The Case of the Postponed Murder

Chapter 8

Mason rang for Della Street and when she entered the office said to her, “Della, use our regular office forms. Prepare a writ of habeas corpus for Mae Farr. I’m going to make them either file a charge against her or turn her loose.”

She studied the granite hard lines of his countenance with solicitous eyes. “How was it?” she asked.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“What did they do?”

“Not much,” Mason said. “It could have been a lot worse. Evidently, Holcomb was under orders to let the D.A.’s office run the show.”

“And how did they run it?’

“Their timing was bad,” Mason said, “but Runcifer was a gentleman. I don’t think he has had much experience as a trial lawyer. He wanted to be certain he’d covered every single detail about which they wanted to question me.”

“What did Sergeant Holcomb do?”

“Tried to get rough,” Mason said, “found he couldn’t get away with it, and turned sullen.”

She said, “Paul Drake telephoned that he had some important information and wanted to come in as soon as the coast was clear.”

“Okay. Tell him the coast is clear. Get out that application for a writ of habeas corpus and ride herd on that outer office. I don’t want to see any routine clients, don’t want to think about any routine business.”

She nodded. “Follow the same procedure as in that Smith case?” she asked.

“Yes. Use the files in that case for form. You can check them over and get the typists started doing the work. I want it right away.”

With self-effacing efficiency, Della glided through the door to the outer office. A few minutes later Paul Drake knocked on the corridor door and the lawyer let him in.

“How was it, Perry?” Drake asked.

“Not so bad,” Mason said.

“What did they want?”

“The man from the district attorneys office wanted facts,” Mason said. “Sergeant Holcomb wanted me.”

“Didn’t get you, did he?”

“Not yet. What’s new?”

Drake said, “A lot of things. Here’s the latest paper.”

“What’s in it?”

“The usual hooey and statements that by throwing out a dragnet, police were able to apprehend Anders in a northern city where he had fled, that he’s made a partial confession, that as a result of that confession, police are investigating the activities of one of the best known criminal attorneys in the city, that police are searching for the gun with which they feel the murder may have been committed, that Anders admits having a gun which he threw away. Police were rushed to the scene where they found that virtually every inch of the territory had been covered by a man who made a search sometime after the rain started last night.”

“What’s the photograph?”

“Sergeant Holcomb holding up a pair of shoes and showing how they fit the plaster-of-paris casts made of the footprints that were found in the soft soil.”

“Say where he got the shoes?” Mason asked.

“No, that’s one of the things on which the paper reports the officers are working, but are not as yet ready to divulge any information because of the sensational conclusions which may be drawn when the evidence is finally put together... Are those your shoes, Perry?”

“Yes.”

Drake said, “That looks rather bad, doesn’t it?”

Mason brushed the question aside with a quick gesture of his hand. “Never mind the postmortems,” he said. “Give me the facts. What’s that other picture?”

“Photograph of the field where the police think you found the gun.”

“Let me see it,” Mason said.

He took the newspaper, folded it over, and studied the newspaper reproduction of a photograph showing a field alongside the highway.

“Line of high tension poles running along the right of way,” Mason said musingly, “barbed wire fence, concrete pipe lines for irrigation — not much opportunity to conceal a gun there, Paul, just clumps of grass and weeds. Why don’t they cultivate that ground if it’s under irrigation?”

“It’s tied up in litigation,” Drake said.

“What else, Paul?”

“Quite a bit of stuff — a whole mess of dope on the tastes and habits of Wentworth.”

“Yachting his hobby?” Mason asked.

“Yachting, women, and coin collecting,” Drake said.

“Why the coins?”

“You can search me. Coins, boats and horses, wine and women, that represented Wentworth’s life.”

“What did he do for a living?” Mason asked.

Drake grinned and said, “I think that’s going to be a sore subject with the police. Evidently, he was a bookmaker. He had a partner by the name of Marley — Frank Marley.”

Mason said. “I’ve heard of him. Wasn’t he arrested a while back?”

“Two or three times,” Drake said.

“What happened to the charges?”

“Postponed, transferred, continued, and dismissed.”

“A payoff?”

Drake said, “I’m not saying anything. Perhaps you can read my mind.”

“I’m reading it,” Mason said, and grinned. “How about Marley? Can we drag him in?”

“I have an idea we can,” Drake said. “Incidentally, Marley also has a boat. He went in for fast stuff, an express cruiser with powerful motors, twin screws, mahogany finish — nothing you’d want to be out in a heavy sea in, but something that would scoot over to Catalina and back in nothing flat.”

“Where was he last night?”

“Apparently in a hospital. He was scheduled to have an operation this morning — nothing serious. He’d had a couple of attacks of appendicitis, and the doctor told him to have it out when he could spare a few days from his business. He reported to the doctor yesterday and went to the hospital yesterday afternoon.”

“Did he have the operation?” Mason asked.

“No. There was nothing particularly urgent about it. When he heard of Wentworth’s death, he called off the operation, claims he can’t afford to be laid up right now. There’s too much business to be handled.”

Mason said, “Not that it means anything, but just for the purpose of keeping the records straight, that hospital business doesn’t mean a damn thing.”

“I know,” Drake said. “I’ve checked on it, however. He had a private room. A special nurse was to come today after the operation, but he was on general last night. Directions called for him to have a capsule of sodium amytal.”

“Did he get it?”

“Yes. The nurse gave it to him.”

“Would that make him stay put?” Mason asked.

“Yes, I think it would,” Drake said. “And the floor nurse looked in on him three or four times during the night.”

“Does it show on his chart when she looked in on him?”

“No, but the nurse says it was at least once before midnight, a couple of times after midnight, and once this morning. The special came on duty at eight o’clock. He was to have been operated on at ten.”

“Did they tell him about Wentworth?”

“They weren’t going to, but he insisted on talking with Wentworth over the telephone before he went under the anaesthetic, said he had some last minute instructions to give and wanted to verify certain matters. They tried to keep it from him but couldn’t.”

“How about Wentworth’s wife?” Mason asked.

“She was down in San Diego. It looks as though Wentworth had an appointment with her for this morning.”

“Where?”

“At San Diego.”

“And the wife’s boyfriend?”

“I don’t know, yet. But he has a yacht.”

“Where is it moored?”

“Outer yacht harbour, just inside the breakwater.”

Mason and the detective exchanged glances.

“Better check him pretty carefully,” Mason said.

“I’m doing that. He’s quite a sportsman, polo, yachting, and airplanes.”

“Airplanes?”

“Yes. He has an amphibian he plays around with.”

“Where does he keep it?”

“In a hangar on his estate.”

“And that’s where?”

“On a rugged promontory overlooking the ocean about ten miles from his yacht mooring.”

“Can you find out if the plane has been doing any travelling lately?”

Drake said, “I’m going to try to get a look at the log of the plane.”

“How about travelling? That wouldn’t be in the log.”

Drake shook his head and said, “Barring accident, we can’t find out about that.”

Mason drummed with the tips of his fingers. “Can you get in the estate, Paul?” he asked.

“It’s difficult,” Drake said, “but I think I have an operative who could do the job.”

Mason said, “There was rain last night, Paul. It came down pretty heavy for a while. If an airplane taxied off a dirt field, it would leave tracks, particularly if it was a little slow on the takeoff.”

Drake said, “I get you, Perry.”

“How about servants? Can you find out if they might have heard the sound of the motor?”

Drake said, “I could tell you the answer to that in advance, Perry. It’s ‘no.’”

“How come?”

“There wasn’t a servant on the place last night. Eversel gave them all a night off and had the chauffeur put a car at their disposal.”

Mason raised his eyebrows.

“That’s what I thought, too,” Drake said, “but it turns out it’s not particularly unusual. Eversel has a hard time keeping servants. The estate is isolated. There are no picture shows, beauty shops, or any sort of amusement facilities available. Naturally, you can’t expect servants to stay on a job like that seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. When they have time off, Eversel has to provide them with transportation if they’re going to leave the estate. So he frequently sends them out on a skylarking expedition, especially when he doesn’t expect to be home.”

“I see,” Mason said, his voice casual enough, but his eyes narrowed into thoughtful slits.

“The bullet,” Drake went on, “was fired downward, apparently through the skylight or when Wentworth was leaning forward. Probably the shot was fired through the skylight. The windows of that skylight roll back. They’re controlled from the inside. In warm weather, while the ship was moored or cruising through calm waters, Wentworth would roll the windows back and get ventilation through the opening.”

“It was warm last night,” Mason said.

“There’s no question but what the glass was rolled back when Anders went aboard,” Drake said. “Anders admits that in his statement to the police. He claims that’s the reason he could hear Miss Farr pleading with Wentworth and struggling.”

“Anyone else hear any screams?” Mason asked.

“No. Apparently, the screams weren’t particularly loud. People on yachts don’t listen for those things anyway. Some pretty wild parties go on at times. Most of the time the screams that come from a yacht are referred to as ‘the squeals of synthetic virtue.’ I’m getting a file of photographs taken by one of the newspapermen, showing the interior of the cabin just after the yacht was brought into the harbour. Incidentally, Perry, Wentworth was probably dead before the rain started.”

“How come?”

“He hadn’t closed the skylight. He would have...”

Della Street slipped quietly through the door from the outer office and came over to Mason’s desk. She slid a folded paper across to him. He unfolded the paper and read, “Frank Marley, partner of Wentworth, in the office. Wants to see you at once on an urgent matter.”

Mason thought for a moment, then slid the memo across to Drake.

The detective read it and said, “Oh, oh.”

“Send him in, Della,” Mason said.

The men waited in silence until Della Street escorted Marley into the office and quietly withdrew, closing the door behind her.

Marley, a small boned, dark, thin man in his late thirties, kept his face without expression as he stood still, glancing from Mason to Paul Drake.

“Come over and have a chair,” Mason invited. “I’m Mason. This is Paul Drake, who handles my investigations.”

Marley’s large, dark eyes, the sheen and color of ripe olives, moved from one man to the other. He smiled, then came forward and extended a hand to Mason. “Very pleased to meet you, Counsellor,” he said.

Mason’s big hand closed over the small, tapering fingers, received in return a grip of surprising strength. Then the huge diamond in Marley’s tie flashed as he turned to shake hands with the detective.

His hand dropped to his pocket and took out a cigarette case. A diamond on his ring finger made a glittering streak of light as he conveyed the cigarette to his lips. “I only have a few minutes, Mr. Mason,” he said significantly.

“Go right ahead.”

Marley smiled. His eyes were without expression. In a low, well modulated voice, he said, “My information is very confidential.”

Drake glanced at Mason, raising his eyebrows. The lawyer nodded, and Drake said, “Okay, Perry. See you later.” He studied Marley for a long moment, then he said, “Glad I met you, Marley. Probably see you again.”

Marley said nothing.

When he had gone, Mason said, “Well?”

Marley said, “Too bad about Penn.”

Mason nodded.

“However,” Marley went on, “I’m a man of the world, and I take it, Mr. Mason, that you’re a businessman.”

Again Mason nodded. “Better sit down.”

Marley eased one hip over on the arm of the chair which Drake had just vacated. “You’re representing Mae Farr?” he asked.

Mason nodded.

“A nice girl, Mae.”

“Know her?”

“Yes. Penn carried a torch for her. I was close to Penn. Sometimes we’d cruise on his yacht, sometimes on mine. It depended on the weather. My boat performs best on a smooth sea. Penn had an all weather yacht.”

Mason nodded.

“Mae’s an independent kid,” Marley said, almost musingly.

“Any idea who killed him?” Mason asked abruptly.

Frank Marley’s dark eyes bored steadily through the light blue haze of cigarette smoke which framed his features. “Yes,” he said.

“Who?” Mason asked.

“Suppose I tell you a story first.”

“It’s your show,” Mason said. “Go ahead and run it.”

Marley said. “I want something.”

“You don’t look exactly like a philanthropist,” Mason observed.

“What I want means a lot to me and not much to you.”

“Go ahead,” Mason urged.

“I always figured you were the best mouthpiece in the business. I made up my mind that if I ever got in a jam, I’d come to you.”

Mason’s acknowledgment was less than a bow, almost a nod.

“I’m apt to be in a jam on this thing.”

“How come?”

“Penn was never divorced. He and his wife could never agree on a property settlement. She tried to wear him down. He wouldn’t give her a divorce, and she wouldn’t give him one. Neither one of them could have had a divorce without the other’s consent. It would have resulted in a lot of mudslinging, and a judge would have kicked them both out of court.”

“They didn’t get along?” Mason asked.

“At first they did. Afterwards, it was just like two cats tied by the tails and thrown over a clothesline.”

Mason said, “I suppose that was after you started playing around with her.”

Marley’s face didn’t exactly change expression. It merely stiffened as though he had frozen his facial muscles into immobility at the impact of Mason’s remark. After a long moment, he puffed calmly on his cigarette and said, with equal calmness, “What gave you that idea, Mason?”

“Just a shot in the dark,” Mason said.

“Don’t make them,” Marley warned. “I don’t like them.”

Mason ostentatiously pulled a sheet of paper toward himself, and scribbled a rapid note on it.

“What’s that?” Marley asked suspiciously.

“Just making a note to have my detective look up that angle of the case.”

“You,” Marley announced, “are hard to get along with.”

“Not for those who shoot square with me,” Mason said. “When a man sits on the other side of the desk and starts trading horses, I trade horses.”

“Better wait until you hear the horse trade I have lined up,” Marley said, “before you start getting rough.”

“I’ve been waiting ever since you came in,” Mason reminded him.

“As I was saying,” Marley said, “I think you’re a swell mouthpiece. I’d rather have you in my corner than in the other guy’s corner. Juanita is still Wentworth’s wife. I don’t think Penn left a will. She’ll have the job of winding up the estate. As the surviving partner, I’ll have to account to her for partnership business.”

“Well?” Mason asked.

“It’s going to put me in a spot,” Marley said.

“Why?”

“There were things that Penn knew all about,” Marley said, “which wouldn’t look so well in black and white. I did certain things. I asked Penn about them before I did them. He gave me his okay. It was all word of mouth, nothing in writing. Naturally, I didn’t think he was going to get bumped off.”

“So?” Mason asked.

“So I want you to be in my corner.”

“For what?” Mason asked. “The preliminary fight or the main event?”

“Just a preliminary,” Marley made haste to assure him. “There isn’t any main event as far as I’m concerned. I want you to represent me in straightening out the affairs of the partnership.”

“That all?”

“That’s all.”

“How much,” Mason asked, “were you prepared to pay?”

Marley said hastily, “Before we start talking about that, I’ll tell you some more about the horse I have to trade.”

“What about it?”

Marley said, “I don’t have too much use for the cops. I’ve been in business too long. I’m sorry Penn got croaked. Being sorry can’t help him any. He’s gone. I’m left. I have to look out for myself. All right, here’s the proposition: Mae Farr killed him. I have a witness who can prove it. You play ball with me, and I play ball with you.”

“I don’t like that sort of a ball game,” Mason said. “You call all the strikes and let me pitch all the balls.”

“No, it isn’t like that, Mason, honest. Look here, I’ll put my cards on the table. Mae Farr bumped him. I think she was entitled to do it. I think a jury would think so, but it would be a lot better for her if she didn’t have to go in front of a jury and tell all that stuff.

“You know, Penn was always on the make for her. I don’t think she was any virgin, but she just didn’t care for Penn. Perhaps she got a kick out of holding him at arm’s length and watching him pant. Some women are like that.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said.

“Hell, do I have to draw you a diagram?”

“Yes.”

Marley sighed and said, “Oh well, here it is. A certain party who shall be nameless was at the Yacht Club late last night and early this morning, sitting in an automobile waiting.”

“For what?” Mason asked.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, we’ll let it go at that then. She was waiting. She knew Penn. She knew me. She knew our boats. She didn’t know Mae. While she was sitting in her car waiting and getting sore because she thought her boyfriend had stood her up, she saw the lights of a boat coming into the float. She thought at first it was the one she was waiting for, then she saw it was my cruiser, the Atina.”

Mason shifted his eyes to watch the smoke which drifted upward from the tip of Marley’s cigarette.

“The party handling the Atina didn’t make such a good landing, scraped and bumped around a little bit, finally got the motors shut off, and jumped out with the mooring lines. She saw it was a girl. She didn’t know the girl, but she got a good look at her face. Later on, she heard about the murder. She put two and two together. She told me about it. She described the girl. The description checks with Mae.”

“Well,” Mason said, “she—”

“Just a moment,” Marley pleaded, holding up his hand. “I want you to have it absolutely straight. I had photographs taken on cruises, showing Mae Farr. I showed this girl the photographs. She’s positive that Mae was the one who had my cruiser out.”

“Well?” Mason asked.

“You can figure what that testimony will do to you,” Marley said.

“It won’t do a damn thing to me,” Mason told him.

“Well, it will to your client.”

“Testimony,” Mason said, “is one thing. Conversation is another. Don’t forget I have a right to cross-examine witnesses. There are a lot of questions I can think of right now that I’d like to ask this witness of yours. There’ll probably be a lot more by the time I know more about the case.”

“Sure there will,” Marley said, his enunciation becoming more rapid. “That’s what I’m getting at. You’re dangerous, Mason. I know it. I’m not kidding myself a damn bit. You can probably beat the rap on Mae Farr. She’s a good looking baby, and jurors fall for that stuff. She can put on a great story about fighting for her honour. It’s a cinch. Good looking women have lived with men for months and then killed them to defend their honour, and weeping juries have brought in verdicts exonerating the dames and asking for their telephone numbers afterwards. It’s a cinch you can beat it.”

“If I can beat the rap,” Mason asked, “what have you got to trade?”

“Simply this,” Marley told him. “If you play ball with me, there won’t be any rap. They’ll concentrate on Anders and try to pin the kill on him. They can’t do it. They can get so far, and then it sticks. Anders didn’t do it. Mae did.”

“What makes you so positive?”

“After I heard what had happened to my boat, I went down and looked her over.”

“When was that?”

“About two or three hours ago.”

“What did you find?”

Marley said, “You know, Mason, I wasn’t born yesterday.”

“What did you find?” Mason repeated.

Marley said, “I found that a lock had been smashed, that someone had had the boat out. I always leave the boat with a full tank of gas. As nearly as I can tell from the gas gauge, she’d gone maybe ten miles. I know a little something about fingerprints — I learned it in the hard school of experience. I sprinkled some powder around where it would do the most good on the steering wheel, on the handle of the throttle, on the lighting switches.”

“What did you find?” Mason asked.

“Fingerprints.”

“Whose fingerprints?”

Marley shrugged and said, “I wouldn’t know. It would be up to the police to tell whose fingerprints they were.”

“What’s your proposition?” Mason asked.

Marley said, “I’ll give you five grand in cash right now. I’ll take an oiled cloth, go down and scrub off every fingerprint on the boat. I’ll buy this witness a ticket to Australia, and let her stay there until the case is over. You advise me about how to wind up the partnership business.”

“Why can’t any attorney do that?”

“I tell you, it’s a mess. I’ve been careless. I’ve relied too much on conversation and not enough on records. I did virtually all of the business recently. Penn got so he left things more and more to me.”

“Why do you think I could handle the widow better than any other lawyer?” Mason asked.

“You have the reputation. What’s more, you have the knowledge, and if she gets too tough, you could bring a little pressure to bear on her. You know, let her feel that you were going to rip her wide open when she came into court to testify. Penn had some stuff on Juanita. She’s nobody’s fool. She knows that.”

Mason said, “That’s all of your proposition?”

Marley nodded.

“Pardon me a minute,” Mason said as he rang the buzzer for Della Street.

When she opened the door, he said, with a nod to Frank Marley, “Mr. Marley will be leaving shortly. Tell Drake that he can come back. And tell him to make adequate preparations to report progress on everything that happens from now on. Emphasize everything. Do you understand?”

She nodded. “I’ll tell him, Mr. Mason. Is there anything else?”

Mason shook his head and she closed the door.

“Sorry for the interruption,” Mason said, turning back to face Marley. “I don’t like your proposition.”

“I could up the cash a little — not very much because I’m short right now, and Penn’s death is going to...”

“No,” Mason said, “it isn’t the cash.”

“What is it?”

“It’s the idea.”

“What idea?”

“Of suppressing evidence, for one thing.”

Marley looked at him in surprise. “You mean to say that you’re going chicken on a little thing that’s done every day of the week?”

“You can call it that if you want to.”

Marley said, “Well, look. We don’t have to do anything. We can simply...”

Mason shook his head.

“Listen,” Marley said, “this is on the square. There’s just the two of us here. It isn’t any trap. It’s a straight out business proposition.”

Again Mason shook his head.

“For God’s sake,” Marley said, “don’t tell me you’re going to pull that line. If you’re going to act like that, it’s your duty to see that this witness tells her story to the police.”

“It may be at that.”

Marley said, “Look here, Mason, don’t be a fool. You’re in business. You know which side of the bread has the butter.”

Mason said, “From where I sit, it doesn’t seem to be your side.”

Marley said indignantly, “You mean I’m apt to sell you out? You mean you think you can’t trust me?”

Mason said, “I’m not interested.”

“Think it over for an hour or two,” Marley said. “I think you’ll figure it’s the only thing to do. Anders has spilled his guts. You’re in a spot. I’m in a spot. Mae Farr is in a spot. If we play this thing right, we can all get off the spot.”

Mason said coldly, “I like to lead my own aces, Marley.”

Marley said, “I know. You think I’m bluffing. You think there isn’t any witness. You think that I’d simply go down and clean the inside of the yacht, tell you I’d sent the witness to Australia, and be sitting pretty.”

“You could do just that,” Mason pointed out.

“Don’t be a damn fool,” Marley said.

“I’ll try not to,” Mason assured him.

Marley sighed, said, “Cripes, if you haven’t any better sense than that, I don’t want you for an attorney. I think you’re vastly overrated.”

“Sometimes I think so myself,” Mason said.

Marley started for the door, paused with his hand on the knob to look back at Mason. “No,” he said thoughtfully, “you aren’t dumb. You’re smart. You figure you can make me the fall guy. Well, think again, Mason.”

Frank Marley jerked open the door, then slammed it shut behind him.

Mason picked up the desk telephone and said to the operator in the outer office, “Get Della Street for me right away.”

Almost immediately he heard Della’s voice on the line. “Okay, Chief, what is it?”

“Did you get my message straight for Paul Drake?”

“I think so. You meant that you wanted Marley shadowed?”

“Yes. I was wondering if you’d get it.”

“Two operatives will be in the lobby,” she said. “Another operative is being planted at the elevator. She’ll put the finger on Marley for the two detectives downstairs. Drake had to work fast, but he did it.”

“Good girl,” Mason said.