The Case of the Crimson Kiss

Chapter eleven

Back in the courtroom, all but deserted now except for the county officials who were crowding around Shirley Tanner, Mason was asking questions in a low voice.

There was no more stamina left in Shirley Tanner. She heard her own voice answering the persistent drone of Mason’s searching questions.

“You knew that Clements had this apartment in seven-oh-two? You deliberately made such a high offer that you were able to sublease apartment seven-oh-one? You were suspicious of Clements and wanted to spy on him?”

“Yes,” Shirley said, and her voice was all but inaudible to her own ears, although her eyes told her that the court reporter, standing beside her with his hand moving unobtrusively over his notebook, was taking down all that was said.

“You were furious when you realized that Carver Clements had another mistress, that all his talk to you about waiting until he could get his divorce was merely another bait which you had grabbed.”

Again she said, “Yes.” It seemed the easiest thing to say, the only thing that she could say. There was no strength in her any more to think up lies.

“You made the mistake of loving him,” Mason said. “It wasn’t his money you were after, and you administered the poison. How did you do it, Shirley?”

She said, “I’d poisoned the drink I held in my hand. I knew it made Carver furious when I drank because whiskey makes me lose control of myself, and he never knew what I was going to do when I was drunk.

“I rang his bell, holding that glass in my hand. I leered at him tipsily when he opened the door, and walked on in. I said, ‘Hello, Carver darling. Meet your next-door neighbor,’ and I raised the glass to my lips.

“He reacted just as I knew he would. He was furious. He said, ‘You little devil, what’re you doing here? I’ve told you I’ll do the drinking for both of us.’ He snatched the glass from me and drained it.”

“What happened?” Mason asked.

“For a moment, nothing,” she said. “He went back to the chair and sat down. I leaned over him and pressed that kiss on his head. It was a good-by kiss. He looked at me, frowned, suddenly jumped to his feet, and tried to run to the door. Then he staggered and fell face forward.”

“And what did you do?”

“I took the key to his apartment from his pocket so I could get back in to fix things the way I wanted and get possession of the glass, but I was afraid to be there while he was... retching and twisting... and dying.”

Mason nodded. “You went back to your own apartment and then after you had waited a few minutes and thought it was safe to go back, you couldn’t, because Anita Bonsal was at the door?”

Shirley Tanner nodded and said, “She had a key. She went in. I supposed, of course, she’d call the police and that they’d come at any time. I didn’t dare to go in there then. I tried to sleep and couldn’t. Finally I decided the police weren’t coming after all. It was past midnight then.”

“So then you went back in there? You were in there when Don Ralston rang the bell. You—”

“Yes,” she said. “I went back into that apartment. By that time I had put on a bathrobe and pajamas and ruffled my hair all up. If anyone had said anything to me, if I had been caught, I had a story all prepared to tell them — that I had heard the door open and someone run down the corridor, that I had opened my door and found the door of seven-oh-two ajar, and I had just that minute looked in to see what had happened.”

“All right,” Mason said, “that was your story. What did you do?”

“I went across the hall. I went in and wiped all my fingerprints off that glass on the floor. Then the buzzer sounded from the street door.”

“What did you do?”

“I saw someone had fixed up the evidence just the way I had been going to fix it up. A bottle of Scotch on the table, a bottle of soda, a pail of ice cubes.”

“So what did you do?”

She said, “I pushed the button which released the downstairs door catch and ducked back into my own apartment. I hadn’t any more than got in there than I heard the elevator stop at the seventh floor. I couldn’t understand that, because I knew these people couldn’t possibly have had time enough to get up to the seventh floor in the elevator. I waited, listening, and heard you two come down the corridor. I could barely hear the sound of the buzzer in the other apartment. I opened the door to chase you away and saw you were actually entering the apartment, so I had to make a quick excuse, that the sound of the buzzer had wakened me. Then I jerked the door shut. When the four people came up, I really and truly thought you were still in the apartment, and I was dying of curiosity to see what was happening.”

“How long had you known him?” Mason asked.

She said sadly, “I loved him. I was the one that he wanted to marry when he left his wife. I don’t know how long this other thing had been going on. I became suspicious, and one time when I had an opportunity to go through his pockets, I found a key stamped ‘Mandrake Arms Apartment, Number Seven-oh-two.’ Then I thought I knew, but I wanted to be sure. I found out who had apartment seven-oh-one and made a proposition for a sublease that simply couldn’t be turned down.

“I waited and watched. This brunette walked down the corridor and used her key to open the apartment. I slipped out into the corridor and listened at the door. I heard him give her the same old line he’d given me so many times, and my heart turned to bitter acid. I hated him. I killed him... and I was caught.”

Mason turned to Stewart Linn. “There you are, young man. If you want to be the fearless prosecutor, there’s your murderess, but you’ll probably never be able to get a jury to think it’s anything more than manslaughter.”

A much chastened Linn said, “Would you mind telling me how you figured this out, Mr. Mason?”

Mason said, “Clements’ key was missing. Obviously he must have had it when he entered the apartment. The murderer must have taken it from his pocket. Why? So he or she could come back. And if what Don Ralston said was true, someone must have been in the apartment when he rang the bell from the street, someone who let him in by pressing the buzzer.

“What happened to that someone? I must have been walking down the corridor within a matter of seconds after Ralston had pressed the button on the street door. Yet I saw no one leaving the apartment. There was no one in the corridor. Obviously, then, the person who pressed the buzzer must have had a place to take refuge in another nearby apartment.

“Having reasoned that far, having learned a young, attractive woman had only that very day taken a lease on the apartment opposite, the answer became so obvious it ceased to be a mystery.”

Stewart Linn nodded thoughtfully. “Obvious when you have once pointed it out,” he said.

Mason picked up his briefcase and smiled at Della Street. “Come on, Della,” he said. “Let’s get Fay Allison and...”

He stopped as he saw Fay Allison’s face. “What’s happened to your lipstick?”

And then his eyes moved over to take in Dane Grover, who was standing by her, his mouth streaked diagonally with a huge red smear.

Fay Allison had neglected to remove the thick coating of lipstick which she had put on when Mason had asked Benjamin Harlan, the identification expert, to take an imprint of her lips. Now the heavy mark where her mouth had been pressed against the mouth of Dane Grover gave an oddly jarring note of incongruity to the entire proceedings.

On the lower floors a mob of eager, curious spectators were baying like hounds on the track of Anita Bonsal. In the courtroom the long, efficient arm of the law was gathering Shirley Tanner into its grasp, and there, amidst the machinery of tragedy, the romance of Fay Allison and Dane Grover picked up where it had left off.

It was the gavel of Judge Randolph Jordan that brought them back to the grim realities of justice, transferred the courtroom from the scene of a dramatic confession to a crowded place, filled with chairs, tables, and benches, peopled by puppets who were mechanically doing the bidding of justice.

“The Court,” announced Judge Jordan, “will dismiss the case against Fay Allison. The Court will order Shirley Tanner into custody and the Court will suggest to the Prosecutor that a complaint be issued for Anita Bonsal, upon such charge as may seem expedient to the office of the District Attorney. And the Court does hereby extend its most sincere apologies to the defendant, Fay Allison. And the Court, personally, wishes to congratulate Mr. Perry Mason upon his brilliant handling of this matter.”

There was a moment during which Judge Jordan’s stern eyes rested upon the lipstick-smeared countenance of Dane Grover.

A faint smile twitched at the corners of His Honor’s mouth.

The gavel banged once more.

“Court,” announced Judge Randolph Jordan, “is adjourned.”