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“I’ll bet you he’s drunk as a lord, no matter whether he seems to be sober or not,” snapped Mason. “Some of these fellows are pretty deceptive when it comes to carrying their booze. They get so they can act as sober as judges, but they haven’t very much of an idea what they’re doing or saying.”
Bill Hoffman looked at him with a suggestion of a twinkle in hiseyes.
“Sort of discounting in advance what ever it may be that he’s going to say, eh, Mason?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Hoffman laughed.
“No,” he said, “you didn’t say it. Not in exactly those words.”
“How about getting him some black coffee?” asked Mason. “I think I can find the kitchen and put some coffee on.”
“The housekeeper should be out there,” Hoffman said. “I don’t want to offend you, Mason, but I really want to talk to this man alone, anyway. I don’t know exactly what your status in this case is. You seem to be a friend of the family and a lawyer both.”
“That’s all right,” Mason agreed readily enough. “I understand your position, Sergeant. I happen to be out here, and I’m sticking around.”
Hoffman nodded. “You’ll find the housekeeper in the kitchen, I think. Mrs. Veitch, her name is. We had her and her daughter upstairs questioning them. Go on out there and see if they can scare up some coffee. Get lots of black coffee. I think that the boys upstairs would like it as well as this chap, Griffin.”
“Okay,” Mason said. He went through the folding doors from the dining room, then pushed through a swinging door into a serving pantry, and from there into the kitchen.
The kitchen was enormous, well lit, and well equipped. Two women were seated at a table. They were in straight-backed chairs, and were sitting close to each other. They had been talking in low tones when Perry Mason stepped into the room, and they ceased their conversation abruptly and looked up.
One of them was a woman in the late forties, with hair that was shot with gray, deep-set, lack-luster, black eyes that seemed to have been pulled into her face by invisible strings that had worked the eyes so far back into the sockets it was hard to tell their expression. They hid from sight back in the shadowed hollows. She had a long face, a thin, firm mouth, and high cheek bones. She was dressed in black.
The other woman was very much younger, not over twenty-two or three. Her hair was jet black and glossy. Her eyes were a snapping black, and their brightness emphasized the dullness of the deep-sunken eyes of the older woman. Her lips were full and very red. Her face had received careful attention with rouge and powder. The eyebrows were thin, black and arched, the eyelashes long.
“You’re Mrs. Veitch?” asked Perry Mason, addressing the older woman.
She nodded in tight-lipped silence.
The girl at her side spoke in a rich, throaty voice.
“I’m Norma Veitch, her daughter. What is it you wanted? Mother’s all upset.”
“Yes, I know,” apologized Mason. “I wondered if we could get some coffee. Carl Griffin has just come home, and I think he’s going to need it. And there’s a bunch of men working on the case upstairs who will want some.”
Norma Veitch got to her feet. “Why, I guess so. It’s all right isn’t it, Mother?” she asked.
She glanced at the older woman, and the older woman nodded her head once more.
“I’ll get it, Mother,” said Norma Veitch.
“No,” said the older woman, speaking in a voice that was as dry as the rustling of corn husks. “I’ll get it. You don’t know where things are.”
She pushed back her chair and walked across the kitchen to a cupboard. She slid back a door and took down a huge coffee percolator and a can of coffee. Her face was absolutely expressionless, but she moved as though she were very tired.
She was flat-chested and flat-hipped and walked with springless steps. Her entire ma
The girl turned to Mason and flashed him a smile from her full red lips.
“You’re a detective?” she asked.
Mason shook his head. “No,” he said, “I’m the man that was here with Mrs. Belter. I’m the one that called the police.”
Norma Veitch said, “Oh, yes. I heard something about you.”
Mason turned to the mother.
“I can make the coffee all right, Mrs. Veitch, if you don’t feel able.”
“No,” she said in that same dry, expressionless voice. “I can make it all right.”
She poured coffee into the container, put water in the percolator, walked over to the gas stove, lit the gas, looked at the percolator for a moment, then walked with her peculiar, flat-footed gait back to the chair, sat down, folded her hands on her lap, and lowered her eyes so that she was staring at the top of the table. She continued to stare there in fixed intensity.
Norma Veitch looked up at Perry Mason. “My,” she said, “it was horrible. Wasn’t it?”
Mason nodded, remarked casually, “You didn’t hear the shot, I presume?”
The girl shook her head.
“No, I was sound asleep. In fact, I didn’t wake up until after the officers came. They got Mother up, and I guess they didn’t know that I was sleeping in the adjoining room. They wanted to look through Mother’s room while she was upstairs, I guess. Anyway, the first thing I knew, I woke up and there was a man standing by the bed looking down at me.”
She lowered her eyes and tittered slightly.
One gathered that she had not found the experience unpleasant.
“What happened?” asked Mason.
“They acted as though they thought they had discovered the nigger in the woodpile,” she said. “They made me put on clothes and wouldn’t even let me out of their sight while I was dressing. They took me upstairs, and gave me what they call a third degree, I guess.”
“What did you tell them?” asked Mason.
“Told them the truth,” she said, “that I went to bed and went to sleep, and woke up to find somebody staring down at me.” She seemed rather pleased as she added, “They didn’t believe me.”
Her mother sat at the table, hands folded on her lap, eyes staring steadily in fixed intensity at the center of the table.
“And you didn’t hear anything, or see anything?” asked Perry Mason.
“Not a thing.”
“Have you any ideas about it?”
She shook her head.
“None that would bear repeating.”
He glanced at her sharply.
“Have you any that wouldn’t bear repeating?” he inquired.
She nodded her head.
“Of course, I’ve only been around here a week or so, but in that time…”
“Norma!” said her mother, in a voice which had suddenly lost its dry huskiness and cracked like the lash of a whip.
The girl lapsed into abrupt silence.
Perry Mason glanced at the older woman. She had not so much as raised her eyes from the table when she spoke.
“Did you hear anything, Mrs. Veitch?” he asked.
“I am a servant. I hear nothing, and I see nothing.”
“Rather commendable for one who is a servant, as far as minor matters are concerned,” he observed, “but I think you will find the law has ideas of its own upon the matter, and that you will be required to see and to hear.”