“It was perfectly legal in form,” Mason admitted. “In fact, it was all worked out to the last detail, even the name of the clerk and the deputy. A very clever forgery — but nevertheless the document was forged.”
“How did you find that out?” Sabin asked, highly excited.
Mason said, “I made it my business to investigate the court records. I gave a photostatic copy of the decree to a detective who flew to Reno. The case was purportedly a default matter, and handled in a routine manner. Much to my surprise, when I investigated, I found that there were no court records of any divorce.”
“Good heavens,” Charles Sabin said, “what did she expect to gain by that? She must have known she’d be discovered.”
“On the other hand,” Mason said, “under ordinary circumstances, no one would ever look back at a certified copy of a divorce decree. It would have been rather a safe forgery.”
“But why did she want to rely on a forged document?” Sabin asked.
“I don’t know,” Mason told him. “There are several guesses. One of them is that there’s some question as to the validity of her marriage to your father.”
“But why should that have kept her from filing suit for divorce?” Waid asked.
“Because,” Mason said, “regardless of the optimistic ideas of Fremont C. Sabin, there was bound to have been publicity. Newspapers keep highly trained investigators stationed at Reno for the purpose of scrutinizing divorce actions. They’re particularly anxious to find out if any of the movie celebrities slip over to Reno for the purpose of getting a divorce under their true names, and without disclosing their Hollywood identities. Now if, perhaps, Helen Watkins Sabin had another husband living, from whom she’d never been divorced... well, she wouldn’t have dared to risk the publicity. There was a hundred thousand dollars at stake — and that’s a considerable stake.”
Sabin said, “If there’s anything illegal about that first marriage, then how about the marriage ceremony my father went through with Helen Monteith in Mexico?”