“Absolutely not.”
“Did you have a revolver?”
“No, of course not. That woman’s a liar.”
Mason said, “Look here, Mrs. Newberry. Suppose your husband told you he was going to commit suicide. Suppose you tried to stop him. Suppose he produced a revolver and shot himself, despite anything you could do. Suppose you tried to drag him to the stairs so you could get help, and suppose the ship, at that time, took a heavy roll to port which sent you sliding down against the port rail, still holding on to your husband’s body. You knew you were going to have to summon help. Would you, under those circumstances, have decided it would be better to remove his money belt before you gave the alarm?”
“Probably,” she said, “but that isn’t what happened.”
“And if you had, and your husband had recovered consciousness while you were doing it, started to struggle and gone overboard, then what would you have done?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
Mason said, “Wouldn’t you have given the alarm of ‘Man overboard’?”
“I might have.”
“Well,” Mason said, “ I think you did give the alarm.