“They didn’t tell me so.”
“You knew the newspapers were trying to find out what had happened to her.”
“I didn’t know newspapers were entitled to any priority. I knew her life was in danger. I wanted to give her a break.”
“How did you know it was in danger?”
“Because she was mixed up with Edna Cutler, and, between them, if they ever got their heads together, they knew too much.”
“You mean about this Craig killing?”
“That and other things.”
“Tell me about Craig.”
“Cutler had been doing some business in oil properties for Roxberry. Cutler kept everything in his wife’s name so that the account showed on the books as Edna P. Cutler, although Edna didn’t know anything about it, and Roxberry had never met Edna. A lot of the property that stood in Edna’s name was property which Roxberry really owned. It was oil property. Roxberry died. The wildcat wells came in. Because the deals had been highly confidential, there were no papers covering them. Marco simply sat tight. He stood to clear up half a million dollars if he could keep the trust element of the oil properties a secret, and if he could get a divorce decree holding that all of the property that was in Edna Cutler’s name had been placed there for convenience, merely so it wouldn’t be in his name, that it was in reality his separate property acquired with funds which he had had prior to his marriage.”
Sergeant Rondler started slapping the tips of his fingers against the top of the desk. “That part is all more or less obvious,” he said.