The Case of the Golddigger’s Purse

7

A siren, at first as muted as the sound of a persistent mosquito, grew in volume until as the police car approached the house it faded from a keen, high-pitched demand for the right-of-way to a low, throbbing protest, then lapsed into silence.

Heavy steps sounded on the porch and Mason opened the front door.

Sergeant Dorset said, “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Reception committee,” Mason announced briefly. “Do come in.”

Men pushed into the room, not bothering to remove their hats, gazing curiously at the two women; Sally Madison calm and collected, her face as expressionless as that of a doll, Mrs. Faulkner, her eyes red from crying, half sitting, half reclining on the davenport, emitting low, moaning sounds which were too regular to be sobs, too low in volume to be groans.

“Okay,” Sergeant Dorset said to Mason, “what’s the story this time?”

Mason smiled suavely. “No need to run a blood pressure, Sergeant. I didn’t discover the body.”

“Who did?”

Mason inclined his head toward the woman on the davenport.

“Who’s she, the wife?”

“If you wish to be technically correct,” Mason said, “and I’m certain you do, she’s the widow.”

Dorset faced Mrs. Faulkner, and by the simple process of tilting his hat toward the back of his head, gave her to understand that she was about to be interviewed. The other officers, having spilled through the house in a questing search for the body, congregated almost at once at the entrance to the bathroom.

Sergeant Dorset waited until Mrs. Faulkner glanced up. “Okay,” he said.

Mrs. Faulkner said in a low voice, “I really did love him. We had our troubles, and at times he was terribly hard to get along with, but...”

“Let’s get to that later,” Dorset said. “How long ago did you find him?”

“Just a few minutes.”

“How many? Five? Ten? Fifteen?”

“I don’t think it’s been ten minutes. Perhaps just a little more than five.”

“We’ve been six minutes getting here.”

“We called you as soon as I found him.”

“How soon after you found him?”

“Right away.”

“One minute? Two minutes? Three minutes?”

“Not as much as a minute.”

“How’d you happen to find him?”

“I went into the bedroom and — and opened the door to the bathroom.”

“Looking for him?”

“No. I had let Mr. Mason in and...”

“What was he doing here?”

“He was waiting at the door as I drove up. He wanted to see my husband.”

Dorset turned to glance sharply at Mason.

Mason nodded.

“We’ll talk about that later,” Sergeant Dorset said.

Mason smiled. “Miss Madison was with me, Sergeant, and had been with me for the last hour or two.”

“Who’s Miss Madison?”

Sally Madison smiled. “Me.”

Sergeant Dorset looked her over. Almost unconsciously his hand strayed to his hat, removed it and placed it on a table. “Mason your lawyer?” he asked.

“No, not exactly.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, I hadn’t fixed things up with him — you know, retained him, but I thought perhaps he could help me, thought he would, you know.”

“Help you what?”

“Get Mr. Faulkner to finance Tom Gridley’s invention.”

“What invention?”

“It has to do with curing sick fish.”

A voice from the bedroom called, “Hey, Sarge. Look in here. He’s got a couple of goldfish swimming around in the bathtub.”

“How many goldfish are swimming?” Mason asked.

“Two of ’em, Sarge.”

Sergeant Dorset said angrily, “That wasn’t me who asked you that last question. That was Mason.”

“Oh,” the voice said, and a broad-shouldered officer came to the door to stare belligerently at the lawyer. “I’m sorry, Sergeant, I thought it was you.”

Mrs. Faulkner said, “Please, I want to have someone come to stay with me. I can’t bear to be here alone after all this. I... I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Hold it, lady,” the officer in the bedroom said. “You can’t go in the bathroom.”

“Why not?”

A certain delicacy caused the officer to keep silent.

“You mean you aren’t going to... to move him?” Mrs. Faulkner asked.

“Not for a while. We’ve got to take pictures and get fingerprints and do lots of things.”

“But I’m going to be sick. What... what shall I do?”

“Ain’t there any other bathroom in the place?”

“No.”

“Look,” Dorset said, “why don’t you go to a hotel for the night? Perhaps you can ring up some friend and...”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that. I don’t feel up to going to a hotel. I’m all upset. I’m... I’m nauseated... Besides, I don’t think you could get a room in a hotel this hour of the night, just ringing up and telling them I wanted a room.”

“Got some friend you could stay with?”

“No — not very well. She’d have to come over here. She and another girl share an apartment. There wouldn’t be any room there for me.”

“Who is she?”

“Adele Fairbanks.”

“Okay. Ring her up.”

“I... oh...!” Mrs. Faulkner clapped a hand over her mouth.

“Go out on the lawn,” the officer in the doorway said.

Mrs. Faulkner dashed for the back porch. The men heard the sound of retching, then the running of water in a set tub.

Sergeant Dorset said to the officer in the bedroom, “She’s got a girl friend who’ll be coming over. They’ll be using the bathroom. Get busy on the fingerprints.”

“They’re taking ’em now, Sergeant, but the place is full of latents. You can’t get ’em classified, photographed and all that by the time they’re ready to move the stiff.”

Sergeant Dorset reached a prompt decision. “Okay,” he said, “lift ’em.” Then he turned to Mason and said, “You can wait outside. We’ll call you when we want you.”

Mason said, “I’ll tell you what you want to know now, and if you want any more information from me you can reach me at my office tomorrow.”

Dorset hesitated, said, “Wait outside for ten or fifteen minutes anyway. Something may come up I want to ask you about.”

Mason glanced at his watch. “Fifteen minutes. No longer.”

“Okay.”

Sally Madison got up from her chair as Mason started for the door.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Sergeant Dorset said.

Sally Madison turned, smiled invitingly. “Yes, Sergeant.”

Sergeant Dorset looked her over, glanced at the officer who was standing in the doorway. The officer closed his eye in a surreptitious wink.

“All right,” Dorset said abruptly, “wait outside with Mr. Mason. But don’t you go away.” He strode to the door, jerked it open and said to a man in uniform who was on guard outside, “Mr. Mason’s going to wait outside for fifteen minutes. If I want him within that time I’ll call him. The girl is going to wait outside until I call her. She isn’t to leave.”

The officer nodded, said, “Fifteen minutes,” and looked at his watch. Then he added, “A private dick’s out here. I wouldn’t let him in. He says the lawyer called him.”

Sergeant Dorset glanced over to where Paul Drake was leaning against the side of the porch, smoking a cigarette.

“Hello, Sergeant,” Drake said.

“What are you doing here?” Dorset asked.

“Keeping the porch from falling over,” Drake drawled.

“How did you come — in a car?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Go on out and sit in it.”

“You’re so good to me,” Drake said humorously.

Sergeant Dorset held the door open until Sally Madison and Perry Mason had moved out to the porch, then slammed it shut.

Mason jerked his head toward Paul Drake and moved off toward the place where he had left his automobile. Sally Madison hesitated a moment, then followed. Drake joined them at the curb.

“How’d it happen?” Drake asked.

“He was in the bathroom. Somebody shot him. One shot. Dead center. Through the heart. Death must have been instantaneous, but the medical examiner hasn’t said anything yet.”

“Did you find him, Perry?”

“No, the wife did.”

“That’s a break. How did it happen? Wasn’t she home when you got here?”

“No. She drove up just as I was ringing the bell. You know, Paul, she seemed to be in one hell of a hurry. There was a peculiar smell to the exhaust fumes. Suppose you can get over and take a look at her car before the officers start questioning her and perhaps get the same idea I have?”

“What idea?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It isn’t definite enough to be an idea, but she certainly slammed that car around the corner and up into the driveway. I don’t know what gave me the idea, Paul, other than the smell of the fumes from the exhaust — but I wondered if she’d driven the car a long ways, or whether she’d been parked around the corner somewhere. I remember there was something peculiar about the way the motor sounded, and I got the smell of all but raw gasoline when she slammed the car to a stop. How about taking a look at the choke?”

“Well,” Drake said dubiously, “I can try.”

“They can’t hook you for trying,” Mason said.

Drake moved away, starting toward the front porch. The officer grinned, shook his head and jerked his thumb. “Nothing doing, buddy,” he said, and then added, “sorry.”

Drake veered off to one side, made a few aimless motions, then strolled quite casually over toward the automobile Mrs. Faulkner had driven up to the house. Acting very much as though this was the automobile in which he had driven up, the detective settled down in the front seat and after a moment took a cigarette from his pocket and lit a match, delaying its application to the end of the cigarette long enough to study the dashboard of the automobile.

“What do they mean by lifting fingerprints?” Sally Madison asked Mason.

“They dust objects with a special powder,” Mason said, his eyes on Paul Drake. “That brings out what are known as latent fingerprints. Sometimes they use a black powder, sometimes a white powder, depending on the surface. Mostly when they lift fingerprints they use a black powder to bring out the latent, and then take a piece of adhesive, place it over the developed latent, rub it smoothly until every bit of powder has had a chance to adhere to the adhesive, and then pull off the adhesive. That definitely lifts the fingerprint from the object on which it was found.”

“How long do fingerprints keep when they do that?”

“Indefinitely.”

“How do they know where they took the prints from?”

Mason said, “You’re asking a lot of questions.”

“I’m curious.”

“It all depends on the expert who’s doing the job. Some of them make marks on the object from which the print was lifted, number the adhesive and put a corresponding number on the object. Some of them put the numbers in a notebook with a sketch or a description of the place from which the print was lifted.”

“I thought they had fingerprint cameras and took photographs.”

“Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t. It all depends on who’s doing it. Personally, I’d photograph all latents, even if the women never got the use of the bathroom.”

Sally Madison looked at Mason curiously. “Why?”

“Because,” Mason said, “if there were a lot of latents, the man’s going to have a heck of a job keeping them all straight.”

“I don’t see the importance of that.”

“You would if they found one of your fingerprints.”

“What do you mean?”

“It might make a difference whether they found it on the doorknob or on the handle of the gun — a difference to you, anyway.”

Paul Drake opened the door of the car Mrs. Faulkner had been driving, swung his feet around to the ground, stretched, yawned, slammed the door shut, and the red of his cigarette glowed in the darkness as he casually walked over to where Mason and Sally Madison were standing, talking.

“You played a hunch, Perry.”

“What did you find?”

“Choke half way out, motor temperature almost stone cold. Even making allowances for the fact that she’s been here for twenty minutes or even half an hour, the motor wouldn’t have cooled off that fast. It looks as though the car hadn’t been driven more than a quarter of a mile. Perhaps less than that.”

Sally Madison said, “She was coming fast enough when she slewed around that corner.”

Mason flashed Paul Drake a warning glance.

The door of the house opened, and Sergeant Dorset stood framed in the illumination of the doorway. He said something to the officer who was guarding the entrance to the house. The officer walked out to the edge of the porch and in the manner of a bailiff calling a witness to the stand, intoned, “Sally Madison.”

Mason grinned. “That’s you, Sally.”

“What shall I tell them?” she asked in sudden panic.

“Anything you want to hold back?” Mason asked.

“No — I don’t suppose there is.”

“If you think of anything you want to hold back,” Mason told her, “hold it back, but don’t lie about anything.”

“But if I held anything back I’d have to lie.”

“No you wouldn’t, just keep your mouth shut. Now then the minute the police get done with you, I want you to call this number. That’s Della Street’s apartment. Tell her you’re coming out there. The two of you go to a hotel, register under your own names. Don’t let anyone know where you are. In the morning have Della telephone me, somewhere around eight-thirty. Have breakfast sent up to your room. Don’t go out and don’t talk with anyone until I get there.”

Mason handed her a slip of paper with Della Street’s number written on it.

“What’s the idea?” Sally Madison asked.

Mason said, “I want you to keep away from the reporters. They may try to interview you. I’m going to try to get five thousand bucks for you and Tom Gridley out of the Faulkner estate.”

“Oh, Mr. Mason!”

“Don’t say a word,” Mason warned. “Don’t let the police or anyone else know where you’re going. Don’t even tell Tom Gridley. Keep out of circulation until I have a chance to see how the land lies.”

“You mean you think there’s a chance?”

“There may be. It will depend.”

“On what?”

“On a lot of things.”

Sergeant Dorset spoke sharply to the officer on the porch and the officer once more intoned in his best courtroom manner, “Salleeeeeee Madisonnnn,” and then, lapsing into a less formal manner, bellowed down at the trio, “cut out that gabbing and get up here. The sergeant wants to see you.”

Sally Madison walked rapidly up toward the porch, her heels echoing her rapid, nervous step.

Drake said to Mason, “What gave you the hunch that she was parked around the corner, Perry?”

Mason said, “It may not have been around the corner, Paul. I had a hunch the car might have been running on a cold motor, judging from the way the exhaust smelled. And then, of course, the possibility naturally occurred to me that she might have been waiting somewhere around the corner for an auspicious moment to make her appearance.”

“Well, it’s a possibility, all right,” Drake said, “and you know what it means if it’s true.”

“I’m not certain that I do,” Mason said thoughtfully. “And I’m not even going to think about it until I find out whether it’s true, but it’s an interesting fact to file away for future reference.”

“Think Sergeant Dorset will get wise to it?” Drake asked.

“I doubt it. He’s too much engrossed in following the routine procedure to think of any new lines. Lieutenant Tragg would have thought of it if he’d been here. He has brains, Paul... Dorset is all right but he came up the hard way, and he relies too much on the old browbeating methods. Tragg is smooth as silk and you never know where he’s heading from the direction in which he’s pointed. He...”

Once more the door of the house opened. Sergeant Dorset didn’t wait this time to relay his message through the guard at the door. He called out, “Hey, you two, come up here. I want to talk with you.”

Mason said in a low voice to Paul Drake, “If they try to put skids under you, Paul, get in your car, and drive around the corner. Scout the side streets just for luck, then after the newspaper boys show up, grab one with whom you’re friendly, buy him a couple of drinks and see what you can pick up.”

“I can’t do that until after he’s phoned his story in to his paper,” Drake said.

“No one wants you to,” Mason told him. “Just...”

“Any old time, any old time,” Sergeant Dorset said sarcastically. “Just take your time, gentlemen, no need to be in a hurry. After all, you know, it’s only a murder.”

“Not a suicide?” Mason asked, climbing up the porch steps.

“What do you think he did with the gun, swallow it?” Dorset inquired.

“I didn’t even know how he was killed.”

“Too bad about you. What’s Drake doing here?”

“Looking around.”

“How’d you get here?” Dorset asked Drake suspiciously.

“I told Sally Madison to call him at the same time she called you.”

“What’s that?” Dorset demanded sharply. “Who called me?”

“Sally Madison.”

“I thought it was the wife.”

“No, the wife was getting ready to have hysterics. Sally Madison put through the call.”

“What did you want Drake for?”

“Just to look around.”

“What for?”

“To see what he could find out.”

“Why? You’re not representing anyone, are you?”

Mason said, “If you want to get technical, I wasn’t paying Faulkner a social call at this hour of the night.”

“What’s this about a man named Staunton having those stolen goldfish?”

“He claims Faulkner gave them to him to keep.”

“Faulkner reported to the police that they’d been stolen.”

“I know he did.”

“They say you were here when the radio officers got here the night the fish were stolen.”

“That’s right. Drake was here too.”

“Well, what’s your idea? Were they stolen or weren’t they?”

Mason said, “I’ve never handled any goldfish, Sergeant.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Nothing, perhaps. Again, perhaps a lot.”

“I don’t get you.”

“Ever stand on a chair and dip a soup ladle down into a four-foot goldfish tank, try to pick up a fish and then, sliding your hands along a four-foot extension handle, raise that fish to the surface, lift him out of a tank and put him into a bucket?”

Sergeant Dorset asked suspiciously, “What’s that got to do with it?”

Mason said, “Perhaps nothing. Perhaps a lot. My own idea is, Sergeant, that the ceiling of the room in that real estate office is about nine and one-half feet from the floor, and I would say that the bottom of the fish tank was about three feet six inches from the floor. The tank itself is four feet deep.”

“What the devil are you talking about?” Dorset asked.

“Measurements,” Mason said.

“I don’t see what that has to do with it.”

“You asked me if I thought the fish had been stolen.”

“Well.”

Mason said, “The evidence that indicates they were stolen consists of a silver soup ladle, to the handle of which was tied a four-foot extension pole.”

“Well, what’s wrong with that? If you were going to reach to the bottom of a four-foot fish tank you’d need a four-foot pole, wouldn’t you? Or does your master mind have some new angle on that?”

“Only,” Mason said, “that if you were lifting a goldfish out of water which was within a half inch of the top of a four-foot tank and that tank was already three and a half feet from the floor, the surface of your water would then be seven feet five inches above the floor.”

“So what?” Dorset asked, his voice showing that he was interested, despite his elaborate attempt to maintain a mask of skeptical sarcasm.

“So,” Mason said, “you would lower your four-foot ladle into the tank, all right, because you could slip it in on an angle, but when you started lifting it out you’d have to keep it straight up and down in order to keep from spilling your fish. Now let’s suppose your ceiling is nine and a half feet from the floor and the surface of the water is seven and a half feet from the floor, then when you’ve raised the ladle, with its four-foot extension handle, some two feet from the bottom of the tank, the top of your extension handle knocks against the ceiling. Then what are you going to do? If you tilt your pole on an angle so you can get the ladle out of the tank, your fish slips out of the ladle.”

Dorset got the idea. He stood frowning portentously, said at length, “Then you don’t think the fish were stolen.”

Mason said, “I don’t think they were lifted out of that tank with any soup ladle and I don’t think that soup ladle with its four-foot extension was used in fish stealing.”

Dorset said somewhat dubiously, “I don’t get it,” and then added rather quickly, as though trying to cover his confession, “shucks, there’s nothing to it. You’d have held the soup ladle with one hand straight up and down. The end of the pole would have been up against the ceiling, all right, but you’d have reached down into the water with your other hand and pulled out the fish.”

“Two feet of water?” Mason asked.

“Why not?”

Mason said, “Even supposing you’d lift the fish from the bottom of the tank up to within two feet of the surface. Do you think you could have reached down with your other hand, caught the fish in your fingers and lifted him to the surface? I don’t, and, furthermore, Sergeant, if you want to try rolling up your sleeve and picking something out of two feet of water, you’ll find that you’re rolling your sleeve pretty high. Somewhere past the shoulder, I’d say.”

Dorset thought that over, said, “Well, it’s a nice point you’re making, Mason. I’ll go in there and make some measurements. You may be right.”

“I’m not trying to sell you anything. You simply asked me what I thought about the fish being stolen, and I told you.”

“When did that idea occur to you?”

“Almost as soon as I saw the room with the fish tank pulled out to the edge of the sideboard and the soup ladle with its extension handle lying on the floor.”

“You didn’t say anything about that to the officers who came out to investigate.”

“The officers who came out to investigate didn’t ask me anything about that.”

Dorset thought that over, then abruptly changed the subject. “What’s this about this guy Staunton having the fish?”

“He’s got them.”

“The same fish that were taken out of the tank?”

“Sally Madison thinks they’re the same.”

“You’ve talked with Staunton?”

“Yes.”

“And he said Faulkner gave the fish to him?”

“That’s right.”

“What would be the idea in that?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“But you heard Staunton state that Faulkner gave him those fish?”

“That’s right.”

“Did he say when?”

“Sometime in the evening of the day Faulkner reported them as having been stolen — last Wednesday, I believe it was. He wasn’t too definite about the time.”

Dorset was thinking that over when a taxicab swung around the corner and came to a stop. A woman jumped out without waiting for the cab driver to open the door. She handed him a bill, then ran up the walk, a small overnight bag clamped under her arm.

The officer on guard blocked the porch stairway. “You can’t go in here.”

“I’m Adele Fairbanks, a friend of Jane Faulkner. She telephoned me and told me to come...”

Sergeant Dorset said, “It’s all right, you can go in. But don’t try to get into the bedroom yet and don’t go near the bathroom until we tell you you can. See if you can get Mrs. Faulkner to calm down. If she starts getting hysterical, we’re going to have to call in a doctor.”

Adele Fairbanks was in the late thirties. Her figure had very definitely filled out. Her hair was dark but not dark enough to be distinctive. She wore thick-lensed glasses and had a nervous mannerism of speech which caused her words to spurt out in groups of four or five at a time. She said, “Oh, it’s simply terrible... I just can’t believe it. Of course, he was a peculiar man... But to think of someone deliberately killing him... If it was deliberate, officer... It wasn’t suicide, was it? No, it couldn’t have been... He had no reason to...”

“Go on inside,” Dorset interrupted hastily. “See what you can do for Mrs. Faulkner.”

As Adele Fairbanks eagerly popped through the door and into the house, Sergeant Dorset said to Mason, “This Staunton angle looks to be worth investigating. I’m going to take Sally Madison out there. I’d like to have you as witnesses because I want to be damn certain he doesn’t change his story about Faulkner giving him those fish. If he does change it, then you’ll be there to confront him with the admission he made earlier in the evening.”

Mason shook his head. “I’ve got other things to do, Sergeant. Sally will be all the witness you need. I’m going places.”

“And that,” Dorset said to Paul Drake, “just about leaves you with no excuse to be sticking around here any more.”

Drake said, “Okay, Sergeant,” with a docility that was surprising, and immediately walked over to his car, opened the door and started the motor.

The officer who was guarding the porch said suspiciously, “Hey, Sarge. That ain’t his car. His car is the one parked there in the driveway.”

“How do you know?” Mason asked.

“How do I know?” the officer demanded. “How do I know anything? Didn’t the guy go sit in that car and smoke a cigarette? Want me to stop him, Sergeant?”

Drake turned his car out from the curb toward the center of the road.

“That’s his car,” Mason said quietly to Dorset.

“Then what’s that other car out there?” the officer demanded.

“To the best of my knowledge,” Mason said, “that car belongs to the Faulkners. At least it’s the car in which Mrs. Faulkner drove up to the house.”

“Then what was that guy doing in it?”

Mason shrugged his shoulders.

Dorset said angrily to the officer, “What the hell did you suppose I was leaving you out here for?”

“Gosh, Sergeant, I thought it was his car all the time. He walked across to it just as though he owned it. Come to think of it, I guess that car was there when we got here, but the way the bird acted... you know, just like he owned the bus.”

Dorset said angrily, “Give me your flashlight.”

He took the flashlight and strode over toward the parked automobile. Mason started to follow him. Dorset turned angrily and said, “You can stay right there. We’ve had enough interference in this case already.”

The officer on the porch, trying to cover up his previous blunder by a sudden increase in efficiency, announced belligerently, “And when the Sergeant says you stay there, Buddy, it means you stay right there! Don’t take even another step toward that automobile.”

Mason grinned, waited while Sergeant Dorset’s flashlight made a complete exploration of the interior of the car which Mrs. Faulkner had been driving.

After several minutes of futile search, Sergeant Dorset rejoined Mason, said, “I don’t see a thing in the car except a burnt match on the floor.”

“Drake probably lit a cigarette,” Mason said casually.

“Yes, I remember that. He did for a fact,” the officer on guard admitted readily enough. “He walked over to the car just as though he’d been going to drive off, lit a cigarette and sat there and smoked for awhile.”

“Probably he just wanted a place to sit down,” Mason observed, yawning, “and thought that was a good place to take a load off his feet.”

“So you thought he was going to drive off,” Sergeant Dorset said sarcastically to the officer.

“Well, I sort of thought... well, you know...”

“And I suppose if he’d driven that car off you’d have stood there with your hands in your pockets while this guy got away with what may be an important piece of evidence.”

In the embarrassed silence which followed, Mason said placatingly, “Well, Sergeant, we all make mistakes.”

Dorset grunted, turned to the officer and said, “Jim, as soon as they get done with those fingerprints in the bedroom and bathroom, tell the boys I said to go over that automobile for fingerprints. Pay particular attention to the steering wheel and the gear shift lever. If they find any fingerprints, lift them and put them with the others.”

Mason said dryly, “Yes, indeed, Sergeant, we all make mistakes.”

Once more Sergeant Dorset merely grunted.