“Suicide within a year, the policies don’t pay anything,” Bertha pointed out, greedily. “Death not by suicide, they pay forty thousand dollars; death by accidental means gives them double indemnity or eighty thousand bucks.”
Sellers whistled.
Bertha said, “We’re in on that — that is, I’m in on it.”
“Go ahead,” Sellers said to me, “keep talking, Lam.”
I said, “It wasn’t a love-nest affair at all. Minerva Carlton was being blackmailed. The blackmailer wanted a big shakedown, too much for her to pay. If he didn’t get it, he threatened to go to her husband and spill the beans.”
“If she was being blackmailed, that’s probably the way it was,” Sellers said.
I said, “She decided to slip a fast one over on the blackmailer. She went to Dover Fulton. He had been her former boss. She liked him. She may have been sweet on him at one time, I don’t know. But anyway she went to him, and they agreed to fix things up so that Dover Fulton posed as her husband. The blackmailer had never seen Stanwick Carlton. Fulton posed as Stanwick Carlton, probably said in effect, ‘So what? My wife’s been indiscreet, but I forgive her!’ So they kissed and made up in front of the blackmailer, and Fulton who was posing as Stanwick Carlton, said, ‘Now go jump in the lake!’ ”
“Could be,” Sellers said after thinking it over. “You’d want proof.”
I said, “I was trying to get proof when you put these on me.” I held out my hands with the handcuffs on them.
“You’re damn right I put them on you,” Sellers said. “You were caught redhanded in a murder.”