The Case of the Queenly Contestant

“Well, a lot calmer than I was when we discovered the body.”

Mason said, “It was the way you acted when we discovered the body that was just a little out of character. I told you not to touch anything. You went stumbling around, falling over things in general, falling over the body in particular, grasping at the surface of the dresser — and then you got up and broke away from Della Street and stumbled into the wall and pushed yourself back with your hands, zigzagged across the room, ran into the wall two or three times, put your hands all over the inside of the front door, and dashed out.

“Prior to that time, when I’d been looking in the windows, you made it a point to come over and stand beside me and cup your hands so that you could see through the window.”

“Well,” she asked, “is there anything wrong with all that?”

“You left fingerprints all over the place,” Mason said.

“I’m sorry.”

“You may be even more sorry,” Mason told her. “Tragg is not going to like that. He’ll find altogether too many of your fingerprints.”

“Well, I don’t know whether Tragg will understand or not. But, after all, he’s a veteran police officer and he must have seen women go to pieces before.

“After all, Mr. Mason, a woman is not a cold, reasoning machine. She relies on intuition as much as logic, and she is at times high-strung and temperamental.”

“I know, I know,” Mason said. “But a thought keeps circulating through my mind, and I’m wondering if it will occur to Lieutenant Tragg.”

“What thought?” she asked.

“That you knew Agnes Burlington was dead when you came to my office the second time.”

“Why, Mr. Mason!” she exclaimed. “Why... why, I never heard anything like that in all my life! You are accusing me of deception and duplicity!” Her voice trailed into indignant silence.

“I’m not accusing you of anything,” Mason said. “I’m asking you a question. Did you know Agnes Burlington was dead when you came to my office?”

“Of course not!”

Mason said, “I’m going to let you do a little thinking, Ellen. If you had been at that house before, if you knew that Agnes Burlington was lying there dead, you’re in just as much trouble as though you had gone to that house with a gun, pulled the trigger, and sent the fatal bullet into Agnes Burlington’s body.”

“Well, I told you I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t have any idea that she was dead. I thought we’d find her alive and well and you could talk with her.”

Mason said thoughtfully, “I wonder.” Then suddenly he said, “In the driveway, Ellen, there were tracks. The water had seeped down through the sloping lawn onto the driveway.”

“Well?” she asked.

“You seemed unduly anxious to get me to put my car in the driveway,” Mason said. “In fact, you were quite insistent that I should go up that muddy driveway.”

“I thought it would be better it we parked the car in the driveway and...”

“Why, because it... well, I don’t know, it just seemed to me to be the thing to do.”

“I am wondering,” Mason said, “if you wanted me to use my car to obliterate the tracks which had been left in that muddy driveway. I am wondering if you had driven out to the house earlier in the day and had left your car parked in the driveway; if you had started across to the front door, found that the lawn was soft, that your feet were bogging down in the soft soil, and so had gone back to the driveway, gone around to the back door, knocked at the back door, found that it was open, gone in, and found Agnes Burlington’s body.

“I am wondering if you started looking around a little bit before you did anything, perhaps looking to see if she had left a diary or some papers, and, in that way, left your fingerprints in the house.

“Then I am wondering if, when you decided that you had to get yourself out of a jam, you didn’t come to me and get me to go out to the house, planning for me to discover the body and having it all planned in advance that you could have a case of hysterics and leave your fingerprints all over the place so that I could tell Lieutenant Tragg what had happened, in order to explain your fingerprints.”

“Mr. Mason,” she said with cold dignity, “I think, under those circumstances, you are hardly in a position to act as my attorney!”

“Anytime you want out of the relationship,” Mason said, “you don’t need to hesitate for a minute. But I’m warning you that if what I said is correct, you’re facing a first-degree murder trial. Don’t kid yourself for a minute that anything as simple as your plot will fool Lieutenant Tragg for more than twenty-four hours. Now think it over.”

Ellen Adair was silent.

“Well?” Mason asked. “What about it? What’s happened to the cold, dignified indignation?”

Suddenly Ellen Adair slumped over against Della Street’s shoulder.

“It’s true,” she said.

Mason muttered an exclamation under his breath, abruptly turned the wheel of the car.

“Where are we going now?” Ellen Adair asked.

“To some place where no one can find us until I’ve hammered the real truth out of you,” Mason said.

Chapter Twelve