“And how did it happen your dress got caught on one of the cleats?” Mason asked.
She said without hesitation, “Mrs. Moar made a mistake, leaving her wet clothes where they could be found. It showed she’d been on deck. If they searched my stateroom, I didn’t want them to find my wet clothes as evidence. I threw my dinner dress out of the porthole. By that time, the ship had turned around and the wind was blowing a gale. It caught my dress, tore it out of my hand, and sent it flying up in the air. I suppose a part of it caught on the cleat and the rest tore loose.
“Miss Fell had seen me dragging the dummy across the boat deck and your secretary, Miss Street, happened to be standing just below. She looked up and saw me as I pushed the dummy overboard and fired the second shot. I knew that she had run in and telephoned that a man was overboard, and I knew that sooner or later she’d be made to tell what she’d seen. You see, she was looking up into the rain, and therefore couldn’t see my features, but I was looking down and could see hers. The rain was in her eyes. It wasn’t in mine.
“Please understand me,” she pleaded, “I was willing to help the man I loved because I thought he was innocent. Then this morning when I read the papers, I knew why he’d left me up there in the mountains. He’d gone back and tricked Carl to his death. He figured that would keep Carl’s testimony from ever being given and that the murder would be charged to Mrs. Moar. I was sick. I loved him — I still love him — I can’t protect him now, though I see him for what he really is — even — I can’t stand back of him anymore— Tell me, Mr. Mason, since you seem to know all about it, he did — kill Carl, didn’t he?”
Her eyes, pleading and anxious, hoping against hope, rested on the lawyer’s face.
“Yes,” Mason said, “and he made the fatal mistake of leaving high-laced shoes on Moar’s body. You see, when Carl Moar was supposed to have gone overboard, he was dressed in a tuxedo. As soon as I saw the high-laced shoes on Moar’s body I realized what must have happened. The fact that the bullet in the body had been fired from a gun other than Moar’s gun was further convincing evidence. I’m sorry, Miss Whiting, but that’s what happened. And I’m not altogether blameless. I should have deduced the truth sooner than I did. Knowing that Moar had been on a jury in Los Angeles, that he had been instrumental in getting the defendant acquitted that Baldwin Van Densie, a notorious jury briber, had been the attorney representing that defendant and discovering that Carl had come into the unexplained possession of approximately twenty-five thousand dollars immediately after the verdict had been returned, should have been all I needed, particularly when one adds to that the fact that Belle Newberry’s picture, had disappeared from a suitcase to which only Mr. Moar had the key, and the lock showed no evidence of having been tampered with. I’m afraid, Miss Whiting, that the peculiar manner in which the case developed threw me off the track and prevented me from saving Carl Moar’s life.”
She nodded. Her lips quivered. “I loved Morgan,” she said. “I believed in him. I... trusted him.” She started to sob.
Mason’s voice was filled with sympathy as he said to Judge Romley, “If the Court please, won’t it be more merciful to take a recess?”
Chapter 19
Mason, Della Street, Paul Drake, Mrs. Moar, Belle Newberry and Roy Hungerford sat in Mason’s suite at the hotel, champagne glasses on the table, the neck of a ceremonial bottle of champagne protruding from a bucket of cracked ice.