“He had none at the time of his death other than Myrna, unless you could call me a relative by marriage.”
“You were his sister-in-law?”
“In a way, yes.”
“He referred to you as such?’
“Yes.”
“You had seen William C. Delano several times in his lifetime?”
“Several times.”
“Now shortly before his death did you see him?”
“Yes.”
“How long before his death?”
“Approximately a month.”
“Now can you describe generally the condition of William Delano’s household during that month? Who was there?”
“I was there, and his niece, Hortense Paxton, was there, and Myrna and Ed Davenport. Myrna came to help with the work.”
“And what happened to Hortense Paxton?”
“She died.”
“And after that William Delano died?”
“Yes.”
“About how long after Hortense Paxton’s death was it that William Delano died?”
“A little over two weeks.”
“During that two weeks he was a very sick man?”
“Yes.”
“And he changed his will, that is, he made a new will during that time?”
“I don’t know.”
“Didn’t he tell you in the presence of the defendant, Myrna Davenport, that he was making a new will?”
“Not in so many words. Lawyers came to the house and he was executing a document. He was a very sick man.”
“Under the terms of that will you inherited some money, did you not?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Under the terms of that last will you inherited some money, did you not?”
“Answer the question,” Judge Siler said.
“Yes, sir.” she snapped.
“How much?”
“A hundred thousand dollars and a fifth interest in his big house.”
“When did you first meet the defendant, Myrna Davenport?”
“When I came to visit William Delano.”
“Was she living there at the house at that time?”
“Not at that time. She was there helping with the work, helping Hortense, but—”
“Now just a moment. By saying that she was helping Hortense you mean she was helping Hortense Paxton, the niece who died?”
“Yes.”
“And Hortense Paxton was running the house, supervising the servants, waiting on William Delano?”
“Yes.”
“And had been for some time?”
“She’d been living with him for more than two years. She was his favorite. They were very close.”
“And shortly after you arrived at the house to visit William Delano, the defendant, Myrna Davenport, came to live with him? Isn’t that right?”
“Well, it wasn’t that simple. That is, you can’t divide it into periods like that. Myrna first came to visit and help Hoi-tie—”
“Now, by Hoi-tie you mean Hortense Paxton?”
“Naturally.”
“Very well, Go on.”
“She was there visiting and helping, and then she decided to move in, that—well, it may have been shortly before I came or shortly afterward, I don’t remember which, but in any event, she and Ed, that was her husband, did move in and take up their residence.”
“But Mr. Davenport still continued to maintain his office at the place he and Myrna Davenport had been using as a residence up in Paradise in this state?”
“Yes.”
“How much of the time?”
“Quite a bit of it.”
“After you came, and shortly after Delano’s death, Mr. Davenport started absenting himself from home, did he not?”
“What do you mean by home?”
“At that time it was the residence in which William Delano had passed away, was it not?”
“I guess so, yes.”
“That’s what I mean by his home. I will refer to the place in Paradise as his mining office.”
“Very well.”
“And shortly after you moved in you noticed that Mr. Davenport began to absent himself, did you not?”
She said, “I don’t know what you’re trying to get at, but I’ll tell you frankly that Ed Davenport and I didn’t get along. But that didn’t have anything to do with those trips of his. Ed Davenport didn’t like me. There wasn’t any secret made about that, although I was just as nice to him as I could be, but he thought I was turning Myrna against him. Actually all I was doing was trying to tell Myrna to wake up to what was happening.”
“What was happening?”
“He was mingling every cent of Myrna’s money he could get hold of with his money and mixing it all up and juggling the assets around so that a body couldn’t tell anything in the world about it. If you’d start asking him about his mining properties or what he was doing, or about how much money Myrna had, or what he was doing with it and where it was invested, he’d either clam up on you or jump up and leave the room. Then shortly afterward he’d take another of his ‘business trips.’ If you really tried to pin him down you’d get all sorts of evasive answers. You couldn’t tell which was which. I knew what he was doing and he knew I knew what he was doing.”
Sara Ansel glowered belligerently at Vandling.
“You knew what he was doing?”
“Certainly I knew what he was doing. I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“How did you know what he was doing?”
“Why, by asking him questions and getting his answers and seeing the way he was acting and all of that stuff.”
“And did he know that you knew what he was doing?”
“Certainly he did. I didn’t make any secret of it. That is, I asked him very pointed questions.”
“In front of his wife?”
“Naturally. She was the one I was trying to get to wake up.”
“And then you talked with his wife privately?”
“Yes.”
“And suggested that she should consult an attorney?”
“Yes.”
“And what else?”
“That she should hire private detectives to trail him. He was gallivanting around the country. He’d tell Myrna to pack up a suitcase for him, talking to her just as though she were a servant, and tell her he was going off to one of the mines. He wouldn’t even tell her which one. He’d say ‘one of the mines.’ “He had several?”
“He did after he began to get his hands on her money. That was when he started to expand. And. as I say, he just mixed transactions around so you couldn’t tell anything about anything.”
“He was using his wife’s money?”
“Of course he was. He didn’t have any money of his own. All he had were some mines he was buying and operating on a shoestring. As soon as William Delano died he started in being a big operator right away. He borrowed what money he could on the strength of the money that was coming to his wife. He got his wife to make a big loan at the bank and then he hurried through some kind of partial distribution of the estate so that Myrna could get money, and as soon as it hit Myrna’s bank account he drew it right out.”
“Do you know how he handled those transactions? Did he give Mrs. Davenport a note or anything?”
“Certainly not. He simply had her put money in a joint account. And all she could ever use that joint account for was just household expenses and an occasional dress or something.”
“So you warned Mrs. Davenport about this?”
“Certainly.”
“So at a time, say a week ago, Myrna Davenport had every reason to distrust her husband, to hate her husband and to wish him out of the way, did she not?”
“Now what are you getting at? You’re putting words in my mouth.”
“I’m simply summarizing what you’ve told me. You had told Mrs. Davenport that her husband was embezzling her money?”