“How do you know they killed him?” Mason asked.
“Because,” she said, “they did. Walter came in and caught Jimmy there, and Jimmy shot him.”
“Go ahead,” Mason told her, his voice a low, rumbling monotone. “Tell me what you know. But shake your head first — that’s it.”
“Rossy called me over the telephone, said something awful had happened and asked me to go over to her house right away. I told her I couldn’t go right at that moment. So then she told me to go down to the pay station in the drug store and call a certain number. She did that because she didn’t want to take chances on having the clerk at the switchboard hear what we were talking about.”
“All right,” Mason said, “you went to the drug store and called her. Where was she?”
“She was at the airport then. She told me that Jimmy had been there in the house with her; that he’d taken her in his arms and made passionate love to her; that there’d been an auto accident out front and the police had made Jimmy give them his name and address and that he’d be called on as a witness. She said that Jimmy had given her a gun right after the accident and before he’d run into the police; that she’d dropped the gun down in back of a drawer in the desk in the solarium. Then she said Jimmy had tried to leave, had run into the police, and had decided the only thing to do was to run away with her; that Mrs. Snoops had seen everything and she’d undoubtedly tell Walter.”
“So what did you do?” Mason said.
“She gave me all the details, told me that she’d left the dress she’d been wearing in the bedroom and that the canary was fluttering around the solarium.
“Well, of course, I told her I’d go over and put on an act for the benefit of Mrs. Snoops. I didn’t want to do it particularly, because I was afraid I might run into Walter. But she told me she knew absolutely Walter wouldn’t be there.”
“Did she tell you how she knew?” Mason asked.