The D.A. Breaks an Egg

“Then Mosher told me this woman detective was on the job, that the man’s sister was making trouble, that it looked as though I might be framed with having given him knockout drops, or something. So then I suggested we come to Madison City and get in touch with A. B. Carr. My friend, Babe Harlan, married Carr, and had told me all about him... and got herself a pretty soft berth.

“I wrote Carr. He wired he’d meet me. I called Carr’s house and tried to talk with his wife. I didn’t let her know that I had any business with old A. B. C. I left a message knowing that that would give A. B. C. his cue.

“Well, Carr called me and told me to call Moana Lennox, to meet her, and be at the park at a certain time. We were to meet him there.

“We got to the park and... well, I found Rose Furman’s body. Then suddenly I realized that instead of providing me with an alibi, they had put me right in the middle of a murder rap. By that time there was nothing I could do.

“But I know what I’m going to do now. I’m going to sing my way out of it.”

“Did Carr ever say anything that led you to believe he knew about the murder?”

She said, “Mosher stuck the knife in her. We all knew that, but Carr never said anything.”

Selby said, “Well, Rex, I guess we have our murder case solved, but pinning anything on old A. B. C. depends on whether Mosher decides to sit tight.”

“Mosher,” she said positively, “will do whatever A. B. C. tells him.”

“Old A. B. C. may not have a chance to tell him anything — for a while,” Selby said.

Sylvia Martin spoke up timidly from the back seat. “Could you put me out at the nearest pay telephone sign you see? I’ll get home somehow, and I simply have to telephone The Clarion. I think the publisher would like to get out an extra that would hit the streets at the same time as The Blade goes on sale.”

Rex Brandon thought that over, a slow grin spread over his features. “Now that’s an idea, Sylvia.”

Brandon suddenly swerved the car and applied brakes. “Here’s a phone, Sylvia.”

Selby said, “When you’ve phoned in your story, go back out to where you left your car and wait for me. I’ll ride back with you, if you want a passenger.”

She squeezed his hand. The car stopped. Selby held the door open for her.

“Okay, Doug, see you later,” she said. “Good-by, and thanks — everyone.”

“Fall dead,” Daphne Arcola snapped.

26

It was after three-thirty when Rex Brandon pulled the county car off to the side of the road and Selby getting out, waved good-by to the sheriff and walked over to Sylvia Martin’s car.

“Have any trouble getting back here, Sylvia?” he asked.

“I hitchhiked.”

“Been waiting long?”

“Uh-huh. What happened?”

“Well,” Selby said, “we have the murder solved.”

“Doug, how did you get your original hunch on Mosher? Only I know it wasn’t a hunch, but the result of good honest thought.”

He laughed. “It was both thought and hunch, Sylvia. Notice that Rose Furman supposedly gave Daphne Arcola a clean bill of health and then gave Remerton a virtual certificate of death from natural causes. Yet she never signed either document.

“She must have found out about Remerton before she arrived in Los Angeles. The phony wire from Corona was sent only a short time before her death.

“Why wouldn’t she have telephoned her client instead of wiring? Supposedly she was whisked away from Los Angeles in such a hurry she didn’t have time to finish her report to Mosher. Yet it was really all finished. And why didn’t she telephone Mrs. Nutwell as a follow-up on the wire?

“If we once start questioning the truth of statements contained in those unsigned documents, we realize that Rose Furman’s murderer could well have secured her purse. He could have then gone to Los Angeles and entered the apartment. All he needed was to have some accomplice send that Corona telegram.

“What murderer? What accomplice? Obviously the two suspects who had been so fortuitously ‘cleared’ by Rose Furman before her death would have had a motive. When we remember that both of the documents by which Rose Furman cleared them were unsigned, the situation becomes suspicious.”

“But, Doug, isn’t it strange that Mosher would have murdered her so Daphne would have stumbled on the body, and...?”

“No,” Selby interrupted, “that’s where the pattern of the crime shows up. Mosher got Daphne to send the wire from Corona and to pose as Rose Furman. Then he brought her back to Madison City.

“Rose promptly picked Daphne up and started following her. That was what Mosher had been planning on. He wanted to lure Rose into the park so he could kill her. The best way was to send Daphne to the park. He knew Rose would follow Daphne and that would put Rose on the spot, right where he wanted her, all ready for the kill.”

“And that murder weapon being found in the hedge?”

“That was where Mosher left it. He naturally wanted it to implicate Dorothy. It was, of course, dead easy for the murderer to plant the weapon there.”