The Case of the Drowning Duck

Chapter 21

Despite the fact that the night had been cold and that the season was early spring, the midday sun sent the thermometer climbing up toward the top of the tube, and Judge Meehan, sitting in Chambers, had relaxed into the comfortable informality of shirt sleeves and a plug of tobacco.

Mason entered just a few moments before Copeland arrived. Judge Meehan, teetering back and forth in a squeaky swivel chair behind a littered desk, nodded to them, sent a stream of tobacco-stained saliva into a battered brass cuspidor, said, “Sit down, gentlemen. Let’s see if we can find out what this is all about.”

The two lawyers seated themselves.

Judge Meehan said, “We don’t want to throw away any evidence, and if there’s something in this case that makes it look like the district attorney was barking up a wrong tree, we’d like to find out about it, wouldn’t we, Ben?”

The district attorney said, “I’m barking up the right tree, all right. That’s why you’re hearing so many squeaks.”

Mason smiled at the district attorney.

Judge Meehan said, “Personally, I’d like to know what this is all about.”

Mason said, “Around twenty years ago, Marvin Adams’ father was executed for the murder of his business partner, a man named Latwell. Latwell’s widow married a man named Dangerfield. The murder took place in Winterburg City. Adams’ father said that Latwell told him he was going to run off with a girl named Corine Hassen, but authorities found Latwell’s body buried under the cement floor in the basement of the manufacturing establishment.”

“So that’s where this Corine Hassen entered into the case?” Judge Meehan said.

“I never knew her name,” the district attorney announced. “I couldn’t understand what Mr. Mason was getting at when he was asking questions about Corine Hassen.”

“Witherspoon know anything about this?” Judge Meehan asked, the tempo of his tobacco chewing increasing somewhat.

Mason said, “Yes. He hired the Allgood Detective Agency in Los Angeles to investigate. They sent Milter; then they fired Milter because he talked too much.”

Judge Meehan said, “Of course, this is all off the record. If you boys want me to go back in there and just sit down and listen, I’ll go back and sit down and listen; but if there’s any point about that note being valuable evidence — or if Witherspoon isn’t guilty of those two murders and someone else is, it might be a good idea to have an informal chat and sort of pool our information.”

“I have nothing to say,” Copeland remarked.

Mason said, “Milter was a blackmailer. He was here to collect blackmail. The evidence shows he told his common-law wife he was about ready to make a clean-up. Now whom was he blackmailing?”

“Witherspoon, of course,” the district attorney said.

Mason shook his head. “In the first place, Witherspoon isn’t the sort of man who would pay blackmail. In the second place, Milter had no means of bringing pressure on Witherspoon. Witherspoon didn’t care if all the facts about that old murder came out. He was getting ready to force his daughter to call of the engagement and wipe the thing off his books.”

“How about Witherspoon’s daughter?” Judge Meehan asked. “Hasn’t she got money?”

“Yes.”

“Well, how about her then?”

“If Milter had gone to her with that story, she’d have married Marvin Adams, anyway. He certainly couldn’t say to her, ‘Look here, Miss Witherspoon, I know something about the man you’re going with that you wouldn’t want to hear. If you’ll pay me umpty thousand dollars, I won’t tell you.’”

“That’s right,” Judge Meehan said, “but that isn’t what he’d have told her. He’d have said, ‘You pay me umpty thousand dollars, and I won’t tell your father.’ ”

“Lois Witherspoon wouldn’t have paid him any umpty thousand dollars,” Mason said, grinning. “She wouldn’t have paid him umpty cents. Shed have slapped his damn face, grabbed Marvin Adams, gone over to Yuma, got married, and defied the world.”

“She would, at that,” Judge Meehan agreed, grinning.

“Now, mind you,” Mason went on, “Milter was going to get a large sum of money. He told his common-law wife it was going to be enough so they could travel anywhere they wanted to. That means he had something that was bigger and better than just the ordinary shakedown. It was connected with something he’d discovered while investigating that old murder case. And the person whom he was blackmailing didn’t have the ready cash available to pay off, but was expecting to get it.”

“How do you know that?” Judge Meehan asked.

Mason said, “I’m making deductions now.”

“They don’t hold water,” Copeland objected.

Mason said, “Let’s forget that we’re on opposite sides of the case. Let’s look at this in the light of cold reason. A blackmailer has information. He naturally tries to get all of the money he can for that information. When he’s once got it, he clears out — until after the money’s gone, and then he’s back for more.”

Judge Meehan said, “Keep right on. You’re doing fine as far as I’m concerned.”

Mason said. “Let’s see where that leaves me. Milter investigated a murder. He uncovered certain information. He came here to blackmail someone. That someone kept him waiting. But on the night he was murdered, he expected to get his money. Now what was the information out of which he expected to make a fortune? Whom was he blackmailing and why?”

“Well,” Meehan said, “suppose you answer that question. You don’t seem to think it could have been Witherspoon or his daughter. Therefore, it must have been young Adams. Now, where was young Adams going to get the money?”

The district attorney suddenly sat up straight in his chair. “By marrying Lois Witherspoon!” he exclaimed. “And then getting control of her fortune.”

Mason grinned, said to Copeland, “Then your theory is that Adams was going to get married, immediately grab his wife’s fortune, and squander it on a blackmailer to keep him from telling something which his father-in-law already knew?”

The smile left Copeland’s face.

“Suppose you tell us,” Judge Meehan said.

Mason said, “The agency Milter worked for was crooked. It ran a Hollywood scandal sheet and wasn’t above blackmailing its own clients. Allgood decided that he’d shake down Witherspoon. He was planning the first step in that campaign when I appeared on the scene. He didn’t change his plan of campaign because of that, but simply started using me as a means of contact. It was a penny-ante sort of blackmail, something which had to be carried on on a wholesale basis in order to pay off. Milter, on the other hand, was after real big game. As I see it, gentlemen, there’s only one thing he could have uncovered in connection with that old case which would have given him information that was important enough to be sold for a small fortune.”

The swivel chair squeaked as Judge Meehan, sitting bolt upright, said, “By George, that sounds reasonable. I take it you mean the identity of the real murderer?”

Mason said, “Exactly.”

“Who?” Judge Meehan asked.

Mason said, “Mr. Burr was staying out at Witherspoon’s house. Mr. Burr had been in Winterburg City at about the time of the murders. Mr. Burr was trying to raise cash. He told Witherspoon he had sent East for some money, that he expected it to arrive the day he was kicked by the horse. The history of that old case shows that Corine Hassen said she had a boy friend who was insanely jealous. Roland Burr would have been about twenty-seven at the time. He knew Corine Hassen. Now put all of those things together, and you can make a pretty good deduction as to whom Milter was blackmailing, and why.”

“But how about this money Milter was going to get from the East?” Copeland asked.

“It arrived, all right,” Mason said. “Let’s look back at that old crime. More than one person was involved in it. Carrying Latwell’s body down into the basement of the old manufacturing plant, breaking a hole in the cement in the cellar, digging a grave, interring the body, placing new cement over the hole, putting a pile of refuse back over that place in the cellar, then dashing to Reno, finding where Corine Hassen was waiting for Latwell to join her, getting her out in a rowboat, upsetting the rowboat, letting her drown, then removing her clothes, and leaving the nude body in the lake — well, I would say all that took two persons, one of whom must have had access to the manufacturing plant. If you were being blackmailed for a murder, and you had an accomplice who had money, you’d naturally send for that accomplice and tell her to pay up, wouldn’t you?”

“You mean Latwell’s widow?” Judge Meehan asked.

“That’s right — the present Mrs. Dangerfield.”

Judge Meehan looked across at the district attorney. “This sounds like it was going to hold water,” he said.

Copeland was frowning. “It doesn’t account for the facts,” he said.

“Now then,” Mason went on, “suppose the accomplice decided that it would be a lot better to get rid of Milter than to pay blackmail. In order to do this successfully, the pair would naturally want what crooks would call a ‘fall guy,’ someone to take the blame, someone who had a motive and an opportunity.”

“Witherspoon?” Copeland asked skeptically.

Mason shook his head. “Witherspoon blundered into it by accident. The one they picked as the logical suspect was Marvin Adams. You can see what a sweet case they could have built up by using circumstantial evidence. When the officers broke in to Milter’s apartment, they’d find a drowned duck in a fish bowl. That would be sufficiently unusual to attract immediate attention. Marvin Adams had to go into town to take that midnight train. He had to do some packing. He was planning to come out to Witherspoon’s ranch in a borrowed jalopy. That meant Lois Witherspoon couldn’t ride back to town with him, because, if she did, she wouldn’t have had any way of getting back to the ranch. Marvin had some packing to do. Therefore, it was almost a certainty that, between eleven o’clock in the evening and midnight. Adams would be in El Templo. He’d leave somewhat early to walk down to the train. No one would be with him. He couldn’t prove an alibi. His motivation would be obvious. Milter had tried to blackmail him to keep the old murder case a secret. Adams didn’t have any money. Therefore, he resorted to murder.”

Judge Meehan nodded, and there was an almost imperceptible nod from the district attorney.

“It was as logical as you could hope to plan out anything in advance,” Mason said.

“But how did they know that young Adams was going to take a duck off the ranch?” Judge Meehan inquired.

Mason took the letter Marvin Adams had given him from his pocket. “Because they held out a bait of one hundred dollars,” he said, “by the simple expedient of signing a fictitious name to a letter.”

Judge Meehan read the letter out loud. “I suppose Marvin Adams gave this to you?” he asked Mason.

“Yes.”

“Well,” Copeland said, his tone thoughtful, “suppose you tell us what did happen, Mr. Mason.”

Mason said, “Burr was being blackmailed. He sent for Mrs. Dangerfield to come out and bring money. She had a way of her own that was a lot better than paying money. Witherspoon had some acid and cyanide there on the ranch. Burr got ample supplies of both, wrapped them up in a package, checked the package at the Pacific Greyhound stage office, and mailed Mrs. Dangerfield the check at her El Templo hotel. Then he went back to the ranch.

“Doubtless, he intended to do something else which was either connected with the murder or which would pin the crime on young Adams. But something happened he couldn’t foresee. He got kicked by a horse. He was put to bed, given hypodermics, and found himself flat on his back with his leg sticking up in the air and a rope attached to a weight tied around it. That was something he couldn’t possibly have foreseen.”

“What happened there in Milter’s apartment?” Judge Meehan asked. “How do you figure that out?”

“The girl who was working for Allgood telephoned that she was coming down. She had something important to tell him. So Milter, who was playing along with two women — his common-law wife and this blonde — told Alberta Cromwell he was having a business visitor at midnight, and made her think his relationship with the blonde was purely a business one. But it happened that Mrs. Dangerfield came in before the girl from the detective agency. Mrs. Dangerfield probably said, ‘All right, you’ve got us. You want umpty-ump thousand dollars. We’re going to pay it, and no hard feelings. We just want it understood that it’ll be one payment and no more. We don’t want any future shakedowns.’

“Flushed with triumph, Milter said, ‘Sure, I was just mixing up some hot buttered rum. Come on back and have a drink.’ Mrs. Dangerfield followed him into the kitchen, poured the hydrochloric acid into a water pitcher, dropped in the cyanide, perhaps asked where the bathroom was, and walked out, closing the kitchen door behind her. A few seconds later, when she heard Milter’s body fall to the floor, she knew her work was done. It only remained to plant the duck in the fish bowl, and get out. Then the complications started.”

“You mean Witherspoon?” Judge Meehan asked.

“First, there was the blonde from the detective agency. She had a key. She calmly opened the door and started climbing up the stairs. That was where Mrs. Dangerfield thought fast. You have to hand it to her.”

“What did she do?” Copeland asked.

Mason grinned. “She took off her clothes.”

“I’m not certain that I follow you on that,” Copeland said.

“Simple,” Mason said. “Milter had two women in love with him. One was his common-law wife. One was the girl from the detective agency. Each one of them naturally thought she was the only one, but was jealous and suspicious of the other. The blonde had a key. She started up the stairs. She saw a semi-nude woman in the apartment. She had come to warn Milter that Mason was on his trail. What would she naturally do under those circumstances?”

“Turn around and walk out,” Judge Meehan said, spitting tobacco juice explosively into the cuspidor, “and say, ‘to hell with him.’”

“That’s it exactly,” Mason said. “And she was so excited she didn’t even bother to pull the street door all the way shut. Then Witherspoon came along. He started upstairs, and Mrs. Dangerfield pulled the same thing on him, making him retreat in embarrassment. Then, with the coast clear, Mrs. Dangerfield walked out.

“Milter’s common-law wife had been lulled into temporary quiescence, but she was suspicious. She watched and listened. When Mrs. Dangerfield, standing half undressed at the head of the stairs, argued with Witherspoon about coming up, Milter’s common-law wife heard the feminine voice, decided it was her chance to see who the woman was, and poked her head out of the window. She saw Witherspoon leaving the apartment and got the license number of his automobile.”

Judge Meehan thought things over for a few moments, then said, “Well, it could have happened just that way. I suppose the common-law wife came downstairs, and saw you at the door. She didn’t want to stand there and ring the bell. And, anyway, you were ringing the bell and not getting any answer. She wanted to get to a telephone, so she started uptown. That gave Mrs. Dangerfield a chance to put on her clothes and leave the apartment.”

“That’s right, because I left then, too.”

“All right,” Judge Meehan said. “You’ve advanced an interesting theory. It isn’t any more than that, but it’s interesting. It accounts for Milter’s murder, but it doesn’t account for Burr’s murder. I suppose Mrs. Dangerfield decided she wasn’t going to have a pin-headed accomplice who was always getting her into trouble, so she decided to eliminate him in the same way. But how did she get past the dogs out at Witherspoon’s house? How did she get the fishing rod for Burr?”

Mason shook his head. “She didn’t.”

Judge Meehan nodded. “I was sort of thinking,” he said, “that just because both murders were committed with acid and cyanide isn’t conclusive evidence they were both done by the same person. And yet that’s the theory on which we’ve been working.”

“It stands to reason,” Copeland said.

Judge Meehan shook his head. “The means are unusual. Not many people would have thought of committing the first murder that way, but after all the publicity, it’s reasonable to suppose the second murder could have been committed by any one of ten thousand people — so far as the means are concerned. Just because two people are killed three or four days apart by shooting, you don’t think they must have been killed by the same murderer. The only reason you fall into a trap here is because the means were a little unusual.”

“Exactly,” Mason said. “And in that connection, here’s something that’s very significant and very interesting. When I came to Witherspoon’s ranch, I was carrying with me a transcript of the evidence in that old murder case and some newspaper clippings. I left them in a desk there at Witherspoon’s house during dinner, and someone opened that desk and moved the transcripts — someone who evidently wanted to know the reason for my visit.”

“You mean Burr?” Judge Meehan asked.

“Burr was then laid up in bed with a broken leg.”

“Marvin Adams, perhaps?”

Mason shook his head. “If Marvin Adams had known anything about that old murder case, he’d have probably broken off his engagement to Lois Witherspoon. He most certainly would have been so emotionally upset, we could have detected it. John Witherspoon wouldn’t have done it because he knew why were were there. Lois Witherspoon wouldn’t have done it; first, because she isn’t a snoop, and second, because when I finally told her what we were there for, she turned so chalky white that I knew she’d had no previous intimation. That leaves one person, one person who left the dinner table while we were eating and was gone for quite a few minutes.”

“Who?” Copeland asked.

“Mrs. Burr.”

Judge Meehan’s chair squeaked just a little. “You mean she murdered her husband?”

Mason said, “She found out about the old case and about what we were investigating. She’d put two and two together. It tied in with her husband’s financial worries and the fact that Mrs. Dangerfield had arrived in El Templo. She ran into Mrs. Dangerfield on the street. Mrs. Burr put two and two together, and she knew. What’s more, Burr knew that she knew.

“Mrs. Burr is highly emotional. She doesn’t like to stay put. Her record shows that after she’s been married just so long, she gets restless. Witherspoon may have thought those embraces were fatherly or platonic, but Mrs. Burr didn’t. Mrs. Burr was looking around at the Witherspoon ranch and the Witherspoon bank account. And she’d found out her husband was guilty of murder.”

“How did she find it out? Where was her proof?” Judge Meehan asked.

Mason said, “Look at the evidence. The nurse was fired when she tried to unpack the bag which Burr kept by his bed. What was in that bag? Books, flies, fishing tackle — and what else?”

“Nothing else,” Copeland said. “I was personally present and searched the bag.”

Mason smiled, “After Burr’s death.”

“Naturally.”

“Wait a minute,” Judge Meehan said to Mason. “That room was full of deadly gas fumes. Until the windows had been smashed open, no one could have got in there to have taken anything out of the bag, so you’ve got to admit that the things that were in the bag when Ben Copeland searched it were the things that were in the bag when Burr was murdered, unless the murderer took something out.”

Mason said, “Well, let’s look at it this way. Burr got the acid in the cyanide for Mrs. Dangerfield to use. He got plenty while he was getting it, and he had both acid and cyanide left in his bag. He may have intended to double-cross Mrs. Dangerfield — or perhaps his wife, who was getting altogether too suspicious. Everything was sitting pretty as far as he was concerned, and then he got laid up with a broken leg. As soon as he became conscious and rational, he asked his wife to bring that bag and put it right by the side of his bed. He didn’t want anyone else touching it. You can imagine how he felt when the nurse announced she was going to unpack it. Someone who wasn’t a trained nurse might fail to appreciate the importance of the acid in the bag with the cyanide. But with a nurse — well, you can see what would have happened.”

“Now, wait a minute, Mason,” Judge Meehan said. “Your reasoning breaks down there. Mrs. Burr wouldn’t have killed her husband. She didn’t have to kill him. All she had to do was to go to the sheriff.”

“Exactly.” Mason said, “and that’s what she was intending to do. Put yourself in Burr’s position. There he was in bed, trapped. He couldn’t move. His wife not only knew he was guilty of murder, but had the proof. She was going to the sheriff. The nurse all but made the discovery of Burr’s secret. His wife already knew it. Burr fired the nurse. He was hoping that some opportunity would present itself to kill his wife before she went to the sheriff, but he was laid up in bed. He realized he was trapped. There was only one way out for Roland Burr.”

“What?” Judge Meehan asked, so interested that his jaws had quit moving.

Mason said, “The nurse knew all about acids and cyanides, but she didn’t know anything about fishing. Burr got her to hand him an aluminum case, saying that it held some blueprints. He slipped it under the bed covers. That was his fishing rod. He was naturally very bitter about Witherspoon. He knew that his wife intended to get rid of him, and then marry Witherspoon. So Burr decided he would spike that little scheme right at the start. He had only one way out, but in taking it, he intended to have a sardonic revenge on the man whom his wife had selected as the next in line for matrimonial honors.

“He made it a point to ask Witherspoon to get the fishing rod for him in the presence of witnesses. It was a fishing rod he already had concealed under the covers in the aluminum case. As soon as he was left alone, he took out the fishing rod, put two joints together, placed the third joint on the bed within easy reach, screwed the cover back on the aluminum case, dropped it down to the floor, and gave it a good shove. It rolled clear across the room. Then Burr opened the bag. He took out the things he was afraid the nurse would find, the bottle of acid and the cyanide. He put them on a moveable table on wheels which had been placed by the side of his bed. He dumped the acid into a vase that was on the table, dropped the cyanide into it, took the butt of the fishing pole, and pushed the table just as far as he could push it. Then he picked up the tip of the rod with his left hand and held it as though he had been inserting it in the ferrule.”

Judge Meehan was too interested to take time out to expectorate. He held his lips tightly together, his eyes on Mason.

“And then?” District Attorney Copeland asked.

“Then,” Mason said, very simply, “he took a deep breath.”