“She was killed around midnight. That makes it murder.”
“But she talked with you and...”
“No,” Mason said. “A woman talked with me, a woman who had a rather well-bred voice. That is, the tones were smoothly harmonious, but there was something wrong with the way she spoke, as though she had a marble in her mouth. That explains it.”
“Explains what?” Drake asked.
Mason said, “It was a woman who talked with me. This woman said she was Mrs. Perlin. It was a cinch to pull that on me because I’d never heard Mrs. Perlin speak and didn’t know her voice. But the one who called the other person was one who said she was speaking for Mrs. Perlin because she was unable to come to the phone.”
“What other person?” Drake asked.
Mason said, “Right at the moment, Paul, that’s neither here nor there.”
The detective looked at him, sighed, and said, “It’s probably there, but it sure as hell ain’t here.”
Mason said, “When I looked down at the body, it didn’t seem to me that she’d been a woman who would have had a voice such as the one I’d heard on the telephone. So I asked — this other party — if the housekeeper had been up in the world at one time, and then had some bad luck. Had to go to housekeeping. That would have accounted for the well-bred voice, you know.”
“What was the answer?”