“What did you do with the piece of paper?” Mason asked.
“After a moment I realized that perhaps I could... well, you know. So I changed the focus on the binoculars back to—”
“So what did you do?” Mason asked.
“I didn’t want that number to seem too conspicuous. I had written Cal 4E4704, so I wrote down other things, just as you said.”
“The first number you wrote on a single sheet of paper that was on the table and not on the pad. When you wrote the rest of it, you had placed the paper on the pad.”
“I... I guess I did.”
Mason pointed to the telephone. “Ring up police headquarters,” he said. “Tell them what you saw. Tell them that it’s been bothering you, that you thought you should have reported it to the police, but that Mrs. Winnett is so opposed to any form of publicity that you didn’t know just what to do; that tonight you asked Mrs. Winnett about it and she told you to telephone the police at once; that the reason you didn’t do so before was because the trailer was gone when you looked again and you supposed that the man hadn’t been hurt and had driven the trailer away.”
“If I do that,” she said, “then I...”
“Then you stand about one chance in ten of beating the rap all around,” Mason said grimly. “Don’t do it, and you’re stuck. What did you do — actually, I mean?”
“I looked up the license number. I found that the car was registered in the name of a Mrs. Harry Drummond. I located her, and while I wasn’t crude or anything... I wanted to open up a beauty shop and... well, she agreed to finance me.”
Once more Mason pointed to the telephone. “Get police headquarters. Come on, Major. Let’s go.”
Out in the corridor Major Winnett said, “But how about my wife, Mason? How about my wife? That’s the thing that bothers me. That—”
“And it damned well should bother you,” Mason said. “She must have seen you driving the trailer Wednesday night and followed you to the place where you parked it. She went in, found Drummond dead and thought you had been trying to avenge the family’s good name. You can see now what happened. She gave Drummond money to get a divorce. He told her he’d secured one. She married again. Drummond made the mistake of also marrying again. When the blow-off came, his second wife threatened to prosecute him for bigamy unless he gave her money. The only way he had to get money was to put the heat on Marcia. She was too conscientious to ask you for money or to try to stick the insurance company for money, so she staged a fake burglary, cached her jewelry in the swallow’s nest, then turned over the jewelry to him. When the second Mrs. Drummond came for her money, all her husband had to offer her was jewelry. She thought it was hot. That started a fight and she shot him. And probably shot him in self-defense at that.”
“But how am I going to explain — about moving the body?” Major Winnett asked.
Mason looked at him pityingly. “You’re not going to explain one damn thing,” he said. “What do you think you have a lawyer for? Get in my car. Leave the nurse to put the police on a hot trail.”
Chapter eleven
It was nearing midnight when Perry Mason and Paul Drake walked into metropolitan police headquarters with a description of Marcia Winnett and a series of photographs.
“Of course,” Mason explained to Sergeant Dorset, “the major doesn’t want any publicity. She had a spell of amnesia several years ago. He’s afraid it may have returned.”
Sergeant Dorset frowned down at a memo on his desk. “We’ve picked up a woman who answers that description — amnesia — a hospital telephoned in the report. How does it happen you’re mixed in the case, Mason?”
“I handle the Winnetts’ business.”
“The deuce you do!”
“That’s right.”
Dorset regarded the memo on his desk. “The county teletype says a man named Drummond was murdered. Mrs. Winnett’s nurse saw it all, phoned in a report. She had the license number of the murder car, Drummond’s wife’s.”
“Indeed,” Mason said, his voice showing courteous interest, but nothing else. “May we take a look at this amnesia case now? The major is very anxious.”
“And,” Dorset went on, “when the county officers picked up Drummond’s wife, she swore that not only was the killing in self-defense, but that the nurse had been blackmailing her. The nurse called her a liar. Mrs. Drummond’s confession puts her in a poor position to claim blackmail. I understand the county is so pleased with having cracked the murder case they’re washing their hands of all the rest of it.”
Mason glared at Sergeant Dorset. “Will you kindly tell me what all this has to do with Major Winnett’s wife?”
Dorset sighed. “I wish to hell I knew,” he said, and then added significantly, “but I’ll bet a hundred to one we never find out now.”
Mason said, “Come down to earth. That murder case is county. The sheriff’s office wouldn’t like a city dick sticking his nose in.”
Dorset nodded. “And by the same sign the way you’ve arranged it, the amnesia case is city and the county men won’t mess around with that.”
He regarded the lawyer with a certain scowling respect.
Mason said very positively, “I don’t see what the murder has to do with all this if the sheriff’s office has a solution and a confession, but one thing I do know is that if you have Major Winnett’s wife here she’s suffering from a nervous ailment and if you make it worse with a lot of fool notions, you’ll wish you hadn’t. Do I get her now, or do I get a habeas corpus?”
“Hell, you get her now,” Dorset said disgustedly. “I can’t help feeling that if I knew everything you’d been doing in the last twelve hours I’d get a promotion, and if I try to find out, I’ll be back pounding pavements. Damn it!”
He picked up the telephone and said into the transmitter, “Send that amnesia case number eighty-four on the night bulletin up to my office.”