“All right,” I said. “You’re in on a murder.”
“I knew that already.”
I said, “The girl you were talking with was Marian Dunton. She was stranded in a hick town up in the foothills. She wanted to get out. She played a hunch that this Lintig case was something bigger than appeared on the surface. She followed my back trail and got a lead by which she figured she could dig up some information.”
“You mean with this Evaline girl?”
“Yes.”
Bertha said, “Never mind the history. I figured that all out myself. Tell me something I don’t know.”
I said, “I don’t know just what time the post-mortem will show Evaline Harris was murdered, probably about the time Marian Dunton went to her apartment for the first time.”
“For the first time?” Bertha asked.
“Yes. She opened the door of the apartment and saw Evaline lying on the bed. She thought she was asleep. A man had just left the apartment. Marian thought it wasn’t exactly a propitious moment for getting information, so she quietly closed, the door and went back to sit in the car where she could watch the door of the apartment house. After half an hour or so, she tried it again. She was bolder that time and more curious. She found Evaline Harris had a cord knotted around her neck and was quite dead. Marian lost her head, could only think of me, and came rushing up to my room to tell me about it. I sent her to the police, told her to say nothing about having been to me, nothing about the agency, nothing about Mrs. Lintig, simply that she was approaching Evaline to see about getting a job in the city, that she thought Evaline was asleep the first time, and had gone out to wait in the car.”
“I doubt if she gets away with that,” Bertha Cool said. “I think she will.”