The Case of the Nervous Accomplice

Chapter 12

Mason stopped his car in front of the California type bungalow, opened the door of the car.

“Hold it,” Della Street said. “I’m coming across to your side.” She slid from the right side across under the steering wheel, with a tantalizing flash of shapely legs, and then was standing on the sidewalk, shaking her skirts down and placing her purse under her arm as she walked up to the door with Perry Mason.

Mason rang the doorbell.

The woman who answered it was red-haired, blue eyed, about thirty, with high cheekbones and a mouth which, despite an attempt to change the lines with lipstick, remained a thin straight line.

“Good afternoon.”

“Mrs. Doxey?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Perry Mason.”

“I thought you were. I’ve seen your picture.”

“This is Miss Street, my secretary. May we come in for a moment?”

“Herbert isn’t here.”

“I wanted to talk with you.”

“I’m rather upset these days, Mr. Mason. The—”

“I don’t want to intrude on your grief,” Mason said, “but I consider it rather important.”

“It isn’t only my grief, it’s my housekeeping. I’ve let things go pretty much. Come in.”

She led the way into a comfortable, spacious living-room.

Mason looked around at the artistic furnishings appreciatively.

“It’s big,” she said. “Too big for just us two, now that Daddy is gone. I don’t know what we’ll do. He lived with us, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” Mason said.

“Sit down, please.”

After they were seated Mason said, “I’ll come directly to the point, Mrs. Doxey.”

“That’s what I like people to do.”

“You and your father were very close?”

“In a way. We understood each other and respected each other. Daddy didn’t confide very much in anyone.”

“You knew that he had sold his stock in the Sylvan Glade Development Company?”

“I know it now.”

“And you knew it on the third, the date that Mr. Lutts died?”

She hesitated for a moment, then said, “Yes I knew it on the third.”

“On the afternoon of the third?”

“On the evening of the third.”

“When?”

“After he failed to show up for dinner — usually, he was very prompt. He wanted dinner at a certain hour — that was one of Daddy’s peculiarities. People kept telephoning about stock.”

“Do you have servants?”

“A servant who helps with housework — part time.”

“And as a rule, dinner was right on time?”

“Right to the minute.”

“So when he didn’t show up you thought it was rather unusual?”

“It was very unusual. I may say it was unique. It was his custom either to be here or give us ample notice by telephone.”

“So I take it, you discussed with your husband what might have been keeping him, when he didn’t show up on the evening of the third.”

“Yes.”

“And it was then your husband told you about the transfer of stock?”

“Yes.”

“And told you I had bought the stock?”

“Yes.”

“Now then,” Mason said, “your husband also told you that I was acting in a representative capacity?”

“He thought you were.”

“And he told you the name of my client?”

“No, he didn’t know.”

“He didn’t know?”

She shook her head.

“You asked him about it?”

“Of course. We speculated as to just who it might be. Herbert thought it might be either Cleve Rector or Ezekiel Elkins. He wouldn’t have put it past either one of them to have manipulated things in that way, so that trouble could have been stirred up.”

“I see,” Mason said. “Eventually, you found out the identity of my client?”

“No, I don’t know to this day who it was. I don’t think any announcement has ever been made, has it?”

“But you’ve learned from your husband, informally and off the record, who that client is?”

She tightened her lips and shook her head.

“Do you know Mrs. Claffin?”

“I’ve met her.”

“More than once?”

“Yes.”

“Several times?”

“Three or four.”

“Are you just on speaking terms, or are you close friends?”

“Just speaking terms.”

Mason hesitated for a moment.

“Why are you asking me these things, Mr. Mason?”

“Because I’m trying to clarify a matter which may be of some importance.”

She remained silent.

“Did you at any time speculate with Mrs. Claffin as to the identity of my client?”

“No.”

“Did you discuss with Mrs. Claffin the fact that I had bought stock in the company?”

“No, I haven’t seen her since you bought the stock.”

Mason exchanged glances with Della Street. “Well, thank you,” he said. “I was just trying to find out something about Mrs. Claffin and her attitude.”

“I’m afraid I can’t help you at all, Mr. Mason.”

She was obviously waiting for him to take his departure. Abruptly, the front door opened, a cheery voice sang out, “Hello, honeybunch.”

Mrs. Doxey got up. “We have company, Herbert.”

“I saw a car parked out front — didn’t know whether it was someone who had parked or— Why, hello, Mr. Mason. What are you doing here? And Miss Street. It’s a pleasure.”

Mason said, “I was trying to find out something about what had happened after the directors’ meeting on the third.”

Doxey lost much of his cordiality. “My wife doesn’t know anything about the business.”

“So she was telling me. Now, Mr. Lutts evidently had a shrewd suspicion as to who my client was when I put across that stock deal.”

“He did. He knew who it was, but he didn’t tell me. I’ve already explained that.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“That afternoon — after the directors’ meeting. We went over to the restaurant and had a couple of hamburgers. You know all that, Mason. I’ve told you all this.”

“Did he discuss my buying that stock with you?”

“We didn’t talk about anything else — what did you think we’d be talking about?”

“And at that time he made some speculation as to the identity of my client?”

“Of course. That was what interested us. That was the sixty-four dollar question, but there weren’t any answers, I was inclined to think it was Elkins. Daddy Lutts thought it had to be an outsider. Then some idea came to him, and Daddy Lutts went to make a phone call. He learned something he didn’t see fit to pass on to me.”

“Do you know Mrs. Claffin?”

“Of course, I know Mrs. Claffin.”

“You’ve met her several times?”

“What the hell is this — some sort of a cross-examination? I know her, yes. What’s that got to do with it?”

“Did you ever talk with her about my buying the stock?”

“I haven’t seen her for — Enny Harlan is her business agent, and nearly all my dealings with her were through him.”

“How about telephone conversations?”

“Sure, I’ve had telephone conversations with Harlan.”

“Any speculation with him as to who my client might be?”

“Some on his part, none on mine. He tried to pump me for information, and I told him I didn’t have any.”

“In other words,” Mason said, “you haven’t told anyone that I was representing any particular party.”

“I don’t like the idea of you coming in here and asking my wife a lot of questions and then asking me a lot of questions,” Doxey said.

“You’re the secretary of the company,” Mason told him. “I’m a stockholder. I have a right to know.”

“You don’t want to know because you’re a stockholder in the company. You want to know because you’re representing Mrs. Harlan in a murder case.”

“All right. But the fact still remains that you’re the secretary of a company in which I’m a stockholder.”

“All right, so what.”

“I want to know if you communicated any ideas you might have had concerning the identity of my client to Enright Harlan or to Mrs. Claffin?”

“The answer to that is no. Now, I take it that’s all you wanted to find out.”

“That’s all,” Mason said.

Mrs. Doxey said, “Herbert, Mr. Mason has been very nice and very considerate. There’s no need to be nasty about it.”

“I’m running this,” Doxey said.

“All right,” Mason told him. “Thank you very much.”

“Don’t mention it,” Doxey said sarcastically, and escorted them to the door.

“After all,” Della Street asked Mason when they were back in the car, driving to the office, “does it make any great difference?”

“It may.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know yet, but Doxey certainly changed his attitude.”

“Yes. You’ve made an enemy out of him now, Chief.”

“That’s right. That’s what interests me. Why did he blow up?”

“He just didn’t like the idea of being questioned. Just because Enright Harlan says Mrs. Claffin got the information from some person doesn’t mean that that’s where she really got it.”

Mason parked his car. He and Della took the elevator and stopped in at Drake’s office before going down the corridor to Mason’s office.

“Hi, Paul,” Mason said. “How was La Jolla?”

“Oh, fine,” Drake said sarcastically. “I was down there for all of fifteen minutes, I guess, and then I got your message to come back.”

“Well,” Mason told him, “it turned out that the case I had down there wasn’t terribly important after all.”

“Yes,” Drake said dryly, “I read about it. The taxicab driver blew up on the witness stand and couldn’t identify anyone, so there was really no need of my going in the first place.”

“I didn’t say that,” Mason told him. “The case you were sent down to La Jolla to work on had nothing to do with the taxi driver.”

“Oh, I know, I know,” Drake said. “Just one of those coincidences. Isn’t it funny how they’ll trap you, Perry? It wouldn’t be any trouble at all to reach an entirely erroneous conclusion in a matter of that sort, just judging from circumstantial evidence.”

“Never mind all that,” Mason told him. “What have you all found out about the people on that list I gave you, Paul?”

“Well,” Drake said, “at four-thirty on the afternoon of the third, Herbert Doxey was at home with his wife. He’d been there since shortly before four o’clock. He was taking a sun bath in a screen enclosure in the back yard. He’s got a sunburned back to prove it, too. Enright Harlan and Roxy Claffin were together.”

“You’re sure?”

“Sure.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, they were out at Roxy’s house. Roxy answered the telephone. She was talking on the phone a little before four o’clock and she was talking again at four-fifteen. Enright Harlan got there a little before four-thirty. They had an appointment for a little after five o’clock with an attorney named Arthur Nebitt Hagan, and they left Roxy’s place shortly after four-thirty.

“Now then, you come to Neffs, and, believe it or not, Neffs was at the Sunbelt Detective Agency, hiring a detective to shadow certain people. It was his theory that your client had to be one of half a dozen possible individuals, and he wanted to find out who.

“Cleve Rector was closeted with Jim Bantry of the Bantry Construction and Paving Company.”

“At four-thirty?” Mason asked.

“Well, there we run into a little trouble. Apparently, he left Bantry at around four o’clock. He says that he stopped in at a bar for a cocktail and then went to his office, getting there around five o’clock.”

“You can’t verify his story as to where he was between four and five o’clock?” Mason asked.

“Well, we know he was at the contractors at four and we know he was at his office at five, and we know the driving time between the two is about twenty-five minutes. He couldn’t have gotten into very much mischief in that time. Of course, when you come right down to it, Perry, we don’t have the type of evidence that would give him an alibi.”

“I don’t want to give him an alibi,” Mason said. “Let him furnish his own alibi. I just want to know how much evidence he can bring to bear.”

“Well, apparently that’s it. He gave the name of a bar where he stopped in for a cocktail. The guy who was tending bar at the time was busy. Rector’s picture doesn’t mean a damn thing to him. Rector may have been there, or he may not as far as the bartender is concerned.”

“All right,” Mason said, “that leaves Ezekiel Elkins. What about him?”

“Now then,” Drake said, “I’ve been saving that choice titbit until the last. There is something very, very mysterious about Ezekiel Elkins. He’s not talking.”

“Not with anybody?”

“Not with any of my men. We’ve used all of the known tricks on him, and he’s not talking. Incidentally, Mr. Elkins has a nice black eye.”

“Where did he get it?” Mason asked. “Did he run into a door in the dark of the night?”

“He ran into somebody’s fist in broad daylight.”

“Who is Elkins talking to — anyone?”

“He’s had a chance to talk.”

“To whom?”

“To the district attorney.”

“You don’t know whether he talked or not?”

“No, naturally the district attorney isn’t going to tell me.”

“What does the district attorney tell the newspaper reporters?”

“That he had several witnesses in who could explain matters somewhat, and Elkins was among them. He didn’t say whether Elkins talked or what they talked about. Just smiled and let it go at that.”

“Well, that’s a thought,” Mason said.

“With the finding of that second bullet,” Drake pointed out, “it turns out that the gun must have been fired at least twice inside the house up there, and the third empty shell indicates that it may have been fired three times. Now what had it been fired at?”

“I wish I could tell you that,” Mason said.

“Did your client hear the shots?” Drake asked.

“What makes you think my client was anywhere around there?” Mason asked.

“Your client could help one hell of a lot if she would co-operate. It would shorten the investigation.”

“How come, Paul?”

“She could tell us exactly when the murder was committed. The autopsy surgeon can place the time within twenty minutes — and twenty minutes is twenty minutes.”

Mason nodded.

“The other thing your client could do is tell how many shots were fired and how those shots were spaced. In other words, whether there was one shot and then quite an interval and then another shot. Whether two shots came close together. Or even, perhaps, if there was a third shot fired.”

“But what in the world would my client have been doing out there... how did she get out there and—?”

“Now wait a minute,” Drake said. “Don’t blow a gasket over this thing, Perry. I’m simply asking you. I’d like very much to have that information. It would simplify my investigative work.”

Mason said, “Paul, no one has proven that my client was out there — yet. But if my client had been out there, she would have been sitting in Lutts’ car, listening to the radio, and the radio would have been playing so loud that she couldn’t have heard the shot.”

“Shots,” Drake corrected, “plural.”

“All right, plural — shots.”

“Della Street and I have been conducting experiments out there at the scene of the murder,” Mason said. “Anyone who might have been in Lutts’ car, waiting for him to come downstairs, was bound to have heard the two shots that were fired unless the radio in the car was on.”

“Was the radio on when you and Doxey went out there and Doxey discovered the body?”

“No.”

“Who had the car keys?” Drake asked.

“To Lutts’ car?”

“Yes.”

“Why, he did, of course.”

Drake shook his head. “They weren’t in his pockets when the body was searched.”

“The devil!” Mason exclaimed.

“Makes a difference?” Drake asked, his eyes searching the lawyer’s face.

“Perhaps. What would the murderer have wanted with car keys?”

“He may have wanted to borrow the car.”

“And the police didn’t search the car for fingerprints?”

“Not then. They’re doing it now. Here are some pictures of the car, for what they’re worth.”

Drake pulled out some eight-by-ten glossy photographs. Mason studied them.

“That’s just the way the car was found?”

“That’s right.”

Mason studied the ignition switch.

“What’s wrong?” Drake asked.

Mason said, “Call up the agency that sells this car. See if it’s possible to turn on the radio when the ignition is locked and the key removed.”

“Oh, oh!” Drake exclaimed.

“Get busy,” Mason told him.

Drake put through the call.

“Don’t give your name,” Mason warned. “Tell them you’re a customer. Give them any kind of a stall.”

Drake nodded, motioned Mason to silence, said, “Hello... On your last year’s model car, is it possible to turn on the radio when the ignition is locked...? Yeah, my neighbor thinks my kid got in his garage, turned on the radio and ran the battery down... Oh, yes, I see. You’re sure...? That’s true of all last year’s models...? Okay, thanks.”

Drake hung up the phone. His eyes avoided the lawyer’s. “When the ignition is in the locked position, Perry, there isn’t any way you can turn on the radio. The car was especially designed that way because of complaints that night attendants in public garages would run the battery down by letting the radio run all night.”

“Well,” Mason said, “that’s that. Come on, Della, let’s go.”