She looked at the elevator as though wondering whether to come along, then said, “We-e-ll, I wanted to go to the office. I’ve ordered a bunch of genuine silk stockings. I want to see if they’ve come. Oh, well, I’ll walk along, yes.”
We walked three abreast down the sidewalk, Bertha on the inside, Pellingham in the middle, while I walked along on the outside.
Pellingham said to me, “You really think Hale went up to that apartment at two-twenty in the morning?”
“I’m sure he did. What have you found out about him?”
He grinned. “He isn’t a lawyer at all.”
“I didn’t think he was. A private detective?”
“Yes. Head of a New York detective agency. Cutler employed him to get some admissions out of Roberta Fenn, or to get something on her. To tell you the truth, I think he planted that whole evidence there in Roberta’s New Orleans apartment, hoping he could bring pressure to bear on her by threatening to open up that old murder case and make it appear she was the guilty party. The price of his silence was to be her giving testimony that would make it appear there was a conspiracy between her and Edna Cutler.”
“Sounds reasonable,” I said.
“Where they fell down,” Pellingham went on, “was in not realizing the gun they had dug up somewhere and planted in the desk would eventually be checked to see whether it had fired the murder bullet.”
I said, “Of course, if Roberta had caved in and done what they wanted, the gun and the clippings would have been delivered to her.”