The Case of the Golddigger’s Purse

Della Street’s eyes were sparkling with interest now. “Then when Faulkner thought attempts were being made to steal his goldfish... you mean it was actually someone trying to get the bullet back out of the tank?”

“Exactly,” Mason said, “and the soup ladle would have been an excellent instrument to have dredged down to the bottom of the tank, scooped up the bullet and eased it back out again. If someone had been reaching for the goldfish it wouldn’t have been necessary to have tied a four-foot extension to the handle of the soup ladle. The goldfish would have been swimming around in the water, and by waiting for a favorable opportunity, they could have been fished out with a container that had a handle not over two feet in length.”

“Then Carson must have been the one who shot at him and...”

“Not so fast,” Mason said. “Carson had been in his office all that morning. Remember, Miss Stanley will give him an alibi. Or so Carson says, and he would hardly dare to falsify that, because he must know the circumstances incident to that first shooting are now to receive a lot of police attention.”

“Then for some reason Carson was trying to confuse the issues.”

“Trying to protect the person who had fired the shot, or the person he thought had fired the shot.”

“You mean they may not have been the same?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Would that account for the sudden animosity which developed between Carson and Faulkner?”

“The animosity had been there for some time. The thing that flared suddenly into existence was Carson’s open hostility.”

“And what did that have to do with it?”

Mason grinned and said, “Put yourself in Carson’s position. He’d tossed a bullet into a fish tank. He’d evidently acted on the spur of the moment, looking for the best possible place of concealment. It was a simple matter to toss the bullet in, but it was a difficult matter to get the bullet out. Particularly when you remember that Faulkner was living in the other side of the duplex house and that he was suspicious of Carson and would have promptly rushed over to see what Carson was doing if Carson came to the office outside of office hours.”

Della Street nodded.

“You can’t reach down to the bottom of a four-foot fish tank,” Mason said, “and pull out a lead bullet without making some rather elaborate preparations. And it was at this time that Carson suddenly realized Faulkner was concerned about the health of the goldfish and was planning to remove the entire tank to some place where the fish could be given treatment.”

“But wouldn’t Carson have been in a position to profit by that? Wouldn’t he have stood more chance of getting the bullet if the tank had been moved?”

“Probably not. And you must also remember that he was running the risk of having the bullet discovered as soon as the tank was moved. Of course, once that bullet was discovered, it wouldn’t take very much of a detective to piece together what must have happened, and Carson would find himself in quite a spot.”

“I’d say he was in a spot anyway,” Della Street said.

“He was,” Mason told her. “And so it became necessary for him to take steps to prevent the goldfish tank from being removed from the office. That was the reason for his sudden flare-up of hostility and the filing of his initial action against Faulkner, the action which resulted in a temporary restraining order preventing Faulkner from removing the fish tank. Of course, Carson might have been left without a leg to stand on when he finally got into court, but that didn’t bother him. He knew that by filing the action against Faulkner he could at least delay things until he had a chance to get that bullet out of the tank.”

“That certainly sounds logical,” Della Street admitted, “and would account for some of the things Carson did.”

“And,” Mason went on, “in order to make the filing of that injunction suit seem logical, Carson had to play the part all the way along the line. Otherwise, his sudden concern over the goldfish tank would have been so conspicuous that it might have aroused suspicion.”

“So that accounts for his action for defamation of character?”

“Exactly.”

“But what about the earlier attempts to steal the goldfish?”

“There weren’t any. Carson had probably managed to get access to the fish tank for some rather limited period. At that time, he probably tried various methods of extracting the bullet and found that he was up against a tougher problem than he had anticipated. The size of the tank, the weight of the tank, and its position, made it something of a job to get that bullet out.”

“And I suppose that the forty-five bullet which was subsequently found on Miss Stanley’s desk was simply another bullet that had been deliberately planted.”