“You’ve now established that Moar didn’t embezzle from the Products Refining Company,” Della Street said.
“It still doesn’t account for where he got the money,” Mason pointed out.
“What makes you think he had any money?” she asked.
“Well,” Mason said, “an assistant accountant doesn’t suddenly give up a job and start traveling around the world without having something to use for cash, and a man who has eighteen thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars in cash in a chamois-skin money belt...”
“Wait a minute. Chief,” she interrupted. “How do you know he had that?”
“Why...” Mason said, “the captain counted it in my presence. He...” He stopped abruptly, to stare at Della Street. “Go on,” he said, “spill it.”
“ I haven’t anything to spill,” she said, “only I’m trying to point out that all the facts you have in this case came from Mrs. Moar. Suppose she was the one who had the sudden influx of wealth? Suppose she gave the money to her husband to finance the trip to Honolulu. Suppose she talked him into quitting his job. Suppose she was the one who suggested that it would make it much easier for Belle if they changed their names from Moar to Newberry.”
“Wait a minute,” Mason interrupted. “How about that money belt?”
“Can’t you see,” Della Street said, “she never intended to let her husband reach shore alive. She intended to make his death look like suicide. Until you told her differently, she didn’t realize that the life insurance policy wouldn’t pay on suicide. When she did realize it, it was too late. She had to go through with the plan. If her husband had apparently committed suicide, later on she could have “found” the money belt. The fact that he’d removed the money belt and placed it under the mattress would have been perfectly consistent with his going up on deck to commit suicide. All Mrs. Moar had to do was to swear she hadn’t been on deck with him. She might have made it stick if it hadn’t been for Miss Fell’s testimony and the search the captain made of her stateroom closet.”
“Has it occurred to you,” Mason asked, “that this theory you’re outlining presupposes, that Mrs. Moar had been deliberately planning her husband’s death for some time?”