The Case of the Golddigger’s Purse

6

Mason escorted Sally Madison up the walk which led to Harrington Faulkner’s duplex house. Both sides of the building were in the sedate midnight darkness of a respectable house in the residential district.

“They’re asleep,” Sally Madison whispered. “They’ve gone to bed.”

“All right. We’ll get them up.”

“Oh, Mr. Mason, I wouldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Faulkner will be furious.”

“So what?”

“He can be very annoying and disagreeable when he’s angry.”

Mason said, “The man who handles his insurance has stated to both of us that Faulkner brought him those fish on Wednesday night. Some time after that, if this man’s story is true, Faulkner made a great to do about finding the fish gone from the aquarium where they’d been placed. He called the police and made false statements to the police. Under the circumstances, he’s hardly in a position to explode with righteous indignation.”

Holding her arm, Mason could feel her shiver with apprehension. “You’re — different,” she said. “You don’t let these people frighten you when they get angry. They absolutely terrify me.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t like anger and fights and angry scenes.”

“You’ll get accustomed to them before we go very much farther,” Mason said, and jabbed his finger with insistence against the bell button.

They could hear the chimes sounding melodiously from the interior of the house. There followed an interval of some fifteen seconds while Mason and Sally Madison waited. Then Mason pressed his fingers several times against the button, causing the chimes to repeat their summons.

“That should wake them up,” Sally Madison said, unconsciously keeping her voice lowered almost to a whisper.

“It should for a fact,” Mason agreed, pushing the button twice more.

The last notes of the chimes were still sounding when the headlights of an automobile swung around the corner in a skidding turn. The car straightened, slowed abruptly as brakes were sharply applied, swerved into a right-angled turn, and headed up the driveway toward the garage. When the car was halfway up the driveway, the driver, apparently for the first time, saw Mason’s car parked at the curb and the two figures on the porch.

Abruptly, the car slid to a halt. The door opened. A pair of well-curved legs flashed in a generous display, then Mrs. Faulkner slid out from the seat, across the running board to the ground, adjusting her skirts well after she had alighted.

“Yes?” she asked anxiously. “What is it, please? Oh, it’s Mr. Mason and Miss Street. No, it isn’t. It’s Miss Madison. Isn’t my husband home?”

“Apparently not,” Mason said. “If he is, he’s a sound sleeper.”

“I guess he hasn’t returned yet. He said he’d be out until quite late.”

Mason said, “Perhaps we could wait for him.”

“I warn you, Mr. Mason, he won’t be in a good humor if he comes home and finds you waiting. Are you quite certain you want to see him tonight?”

“Quite certain — if it won’t inconvenience you.”

Mrs. Faulkner laughed melodiously, a laugh which seemed to have been practiced assiduously. She said, “Oh, well, I’ll let you in and if it’s that important we’ll have some drinks and wait for Harrington to come in. However, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

She inserted a key in the latch of the door, clicked back the lock, turned on lights in the hallway, and in the living room, and said, “Do come in and sit down. You’re sure it isn’t anything that you could tell me, and then let me tell Harrington in the morning?”

“No. We want to see him tonight. He should be coming in soon, shouldn’t he?”

“Oh, I’m quite certain he’ll be home within an hour. Do sit down, please. Pardon me a moment and I’ll get myself organized.”

She stepped from the room, taking off her coat as she went through the door. They heard her moving around the bedroom. A door opened. There was a moment of motionless silence, and then her high-pitched, piercing scream knifed through the silence.

Sally Madison glanced inquiringly toward Mason, but the lawyer was already in motion. He crossed the room in four swift strides, jerked open the door of the bedroom and crossed the bedroom in time to see Mrs. Faulkner, her hands held over her face, stagger back from a bathroom which evidently communicated with another bedroom.

“He’s... he’s... in there!” she cried, and wheeled blindly, then lurched into Mason’s arms.

“Take it easy,” Mason said, his fingers gently pulling her jeweled hands away from her eyes.

As his fingers touched her flesh, he realized that her hands were icy cold. He supported her with one arm, moved toward the bathroom.

She pulled back. Mason released his hold, caught Sally Madison’s eye and nodded. Sally Madison took Mrs. Faulkner’s arm, gently piloted her toward the bed, said, “There, there! Take it easy.”

Mrs. Faulkner moaned, slid down on the bed, her head on the pillow, legs trailing over the edge of the bed so that her feet were dangling halfway between the bed and the floor. Her hands were once more over her eyes. She kept saying, “Oh... oh... oh...!”

Mason moved to the bathroom door.

Harrington Faulkner lay motionless in death. His coat and shirt had been removed, leaving him attired in trousers and undershirt, and the front of the undershirt was a mass of blood. Back of the head was an overturned table, and on the floor fragments of curved glass caught the rays of the bathroom light and reflected them. A thin layer of water which had seeped over the floor had carried blood in a crimson stain to the far corners of the bathroom. On the floor near the figure were perhaps a dozen motionless goldfish, but as Mason looked, one of these goldfish gave a tired, dispirited flap of its tail.

The bathtub was half full of water and in this water a lone goldfish swam energetically back and forth, as though in search of companionship.

Mason stooped to pick up the lone fish which had shown signs of life. Gently he lowered it into the water of the bathtub. The fish kicked about for a moment, then turned half on its side, floated to the top of the water and remained motionless, save for a slight motion of the gills.

Mason felt the touch of Sally Madison’s body, turned to find her standing just behind him.

“Get out,” Mason said.

“Is he... is he—?”

Mason said, “Of course he is. Get out. Don’t touch anything. Leave a fingerprint here, and it may make trouble. What’s his wife doing?”

“Throwing a fit on the bed.”

“Hysterics?”

“Not that bad, just a wild fit of grief.”

“Does it mean that much to her?”

“It’s the shock.”

“Was she in love with him?”

“She was a fool if she was. You never can tell. I thought she didn’t have any emotion at all. She had me fooled.”

Mason said, “You don’t ever show much emotion yourself.”

Her eyes regarded him thoughtfully. “What’s the use?”

“There isn’t any,” Mason said. “Go back to Mrs. Faulkner. Get her out of the bedroom. Call the Drake Detective Agency. Tell Paul Drake to get down here just as quick as he can, then, after you have done that, call police headquarters, get Homicide and ask for Lieutenant Tragg. Tell him you’re speaking for Perry Mason and that I have a murder to report.”

“Anything else?”

“That’s all. Don’t touch anything in the room. Get Mrs. Faulkner out of the bedroom and into the living room, then keep her there.”

Mason waited until Sally Madison had left the room, then, moving backward away from the bathtub a few inches at a time, he carefully studied every part of the room, taking great care, however, not to touch any object with his hands.

On the floor, slightly to one side of the body, was a pocket magnifying glass consisting of two lenses, each approximately an inch and a half in diameter, hinged to a hard rubber case so that they would fold back out of the way when not in use. Back against the wall, almost directly under the washstand, were three popular magazines of approximately nine by twelve inches.

Mason bent over to notice the dates on the magazines. The top one was a current magazine, the one underneath that was three months old, and the bottom one four months old. On the top magazine was a smear of ink about half an inch in width by three or four inches in length and slightly curved in shape, trailing off almost to a point as it approached the end of the three-inch smear.

On a glass shelf over the washstand in the bathroom were two sixteen-ounce bottles of peroxide of hydrogen, one of them almost empty, a shaving brush, a safety razor, to the edge of which soapy lather was still adhering, and a tube of shaving cream.

The man had apparently been shot in the left side over the heart and had died almost instantly. When he fell he had apparently upset the table on which the goldfish bowl had been placed. One of the curved segments of broken bowl still held about half a cup of water.

On the floor, beneath the body of one of the goldfish was a pocket checkbook, and near by, a fountain pen. The cap of the pen lay some two feet away. The checkbook was closed, and bloody water had seeped against the edges of the checks. Mason noticed that about half of the checks in the book had been torn out, leaving the stubs of approximately half the checks in the front part of the book.

Faulkner had apparently been wearing his glasses when he was shot and the left lens had been broken, evidently when he had fallen, as the fragments of curved glass from that lens of the spectacles lay within an inch or two of the head. The right lens had not been injured and it reflected the bathroom light in the ceiling with a glitter which seemed oddly animate in the face of the death that tarnished the floor of the bathroom with its crimson stain.

Mason regarded the overturned table, stepping carefully backward and bending over to get a good look at it. There were drops of water on this table, and a slight blob of ink, partially diluted with water. Then Mason noticed something that had hitherto escaped him. A graniteware cooking pan of about two-quart capacity was in the bottom of the bathtub, lying on its side.

As Mason finished his careful inspection of the contents of the room, Sally Madison called to him from the bedroom. “Everything’s been done, Mr. Mason. Mrs. Faulkner is waiting in the living room. Mr. Drake is on his way out here, and I’ve notified the police.”

“Lieutenant Tragg?” Mason asked.

“Lieutenant Tragg wasn’t in, but Sergeant Dorset is on his way out.”

Mason said, “That’s a break,” and then added, “for the murderer.”