The Case of the Curious Bride (6 page)

"Go ahead," the lawyer said.

Montaine dug his elbows into the leather arms of the chair, hitched himself farther forward. "I married her," he blurted. His manner was that of a man who has confessed to some crime.

"I see," Mason remarked, as though marrying nurses was the customary procedure of all convalescents.

Montaine hitched forward to the edge of the chair once more and pushed back his hair. "You can imagine how that must have seemed to my father," he said. "I am an only child. The Montaine line must be carried on through me. I had married a nurse."

"What's wrong with marrying a nurse?" the lawyer asked.

"Nothing. You don't understand. I'm trying to explain this from my father's viewpoint."

"Why bother about your father's viewpoint?"

"Because it's important."

"All right, then, go ahead."

"Out of a clear sky, my father gets a telegram announcing that I have married Rhoda Lorton, the nurse who was employed on the case."

"You didn't tell him you intended to marry her?"

"No, I hardly knew, myself. It was one of those impulses."

"Why didn't you become engaged to her and notify him of that?"

"Because he would have objected. He would have made a great deal of trouble. I wanted to marry her more than I had ever wanted anything in the world. I knew that if I gave him any notice of my intentions, I could never carry them out. He would have discontinued my allowance, ordered me to come home, done almost anything."

"Go ahead," Mason said.

"Well, I married her. I wired my father. He was very nice about it. He was still working on the business deal I spoke of and couldn't leave. He wanted us to come to Chicago to visit him. But Rhoda didn't want to go right away. She wanted to wait a little while."

"So you didn't go."

"No, we didn't go."

"Your father didn't like that?"

"I don't think he liked it."

"You wanted to tell me about a murder," Mason prompted.

"Have you a morning paper here in the office?" Mason opened the drawer of his desk, took out the newspaper he had been reading when Della Street had announced Carl Montaine. "Turn to page three, please," Montaine said.

Mason turned to the third page of the newspaper. The photograph of a key, reproduced in its exact size, appeared in the center of the third page. Below the picture appeared the words, "DID THE KILLER DROP THIS KEY?"

Montaine took a leather key container from his pocket, detached a key, handed it to Perry Mason. "Compare them," he said.

Mason held the key over the photograph, then placed the key on the other side of the paper, made a pencil tracing, slowly nodded his head. "How does it happen," he inquired, "that you have this key? I understood the police were holding it."

Montaine shook his head and said, "Not this key. This is my key. The one that's pictured there is my wife's key. We've got duplicate keys to the garage and to the two automobiles. She dropped her keys when she…" His voice trailed into silence.

He opened the leather key container, spread it on the desk and indicated the keys. "The door keys to the Chevrolet coupe and the Plymouth sedan. My wife usually drives the Chevrolet. I drive the sedan. But sometimes we change off, so, to simplify matters, we each have duplicate keys to the doors and then leave ignition keys right in the locks."

"You've talked with your wife before coming here? She knows you're consulting me?"

"No."

"Why?"

"I don't know just how to explain it so you'll understand."

"I don't know how I can understand unless you do explain it."

"I'd have to begin at the beginning and tell you the whole story."

"I thought that's what you were doing."

"I was trying to."

"Well, go ahead."

"She tried to drug me."

"Tried to what?"

"Tried to drug me."

"Look here," Mason said, "where is she now?"

"Home."

"Does she know that you know about this?"

Montaine shook his head.

"Well, let's hear the story," Mason said impatiently.

"It starts with when I came home from the hospital. That is, it really starts before that time. I had been very nervous. I started taking what I thought was a sedative. I didn't know it was habit-forming. It turned out it was habit-forming. My wife told me I must break it off. She got some Ipral to give me. She said that would help me cure myself."

"What's Ipral?"

"It's a hypnotic. That's what they call it."

"What's a hypnotic? Is it habit-forming?"

"It isn't habit-forming. It cures nervousness and insomnia. You can take two tablets and go to sleep and wake up in the morning without feeling dopey."

"Do you take it all the time?"

"No, of course not. That's the reason I took it, to quiet my nerves when I had one of those fits of nervous sleeplessness."

"You say your wife tried to drug you?"

"Yes. Last night my wife asked me if I would like some hot chocolate before I went to bed. She said she thought it would be good for me. I thought it would be fine. I was undressing in the bedroom. There was a mirror in the bathroom, and a door opened through to the kitchen. By looking in the bathroom mirror, I could see my wife fixing the chocolate. I noticed her fumbling with her purse. I thought that was strange so I stood still, watching her in the mirror.

"I saw her take out the Ipral bottle and shake tablets into the chocolate. I don't know how many tablets she put in. It must have been more than the usual dose."

"You were watching her in the mirror?"

"Yes."

"Then what happened?"

"Then she brought the chocolate in to me."

"And you told her you'd seen her drugging the drink?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. I wanted to find out why she was doing it."

"What did you do?"

"I slipped into the bathroom and poured the drink down the bowl. Then I washed out the cup with water, filled it with cold water and took it into the bedroom with me. We have twin beds. I sat on the edge of my bed and sipped the water as though it had been chocolate."

"She didn't see you were drinking water instead of chocolate?"

"No, I was sitting where she couldn't see into the cup, and I sipped it slowly, as though it had been chocolate."

"Then what did you do?"

"Then I pretended to be very sleepy. I lay perfectly motionless, waiting to see what happened."

"Well, what did happen?"

Montaine lowered his voice impressively. "At one thirty-five in the morning my wife slipped out of bed and dressed quietly in the dark."

Mason's eyes showed interest. "Then what did she do?"

"She left the house."

"Then what?"

"Then I heard her open the door of the garage and back her car out. Then she stopped the car and closed the garage door."

"What kind of a door?" Mason asked.

"A sliding door."

"A double garage?"

"Yes."

"And," Mason asked, "the only reason she stopped and closed that door was to keep any one from seeing her car was gone?"

Montaine nodded eagerly and said, "Now you've got the point. That's right!"

"Now then," Mason went on, "have you any reason to think any one was keeping a casual eye on the garage?"

"Why, no. Not that I know of."

"But your wife evidently thought some one might be looking at the garage – a night watchman perhaps."

"No. I think it was to keep me from looking out of the window and seeing the door was open."

"But you were supposed to have been drugged."

"Yes… I guess so."

"Then she must have been careful to close the door for another reason."

"I guess that's right. I hadn't thought of it in that way."

Mason asked thoughtfully, "How do the doors slide?"

"There are two tracks, one just outside of the other. Either door can slide all the way back and forth across the entire front of the garage. In that way, either car can be taken out. That is, you can take out the car on the left by sliding both doors to the right, or the car on the right by sliding both doors to the left. Then, when you close the garage, you simply leave one door on the left, slide the other back to the right and lock it with a padlock."

Perry Mason's fingers tapped the key which lay on his desk. "And this is your key to the padlock?"

"Yes."

Mason indicated the newspaper photograph. "And this is your wife's key?"

"Yes."

"How do you know?"

"Because there are only three keys. One of them I keep in the desk, one of them in my key container, and the other is in my wife's key container."

"And you have looked in the desk, to make sure that the third key isn't missing?"

"Yes."

"All right, go on. What happened after your wife closed the garage door?"

"She backed her car out, just as I've told you. Then she closed the garage door."

"Did she," asked Perry Mason, "lock the garage door?"

"Yes… No, I guess she didn't… no, she couldn't have."

"The point I'm getting at," Mason said with slow emphasis, "is that if she dropped her keys while she was out, she couldn't have unlocked the garage door when she returned. I take it she did return, since you say she is home now."

"That's right. She couldn't have locked the garage door."

"What happened after she left?"

"I tried to dress," Montaine said, "so that I could follow her. I wanted to know where she was going. As soon as she left the room, I started getting into my clothes, but I couldn't make it. She had driven away before I had my shoes on."

"Did you make any effort to follow her?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I knew I couldn't catch up with her."

"So you waited up until she came in?"

"No, I got back into bed."

"What time did she come back?"

"Some time after two thirty, and before three o'clock."

"Did she open the garage doors then?"

"Yes, she opened them and drove her car in."

"Then did she close them?"

"She tried to."

"But she didn't?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Well, sometimes when the doors are slid back, the brace on the inside of one of the doors catches on the bumper of the other car in the garage. When that happens you have to lift the doors back away from the bumper."

"The doors caught this time?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't she lift them away?"

"She wasn't strong enough."

"So she left the garage door open?"

"Yes."

"How did you know all this? You were lying in bed, weren't you?"

"But I could hear her tugging at the door. And then, when I went out to look this morning, I saw what had happened."

"All right, go on."

"I lay in bed, pretending to be asleep."

"When she came in?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you confront her as she came in the room and ask her where the hell she'd been?"

"I don't know. I was afraid she'd tell me."

"Afraid she'd tell you what?"

"Afraid she'd tell me something that would – would -"

Perry Mason stared steadily at the reddish-brown eyes. "You'd better," he said slowly, "finish that sentence."

Montaine took a deep breath. "If," he said, "your wife went out at one thirty in the morning, and…"

"I'm a bachelor," Perry Mason said, "so leave me out of it. Tell me the facts."

Montaine fidgeted on the edge of the chair, pushed his hair back with his spread fingers. "My wife," he said, "is rather mysterious, rather secretive. I think she acquired that habit from the fact that she's been supporting herself and wasn't accountable to any one. She isn't the type to volunteer explanations."

"That still doesn't tell me anything."

"She was," Montaine said, "that is, she really is… What I mean to say is… well, she's very friendly with a doctor – a physician who does quite a bit of operative work at the Sunnyside Hospital."

"What's his name?"

"Doctor Millsap – Doctor Claude Millsap."

"And you thought she went to meet this Doctor Millsap?" Montaine nodded, shook his head, then nodded again.

"And you were afraid to question her because you didn't want to have your suspicions confirmed?"

"I was afraid to ask her at the time, yes."