm of her hand. She took it and washed it down with the water that was in the glass.”
“Then what happened to the bottle?”
“I gave it to her. She dropped it in her bag — really my bag, you understand.”
“And where was the porter when this was taking place?”
Her eyes faltered.
“Where was he?”
“He was... there.”
“Near the water cooler?”
“Yes.”
“He saw you give the tablets to Betty Crofath?”
“I guess so, yes.”
“Did he tell you he had — later?”
“No. I never talked with him.”
“Not in your room at the hotel?”
“No. I went out to get some things. I had arranged to have the baggage sent up. When I came back, the baggage was there. Then, as I was opening the trunk, I heard those funny noises in the bathroom. I looked in. He was there, in the bathtub, tied and gagged. I screamed. He rolled his eyes. I took a step toward him... and then you knocked on the door... I felt I had to answer... I went to the door. It was you.”
I said, “You must realize how that would sound to a jury.”
She didn’t say anything.
“That porter saw you giving poison to Betty Crofath. He came to your room. He’s found with his throat...”
“Stop!” she screamed.
I ground out my cigarette in the ash tray. She wasn’t crying, but she was trembling.
“Why did you tell me your name was Hazel Deering?” I asked.
“Because it was the first name that popped into my mind. I didn’t know just what name to give you. I didn’t know whether I was supposed to be Betty Crofath before we got to San Francisco or not. I hadn’t asked Betty about that. I thought if I gave you my name as Daphne Strate and then you met the other girl and she gave you the same name it would be ridiculous. And, of course, the same thing would have been true if I had given you the name of Betty Crofath. So I compromised. I thought I could square it afterward if Betty wanted me to start in right away using her name.”