“I mean to say I don’t make a practice of having strangers tell me to go out to some residence and walk right in. But what are you crabbing about? You had a wild-goose chase out there, and that was all. You got back in twenty or thirty minutes. You found out that I wasn’t there. You knew I’d either been kidnaped, or was working on some new angle of the case.”
Drake said sarcastically, “Oh, yes. It’s nothing to me, just the few minutes necessary to run out there and back.”
“Well, what are you beefing about?” Mason asked, letting a note of impatience creep into his voice.
Drake said, “I don’t suppose you went inside. I don’t suppose you found the body and didn’t want to take the responsibility of telephoning the police and trying to explain to them how it happened you were out there. I don’t suppose you decided you’d discovered enough bodies and that it would be a smart idea to let Paul Drake take the rap on this one. You knew damn well I’d have some hard-boiled detectives on my staff who would bust right on into that house. You knew damn well I’d find the corpse, and when I found it, I’d have to telephone the police.”
Mason said, “What body?”
“Oh, I don’t suppose you knew there was a body in the house?”
“What about the body? Who was it?”
“Apparently,” Drake said, “it’s the body of Mrs. Sarah Perlin, the housekeeper for Hocksley. She may have committed suicide, and she may have been shot.”
Mason said excitedly, “You mean she was actually in that house?”
“Of course, she was in that house, in a bedroom in front of her dressing table. After the shot had been fired, she’d slumped down on the floor. Her own gun did the job.”