“I do.”
“This is a most unusual situation,” said the judge.
Mason said, “In accordance with this plan which had been worked out and which you and Davenport had carefully rehearsed, you reported that the man was dead. You reported that you would have to call the authorities. You locked up the cabin but didn’t call the authorities immediately, giving Ed Davenport an opportunity to get out of the window and jump in a car which had been conveniently parked immediately adjacent to the window of the cabin in which he was supposed to have died, and drive to a predetermined rendezvous. There was a house trailer parked at this place. Ed Davenport had the key to that house trailer. It was equipped with new clothing so that he could get rid of his pajamas and dress himself, wasn’t it?”
“I refuse to answer.”
“And,” Mason went on, “he told you that he had been embezzling money from his wife’s separate property, didn’t he? And he said his wife had an officious relative who was constantly insisting that Mrs. Davenport demand an accounting and that the game was about up, that he had juggled many thousands of dollars so that he had them in the form of cash, that if he didn’t disappear he would be detected and prosecuted. Didn’t he tell you that and ask you to help him?”
“I refuse to answer on my constitutional rights.”
“And didn’t he tell you that he had poisoned Hortense Paxton, that the authorities now suspected that her death had been murder and that he felt they would exhume the body, that he wanted to have them think he was dead when that happened and that you were to be paid generously to help him?”
“I refuse to answer.”
“And,” Mason went on, “after Davenport went to that house trailer you gave him some whisky containing cyanide of potassium. You knew that he had suitcases containing a large amount of money which he had been accumulating by a process of juggling the assets of his wife. You gave him that whisky and—”
“I did not. I absolutely did not.” Dr. Renault shouted. “I had no idea what the suitcases contained. And if you’re so smart you had better get the other party to the conspiracy, the one who was going to drive the house trailer over to Nevada for him.”
“You are referring now, I take it, to Jason L. Beckemeyer, a private detective at Bakersfield?”
“I am,” Dr. Renault snapped.
Mason turned to Vandling and said, “And now, Mr. District Attorney, I suggest by mutual consent we continue this case, that Dr. Renault be taken into custody and that a warrant be issued for the arrest of Jason L. Beckemeyer. I think that by the time we get done taking a statement from Dr. Renault we’ll find out what actually happened.”
Vandling was on his feet. “The prosecution wishes to announce its indebtedness to Mr. Perry Mason for his excellent co-operation, and at this time, if the Court please, I move to dismiss the case against the defendant, Myrna Davenport.”
Chapter 15
Mason, Della Street, Paul Drake and Talbert Vandling, seated around a table in the living room of Mason’s suite at the Californian Hotel, touched glasses.
“Here’s to crime,” Vandling said.
They drank.
“What gets me,” Vandling went on, “is the manner in which the Los Angeles district attorney warned me that you had cloven feet, horns on your head, a tail, and a smell of sulphurous brimstone about you. Thanks to your co-operation with me, people are talking up and down the street about my detective ability.”
“That’s fine,” Mason said. “If a few more of them would cooperate with me we might get along a lot better. Tell us about Dr. Renault.”
“Dr. Renault made a complete statement,” Vandling said. “He was given no promises of immunity or otherwise. After thinking things over he decided he had better clear his conscience as best he could.
“There seems to be no doubt about what happened. You called the turn. Davenport had poisoned Hortense Paxton so his wife would get the Delano money. Then he started turning everything he could get hold of into cash, juggling funds and leaving accounts in a mess. Also he started laying the foundations for his wife’s conviction of Hortense Paxton’s death if there should be any investigation.”
Mason nodded.
“Davenport knew that he might come under suspicion unless he could divert suspicion to someone else,” Vandling went on. “So he was very careful to tell his wife, in the presence of Sara Ansel, that he had left a letter with his secretary which was to be delivered to the police in the event of his death, that in that letter he accused her of poisoning Hortense Paxton and of poisoning him because he had become suspicious.
“Apparently that envelope never did contain anything except sheets of blank paper, but he felt certain that his wife, under the aggressive guidance of Sara Ansel, would take steps to see that this envelope was removed if Ed Davenport should die under circumstances that suggested poisoning.
“By planting the impression in the mind of his secretary that his wife really intended to poison him and had poisoned Hortense Paxton, Davenport had the stage all set. He filled two suitcases with cash and started for Fresno in order to arrange his ‘death.’
“He had previously made arrangements with Dr. Renault, a physician with a shady reputation, to see that the circumstances of his death were duly carried out in such a way that it would appear he had been poisoned and then someone had whisked his corpse away so that no autopsy could be performed on it.
“Davenport told Dr. Renault it would arouse suspicions if any of his things were missing, so he had purchased a little traveling bag into which he had transferred his toilet articles and the telltale box of candy he had been so careful to obtain—candy which he knew his wife had touched.
“So Dr. Renault with a hypodermic syringe injected poison into every piece of candy, then sealed the holes with a hot needle. Davenport instructed him to use both arsenic and cyanide because he knew the authorities could prove his wife had both poisons.
“Davenport locked his two suitcases full of money in the trunk of the getaway car, and Dr. Renault gave him a physic and an emetic in order to simulate the symptoms of collapse and arsenic poisoning.
“Davenport had arranged things so that he could slip out through the window of the cabin, get in the car which had been left there and drive out two or three miles to a place where a house trailer had been placed all in readiness for his arrival.
“Naturally Davenport wanted to get all of the money out of the Paradise account. There were some remittances which he expected to arrive on Friday, or by Saturday at the latest. They didn’t come in and he knew they wouldn’t be in until Monday. In the meantime everything had been arranged for his synthetic death to take place on Monday afternoon.
“Davenport had a tip that they were going to exhume Hortense Paxton’s body and he knew that he couldn’t wait. Therefore the thing to do was to work out some scheme by which he could loot the Paradise account after his supposed death.
“Mabel Norge was a credulous young woman who had extreme loyalty to him and he had gradually been building up in her mind the idea that his wife had tried to poison him.
“So Davenport told Mabel Norge that he was going home, that he didn’t know at what time his wife might try to poison him. He made her promise that she would withdraw every cent from the Paradise bank and that no matter what happened she would take it to San Bernardino, that she was to meet someone at San Bernardino who was working on a mining deal with Davenport. That person was to have a password that would enable her to identify him and then she would turn over the money.