“But Carter didn’t trust Ringold, and Mrs. Ashbury couldn’t understand the delay. The conversation you overheard between her and Carter was when she was telling Carter to go ahead and show some speed and get you dragged into the case.”
“How was the murder committed?” she asked.
“Carter didn’t intend to kill anyone,” I said, “but he knew you were going to see Ringold. He thought perhaps there was going to be a double cross. He got a room in another part of the hotel, found four-twenty-one vacant, picked the lock with a skeleton key, watched his chance to slip through the communicating door, and hid in the bathroom. He found out all he wanted to know, and wanted to sneak out, but, in the meantime, I’d checked into that room and locked the communicating door. He couldn’t get back. Ringold caught him in the bathroom. Carter shot his way out.
“As a matter of fact, Carter gave himself away. He was so anxious to get you on the defensive by telling you that he’d seen you near the scene of the murder at the time the murder was committed, he entirely overlooked the fact that this constituted an admission he was there himself — otherwise he couldn’t have seen you.”
“He hasn’t admitted anything. My stepmother’s going to get a lawyer for him, and they’ll put up a fight,” she said thoughtfully.
“Swell,” I said. “Let them.”
“But won’t those letters enter into it?”
“Not unless the D.A. can get hold of them.”
“Well, where are they?”
I said, “Look at it this way. Carter doesn’t know where they are. Esther Clarde, who was handling the payoff, doesn’t know where they are, and Crumweather doesn’t know where they are. They’ve searched the room in the hotel — and I mean searched it. Jed Ringold had those letters when he went to the hotel. He didn’t leave the hotel, and apparently the letters didn’t either.”