The Case of the Negligent Nymph

Chapter 23

MASON, DELLA STREET, AND PATJL DRAKE SAT IN THE lawyer’s office. A container held a bottle of champagne and three champagne glasses were filled to the brim on Ma-son’s desk.

“Here’s to crime,” Mason said.

“And the greatest lawyer of them all,” Drake amended. “Boy, the way you managed to keep Gloster all tied up in knots, even when he had you on the run as far as the facts were concerned, is one of the greatest pieces of courtroom technique I’ve ever seen.”

Mason grinned and said, “I kept prodding him about telling me about the location of the dog and then I’d let him change the subject or I’d change the subject myself so he’d forget all about it, until Judge Garey really thought there was something sinister about the whole business.”

“How did you know that—well, how did you know what had happened?” Drake asked.

“Believe it or not,” Mason said, “and while I’m not going to ever tell anyone else, I’m actually kicking myself that I didn’t know a lot sooner. First let’s take the fundamental facts into consideration. George Alder had been carrying on a ruthless enterprise. .His half sister, Corrine, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, disagreed with him. He had some papers for her to sign and he Hew to South America.

“She didn’t sign the papers. He reported that she refused to sign them, refused to see him after that, and disappeared, presumably a suicide in a fit of despondency.

“But who knows? Her body was never recovered. She simply vanished.

“With the disappearance of Corrine Lansing, George’s hands were tied for seven years unless he could find some pretty good circumstantial evidence that Corrine Lansing had actually died, and prove the time and the place when she died and show that there had been a dead body which presumably was hers.

“At this point that mysterious letter from Minerva Danby enters the picture. It had been written by a woman. It accused George Alder of murder. It put Alder in a very embarrassing position. Obviously if he’d murdered Minerva Danby he must have done it to have kept Corrine Lansing from officially coming to life.

“He made the mistake of confiding in Dorley H. Alder. He may not have shown Dorley the letter, but he told him enough about what was in it so that Dorley realized the implications and the possibilities.

“If there was no trace whatever of Corrine, then Alder’s hands were tied for seven years. If they could introduce evidence, even circumstantial evidence, which indicated she had been killed then the situation would be entirely different—and if she had been confined to that institution and had been burned to death in the fire which ensued, the whole legal situation would have been simplified for both George Alder and Dorley Alder. The trouble was that the letter which gave the evidence that would simplify the case for George Alder also virtually accused him of murder, which tied his hands. But Dorley Alder was under no such moral restraint. Naturally he wanted to see the letter made public.

“So it was entirely natural that he would talk to Dorothy Fenner about it to see if she had any inkling about the contents of the letter or the facts mentioned in it, and it’s quite possible that he wanted to use her as a cat’s paw in making the letter public.

“George Alder was in a predicament. He didn’t dare to destroy the letter because that would have been tantamount to an admission of guilt—and then of course Pete Cadiz knew about the letter and Dorley Alder knew about the letter.

“Then after Dorothy Fenner sneaked into his house, she knew what was in the letter.

“You can see how the coils of circumstantial evidence began to tighten around George Alder—and when I began to realize how he was trapped by circumstances, I began to study the letter more carefully, and when I saw how cunningly it had been constructed for the purpose of putting him in just such a situation, I began to wonder just who had written that letter and why.”

“What do you think of it?” Drake asked.

T think it’s a forgery,” Mason said. “If you look at the composition carefully you’ll realize that the writing is that of a person trying to achieve a dramatic effect, not the terror-stricken composition of a person who is locked in a cabin on a wild ocean and thinks she is about to be murdered. The whole composition of the thing is far too leisurely. It’s a good specimen of carefully prepared dramatic writing, of building to a climax. It’s not the type of letter a woman would have written while she was in fear of her life.

“Moreover, when we consider the manner in which it was found, we are forced to a realization that it must have been planted. Pete Cadiz had been searching along that high-tide line for several days. Then he suddenly found this bottle right where he had been looking all of the time. It’s hardly conceivable that he could have overlooked the bottle…”

“But suppose it had drifted ashore only the night before,” Drake said.

“Not a chance,” Mason pointed out. “Remember that Cadiz said he couldn’t get into this little bay except when the water was very smooth, and that it was only dining periods of high tide and storm that the waves lashed driftwood way up above the normal high-tide line on the beach. Yet on this trip he’d been in there for a week combing the high-tide line.”

Drake nodded.

“So,” Mason went on, “we start figuring from there. George Alder would hardly have planted a letter branding himself as a murderer. Who would have done so? It was in the handwriting of a woman. It may even be a good forgery, for all I know, but a woman probably did it. Who?

“The evidence points to one person. Someone who was trying to force George Alder into a defensive position. It might have been Corrine, it might have been Dorothy Fenner, but there was a good chance it was Carmen Monterrey, who felt George Alder had murdered Corrine, of whom Carmen was very fond. That last thought opened up possibilities.

“Then I began to think about the dog in the closet, and the blood streaks, just two or three smear tracks on the inside of the closet door, and a couple of blood smudges on the closet floor.

“A bleeding foot would have left a whole lot of smudges and smears. Something was wrong with the picture. At first my mind merely registered a vague uneasiness. Then I began to think about it, and it suddenly dawned on me that if the dog had stepped in a pool of blood and then been put back in the closet, those bloody smears would be in keeping with the picture—otherwise they simply didn’t fit into the pattern of events.

“So then I started thinking about what must have happened in case the dog really had been loose when the shooting took place and been put back in the closet afterwards.

“Then things began to fit into a logical pattern.”

“But why didn’t that track show?” Drake asked.

“It did,” Mason said, “but when die dog got out there was a wild scramble, and the dog splashed through the pool of blood again and the officers simply didn’t appreciate the significance of that one track, in view of the fact that other tracks made by the dog in the blood were all over the place.

“Just as soon as you admit that the dog had stepped in that blood, then the deadly significance of the thing becomes apparent. Conceding that Alder was dead, and the dog was out, then there was only one person on earth who could put that dog back in the closet!

“Remember that George Alder was left-handed that there was a triangular tear on the left sleeve of his coat, that his gun had been fired almost straight up in the air, and that he had been kdled almost at die same moment he filed his gun because he had pitched forward and Ins own gun was found underneath his body. You put all those things together and there’s only one answer.

“For some time I had been toying with the thought that Alder might have actually murdered Corrine there in South America. He flew to South America. He wanted her to agree to certain matters of policy and she refused. He suddenly realized that not only was she balking him, but that she stood between him and a fortune. Perhaps there was a choked cry in the night, a splash, and that was the end. But whether he murdered her or not, Carmen had learned to believe he had.

“She remained in South America for weeks trying to find Corrine’s body, trying to get some clue. At the end of that time she was convinced Corrine was dead and that George Alder had committed the murder.

“So Carmen comes back, still running down clues. She goes to the mental hospital at Los Merritos, running down a clue that a person is there who answers Corrine’s description and suffering from amnesia.

“It wasn’t Corrine, but the woman attracted Carmen’s sympathy. She sent money to the hospital for this woman —and then the hospital burned.

“A few weeks after that the great idea hit Carmen’s mind. At the time of Minerva’s death officials had dumped whitewash on George Alder. But suppose that case could be made to look like a murder. What was more, suppose it could be tied into Corrine’s affairs in some way. Then Alder would be on the defensive and the truth might come out.

“Carmen determined to try it She managed to get a bottle that had been drifting for months. She forged that letter and looked around for Pete Cadiz. Then she planted the bottle where he’d be certain to see it. Then she sat tight to await developments.

“When she saw that ad in the paper, communicated with Box 123J and learned the man at the other end of die line was Alder, she knew she was read’ to strike, to boldly accuse him of Conine’s murder.”

Drake looked at Della Street, sighed and said, “Well, it sounds reasonable enough now, but thank heavens I wasn’t the one that was in there trying that case, with a two-timing client and a district attorney who was laying for my scalp, and me with my fingerprints on the canoe.”

“That goes double for me,” Della Street said. “It should teach Mr. Mason not. to go around picking up nymphs who make passes at his canoe.”

Mason laughed. ‘It would have been all right if only she hadn’t left her bath towel with the laundry mark on it.”

“And thereby got caught,” Drake said.

“A mere slip in her plans, a case of negligence on her part,” Mason explained.

Della Street reached for her pencil. “A good title for the filing jacket, “The Case of the Negligent Nymph.’”

Mason laughed aloud. “And incidentally, Della, as Corrine’s heir, that nymph is going to come into something of a fortune.”

“How come?” Paul Drake asked. “I thought the money was tied up in a trust and that on Conine’s death the property vested in…”

“It’s against the policy or the law,” Mason said, “to permit a murderer to profit by his crime. Therefore, George Alder couldn’t have acquired anything through Corrine’s death. And while the point so far as Dorley Alder is con - cerned might be debatable, he has agreed to a compromise which will give Dorothy Fenner a very comfortable fortune—although I think I should give her a spanking along with it.”

Paul Drake raised his glass, caught Della Street’s eye. “And here’s a toast, Della, to die greatest courtroom strategist of them all.”

Della Street got up and touched her glass to Drake’s. They solemnly drank the toast.

The End.