“That’s a lie.”
I said, “Well, let’s put it this way. He had witnesses who would swear that you had been indiscreet.”
“And they were lying!”
I said, “Forget it. I don’t care about the merits or demerits of that divorce action. I don’t care if Marco Cutler had perjured witnesses, or whether circumstantial evidence looked black against you, or whether he could have named seventy-five corespondents and still missed a couple of dozen. What I’m getting at, and want to establish definitely, is that he wanted to get a divorce, that you didn’t want him to get a divorce, and that you didn’t have any defense.”
She said, “Put it that way then, and go on from there, I’m not admitting anything. I’m not denying anything. I’m listening.”
I said, “The stunt you pulled was a masterpiece.”
“If you’re so smart, tell me the rest of it.”
I said, “You went to New Orleans. You let your husband know you were in New Orleans. You let him believe that you had run out of California because you didn’t want the notoriety of having the things you had done dragged into the limelight. Marco Cutler thought it was all cut and dried. You’d played right into his hands. He’d been very smart. You’d been very dumb. He wasn’t going to pay you a cent of alimony.”
“There’s where you pulled your fast one. You let him know that you were taking an apartment. You gave him the address. Then you looked around for someone who had a superficial resemblance to you; height, size, age, and in a general way, complexion. Anyone seeing you and Roberta Fenn together wouldn’t think there was much similarity, but a written description of one of you could well be taken as a description of the other.”
Edna Cutler said, “If you’re getting ready to say something, go ahead and say it.”