The Case of the Fenced-In Woman

Chapter 8

It was twenty minutes later when Tragg returned to Eden’s side of the house. He found Mason and Eden in the living room.

“How was the interview with Mrs. Carson?” Mason asked.

“Not very satisfactory, thanks to you,” Tragg said. “However, the lady told me quite a few things. She gave me more information than she realized.”

“I see,” Mason said. “Now how would you like me to give you some more?”

“I don’t think I’d like it,” Tragg said. “I fear you when you’re bearing gifts, but go right ahead.”

Mason said, “I would like to call your attention to the fact that Carson’s shirt sleeves are wet up to the elbow, but the coat sleeves aren’t wet except on the inside where water presumably soaked in from the shirt.”

“And how do you know all this?” Tragg asked.

“I know,” Mason said, “because a newspaper reporter told me so.”

Tragg said, “You have very carefully called my attention to this thing. Just what do you think it means?”

Mason said, “There is a swimming pool on the place and we have a man whose shirt sleeves are wet up to the elbow. I think the two things go together.”

“All right,” Tragg said, “we’ll look around.”

Tragg started toward the swimming pool, then turned as he noticed that Mason and Eden had fallen in behind him.

“I don’t think I’ll need either of you to help me look, Counselor,” he said.

“My client,” Mason said, “will need me to keep track of what you find.”

“Well, your client’s wishes don’t control me in the matter.”

“All right then,” Mason said, “I’ll put it up to you this way. Do you have a search warrant?”

“I don’t need one. There’s been a murder committed and I can look around for evidence.”

“That’s quite right,” Mason said, “and you have a right to keep all people away who may obscure or remove the evidence, but when you leave the vicinity of the murder and start prowling around the premises without a search warrant, the legal representative of the owner of the premises is entitled to—”

“All right, all right,” Tragg conceded irritably, “I’m not going to argue with you. Come along, but don’t interfere and don’t try to remove or suppress any evidence.”

Tragg walked out to the swimming pool, surveyed the barbed-wire fence stretched in a taut line across the surface of the pool and across the patio.

“That’s quite a job,” he said. “Quite an engineering job, also.”

Mason nodded.

“You’d have to dive to get under that fence,” Tragg said. “The wires are too tight and too close together for a person to crawl through. Well, let’s look around.”

Tragg took off his coat, rolled up his sleeve, got down on his hands and knees and started feeling his way along the side of the swimming pool, his right hand in the water, exploring every tile of the swimming pool to the depth of his elbow.

“Just what did you think would be here, Mason?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Mason said. “I thought it was significant that the man’s arms were wet.”

“Of course it’s significant,” Tragg said, continuing to grope his way around the pool.

Vivian Carson, standing in the doorway of her side of the patio, asked, “May I inquire just what it is you’re looking for?”

“Evidence,” Tragg said curtly.

Tragg completed his circuit of the swimming pool on that side of the barbed-wire fence. “Well,” he said, “I guess there’s nothing here. We’ll try the other side — although I don’t see what you’re getting at, Mason.

“Would you mind placing a chair next to the barbed wire on your side, Mrs. Carson? I’ll place a chair on this side... right on the tile border of the pool will be all right... Thank you very much. In that way I can make an inspection without going all the way around.”

Eden brought out a straight-backed chair which he placed on his side of the fence. Mrs. Carson brought out a similar chair.

Climbing to one chair and then stepping over the taut wire to the other chair, Tragg let himself down on the other side of the fence and completed his inspection of the pool.

“I don’t seem to find a thing,” he said, his manner thoughtful.

Mason pointed to the cement steps leading up from the shallow end of the pool. “Did you feel all around those, Lieutenant?”

“I felt all around those steps.”

“And in back of the steps? From here it looks to me as though the first cement step isn’t right up against the swimming pool.”

“Well, what about it?” Tragg asked.

“Under ordinary swimming-pool construction,” Mason said, “I thought—”

“Okay, I get it,” Tragg said impatiently.

The police lieutenant got down on his knees again, said, “I’ll probably have worn out the knees on these pants by the time I get done with this thing. I... You’re right, Mason! There’s a crack between the upper step and the back of the swimming pool. I can get my fingers in it. But that doesn’t mean anything.”

“No?” Mason asked.

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute,” Tragg said. “There’s a ring here.”

“What sort of a ring?”

“A metal ring and it’s on a cord. I’m going to pull it, Mason, and...”

Tragg braced himself with his left hand, pulled with his right.

“This thing is moving,” Tragg said. “It’s on a cable. It... Well, what do you know, what do you know?”

Some ten feet back from the swimming pool a tile raised on a hinge, disclosing a square receptacle.

Tragg let go of the ring, jumped to his feet.

“So that’s it,” he said, “a concealed strongbox. Let’s see what’s in it.”

“You stay here,” Mason told Eden, then climbed up on the chair and over the wire fence to Mrs. Carson’s side of the house. He hurried over to join Tragg. They looked down into a steel-lined recess that was nearly eighteen inches square and some two feet deep.

“Not a darn thing in it,” Tragg said.

Vivian Carson, standing behind them looking down into the dark interior, asked, “What in the world is all this?”

Tragg looked up. “Suppose you tell us, Mrs. Carson.”

She shook her head. “It’s all news to me.”

Tragg’s brows knitted thoughtfully.

“Carson built this house, Mason?” he asked.

“That’s my understanding.”

“And the swimming pool?”

“The whole house, swimming pool, patio and everything.”

Vivian Carson said, “So that’s it! That’s where he was concealing his money.”

“What money?” Tragg asked.

“He jockeyed things around so that it was impossible to get any kind of a property accounting out of him,” she said breathlessly. “Judge Goodwin knew that my ex-husband had been concealing assets and he was trying to force him to disclose them. He examined him at great length about whether he had any savings accounts, any safety deposit boxes, anything that... That’s what he was doing when he constructed this house; he made this secret safe and he put cash and securities in here.”

Tragg looked at her thoughtfully. “You’re jumping to a lot of conclusions just because there’s an empty hole here.”

“All right,” she said crisply, “what are your conclusions, Lieutenant?”

Tragg grinned. “I collect evidence. We arrive at conclusions after we get the evidence. If we jumped to conclusions and then tried to get the evidence to support those conclusions, we’d be in trouble all the time.”

Mason said, “I think Mrs. Carson is making a perfectly obvious inference, Lieutenant.”

“I suppose so,” Tragg said, “but I always get suspicious of people who jump to too many conclusions too fast, even if they are logical. Is this the first time you ever saw this receptacle here, Mrs. Carson?”

“Yes.”

“First time you ever saw this tile hinged back?”

“Yes, I tell you. I never knew anything about it. How does it work? Is it from someplace in the swimming pool?”

“It’s worked from a place in the swimming pool,” Tragg said.

Tragg went back again and inspected the step in the swimming pool. “Well, Mason,” he said, “I guess that does it. We’ve solved the mystery of the wet shirt sleeves. If Carson was high-grading his income and kept things concealed from his wife, and probably from the income-tax people, this could have been his hiding place. Back of that cement step is a ring on a wire cable. By pulling it about two inches you actuate a lever and a spring raises this tile — and, of course, that furnishes a good motive for his murder.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean by that,” Vivian said.

“It’s very simple,” Tragg explained. “Loring Carson may have had a lot of money here — a great deal more than was found on his body His wet shirt sleeves indicate he may have hurriedly opened the place of concealment and removed this large sum of money. Someone who wanted that money stabbed him and took the loot. It’s that simple.”

Mason said, “Who’s jumping to conclusions now, Tragg?”

“I am,” Tragg said. “I’m doing it because I wanted to see Mrs. Carson’s reactions.”

“All right,” Vivian Carson said, “you can see my reactions right now. All you want.

“I’m trying to be fair, and I don’t want to be a hypocrite. I’m not going to pretend a whole lot of grief that I don’t feel. Loring Carson was a louse, a heel, but he was a human being and we had been married, which means, of course, that we had been very close. I’m sorry he’s dead, but if property rights are involved I want to be protected. Anything that was in that place of concealment was really my property.”

“How do you figure that out?” Tragg asked, looking up at her thoughtfully.

“Because Judge Goodwin wanted to award me more property. He felt certain that a substantial part of the community property had been concealed. Mr. Mason can tell you that. It’s no secret. The judge said so in open court.”

“Feeling that way,” Lieutenant Tragg said, “if you had found out about this receptacle, you would have taken possession of any property that was in it?”

“Now just a minute,” Mason said, “that’s hardly a fair question. If she didn’t know about the receptacle, she—”

“It’s my question and it’s a fair question,” Tragg said. “It’s a police question. Now I’m asking you, Mrs. Carson, if you had known about the receptacle, would you have taken anything that was in it?”

She met his eyes and said, “I’m not going to lie and I’m not going to be a hypocrite. I think I would have.”

“Well,” Tragg said, “at least you’re frank and truthful. Under the circumstances, Mrs. Carson, I am afraid you’re going to have to go with me to answer some more questions, and I’ll be equally frank with you; we’re going to get a search warrant for this house and we’re going through it piece by piece. We’re going to try to find what was in that receptacle.”

“You mean I’m to consider myself under arrest?”

“Certainly not,” Tragg said. “You can consider yourself as a young woman who is anxious to cooperate with the police in every way possible, who is only too glad to come downtown with me so you can answer questions and clear yourself of any possible suspicion... And, Mr. Mason, I’m going to ask the same thing of your client. I’m going to ask him to get in the car and go with us, and I may as well tell you, Counselor, that I’m going to ask you to leave the place at once. I’m going to get everybody out of here. I’m going to seal it up and then we’re coming out here and we’re going to search every nook and cranny.”

“Go right ahead,” Mason said irritably. “That’s typical police psychology. You lock the door after the horse has been stolen.

“Loring Carson didn’t walk out here. He came out here in a car. He probably drove his own car. Whoever came out here with him, took his car and drove away leaving him here. That means that in all human probability, Carson was dead when that other person left the house and—”

“I know, I know, I know,” Tragg interrupted. “You’re like all of these good citizens who want to tell the police how to run their business. For your information, Mr. Mason, very shortly after my arrival and as soon as I positively identified the corpse, I had the police put out an all-points bulletin for his car. We’ll pick it up no matter where it is. We have the description of the make and model of the car and the license number.

“For your further information, we’re watching the airport and making a check on the thruways. Whoever drives Loring Carson’s car anywhere is going to be stopped, is going to have to answer questions, and is, in all probability, going to be the number-one suspect.

“In the meantime, much as I value your suggestions, Counselor, I think the police can investigate this case without you. In view of this discovery, which changes the whole complexion of the case, I am now escorting you to the door. You’re getting out and you’re going to stay out. Mrs. Carson here and Morley Eden are going to ride downtown in my car; you have your own car here. I know you have a number of very pressing matters to which you must give your attention, and I am not going to detain you any longer... We’re starting now — and I don’t want anyone to touch that tile. I’m going to have the fingerprint men go to work on it — so just keep away from it, if you will.

“We’re going now. I’ll leave instructions with my men as we go out.”