"In the meantime, Julia, as soon as she heard the shots, had run to her own car; but she didn't get it started for a few minutes. Stella beat Julia home, undressed, and waited for her. Julia was so excited she didn't go directly back to the apartment, but drove around for a while, calming her nerves."
Mason turned to Stella Kenwood and said, "That's right, Stella, isn't it?"
"Yes," she said, "that's right."
"And that key Sacks had," Mason said, "was the key to the apartment, all right, but Stella had given it to him instead of Julia. That's right, isn't it, Stella?"
"That's right," she said, "but my daughter doesn't know anything about my shooting Brownley. No one knows anything about that. I would have told Pete Sacks what I intended to do, if I could have got him on the telephone, but I couldn't get him. When I knew what Julia intended to do, I just couldn't see my daughter go to jail. I didn't intend to frame the crime on Julia-not at first. I just wanted a gun and I didn't have one, so I took the one out of Julia's purse. But how could my daughter have confessed all this to you, Mr. Mason, when she didn't know it herself?"
Mason said, "I'm sorry, Stella. I had to trap you into a confession."
"How much of this did my daughter tell you?"
"None of it."
"Then she isn't… isn't?…"
Mason shook his head and said, "No, Stella, she isn't hurt. I had to do it this way in order to right a wrong. It was the only way I could think of."
Stella Kenwood slumped wearily in her chair, then started to cry. "It's a judgment," she said. "I guess I couldn't have gone through with it anyway. I wish you gentlemen could see my side of it… life always so hard… I was fighting for my daughter. I didn't care for myself… here was this opportunity going to waste. Julia wouldn't let Brownley have her daughter, and Brownley wanted a granddaughter, so I gave him one… And then the bishop showed up, and Pete Sacks told me we'd all go to jail. I didn't care for myself. It was for my daughter. I'm willing to die. Go ahead and let the law kill me, but please don't be too hard on my girl. She did it because her mother told her to."
A nurse entered the room and said to Hamilton Burger, "Mr. Burger, your office wants you on the telephone."
"Not now," Burger said, his eyes on Stella Kenwood. "Tell them I can't be interrupted. There are one or two matters I want to clean up here before…"
The nurse said, "They said I was to tell you it was very important; that it was a new development in the Brownley matter."
Burger frowned thoughtfully. "I can plug a phone in here," the nurse said.
Burger nodded to the nurse, turned to Stella Kenwood and said, "Are you going to make a written statement, Stella?"
She said, "Why not? I've told you everything, and I feel better. I'm a wicked woman, but I don't want my daughter to suffer."
The nurse brought a desk telephone, plugged it in and handed it to Burger, who said, "Hello," and then frowned thoughtfully as he listened for several seconds. He glanced significantly at Perry Mason and said, "Leave things just as they are. Don't touch anything. Get Philip Brownley and Janice Brownley to make the identification; but don't let them see it until I get there. Have a shorthand reporter on the job. You'll have to stall things along for a few minutes because I can't get away from here for ten or fifteen minutes yet. I'm getting a written statement." He hung up the telephone, caught the significance of Mason's lifted eyebrows and nodded his head. "Yes," he said, "found just a few minutes ago."
Stella Kenwood, her chin sunk on her chest, had apparently paid no attention to the conversation.
Chapter 17
The speedometer needle of Mason's car quivered at around seventy miles an hour. Della Street, in the front seat beside him, lit a cigarette with the electric lighter, took it from between her lips and proffered it to Mason.
"No, thanks, Della," he said, "I'll drive now and smoke afterwards."
Paul Drake, in the back seat, yelled, "Take it slow, Perry. There's a curve ahead."
Mason said grimly, "When you were at the wheel, you looped the loop on this curve and thought it was funny. Now I'm driving, and you'll take it and like it."
The car screamed into the curve, lurched, straightened, skidded and then, as Mason depressed the foot throttle to the floorboards, came out of the turn and into the straightaway. Drake heaved a sigh of relief and let go his hold of the robe rail. Della Street, exhaling cigarette smoke, said, "Do they know whether he died from drowning or from the gunshot wounds, Chief?"
"If they know, they aren't saying," he told her. "It'll probably take a fairly complete post-mortem to tell."
"And you've already pointed out to them what they're up against," she said. "If he died by drowning, they can't convict Stella Kenwood of murder. Just what could they do to her?"
"Prosecute her for assault with a deadly weapon with intent to commit murder. However, having guessed wrong on the crime the first time they made a pass at it, it isn't going to be so easy to get a conviction in front of a jury. Burger will realize that, so he'll move heaven and earth to make a perfect case now."
"And if he died of the gunshot wounds?" she asked.
"That'll make a murder case out of it," Mason said, "only then they've got to prove how the car happened to be driven over the edge of the wharf, and that's not going to be so easy, because, regardless of what the autopsy surgeons say, if Renwold Brownley was able to drive the car off the wharf, a jury won't think he was dead when he went over the edge. And there'll be a lot of sympathy with Stella Kenwood. Then, if Brownley was killed by the bullets, someone must have driven the car over. That someone would have been an accomplice."
"Of course," Della Street pointed out, "he could have recovered consciousness and started to drive the car. He could have put it into low gear and, in a half-conscious condition, driven along the pier thinking it was a road. Then he could have died with the car still in gear, and the weight of his body depressing the foot throttle…"
Mason interrupted with a laugh and said, "That's something that could have happened. Remember that a district attorney has to prove to a jury beyond all reasonable doubt what actually did happen."
Drake yelled, "For God's sake, Della, quit talking so much and let him drive the car. That truck almost sideswiped us! It was the hand throttle which sent the car over the pier. You're a swell secretary, but don't try to make a detective out of yourself, because women can't develop the type of minds detectives need to have-and don't distract Mason's attention with a lot of arguments, or we'll all be corpses!"
Della said, "It's your cold that makes you such a grouch, Paul. Don't think just because you're a man, God gave you a corner on detective ability."
"That isn't what I meant," Drake explained. "I don't want to argue it now; but being a detective means you have to remember thousands of details and automatically fit any theory into the facts. You illustrated the point just now by forgetting about that hand throttle."
Mason grinned and said, "Don't argue with him, Della. He's got a cold and he's full of dope, fever and egotism."
Della Street lapsed into frowning silence. Drake closed his eyes. Mason, devoting his entire attention to driving the car, sent the speedometer needle shivering upward.