She remained on the sofa, listening to the silence, for thirty-two minutes. Then she stood, brushed her hands down her skirt, and stepped to the entrance to the hallway that led to the bathroom and the bedroom. Her foot extended, then retreated. It was only ten feet that she needed to walk to reach the switch to turn on the light. She laughed, almost nervously, but honestly as well. Her smiled faded when she remembered the last time she'd found her fear ridiculous. The ghost of his hand on her shoulder touched her and she jumped, returning to the sofa.
The imprint of her front teeth dented her knuckle. It was a nervous habit she'd had since childhood. She decided to try a game that worked when she was a little girl and she had to do something she didn't want to. On the count of three she would simply run down the hall and it would all be over and she would see that there was nothing in the dark. She counted to herself four times and remained still. The cold fear had sparked a typical reaction; one that hadn't been helped by her choice to drink two cups of coffee with her supper. She annoyed herself and marched to the hallway. I'm going to do it, she announced to the darkness. But then the telephone rang.
Della couldn't make herself answer. What if it was the voice again? What if he knew she was here, alone, and what if he knew that Perry wasn't here? Her fingers found the receiver and it continued to ring. Six, seven, eight, nine. Then silence. Probably just Aunt Mae, wondering how she was but knowing that while she and Perry were working on a case she was never home.
The hallway loomed longer that it had been thirty seconds ago. Della took a deep breath, and lunged as though she were at the starting line of a sprint. One. Two. The telephone sounded again. She let it ring four times and then answered.
"Della," Perry's voice whispered. "Do not answer the door."
The door buzzer sounded.
"Where are you?" she whispered. A fist began pounding.
"Grab anything you can get your hands on that you could use for a weapon," he said. The line clicked. Again the doorbell rang, longer, more impatient. Della backed from it, glancing down the hall again, her mind imagining what could come from the darkness toward her, forcing her into a corner.
She crept to the door and pressed her eye to the peek hole, but saw black. A hand had it covered. The sensation of the flesh a mere inches from her face raised goosebumps on her arms. Feeling the person on the other side, she reached for the crystal vase that sat on the telephone table. The ends of the stems left fat drops on the table, and Della let the water spill onto the floor. She reached to turn the knob, but didn't.
Perry had to be in the building, she knew. She wondered if she should call the police. If he'd wanted her to, though, he would have told her to. He had disconnected suddenly, and perhaps he was in trouble. Her buzzer sounded again, followed by slow knocking, almost a toll. Whoever was on the other side wouldn't continue to ask, it said. She felt hypnotized, as though she were already dead and didn't yet realize it. Where was Perry? Della picked up the phone to dial the police when a gunshot sounded in the corridor. She dropped the receiver and rushed to the door, sliding back the deadbolt and throwing it open.
Nelda Godfrey stood in the middle of the hall, pointing a gun at Perry Mason. She turned it to Della. "Don't move a muscle," she said, her teeth clenched so tightly that Della wondered if the woman had been the one to speak. She backed up and alternated her aim between the lawyer and Della.
"I told you to stay in there," Perry said.
Della rolled her eyes. "Oh yeah, Perry, I know you're close, I hear a gunshot, and you think I'm just going to wait for the coroner to let me know how things turn out?"
"Be quiet, both of you," the woman said clearly. "Get into the apartment now." Della froze, and turned toward the voice. A gravelled tenor that she would never forget. She'd assumed it was a man's, but hearing it come from the withered, thickened woman it didn't seem out of place. It was the one she'd heard in her ear the night of the attack, and then again on the phone in the office the next day.
Perry looked at Della and nodded. "All right, Mrs. Godfrey," he said. "Put down the gun and we'll talk."
"Just get in there," she said. The barrel of the gun followed them into the apartment. "Sit," the woman ordered.
"May I offer you a drink?" Della asked, smiling. Perry kept himself from grinning. She always knew just what to say. The cordial offer clearly surprised Nelda Godfrey, who looked almost childlike holding the gun at them, both hands clutching it. She'd clearly not had much experience shooting, as the bullet hole over the stairway exit could attest.
"Come now, Mrs. Godfrey," Perry began. "We all know you're not going to shoot us. If you'd really wanted to kill Della you would have last week when you were here."
"I don't know what you mean," she said, the gun lowering slightly.
He stood and took a step toward her, but halted when the gun perked up again. Instead he pulled a cigarette from his jacket pocket and lit it. "Of course I didn't suspect you at first. But you made a few mistakes, Mrs. Godfrey. The first was having your neighbor lie for you. The second was killing Lucy Goodland." He exhaled three smoke rings then extinguished the cigarette. "Do you read much Agatha Christie?"
"Some," Nelda Godfrey said.
Perry nodded toward his secretary. "We were talking about Miss Marple this afternoon, Della and I, when I remembered something elementary I learned from one of those novels."
Nelda Godfrey's face wrinkled in confusion.
"And that," Perry continued, "is that people caught up in murders who don't really want to be murderers keep killing to cover their tracks. Soon they stop thinking clearly and trip up." He bore into her eyes. "I don't think you want to be a murderer, Mrs. Godfrey. I don't think you intended for Elise Haynes to die, did you?"
Tears welled up in her eyes. "I didn't kill that girl," she spat.
"But you know who did," he said. "The plan was to scare Elise and get me off your husband's defense for embezzlement. You both knew she was going to tell Goldmeier the truth, didn't you? That was all, wasn't it, Mrs. Godfrey? But that's not how it happened. And when you found out that you'd been double crossed, you got desperate, didn't you?"
"I don't know what you're saying," she cried. "It was me in here that night, Mr. Mason. But I didn't kill Elise."
"You killed Parker, though, didn't you? And Old Walt? Then when Lucy Goodland put it all together you had to kill her, too."
She raised the gun until it pointed at his forehead. Her hands shook as her eyes lit. Della started toward him, and grabbed his arm. Nelda Godfrey no longer cowered, but seemed to grow taller. "If only you'd have listened," she said to Della Street. "I didn't want to have to do this, Mr. Mason. But you've given me no choice."
Perry lunged toward her as the gun fired. Della Street screamed and fell to the ground. An instant later Paul Drake, followed by Lieutenant Tragg and another officer, burst through the front door. Nelda Godfrey dropped the gun, burying her face in her hands as she realized she had been caught.
Drake helped Mason to his feet. "Got here just in time," he said.
The lawyer scowled at him, wrapping his arm around Della's waist as she stood. "Sure," Perry said. "Next time do you think you could make it before we get shot at?"