The Case of the Crying Swallow

Chapter ten

Major Winnett’s limp was more noticeable as he moved across the drawing room to confront Perry Mason. “I don’t know exactly what’s been going on here,” he said angrily. “I don’t know what prerogatives you have assumed, Mr. Mason. But as far as I’m concerned, our relationship is ended.”

Mason said, “Sit down.”

“I’m waiting to drive you to town, Mason, in case you don’t have a car. If you do, I’ll go with you to your room and you can pack up.”

Mason said, “As nearly as I can put things together, you had previously discovered the trailer parked down in the trees. You were suspicious. You went up to the observation tower and saw Marcia go to the trailer and then later on saw the car and trailer go away. You took down the license number of the car. You looked up the man who owned that car. After that you kept a pretty close watch on what was going on.

“You didn’t say anything when Marcia canceled the insurance on her jewelry and then had such an opportune burglary. You were very careful not to call the police because you knew the police would tab it as an inside job. You let your wife think it was because your mother didn’t want any notoriety, but you got the jewelry and hid it in that twelve-gauge shotgun. After that you kept a pretty good watch on your wife. Where did you get the jewelry?”

“Mason,” Winnett said coldly, “in case you don’t leave this house at once, I’m going to call the servants and have you put out.”

Mason brushed aside Major Winnett’s angry statement with a gesture. “You’ll have to hire more servants, then,” he said, and went on. “When the trailer came back on Wednesday and Marcia went down there the second time, you decided to investigate. When you got down there, you found you had a fight on your hands. You killed Harry Drummond. Then you locked up the trailer, came back to the house and waited until dark. Then you took the trailer with its gruesome evidence of murder, drove to a trailer camp—”

“Mason, watch what you’re saying. By heaven, I’ll throw you out myself!”

“—parked the trailer,” Mason went on, as smoothly as though Major Winnett had said nothing, “but only after some difficulty, then got out and went home. Then you felt it would add an artistic touch to have two shots fired so the time of the killing could be definitely fixed. So you went back, sneaked into the trailer park, stood in the dark outside the trailer and fired two shots in the air.

“You didn’t realize that Marcia had been following you, and when she heard those shots she naturally thought you had killed Drummond out of jealousy, decided that she loved you too much to let you take the rap, and so skipped out. That’s the reason you didn’t go to a detective agency to get someone to try to find your wife. You wanted a lawyer who specialized in murder cases, because you knew there was going to be a murder case.”

Major Winnett snapped his fingers. “A lot of half-baked theories!”

“You see,” Mason went on, “you made a couple of fatal mistakes. One of them was that the first shot you fired missed Drummond and went clean through the trailer, leaving a hole in the double walls that clearly shows the direction taken by the bullet. When you parked that trailer in the automobile camp under the eucalyptus trees, it was dark and you didn’t take the precaution of noticing where a bullet fired under such circumstances would have hit. That was a mistake, Major. As it happened, the hole in the trailer was lined up absolutely with the window of an adjoining trailer.

“At first the police will think the shot might have been fired from the other trailer. Then they’ll make a more careful investigation and find that the direction of the bullet was the other way. Then they’ll know that the murder wasn’t committed there at the trailer park. There’s another little thing you hadn’t thought of. At the time you moved the trailer, the body had been dead for some time but the pool of blood hadn’t entirely coagulated. Near the center of the pool there was blood that was still liquid. It spread around when the trailer swayed from side to side in going over irregularities in the road. That is what gives the pool of clotted blood the peculiar appearance of having little jagged streamers flowing from it.”

Major Winnett was silent and motionless. His eyes were fixed on Mason with cold concentration. The anger had left his face, and it was quite plain the man’s mind was desperately turning over Mason’s words.

“So,” Mason went on, “you knew that when the police started to investigate, they would find the dead man had been Marcia’s first husband. You knew they would then start looking for her. When they found that she had skipped out, you knew what would happen. And so, you came to me.”

Major Winnett cleared his throat. “You made a statement that Marcia had followed me. Do you have any evidence to back that up?”

Mason said, “It’s a logical deduction from—”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Come to my room. I want to talk with you.”

Mason said, “You haven’t much time. The police have found the body. They’re going to be out here looking for Marcia as soon as they have completed an identification and checked up on the man’s history.”

“All right,” Winnett said, “come with me. Mother, you and Daphne pretend you haven’t heard any of this. I’ll talk with you later.”

Major Winnett led the way to his room, opened a portable bar and took out a bottle of Scotch.

Mason refused with a gesture, then when Winnett had poured out a drink, the lawyer reached over and poured half of that drink back into the bottle. “Just enough to give yourself a bracer,” he warned, “not enough to give you a letdown afterward. You’re going to be talking with the police pretty soon. Start talking with me now.”

Winnett said, “I didn’t know Marcia went to visit the man in the trailer on Monday. I did know that Marcia went to the trailer on Wednesday.”

“How did you know?”

“I was watching her.”

“Why were you watching her?”

“Someone told me she had been to the trailer on Monday.”

“Who?”

“My mother.”

“What did you do?”

“After she left the trailer on Wednesday, I went down there to see who was in the trailer and see why my wife was having a rendezvous.”

“What did you find?”

“I found the man dead. I found Marcia’s jewelry spread out on a table in front of him. I realized what must have happened. I saw that one shot had gone into the man’s heart. One had apparently gone past his head and into the wall of the trailer.”

“All right,” Mason said sarcastically, “it’s your story. Go ahead with it. What did you do then?”

“I took Marcia’s jewelry and locked up the trailer. I came home. I waited until after dark, then I moved the trailer to a trailer camp I knew of, where I parked it. I got out and left the trailer and walked to where I had parked my own car earlier in the day. I had driven home before I realized that I could completely throw the police off the scent by letting it appear the murder had been committed late that night in the trailer camp. So I returned, stood near the trailer, fired two shots into the air, then ran to my car and came back home. I thought Marcia was in bed. But when, after a couple of hours, I went up, I found she wasn’t there, that she had left that note. That’s why I came to you. I wanted your help. That’s the truth, so help me.”

Mason said, “You wrote down the license number of that automobile. Later on you tried to cover it up by adding some words and some figures. Then you added the total—”

“Mr. Mason, I swear I did not.”

“Who did then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Someone wrote down the license number of the car,” Mason said, “4E4705, then tried to camouflage it by working in a number of other figures and writing at the top These numbers called — but a mistake was made in the addition. I... wait a minute...”

Mason stood motionless, his eyes level-lidded with concentration.

“Perhaps,” Major Winnett suggested, “it was...”

Mason motioned him to silence, then, after a moment, picked up the telephone, dialed the hotel where Drake had established an office, and when he had Drake on the line, said, “Hello, Paul. Perry talking. I think I’ve got it. There wasn’t any mistake in the addition.”

“I don’t get it,” Drake said. “The total should be 49″37818. Actually it’s 49″37817.”

“And that figure is right,” Mason said. “The number we want is 4E4704.”

“But the license number was 4E4705.”

Mason said, “What happens when you have two cars? You are given license numbers in chronological order. Look up license number 4E4704. You can start your search in room six-thirteen there at the hotel. Make it snappy.”

Mason slammed up the telephone receiver and nodded to Major Winnett. “We’ve got one more chance. It’s slim. The next time you go to a lawyer, don’t be so damn smart. Tell him the truth. Where’s your mother’s room?”

“In the other wing at the far end of the corridor.”

“And the nurse’s room?” Mason asked. “That must be a communicating room?”

“It is.”

Mason said, “Let’s go.”

Helen Custer, answering their knock, seemed somewhat flustered. “Why, good evening. I, ah... is there something...”

Mason pushed his way into the room. Major Winnett hesitated a moment, then followed. Mason kicked the door shut.

“Police are on their way out here,” Mason said to the nurse.

“The police? What for?”

“To arrest you.”

“For what?”

Mason said, “That’s up to you.”

“What do you mean?”

Mason said, “Playing it one way, it’s blackmail. Playing it the other way, it’s being an accessory after the fact on a murder charge. You’d better take the rap for blackmail.”

“I... I... why, what are you talking about?”

Mason said, “I’ve practiced law long enough to know that a man should never torture clues to make them point in the direction he thinks they should go. When that column of figures added up to 49E37817 and I thought it should have been 49E37818, I assumed a mistake had been made in the addition. It wasn’t a mistake. You marked down the number Cal 4E4704. You wanted to preserve that number but you didn’t want anyone to think that it had any significance, so you added the words at the top, These numbers, and then inserted led after the Cal, so that made it read, These numbers called. Then you added other numbers after that number and then totaled the sum. Now then, you probably have less than five minutes to tell us why you wrote down 4E4704.”

She glanced from Mason to Major Winnett. There was dismay in her eyes. “What makes you think I—”

Mason took out his watch, said, “If the police get here first, you’ll be an accessory after the fact. If you use your head, you may be able to get by with a rap for attempted blackmail.”

“I... I... oh, Mr. Mason. I can’t...”

Mason watched the hand ticking off the seconds.

“All right,” she blurted. “It was yesterday morning. I was looking for Mrs. Victoria Winnett. I thought she was up in the observation tower. I went up there. She wasn’t there. The binoculars were adjusted so they pointed down to that grove of trees. I just happened to look through them and saw the trailer. A light coupé was parked beside the big Buick that was attached to the trailer. A man and a woman were having a struggle of some sort. The man tried to strike her and the woman reached into her blouse. I saw the flash of a gun, then another flash. The man staggered back and the woman calmly closed the door of the trailer, got in her car and drove away.

“Through the binoculars I got a look at the number of her automobile. It was Cal 4E4704. I wrote it down on a piece of paper, intending to tell the police. Then... well, then I... thought... I...”

“What did you do with the piece of paper?” Mason asked.

“After a moment I realized that perhaps I could... well, you know. So I changed the focus on the binoculars back to—”

“So what did you do?” Mason asked.

“I didn’t want that number to seem too conspicuous. I had written Cal 4E4704, so I wrote down other things, just as you said.”

“The first number you wrote on a single sheet of paper that was on the table and not on the pad. When you wrote the rest of it, you had placed the paper on the pad.”

“I... I guess I did.”

Mason pointed to the telephone. “Ring up police headquarters,” he said. “Tell them what you saw. Tell them that it’s been bothering you, that you thought you should have reported it to the police, but that Mrs. Winnett is so opposed to any form of publicity that you didn’t know just what to do; that tonight you asked Mrs. Winnett about it and she told you to telephone the police at once; that the reason you didn’t do so before was because the trailer was gone when you looked again and you supposed that the man hadn’t been hurt and had driven the trailer away.”

“If I do that,” she said, “then I...”

“Then you stand about one chance in ten of beating the rap all around,” Mason said grimly. “Don’t do it, and you’re stuck. What did you do — actually, I mean?”

“I looked up the license number. I found that the car was registered in the name of a Mrs. Harry Drummond. I located her, and while I wasn’t crude or anything... I wanted to open up a beauty shop and... well, she agreed to finance me.”

Once more Mason pointed to the telephone. “Get police headquarters. Come on, Major. Let’s go.”

Out in the corridor Major Winnett said, “But how about my wife, Mason? How about my wife? That’s the thing that bothers me. That—”

“And it damned well should bother you,” Mason said. “She must have seen you driving the trailer Wednesday night and followed you to the place where you parked it. She went in, found Drummond dead and thought you had been trying to avenge the family’s good name. You can see now what happened. She gave Drummond money to get a divorce. He told her he’d secured one. She married again. Drummond made the mistake of also marrying again. When the blow-off came, his second wife threatened to prosecute him for bigamy unless he gave her money. The only way he had to get money was to put the heat on Marcia. She was too conscientious to ask you for money or to try to stick the insurance company for money, so she staged a fake burglary, cached her jewelry in the swallow’s nest, then turned over the jewelry to him. When the second Mrs. Drummond came for her money, all her husband had to offer her was jewelry. She thought it was hot. That started a fight and she shot him. And probably shot him in self-defense at that.”

“But how am I going to explain — about moving the body?” Major Winnett asked.

Mason looked at him pityingly. “You’re not going to explain one damn thing,” he said. “What do you think you have a lawyer for? Get in my car. Leave the nurse to put the police on a hot trail.”