“Yes.”
“Cullens knew at the time that Trent wasn’t there?”
“Yes,” she said, “because he told me that I was to ask for Mr. Trent, that Trent was out on a drunk, that the shop would make excuses to stall me off, that I wasn’t to be stalled. I was to insist on a return of the stones.”
Mason regarded the smoke which spiraled upward from the tip of his cigarette. “Now, wait a minute,” he said, “let’s get this straight. You’d never seen these stones you were supposed to own?”
“No.”
“Therefore,” Mason said, “when you saw those stones in the handbag at police headquarters, you couldn’t tell whether they were the ones you were supposed to have owned or not.”
“That’s right.”
“But you said positively that they were not yours.”
“I had to say something,” she said. “I certainly couldn’t say I didn’t know my own stones and I figured... well, I figured it was a trap.”
“You didn’t know Cullens was dead at the time?” Mason asked.