“And you didn’t tell them about what you’d seen in the house?”
She shook her head, compressed her thin lips and said in a tone of righteous indignation, “They didn’t ask me. They didn’t even come near the house. I never had a chance to tell them, and it serves them right!”
“What!” Mason exclaimed. “They didn’t even come to talk with you after you’d put in the call for them?”
“That’s right. They came and looked over that coupe, and took down the license number and copied the registration certificate, then they talked with the young man who came out of Walter Prescott’s house, and then got in their car and drove away. They never once came near my place, not once!”
“And you’d seen something you could have told them about?” Mason asked.
“I’ll say I could.”
Mason, sizing her up with his steady, patient eyes, crossed one leg over the other, settled back in the chair and said casually, “Oh, well, if it had been important they’d have asked you about it.”
She teetered back and forth on the edge of her chair, her bony back rigid with indignation. “What’s that?” she snapped.
Mason said, “They probably had all the information about the automobile accident they needed.”
“Well,” she said, bristling, “it just happens this wasn’t about the automobile accident. Don’t you go jumping at conclusions, young man.”