“Why— why, I don’t know.”
“How long since you’d been in his bedroom?”
“I hadn’t been in all the morning. His bedroom is separated from mine by my dressing room and a bath. I met him that morning at breakfast. He was particularly offensive. He’d found a letter Jimmy had written me. He’d just been waiting for something like that. He’d taken twelve thousand dollars of my money, and I didn’t have a thing to show for it. He was afraid I was going to demand it back and he was just looking for an opportunity to put me in the wrong and file suit for divorce, so it would look as though I’d thought up the money business after he’d filed and in order to save my own reputation by putting him in the wrong.”
“I suppose you know,” Mason told her, “this is going to sound like hell in front of a jury.”
She nodded.
“According to Mrs. Snoops,” Mason went on, “you were trimming the claws of the canary when Driscoll came into the solarium and took you in his arms.”
She nodded.
“Mrs. Snoops,” Mason went on remorselessly, “had been watching you for several minutes before Driscoll came in. Driscoll wasn’t in the solarium with you, but he’d already been in the house for some forty-five minutes. Mrs. Snoops saw him come in and noticed the time.”
“She would!” Rosalind exclaimed bitterly.
“That,” Mason said, “isn’t the point. The point is, Driscoll wasn’t in the solarium with you. Where was he?”