“How did Ringold get them?”
“Some smart detectives working out of the district attorney’s office figured that what they needed to make a perfect case against Lasster was a motivation — one which would prejudice a jury. They checked back on Lasster just as much as they could. He couldn’t account for his time covering a period of eight weeks during the summer, while his wife was away. The detectives couldn’t find where he’d been.”
“Then, in searching a woodshed, they came on an old trunk which had a steamer label on it. They traced that back and found out about the trip to the South Seas, then got a passenger list, and interviewed passengers. Of course, it was a cinch after that. They found out that Lasster had been definitely interested in me while he was on the cruise.”
“Still,” I said, “if you were reasonably discreet, that didn’t give them anything they could work on — not if he kept his mouth shut.”
“But don’t you understand? It gave them just the lead they wanted. They waited for the right opportunity, managed to break into the house, go through my room in my absence, and— Well, they found the letters. You see what that means. I can swear on a stack of Bibles a mile high that I haven’t written Lasster or seen him since I found out he was married. No one would believe me.”
“How did it happen you bought the letters in three instalments?”
She said, “There were three detectives. After they got the evidence, they did a little thinking. They were drawing a low salary from the county. If they turned the letters over to the district attorney, they wouldn’t even get a rise in pay. I was supposed to be a wealthy woman... Of course, they didn’t appear in it themselves. They got Ringold to act as intermediary. I don’t know how much Ringold was making out of it, but it was arranged that I’d buy the letters in three installments.”
I pushed my hands down in my pockets, stuck my legs straight out in front of me, crossed my ankles, and stared at my toes, trying to see the picture, not only as she saw it but to get angles that she didn’t know anything about.
Now that she’d started talking, she didn’t want to stop. She said, “You can see what it would mean to a woman like me. The district attorney is crazy to get a conviction in that case. In the first place, they don’t know whether it was an accident and she fell and struck her head, or whether Lasster hit her with something. Then, even if the district attorney can prove that Lasster hit her, Lasster’s lawyer could bring up that Shanghai trip and might be able to make a showing of emotional insanity or whatever it is a lawyer pulls when he’s trying to prejudice a jury by making them think that a woman needed killing anyway.
“Well, the district attorney could put a stop to all that right at the start if he could introduce a lot of stuff about me, make it appear that Lasster was infatuated with me, and wanted to get rid of his wife so that he could marry me. I was wealthy and — well, not exactly ugly. He could put me up in front of the jury in a way that would absolutely crucify me, and if he had those letters, he could rip Lasster to pieces the minute he got on the witness stand and tried to deny it, or he could draw the worst sort of conclusions if Lasster didn’t try to deny it.”