“This man was Beckemeyer, the third party to the conspiracy. Beckemeyer and Davenport had pulled several sharp deals together. Davenport had used Beckemeyer as the dummy through whom he had siphoned cash out of the various accounts.
“When Davenport suggested he might be getting into a jam which would force him to skip the country, Beckemeyer mentioned that he had a doctor in Crampton who would do anything for cash and who was very hard up.
“So Beckemeyer introduced Davenport to Dr. Renault and the scheme was hatched by which Ed Davenport was apparently to die under such circumstances he would be considered a victim rather than a suspect.
“Dr. Renault got five thousand in cash. He says he has no idea what Beckemeyer was to get, probably a lot more than that.
“Beckemeyer was to drive the house trailer to Nevada while Ed Davenport lay safely in bed in the trailer. In that way even if anyone saw Davenport getting out of the window and started a search, Davenport would be out of sight.
“Beckemeyer was also to provide the getaway car and attend to the details. Dr. Renault was simply to bring about Davenport’s simulated death.
“Mabel Norge had been instructed to go to the office in Paradise Monday evening. She was to receive a telephone message as to where to go in San Bernardino, taking the money with her. All she knew was that she might be juggling funds so that Mrs. Davenport couldn’t get wind of a deal Davenport was making.
“Now, according to Dr. Renault’s story, Beckemeyer must have done some fast thinking. He knew that Davenport was going to have more than two hundred thousand dollars in cash.
“So Beckemeyer conceived a brilliant idea. Why not see that Davenport really disappeared. Since this was what Davenport was intending to do, Dr. Renault wouldn’t suspect anything because he knew that was exactly the deal Renault was to help engineer.
“The idea, of course, was that it would appear Myrna Davenport had poisoned her husband, that she had first given him poison in the candy, that then she had finished the job when she was left alone with her husband who was then supposed to be in a dying condition. Naturally the conspirators wouldn’t have any corpse, so they had to have it appear that Myrna had some male accomplice who had whisked the body out of the window so it couldn’t be autopsied.
“Beckemeyer studied the full possibilities of this situation. Sometime before Friday he went out to a place near where the house trailer had been planted and dug a convenient grave. When Davenport, in pursuance of the conspiracy, slipped out to the trailer, Beckemeyer gave him a few drinks and cooked him a meal of bacon and eggs. Dr. Renault said he warned Davenport to get some food in his stomach the very first thing, otherwise he might really collapse.
“Davenport ate the bacon and eggs and then he and Beckemeyer had a few more drinks, toasting the success of the conspiracy. Beckemeyer slipped a slug of cyanide of potassium in Davenport’s whisky. Davenport died almost instantly. Beckemeyer took him out and planted him in the grave, then drove away with the house trailer.
“But Beckemeyer knew there was about thirty thousand dollars in the Paradise account that was to be reduced to cash. He had been instructed to give Mabel Norge the message as to where to take this money in San Bernardino. It was planned that Beckemeyer would call the Paradise number, phone just the address and hang up fast before the call could be traced in case of any hitch in the Paradise scheme.
“Beckemeyer was smart. After he got crossed up on the delivery of the money in San Bernardino he realized that he might have put himself in a vulnerable position, that he might have been talking with someone other than Mabel Norge when he called the Paradise number. So he immediately adopted the position that Davenport had retained him as a private detective to go to San Bernardino and watch the motel unit in question and wrote you a letter that would account for his trip to San Bernardino.
“Now that’s generally Dr. Renault’s story. It’s probably true. Beckemeyer, however, will probably try to blame the murder on Dr. Renault. By the time we get done we’ll have each of them singing like canaries.”
“Why was Dr. Renault so stubborn about that cyanide?” Mason asked.
“Dr. Renault said he knew what must have happened just as soon as he learned about the cyanide at the autopsy. He was preparing his own defense even then. If he had ever admitted that there had been even a single symptom of cyanide poisoning while he was treating Ed Davenport, he would have crucified himself in case the true story ever came out.
“If it hadn’t been for the children finding that grave, we would never have known what happened. A convincing case of poisoning would have been made out against Myrna Davenport. She probably would have been convicted.”
Mason chuckled. “You can imagine how Dr. Renault felt when the body was found and the autopsy showed poisoning by cyanide.”
“Well,” Vandling said, “thanks to your co-operation I’ve had a nice feather in my cap. People here are patting me on the back and they’re going to keep patting me on the back. The thing that I can’t understand is how the devil you figured it out.”
“I didn’t figure it all out,” Mason said, “but I knew that Edward Davenport was the only person who could have been sure he would be taken sick at Crampton. If Davenport had planned it that way, then it was almost certain that Dr. Renault was in on it. And because the grave had been dug it was almost certain that someone else knew it had been planned in advance that Davenport was to be taken ill at Crampton.
“When you come right down to it, Vandling, you have to bear in mind that while Beckemeyer and Renault may have committed the actual murder the one who really put his neck in the noose was Ed Davenport.”
“Contributory negligence,” Vandling said, grinning.
“Exactly,” Mason observed, filling the glasses once more. “Well,” he said, “here’s to crime.”
The End
About the Author
Erle Stanley Gardner is the king of American mystery fiction. A criminal lawyer, he filled his mystery masterpieces with intricate, fascinating, ever-twisting plots. Challenging, clever, and full of surprises, these are whodunits in the best tradition. During his lifetime, Erie Stanley Gardner wrote 146 books, 85 of which feature Perry Mason.