Had Nita planned to commit the crime of bigamy? If not, when and where and how had she secured a divorce?
To Serena Hart, years before, she had denied any intention of getting a divorce, for two reasons—because she did not know where her husband was, and because, being married although husbandless, was a protection against matrimonial temptations.
To Gladys Earle, a year ago in April, she had confided that she could not marry again, because she was not divorced and because she did not know the whereabouts of her husband.
And so far as New York reporters had been able to find out, Nita Leigh had done nothing to alter her status as a married woman during the past year. Moreover, if Nita had secured either a divorce or a legal separation, her "faithful and beloved maid," Lydia Carr, would certainly have known of it. And Lydia had vehemently protested more than once to Bonnie Dundee that she knew nothing of Nita's husband, although she had worked for the musical comedy dancer for five years. Surely if Nita, loving and trusting Lydia as she did, had entered into negotiations of any kind with or concerning her husband during the last year, her maid would have been the first to know of them. And yet——
Suddenly Dundee jumped to his feet and began to pace the floor of his hotel bedroom. He was remembering the belated confidence that John C. Drake, banker, had made to him the morning before—after the discovery of Dexter Sprague's murder. He recalled Drake's reluctant statement almost word for word:
"About that $10,000 which Nita deposited with our bank, Dundee.... When she made the first deposit of $5,000 on April 28, she explained it with an embarrassed laugh as 'back alimony', an instalment of which she had succeeded in collecting from her former husband. And, naturally, when she made the second deposit on May 5, I presumed the same explanation covered that sum, too, though I confess I was puzzled by the fact that both big deposits had been made in cash."
In cash!
Had Nita, by any chance, been telling a near-truth? Had she been blackmailing her own husband—a husband who had dared marry again, believing his deserted wife to be dead—and justifying herself by calling it "back alimony?"
But—wasn't it, in reality, no matter what coercion Nita had used in getting the money, exactly that?... Back alimony! And the price of her silence before the world and the wife who was not really a wife....
In a new light, Bonnie Dundee studied the character of the woman who had been murdered—possibly to make her silence eternal.