The Case of the Drowning Duck

Chapter 16

John L. Witherspoon, held temporarily in custody at the sheriff’s office, was permitted to talk with his lawyer privately in a witness room which opened off from the courtroom.

“The damnedest, most absurd thing you ever heard,” Witherspoon stormed. “And it all started with my identification of that damned duck.”

“Suppose you tell me about it,” Mason said.

“Well, I told the police about the duck. And I told them about Marvin having taken that duck from the ranch. The whole thing was as plain to me as the nose on my face. Hang it, it still is.”

“What did you tell the police?” Mason insisted.

“I told them that Marvin Adams had taken a duck from my place. I identified it as being my duck — the one that Marvin Adams had taken. That was all the police needed. They decided to grab Marvin Adams. They caught him as he got off the train in Los Angeles.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said.

“Apparently Adams told a pretty straightforward story. He said he’d taken a duck and put him in his automobile and that the duck had vanished, and that was all he knew about it. He admitted that he hadn’t searched the car completely, but felt sure the duck was gone. The police thought so, too. They got in touch with the police here, and they went out and searched the car Marvin was driving — and what do you think they found?”

“What did they find?” Mason asked.

“Found that damn duck over in the back of the car. The little son-of-a-gun had flopped over the back of the front seat somehow, got down on the floor and crawled under the foot rest.” Witherspoon cleared his throat, shifted his position uncomfortably in the chair. “A damnable combination of peculiar coincidences put me in something of a spot,” he said.

“How so?” Mason asked.

“Well, after you left the house last night, I wanted to catch up with you, just as I told you, but I didn’t tell you exactly what happened after that — that is, I told you but I didn’t tell it in its proper sequence.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said noncommittally.

“I chased in after you. I missed you when you were off by the side of the road changing a tire. I told you that I looked around uptown to try and find you, and thought I saw Mrs. Burr and went off on a tangent trying to find her. Well, that’s true. The thing that I didn’t tell you about was something that I thought might embarrass me personally.”

“What was it?”

“Immediately on reaching town, I drove to Milter’s apartment. I told you that I didn’t see your car parked near there, so I kept on going. That isn’t true. I didn’t pay any attention to cars. I was too steamed up. I slid my car into a parking place at the curb, got out, and went directly to Milter’s apartment, and rang the doorbell. Naturally, I thought you were up there. Not having overtaken you on the road, I thought you’d kept ahead of me.”

“You went to Milter’s apartment then?”

“Yes.”

“Immediately on reaching town?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you do?”

“I rang the doorbell.”

“Then what?”

“No one answered, but I saw the door hadn’t been closed all the way. I pushed against it impatiently, and the door came open. The spring lock hadn’t clicked into place.”

“What did you do?” Mason asked.

“I walked part way up the stairs and someone heard me coming — a woman.”

“You saw her?”

“No, I didn’t, not her face, at least. I was halfway up the stairs when this woman came to the head of the stairs. I could see a leg and some underthings — felt embarrassed as the devil. She wanted to know what I was doing, breaking into the apartment. I said I wanted to see Mr. Mason, and she told me Mr. Mason wasn’t there and to get out. Naturally, under the circumstances, I turned around and went downstairs.”

“You didn’t tell me anything about this,” Mason said.

“No, I didn’t. I felt rather cheap about the whole business. I realized that a man in my position couldn’t afford to admit having broken in on something of that sort. I didn’t see the woman’s face, and she hadn’t seen mine. I thought no one knew who I was.”

“Did they?”

“Some woman who lived next door. She’d heard some talk, and evidently she’s one of those curious people who peek out through window shades, and pry into other persons’ business.”

“She saw you?”

“Not when I went in, but when I came out,” Witherspoon said. “She identified the car. She’d even jotted down the license number. Why, is more than I know, but she had.”

“Didn’t she give any reason for writing down the license number?”

“I don’t know. She tells the police that she thought a woman came in with me. Probably because she heard the voice of a woman in the apartment next to hers.”

“Did some woman go in there with you?”

“No,” Witherspoon said. “Of course not. I was alone.”

“Lois wasn’t with you?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Nor Mrs. Burr?”

Witherspoon shifted his eyes. “I want to talk with you about Mrs. Burr in a minute. That’s another one of those damnable things.”

“All right,” Mason said. “Tell it in your own way. It’s your funeral. You may as well make the oration.”

“Well, that woman next door reported my license number to the police. Naturally, if that duck in the goldfish bowl was my duck, and it came from my place, and Marvin Adams hadn’t brought it, the police thought perhaps I had.”

“Rather a natural assumption,” Mason commented dryly.

“I tell you it’s the damnedest combination of coincidences,” Witherspoon stormed angrily. “I get angry every time I think of it.”

“Suppose you tell me about Burr.”

“Well, this morning, of course, I told Mrs. Burr about the excitement in El Templo and about how Milter had been murdered. Roland Burr was feeling better, and he wanted to see me, so I went in and had a talk with him.”

“And you told him about it?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“Well, he was curious — the way anyone would be.”

“Did you tell him anything about Milter?” Mason asked.

“Well, a little something, not much. I’ve grown rather fond of Roland Burr. I felt that I could trust him.”

“He knew I was at the house?”

“Yes.”

“Did he know why?”

“Well — well, I think some of those things were discussed in a rather general way.”

“Then what?”

“This morning Roland Burr asked me to bring him his favorite fishing rod. I told him that I would as soon as I could get to it.”

“Where was it?”

“He said he’d left it in my den. I believe I told you that I’m particular about that den of mine. There’s a lock on the door, and I have the only key to it. I never let the servants go in there except when I unlock the door and stand around watching them. I keep quite a stock of liquor in there, and that’s one thing about these Mexicans. You can’t trust them around tequila.”

“And Burr had left his fishing rod in there?” Mason asked.

“Apparently so — that is, he said he had. I don’t remember that he did, but he must have.”

“When?”

“He was in there with me, chatting. That was the day he broke his leg, and he’d had his fishing rod with him. But I can’t remember that he left it there. I can’t remember that he didn’t. Well, anyway, he asked me to get it for him, said there was no particular hurry about it, but he’d like to have it to sort of play around with it. He’s a regular nut about fishing rods, likes to feel them, whip them in his hands, and all that sort of thing. Plays with them the way a man will play with some favorite gun, or camera, or other toy.”

“And the police know about that rod?” Mason asked.

“Oh, yes. Mrs. Burr and the doctor were there at the time. I promised I’d get it for him, and then the doctor left to drive into town; and Mrs. Burr said she’d like to go in with him. I told her I was going to be in town later on, and I’d pick her up and drive her back.”

“So she went in with the doctor?”

“Yes... That left me there in the house alone, except for the servants.”

“And what did you do?”

“Well, I fooled around for a while with some odds and ends, and intended to go into the den to get Burr’s fishing rod, as soon as I got a chance.”

“What time was this?”

“Oh, around eighty-thirty or nine o’clock I guess. I had a lot of things to do around the place, getting the men started on their work, and so forth. Burr had told me he was in no hurry for the fishing rod. Sometime in the afternoon, I think he said.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said. “Get to the point.”

“Well, about an hour later one of the servants passed by the room. You know where his room is. It’s on the ground floor, and the windows open on the patio. The servant looked through the window and saw Burr sitting in bed, and from the position in which he was sitting — well, dammit, the Mexican saw he was dead.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said.

“The servant came and called me. I dashed to the door, opened it, saw Burr there on the bed, and immediately saw a vase sitting on the table about ten feet from the bed. I got a whiff of some peculiar gas, and it keeled me over. The Mexican dragged me out into the corridor, slammed the door shut, and called the police.

“The sheriff came out, took a look through the window, came to the conclusion the man had been killed in the same way that Milter had been killed, and smashed in the windows and let the place air out. Then the officers went in. There’s no question about it. He’d been killed in the same way — cyanide of potassium dropped into the vase of acid. The poor devil had never stood a chance. He was there on the bed with his leg in a cast and a weight on the leg suspended from a pulley. He couldn’t possibly move out of bed.”

“Where was the nurse?” Mason asked.

“That’s just it,” Witherspoon said. “That damn nurse was at the bottom of the whole business.”

“In what way?”

“Oh, she got temperamental — or Burr did. I don’t know which. The nurse is telling an absolutely preposterous story.”

“Well, where was she?” Mason asked. “I thought Burr was to have someone in constant attendance.”

Witherspoon said, “I told you that they caught Burr trying to get out of bed, that Burr said someone was trying to kill him. The doctor said it was a plain case of nervous reaction after the administration of narcotics. No one paid very much attention to it — not then. Of course, later on, when this thing happened, his words had the effect of a prophecy. So the police got in touch with the nurse. The nurse said that Burr had told her in confidence that I was the someone he expected to try and kill him.”

“The nurse hadn’t said anything about that to the authorities?”

“No. She also thought it might have been a reaction from the narcotics. The doctor was certain of it. You know how a nurse has to defer to the doctor on a case. Under the circumstances, if she’d said anything to anyone, she’d have been guilty of all sorts of professional misconduct. She had to keep her mouth shut — so she says — now.”

Mason said, “That still isn’t answering my question as to where the nurse was when all this happened.”

“She was in town.”

“And Burr was there alone?”

“Yes. You see, Burr absolutely couldn’t move out of that bed. He could, however, use his arms and hands, and there was a telephone right by the bed. As a matter of fact, he really didn’t need a nurse in attendance all the time. He could have got action whenever he wanted to pick up the telephone receiver. I have an inter-room telephone communication in the house. You can press a key on the switchboard and hook your telephone in on one of the outside trunk lines, or you can switch it over to any one of half a dozen rooms in the house, simply by pressing the proper button. Burr could have called the kitchen any time he wanted anything.”

“Tell me about the nurse,” Mason insisted.

“Well, when Burr was first put to bed and the leg set, he had his wife take a bag out of the closet and bring it to him. That bag had some of his fishing flies, a couple of his favorite books, a little flashlight, five or six books of the pocket series, and various odds and ends. He could keep that bag by the side of his bed, reach down in it, and tie flies, look over his reels, or get a book.

“After this nurse came on the job, she told him that she thought it would be better for him to tell her whenever he wanted anything, so she was going to unpack the bag and put the contents over on the dresser. She told him to ask her for whatever he wanted. She said she wasn’t going to have the bag there where she’d stumble over it every time she walked around the bed.

“That infuriated Burr. He said no woman was going to mix his fly-tying stuff all up, that he’d keep his things by the side of his bed, and whenever he wanted them, he’d get them.

“The nurse tried to show her authority, and grabbed the bag. He managed to catch her wrist, and all but twisted her arm off. Then he told her to get out and stay out. He said he’d start throwing things at her if she so much as stuck her head in the door. The nurse telephoned the doctor. The doctor came out, and the nurse, Mrs. Burr, the doctor, and I all had a talk with Burr. The upshot of it was that the doctor and the nurse went back to town. Mrs. Burr went with them to pick up a new nurse. The telephone was left switched on to the kitchen, and the women in the kitchen were told to pay particular attention to see that Burr’s telephone was answered just as soon as he picked up the receiver in his room. It certainly seemed as though it would be safe enough to leave him alone under those circumstances. At least the doctor thought so.”

“And you?” Mason asked.

“Emphatically,” Witherspoon said. “To tell you the truth, I was just a bit fed up with Burr’s going temperamental. I told him, somewhat forcefully, that I thought it would be better for him to go to a hospital. Of course, I had to make allowances for the man He’d been suffering a great deal of pain. He was still very weak and very sick. The danger of complications had not yet passed. He was nervous and irritable. The after effect of the drugs was distorting his mental perspective. Undoubtedly, he was hard to get along with.

“However, I think his actions were very unreasonable, and his treatment of the nurse decidedly boorish.”

“And what connects you with his death?” Mason asked.

“The damn fishing rod. There he was on the bed with the fishing rod in his hands. He’d just started to put it together. He had two joints in his right hand, and the other joint in his left hand. Well, you can see where that leaves me. I’m the only one who could have got the fishing rod, the only one who could have given it to him. I was alone in the house. The dogs were loose. No stranger could have got in. The servants swear they hadn’t gone near the room. The poor devil never stood a chance. There he was, held motionless in bed, and this vase of poison stuck on the table about seven or eight feet from the bed, where he couldn’t possibly have reached it to have knocked it off, or done anything about it.”

“But he could have picked up the telephone?”

“Yes. Evidently the gas took effect too quickly for that. He didn’t even know what was happening. Someone — some friend of his had walked in the room, handed him that fishing rod, probably said, ‘Look, Roland, I happened to find your fishing rod. It wasn’t in Witherspoon’s study at all. You left it somewhere else,’ and Burr had taken the fishing rod and started to put it together. The friend had said, ‘Well, so long. If there’s anything you want, just let me know,’ and dropped some cyanide of potassium into the acid, and walked out. A few seconds later. Burr was dead. It had to be some intimate friend. Well, there you are.”

“From the police viewpoint,” Mason said, “it’s a perfect case. You were about the only one who had the opportunity. How about motive?”

Witherspoon became embarrassed.

“Go ahead,” Mason told him. “Let’s have the bad news. What about the motive?”

“Well,” Witherspoon blurted, “Mrs. Burr is a very peculiar woman. She’s as natural as a child. She’s affectionate and impulsive and — well, lots of things. You’d have to know her to understand.”

“Never mind beating around the bush,” Mason said. “Specifically what’s the motive?”

“The police think I was in love with Mrs. Burr and wanted to get her husband out of the way.”

“What makes them think that?”

“I’ve told you. Mrs. Burris natural and demonstrative and affectionate, and — well, she’s kissed me a couple of times right in front of her husband.”

“And sometimes not in front of her husband?” Mason asked.

“That is the hell of it,” Witherspoon admitted. “No one has been present when she’s kissed me in front of her husband except the three of us. But a couple of servants have seen her kiss me when her husband wasn’t there. Most natural thing in the world, Mason. I can’t explain it to you. Some women are just naturally affectionate and want to be fondled and kissed. I wasn’t making any passionate love to her, the way it sounds when the servants tell it. Mexicans don’t understand anything except passion in lovemaking. I simply slipped my arm around her in a fatherly sort of way — and, well, she put her face up to be kissed, and I kissed her.”

“Can the police trace any of the poison to you?”

“That’s another bad thing,” Witherspoon admitted. “The acid is stuff I keep on the ranch, and I always use cyanide for poisoning ground squirrels and coyotes. Ground squirrels are a terrific pest. Once they get into a field of grain, they eat the grain off. They hang around the stable and eat the horses’ hay. The only way you can get rid of them is to poison them. It’s customary all over California to poison ground squirrels, and cyanide is one of the things that’s used. They use quite a bit of strychnine and other stuff. I’ve got poisoned barley on the ranch, keep it there all the time. I also have a stock of cyanide. Well, there you are. Just a plain damn case of circumstantial evidence, without a thing on earth for the police to go on except those circumstances. It puts me in a hell of a spot.”

“Doesn’t it,” Mason said.

Witherspoon flashed him an angry glance.

“You might turn back the hands of the clock eighteen years,” Mason went on dryly, “and think about how Horace Adams must have felt when the police put him in jail, charged him with murder, and he realized that circumstances had conspired to weave a web of evidence around him. I remember when I told you that circumstantial evidence could be the greatest perjurer on earth, not because the circumstances lied, but because men’s interpretation of the circumstances lied. You were inclined to be rather skeptical then.”

“I tell you,” Witherspoon said, “this is something unique. Dammit, this couldn’t happen again in a hundred years.”

“Well, make it eighteen,” Mason said.

Witherspoon glowered in impotent rage.

“Do you want me to represent you?” Mason asked.

“Hell, no!” Witherspoon roared angrily. “I’m sorry I ever sent for you. I’ll get myself a lawyer who isn’t trying to teach me some moral lesson. I’ll get myself a good lawyer. I’ll get the best money can buy. I’ll beat this case hands down.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said, and walked out.