“Yes.”
“And then what happened?”
“Mr. Cullens said that he’d been robbed of a lot of jewels, and my aunt asked him why he kept jewels in the house that way, and all of a sudden he said to her, ‘By God, I believe that wasn’t a thief at all, but a detective you’ve had on my trail,’ and she said, ‘Why Aussie? Is it because you know those gems of yours had been stolen?’ and he said, ‘So that’s it, is it?’ and she said, ‘Aussie, I’ll promise you that if you’ll tell me where George is, and he’s safe, we won’t do anything at all but if you don’t I’ll tell the police that...’ That was as far as she got. Aussie screamed out something about not being taken alive and flung up his gun and shot right square at Auntie.”
“And what did you do?” Mason asked.
“Whatever I did,” she said, “was just an unconscious reflex. Honestly, I have no recollection of pulling the trigger. The first thing I knew, Mr. Cullens was lying on the floor, and my aunt was just as cool as a cucumber. She said, ‘Virgie, we have to keep our heads on this. I’m afraid something awful has happened to George, and we’re going to have to make Aussie talk.’ She said, ‘We’ll have to telephone for an ambulance and get him to the hospital, but before we do that I think he has some evidence on him we’re going to have to get,’ and she bent over him and opened his vest and shirt and found a chamois-skin belt with some gems in it. She took the gems out and picked up the gun which he’d dropped and put it in her bag, and said to me, ‘Find a telephone, Virgie, and telephone for the police,’ and then while I was still groping around trying to find a telephone, she called to me and said, ‘Wait a minute, Virgie, he’s dead.’ ”
“Then what happened?” Mason asked. Virginia Trent shook her head as though trying to dislodge a memory, and dove into the protection of the pillow. Mason put his hand on her shaking shoulder. “Now, wait a minute, Virgie, you’re all upset. Snap out of it. Tell me what happened.”
After a few moments, she turned her head so that her mouth was clear of the pillow, and said sobbingly, “Aunt Sarah said she thought the stones that he had on him were stolen. That if they were, we’d be all right. That if they weren’t, we were going to be in an awful jam; that no one knew anything about our having been there, and that evidently a burglar had been in the house, and the best thing for us to do was to clear out and say nothing to anyone. She told me to take the back door, and she’d take the front... And then... Well, you know the rest.”
“And you’d gone up to your uncle’s office and put the gun back in the drawer just before I came in, Virgie?”
“Yes.”
“And you had no idea your uncle’s body was up there?”