“And then?”
“So then I asked her what she’d buried, and what do you think she told me?”
“What?”
“Little packages of arsenic and cyanide of potassium. Now isn’t that nice?”
“Go on,” Mason said.
“Well, the tittle minx had the audacity to stand there and tell me that she had been experimenting with different types of spray for pests on flowers, that she had some ‘active ingredients,’ as she called them, that were very poisonous. The arsenic she had purchased. Some of the cyanide of potassium she had got from the laboratory in her husband’s mining operations. She’d been experimenting with different types of plant sprays for killing various pests, and now she was afraid her action in collecting those poisons might be subject to question, just in case someone started looking around with the idea of poison in mind. She said under the circumstances she thought she’d better get rid of the stuff.”
“So what did you do?” Mason asked.
“I suppose I should have had my head examined. I believed her. She never raised her voice and was so sweet and demure and so completely unexcited that I let her convince me. I even got to feeling sorry for her again. I sympathized with her and told her I couldn’t understand how she could go through so much and not be hysterical.
“Well, I put my arm around her and we walked back to the house, and I went upstairs and went to bed, and I was just getting to sleep when there was this pounding on the door and the housekeeper came up to tell us that an officer was there, that he had to see us right away upon a matter of the greatest importance.”
“And what was the matter of greatest importance?”
“It seemed that the coroner’s chemist had found arsenic in Hortie’s body, and the district attorney wanted to question Myrna.”
“Then what?”
“So then they took Myrna up to the district attorney’s office.”
“And you?”
“Nothing was done with me,” she said. “They asked me how long I’d been there and I told them. They asked me a few questions and then they took Myrna up to the district attorney’s office.”
“How did Myrna take it?” Mason asked.
“Just like she takes everything,” Sara said. “She was quiet and mouselike. Her voice didn’t raise a bit. She said that she’d be glad to go to the district attorney’s office but she thought she should have a little sleep, that she’d been up all night on account of her husband’s illness.”
“And then?” Mason asked.
“That’s all I know. They took her away. But I began to start putting two and two together, and then I got to thinking about that candy that Ed Davenport had in his bag. You know, Mr. Mason, she told me that she packs his bag every time he goes away. She said he was helpless—didn’t know how to fold his clothes and all of that.”
“That’s not unusual,” Mason said. “Most wives do that for their husbands.”
“I know, but that meant she must have packed the candy, so I started looking around after she left. I just started looking things over a little bit and—”
“What were you looking for?” Mason asked.
“Oh, just things that would help.”
“You went into her room?”
“Well, yes.”
“And what did you find?”
“I found a box of candy in her bureau similar to the kind of candy that Ed Davenport carries with him when he travels—those cherries that are in chocolate with sweet syrup around them. She has a sweet tooth herself. I remember a couple of boxes of that same type of candy had been hanging around the living room, and Myrna had kept asking me to help her eat them up. I only had a couple of pieces because I’m watching my figure. However, you can see what it means—the significance of it all.
“Good heavens, suppose she’d been trying to poison me! Suppose one of the pieces of candy she offered me had been poisoned! It must have been fate that guided my hand to the right pieces.
“And then she kept insisting I have more. I didn’t take any on account of my figure, but you can see what she must have had in mind. I thought at the time she was unduly insistent.
“Looking back at it now, I can see that the little minx must have been pulling the wool over my eyes all along.
“I can think of a lot of little things now that had seemed trivial at the time, but now they all begin to fit into a pattern. She’s a murderess, a poisoner, a regular Lucrezia Borgia.”
Mason thought things over for a few seconds, then said, “Let me ask you a few questions. As I understand it, you two women were together all of the time you were there in Crampton. You—”
“Oh no, that’s not true. She was alone with Ed while I was taking a shower. Then, shortly after the doctor reported that Ed had passed away and locked up the place, I went to telephone you. Now I remember seeing her talking with some man as I started back toward the cabin. Then she and the man separated. I didn’t think much of it at the time because I thought perhaps it was just one of the other tenants who was expressing his sympathy, but now I know it could have been a male accomplice. He probably entered the cabin through the window. After he got in there he was smart enough to put on a pair of pajamas. He must have slipped Ed’s body out through the window and into his own automobile. Then he waited until he was certain someone was looking, climbed back out of the window again, got in his automobile and drove away.”
“Your feelings seem to have changed all of a sudden,” Mason said.
“Well, I’ll certainly say they have. Why wouldn’t they? The scales have dropped from my eyes, Mr. Mason.”
“Thank you very much for telling me.”
“What are you going to do?” Sara Ansel asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Well, I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to clear my skirts. I’m going to maintain my good name and my reputation.”
“I see,” Mason said. “I suppose that will include going to the police?”
“I’m not going to the police but I’m certainly not going to avoid them when they come to me.”
“And what are you going to tell them about me?” Mason asked.
“You mean about going up to Paradise to get that letter?”
Mason nodded.
She met his eyes grimly and uncompromisingly. “I’m going to tell them the truth.”
“I thought perhaps you would,” Mason announced dryly.
“I don’t think your attitude is being co-operative, Mr. Mason.”
“I’m an attorney and I only co-operate with my clients.”
“Your clients! You mean you’re still going to represent that woman after what she did to you, after the position in which she put you, after the lies she told you, after the—?”
“I’m going to represent her,” Mason said. “At least I’m going to see that she has her day in court and isn’t convicted of anything except by due process of law.”
“Well, of all the fools!” Sara Ansel snapped. She got up out of the chair, stood glowering at Mason for a moment, then said, “I might have known I was wasting my time.”
With that she turned and strode toward the exit door. She jerked it open, looked back over her shoulder and said, “And I was trying to help you!”
She walked out into the corridor.
Mason watched the closing door. “That,” he said to Della Street, “is what comes when an attorney accepts the obvious.”
“What do you mean?”
“A client’s statement to an attorney is a confidential communication,” Mason explained. “An attorney’s clerk or secretary can be present at the conversation and it’s still confidential. The law gives that protection. But when a third person is present the communication ceases to be confidential.”