“Then,” she said, “I told him that Mr. Perry Mason was going to be my lawyer, and that Mr. Mason would call on him at eleven o’clock the next morning. And that seemed to knock him for a loop. He mumbled something we couldn’t hear, and started his car and drove away.”
Sergeant Holcomb glanced inquiringly at Byrl Gailord. “You were there?” he asked.
She nodded.
“How does that check with your recollection of what happened?”
Byrl Gailord lowered her eyes thoughtfully for a moment, then said almost inaudibly, “It isn’t the way I remember it.”
Sergeant Holcomb pounced on her statement. “What’s wrong with it?” he asked.
She said, “Uncle Albert — that’s Mr. Tidings — wasn’t quite as short and irritable as it would seem from the way Mrs. Tump tells it.”
“He was, too,” Mrs. Tump said indignantly. “He was very abusive. He…”
“I don’t think you understand Uncle Albert as well as I do,” Byrl Gailord interrupted. “He’s exceedingly nervous when he’s in a hurry, and he was in a hurry then.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Tump admitted, “he did say something about an appointment.”