Chapter Nine

Promptly at eight o’clock Mason pulled his car into the La Brea curb, and immediately Ellen Adair detached herself from the shadows, crossed the sidewalk and jumped into the car.

“You came by cab?” Mason asked.

“That’s right.”

“Were you followed?”

“Absolutely not.”

“All right,” Mason told her; “now where do we go?”

“Keep on down La Brea for a ways, then we turn to the right. I haven’t been to this place for six months, but I think I remember the way.”

“What sort of a place is it?”

“It’s a duplex bungalow. Agnes Burlington has the place on the west. It’s a cute little place with a lawn and a gravel driveway.”

“When were you there last?”

“I guess it’s all of six months ago.”

“How did you happen to go there?”

“I went there to try and buy Agnes Burlington’s silence. At that time I wanted her to keep quiet.”

“You paid her money?”

“I made her a loan.”

“Now,” Mason said, “you want her to start talking. Has it ever occurred to you she may not be receptive to your proposition?”

“You mean that she’ll want more money?”

“Yes.”

“You mean first I pay her not to talk and now I pay her to get her to talk.”

“You don’t pay her,” Mason said. “You can’t afford to.”

“Why not?”

“Because the Other side would claim that was suborning perjury. In a case of this kind, you can’t self in the position of paying a witness to testify.”

“What can we do?”

“If she’s reluctant,” Mason said, “we might decoy her into believing that you still don’t want her to talk and get her to make threats to tell the truth.”

“What good will that do?”

“We’d get her to repeat the threats under such circumstances that there’d be a tape recorder concealed in some advantageous place where we can record the entire conversation.”

“Turn to the right here,” Ellen Adair said. And then, after Mason had made the turn, she added, “That’s really a good idea. I think perhaps we can work that with her — if she’s reluctant. But I think she’ll tell her story. She’ll do quite a bit of talking now.”

Mason drove several blocks, then Ellen said, “Turn to the right again here. Go two blocks, then... No, wait a minute, I’m confused. You go three blocks and then turn to the left, and it’s about midway down the block. Let’s see, it’s — there it is, Mr. Mason. That house over there on the right — the duplex house. Agnes Burlington Is side of the house is the one on the west.”

Mason eased the car into the curb.

“You can drive right on up the driveway,” she said.

Mason said, “That driveway looks soft. You can see where someone has been in there and left deep tracks. The way the lawn is sloped, water from the grass seeps down into the driveway and...”

“But go in there anyway; get the car off the road!”

Mason said, “I think it’s too soft, Ellen. This is a heavy car.”

“It has big tires,” she said.

“But what do we gain?” Mason asked. “We’ll park here at the curb. I don’t like to go into someone’s driveway and park when we’re going to call on a business matter.”

“Oh, she’ll understand.”

“No, we’re all right where we are,” Mason said in a tone of finality, opening the door on the driver’s side, then crossing behind the car to open the door for Della Street and then Ellen Adair.

They walked up a cement walk which led to a porch with two front doors, one on the left and one on the right.

Mason pressed the bell button on the door on the left.

There was no sound of motion from within the house, only the sound of the bell jangling.

“She doesn’t seem to be home,” Ellen said.

“Oh, I think probably she’s home,” Mason said. “The lights are all on. She may be busy for the moment.”

“Perhaps the bell didn’t ring.”

“No, I could hear it inside the house,” Della Street said.

Once more Mason pressed the button, and again from the interior of the house was the unechoing sound of the bell.

“Well,” Mason said, “I suggest we go back to the car and wait five or ten minutes and try again. After all, she may be taking a shower.”

“Perhaps she’s in the kitchen and can’t hear the bell. She might have a dishwasher running or perhaps she’s got a clothes-washing machine going and... Why not go around to the back and take a look?” Ellen asked.

Mason said, “The other side of the house is dark — the other unit of the duplex. The people there are probably out, but I don’t like to go wandering around at the back of houses.”

Mason tried the bell button twice more, then moved over a few feet along the porch to press his forehead against the cold glass of the windowpane.

“See anything?” Della Street asked.

“I can see the interior of the living room,” Mason said, “through a half-inch crack where the drapes aren’t pulled tightly together. I can see... Hold everything!”

“What is it?” Della Street asked.

Mason said, “I can see the foot of a woman.”

“What’s she doing?” Della Street asked.

“Nothing,” Mason said. “The foot is in another room which may be a bedroom. The toe is pointed straight up. It shows through the crack in the door.”

“Oh, good lord!” Ellen said. “If anything’s happened to her, I... Let me see.”

She moved over to stand beside the lawyer, pressing her hands against the glass in order to form a shield for her eyes, cutting out the rays of light which might come in at the sides.

Mason said, “That foot looks strangely still. Evidently a woman is lying on the floor. Try the front door, Della. See if it’s locked. Knock at the same time you press the bell button.”

“She’s unconscious,” Ellen said. “She isn’t moving an inch.”

“The front door’s locked,” Della Street reported.

Mason said, “I think we’d better call the police.”

“No, no, no!” Ellen protested. “Not until we’ve tried to find out what it’s all about. If she’s just drunk or drugged or something, we’ve simply got to get her testimony before anyone else can get to her. Can’t you understand what it means to me to have her get on the stand and tell the truth?”

Mason hesitated.

Ellen Adair said, “If she’s drunk and passed out and...”

“It’s early for her to have passed out from drinking,” Mason said. “All right, let’s go around to the back of the house and try the back door. And, incidentally, we’ll see if there’s another window we can peep in and perhaps get a better view.”

The lawyer walked down the front steps, started across the lawn for the driveway, paused after taking a couple of steps, and said, “This soil is plenty soft. Somebody’s been sprinkling the lawn quite heavily. There’s an underground irrigation system which is still running at a trickle. It’s been on for some time.”

“Let’s go around the other way, circling around the other side of the duplex,” Ellen said.

“That puts us in the position of being trespassers,” Mason observed, “but we may as well go the whole way now we’ve started.”

He led the way across the lawn on the other side of the duplex bungalow, around to the back, over to the west side of the duplex, and climbed a short flight of steps to a service porch and said, “Oh-oh, the door’s open a crack. I think we can get in here.”

“Well?” Ellen asked as Mason hesitated.

Mason paused a moment, then said, “All three of us keep together. Be careful not to touch anything. Be sure that we call out as soon as we get the door open.”

Mason pushed the door open. “Anybody home?” he called in a loud voice. Then, as there was silence, the lawyer shouted, “Hello! Miss Burlington!”

There was no answer.

The lawyer moved across the kitchen and into a lighted living room, turned to the right into a bedroom in which drapes were drawn over the widows and electric lights were turned on, and then suddenly froze into rigid immobility.

“All right,” Mason said, “this is it. Keep back.”

The woman who was lying on the floor was perhaps forty-two or forty-three years of age, with dark hair streaming out over the floor, part of the ends matted in a pool of dried blood.

She was wearing shoes, stockings, a garter girdle, and a bra.

The lawyer said to the two women, “Keep back and don’t touch anything!”

Mason stepped gingerly forward, bent over the body, and picked up a limp, cold arm.

The lawyer held the wrist for a moment, then let the arm drop back.

“She’s been dead for some time,” he said. “Rigor mortis has formed and disappeared. There’s postmortem lividity. It’s a job for the police.”

Ellen Adair pushed past Della Street, grabbed Perry Mason by the arm. “Oh, Mr. Mason, do something! For heaven’s sake, we can’t take a beating in this thing!”

Mason said, “Get back out of the way. You can’t bring a person back to life just because you want her testimony.”

“Oh, my God! This is terrible!” Ellen said, letting go of Mason’s arm, turning toward the door, stumbling over the body, trying to catch her balance, grabbing hold of the dresser. Then as she saw her feet were touching the legs of the dead woman she started screaming.

Mason grabbed her, said to Della Street, “Get her out of here! Don’t let her touch anything, Della!”

The lawyer swung Ellen Adair toward Della Street, but Ellen once more stumbled, grabbed the side of the door, then hung onto Della Street, crying and moaning.

“I think she’s going to have hysterics,” Della Street said.

“She can’t have hysterics,” Mason said. “I want to take a quick look, but I don’t want to touch anything. We can’t... Watch her, Della!”

“Let me out of here!” Ellen screamed, breaking away from Della and making a stumbling, zigzag, flying course for the front door, which she opened.

Della Street said to Mason, “She’s hysterical. We can’t let her go running around...”

Mason sprinted after Ellen Adair, caught her at the foot of the front steps, said, “Sit down and control yourself!”

Ellen started to scream. The lawyer clapped his hand over her mouth, pulled her down on the cement steps.

“Sit down!” he repeated.

She looked at him with wide, panic-stricken eyes and once more tried to scream.

Mason said, “Della, there’s a service station three blocks down the street with a telephone. Get to it and call the police, then come back here. I’ll hold Ellen until you can get back.”

The lawyer turned to the hysterical woman.

“Now shut up!” he said. “Don’t make a lot of commotion and attract the attention of everyone in the neighborhood. We’re dealing with what is, in all probability, a murder, and I want you to keep your head.”

Della Street hurried down the short stretch of cement walk, jumped in the car, turned on the motor, and shot away from the curb.

Mason said to Ellen, “Now I’m going to take my hand away and I don’t want you screaming. The police are going to come here, and I don’t want you to tell the police why we were calling on Agnes Burlington. I particularly don’t want you to say anything about ever at any time having paid Agnes Burlington any money to keep quiet about anything. Do you understand?”

The wide, panic-stricken eyes searched Mason’s face.

The lawyer removed his hand from Ellen Adair’s mouth.

“Do you understands?” Mason said. “Let me do the talking!”

Ellen Adair took a deep breath. “This is such a shock!” she said; then her body stiffened. “I think I’m going to faint.”

Mason pushed her shoulders forward. “Put your head down between your knees,” he said.

Ellen lurched against Mason.

The lawyer pushed on her shoulders, guided her head down to her knees.

“Sit there, Ellen. Try not to think about what you’ve seen. Think about what we are going to have to do now.”

Ellen’s body became limp.

Mason supported it for a matter of a full minute before, gradually, the muscles responded. Ellen breathed a tremulous breath, raised herself, looked at Mason. Then her eyes became wide with panic once more.

“Easy,” Mason said. “The police will be corning any minute now. You’ve got to pull yourself together! Remember the police can’t keep information of this sort confidential. They’ll be reporting that the body was discovered by Perry Mason, his secretary and a client. The newspaper reporters will pick it up. They’ll want to know who you are; they’ll want to know what your business with me is; they’ll find out all about the Cloverville background. Maxine will come forward with her story. The police will search the premises here. Maybe Agnes kept a diary. They’ll get the names of her friends. Maybe Agnes talked. She probably has a boyfriend somewhere. She may have confided in him at length.

“We’ve got to keep ourselves in such a position that we can be prepared no matter which way the cat jumps. You’ve too much at stake to go feminine on me now. Get yourself together!”

Ellen took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

Mason said, “Here comes a car and... it’s stopping... It’s Della.”

Della Street had pulled the car into the curb and just opened the door to disembark when a police car swung around the corner, glided to the curb. A red spotlight illuminated Della Street. An officer said, “Hold it, lady!”

Della froze.

Mason said, “Now sit tight, Ellen,” and arose from the step.

“This way, Officer,” Mason called.

An officer jumped from the car, came toward the sound of Mason’s voice.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Perry Mason,” the lawyer said.

“Who’s the girl?”

Mason, walking rapidly toward the officer so he could keep his voice low, said, “She’s my secretary.”

“What’s the trouble?”

“There’s a body in the house.”

“How do you know?”

“We were in there.”

“How did you get in?”

“Through the back door.”

“What were you doing prowling around the back door?”

Mason said, “We had reason to believe there was somebody home. We rang the doorbell and got no answer. I looked through the front window and could see a woman’s foot. We went around to the back of the house. The back door was unlocked; in fact, it was standing slightly ajar — open about half an inch, I would say. We went in.”

“Touch anything?” the officer asked.

“I’m afraid my client touched a few things. She became hysterical and started running through the house. She stumbled over furniture. I grabbed her, got her out here into the open air, and sent my secretary to call you.”

“Where did you have your car parked?”

“At the curb,” Mason said. “The front lawn and the driveway are rather soft. I think there’s an automatic sprinkler system which has been turned on low and has been left running for some time. I felt the body to see if there was any sign of life. The flesh is cold, lifeless and limp, which means that rigor mortis has not only formed but has had time to disappear. The soft lawn indicates the irrigation system has been on for some time. Lights are on inside the house, and I have an idea they’ve been on all day and probably all night last night.”

“We’ll take a look,” the officer said. He turned to his partner. “Call Homicide.” He said to Mason, “Get in your car and stay there. Don’t go away. Who’s the woman on the steps?”

“Come here, Ellen,” Mason said.

Ellen Adair got up and walked slowly but steadily toward the officer.

Mason said, “This is my client. She’s emotional and unstrung. She’s a responsible businesswoman; her name is Ellen Adair, and she’s head buyer for French, Coleman and Swazey, the big department store.”

“All right,” the officer said. “The three of you get in your car. I’ll just take a look at your driver’s license, Mr. Mason, if you don’t mind.”

Mason showed the officer his driver’s license.

The man in the car reported, “Homicide is on its way out here. We’re supposed to cover the premises front and back.”

“O.K., I’ll take the back,” the first officer said. “You watch the front. And keep an eye on these people. This is Perry Mason, the lawyer.”

“Don’t start around the back of the house over the lawn,” Mason said, “or the driveway. The lawn is mushy and some of the water has run into the driveway. Go around the side of the other duplex. That’s the way we went.”

“Thanks,” the officer told him. Then he asked, “How did you know the lawn is soft if you didn’t go around that way?”

“I just took two steps,” the lawyer said.

“I see,” the officer announced noncommittally, and, sending the beam of a flashlight in front of him, walked around the side of the duplex on the east to take up a station at the rear of the house.

The officer in the car said, “You three people may just as well get in your parked automobile and stay there until Homicide comes.”