Della Street moved the phone on its long extension over to Mason’s desk.
Mason said, “Hello. This is Perry Mason talking.”
Marilyn Marlow’s voice was choked with emotion. “Mr. Mason, something... something terrible has happened. It’s... it’s awful!”
“Did you see Dolores Caddo?” Mason asked.
“No, no. I haven’t seen her. This is something worse than that. Something awful!”
“What is it?” Mason asked.
“Rose Keeling.”
“What about her?”
“She’s... she’s dead!”
“What happened?” Mason asked.
“She’s dead in her apartment. She’s been killed.”
“Where are you?” Mason asked.
“In Rose Keeling’s apartment. It’s a flat, part of a four-flat house, and...”
“Who’s with you?”
“No one.”
“When did you get there?”
“Just now.”
“Are you actually in the house?”
“Yes.”
“She’s been murdered?”
“Yes.”
Mason said, “Don’t touch anything. Are you wearing gloves?”
“No, I...”
“Any gloves with you?”
“Yes.”
“Put them on!” Mason said. “Don’t touch a thing. Sit down in a chair and fold your hands on your lap. Stay there until I get there! That address is 2240 Nantucket Drive?”
“That’s right.”
Mason said, “Sit tight. I’m coming.”
He slammed the receiver back on the telephone, rushed to the cloak closet, grabbed his hat and pulled out a topcoat.
“What is it?” Della Street asked.
“Rose Keeling’s been murdered. You stay here and run the office-no, come along with me, Della. Bring a notebook. I may want a witness and I’ll sure as hell need an alibi.”
Chapter 9
Perry Mason slid his car to a stop at the curb in front of the Nantucket Drive address.
The building was a four-flat house, and Mason, running up the steps, quickly picked the entrance to Rose Keeling’s flat, a second-floor, southern exposure.
Mason tried the door. It was locked. He buzzed on the bell, and a moment later an electric door release opened the door for him.
Della Street and Mason crowded through the door, and the lawyer took the steps two at a time, arriving at the upper corridor several steps in advance of Della Street.
Marilyn Marlow, white and shaken with the shock of what she had found, was waiting in the reception hallway.
“All right,” Mason said, “let’s have it fast. What happened?”
“I... I came to see Rose Keeling. She’s... she’s in there on the floor by the bathroom.”
Mason said to Della Street, “You’d better stay there, Della.”
He walked rapidly down the corridor, looked in at the open door of the bedroom and looked briefly at the sprawled white body lying motionless against a sinister red background.
For a brief moment the lawyer surveyed the ingredients of the tragedy, the packed suitcases, the nude body, the clothes on the bed, the open bathroom door. Then he turned back down the corridor toward the living room.
“Where’s the phone?” he asked.
Marilyn Marlow indicated the telephone.
“You picked up the receiver and dialed my number. Did you call anyone else?”
“No.”
Mason said, “That telephone call puts us in a spot.”
“What do you mean?”
Mason said, “At twenty minutes to twelve I called this number. Someone was here. Someone evidently who didn’t want the phone to keep on ringing and ringing. The receiver was gently lifted off the cradle and...”
“Why, that’s right,” Marilyn Marlow interrupted. “When I came here, the receiver was lying beside the telephone. It had been left off the cradle. I had to put it back and then wait for a minute for the line to come back in service.”
Mason nodded, said, “The person who lifted the receiver was probably the murderer. We caught him in the middle of what he was doing, and the continued ringing of the telephone either made him nervous or else he was afraid it would attract attention, so he took the receiver off the hook. His fingerprints will be on the receiver. The hell of it is, yours will be on there too.”
“Well, what’s wrong with that? I’ll tell the police exactly what happened and...”
“That’s what we’re coming to,” Mason said. “We may not want to tell the police exactly what happened.”
“Why not?”
Mason said, “You probably have never stopped to figure it out, but it was considerably to your advantage to have Rose Keeling out of the way.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Mason said, “Rose Keeling was a subscribing witness to that will. She was threatening to change her testimony. As long as she was alive, she could do it. Now that she is dead, she can’t do it. You can use the testimony that was given by her at the time she went on the stand when the will was being admitted to probate. Do you understand that?”
“Yes.”
“How long have you understood it?”
“Well — Mr. Caddo was the first one to point it out to me clearly.”
“Do you mean he suggested that it might be to your advantage to have Rose Keeling put out of the way?”
“Heavens, no! He only said that if Rose Keeling could be made to skip out, it would help.”
Mason’s eyes were boring steadily into those of Marilyn Marlow. “You knew that Rose Keeling was going to be really difficult to keep in line?”
“Yes, I knew it. I told you that.”
“And you also told Caddo?”
“Well, yes.”
“In other words, Caddo got under your skin pretty much. You talked quite a bit about your affairs.”
She started making nervous patterns on her dress with her left forefinger. “I guess I told Caddo too much.”
“How did you happen to spill everything to him?”
“I didn’t. He has that insinuating way with him. He had found out quite a lot, surmised a lot more, and he had that sort of — well, that sort of take-it-for-granted attitude that’s rather hard to deal with. He’d assume things and sometimes it was hard to differentiate between what I had told him and what he’d just taken for granted on his own.”
“You’d told him quite a bit, however?”
“Well, one way and another, he’d found out quite a bit about the situation.”
Mason said, “I telephoned you and told you Mrs. Caddo was on the warpath.”
She nodded.
“You were to warn Rose Keeling.”
“Yes.”
“And you did so?”
“Not right away.”
“Why not?”
“Something happened that — well, the situation became complicated.”
Mason said, “For the love of Mike, snap out of it! You’ve told a lot of this stuff to a perfect stranger who came along and handed you a good line, and now you’re trying to get reticent with your own lawyer. Get your cards on the table.”
She said, “The situation changed overnight.”
“What changed it?”
“A letter.”
“Who wrote it?”
“Rose.”
“Where is it?”
She opened her purse, took out an envelope and handed it to Mason.
Mason looked at the canceled stamp, at the pen-and-ink address, at the postmark which showed an imprint of 7:30 p.m. of the day before.
“When did you get this?”
“This morning. It was in the morning mail.”
Mason pulled note paper out of the envelope and read the pen-and-ink letter signed by Rose Keeling.
When he had finished reading it, he read it aloud for the benefit of Della Street: