“A very neat little trap,” Sergeant Sellers said. “Someone writes the woman poison-pen letters until she gets so interested she’s virtually hypnotized. Put yourself in her position. She has every dime there is in the family; perhaps she’d like to keep it. The evidence indicates that as a wife she was useful to her husband more as a depository of property than an object of affection. The chances are, she’d have liked to wash her hands of the whole business. Naturally, she’d like to keep as much of the property as possible. You can’t blame her for that. Her husband has his earning capacity. He can go out and make more money. She’s thrown out on the world. If she can find another husband, who can support her, she can get along. If she can’t, she’s going to be faced with the old routine of a separated wife, men who play around but don’t contemplate matrimony, a slender stock of cash dwindling from day to day — every day finding her that much older, her looks—”
“What are you trying to do,” Bertha interpolated sarcastically, “make me cry?”
“Make you think.”
“I don’t get you.”
“I’m looking at it from her standpoint — as her mind was moulded by her mother.”
“You think her mother was in on it?”
“The records show that Tuesday afternoon she had a long-distance telephone conversation with her mother in San Francisco. Then about six-thirty her mother sent her a telegram saying she was coming down and for her to meet the train.”
“What was the conversation about?”
“I asked Mrs. Goldring and she was evasive, but finally I pinned her down. Mabel had rung up to tell her about having received a letter stating that her husband was having an affair with a woman she’d employed as a maid. Mrs. Goldring told her to wash her hands of the whole business, walk out on Everett, and leave him holding the sack. Mabel wasn’t entirely certain that was the right thing to do. She mentioned over the telephone to Mrs. Goldring that the property really and truly wasn’t hers; it was her husband’s, and she thought there should be some settlement. That made Mrs. Goldring furious. She argued with Mabel for a while on the long-distance telephone, then decided to take the night train down and handle the situation personally. She was going to engineer a family smashup.”
“Mabel got the wire?”