Chapter Twelve

“I’ve already told you the truth,” Ellen said. “You don’t need to go anywhere.”

“You little fool!” Mason said. “You’ve got yourself in a mess, and now you’ve dragged me in it with you!

“Don’t make the mistake of underestimating the police. They’ll find tire tracks outlined as plain as can be in that mud in the driveway. They’ll be wondering what we were doing out there. They have your name and address from your driver’s license. They’ll find your car. They’ll take impressions of your tires. They’ll make a moulage of the tracks in the driveway. They’ll come to the conclusion that you went out there and killed Agnes Burlington and then came to me telling me what you’d done and that I went out there with you to remove some evidence that would be incriminating and then, after we had the evidence removed, we notified the police.

“Lieutenant Tragg will put out a bulletin to pick us up for questioning.”

“I could change my tires on the car before they could...”

“Don’t kid yourself!” Mason interrupted. “You’d simply be buying yourself a one-way ticket to prison. What did you do with the gun?”

“What gun?”

“I think she had been shot. There could have been a gun by the body.”

“There wasn’t any gun.”

The lawyer turned the car from the boulevard sharply to the left, drove to a beach motel, rented two adjoining rooms, put Della Street and Ellen Adair in one room, and then opened the connecting door.

“All right,” he said, “now we’ll sit down here and have an hour or so to talk before we have to face the music.”

Ellen Adair said, “I guess I shouldn’t have tried to deceived you. I...”

“That,” Mason said, “is the understatement of the week! Now, then, what I want to know is this: did you kill Agnes Burlington?”

“Good heavens, Mr. Mason, I couldn’t kill anyone! No, I didn’t kill her!”

“When did you go out there?”

“A little after noon.”

“What did you find?”

“I found things just as we saw them.”

“Now I want the truth,” Mason said. “Was there any gun lying around?”

“No, there was no gun.”

“What did you do?”

“I got in a panic, and then I wondered what sort of papers she might have left around and I gave a quick look.”

“Did you find any?”

“There was a diary.”

“What did you do with it?”

“I didn’t have time to read it. I just grabbed it, and then I got out of there. Then I got to thinking what a horrible thing I had done and...”

“Did you read any of the diary?”

“Yes. I read a good deal of it.”

“What did it show?”

“I think it was kept in some sort of code, because she would say at times, ‘I telephoned so-and-so for a date’; then she would say, ‘I had a date with so-and-so’; and then she would say, ‘I had a satisfactory date with so-and-so,’ and would underline the ‘satisfactory.’ ”

“Anybody in there that you know?” Mason asked.

She said, “Not names. She used initials most of the time. But there was one thing in there that bothered me terribly.”

“What?”

“There was a note about three months ago saying, ‘I subscribed to The Cloverville Gazette.’ ”

“Where is that diary now?”

“I hid it.”

“Where?”

“Where no one will ever find it.”

“Don’t be too sure,” Mason said. “The police are very, very thorough.”

“And I,” she said, “am very, very ingenious.”

“You,” Mason told her, “are a babe in the woods. You caught me with my guard down. If it hadn’t been for that, I’d have given you enough cross-examination about what caused your sudden change of heart to have smelled a mouse.

“Now, then, I’ve gone out there with you. If the officers can prove that that’s your second trip out there, that you had already been out and found her dead — if they can prove that you took that diary, you’re going to be convicted of murder.”

“What can I do?” she asked.

“Right now,” Mason said, “you can’t do anything except keep quiet. You can’t afford to give the officers the time of day. If they ask you questions, you’ve got to tell them that you’re not answering any questions on the advice of counsel.”

“But won’t that make me look guilty?”

“You start in answering questions,” Mason said, “and before you get done you’ll look like a murderess. They’ll catch you in a lie. They’ll spring the trap on you and have you dead to rights.”

“But if I don’t say anything, they’ll convict me anyway,” she said.

“If you keep quiet, you stand a fighting chance,” Mason told her. “They’ll think you’re guilty. They’ll arrest you and try you for first-degree murder. But they’ve got to prove their case, and they have to prove it beyond all reasonable doubt.

“Now somebody murdered Agnes Burlington. That someone murdered her for a reason.

“You’re going to have to reconcile yourself to going to trial. You’re going to have to take the chance of being convicted. The only thing that will stand between you and a sure conviction is getting the breaks, watching the evidence, cross-examining witnesses, searching for a weak point in the prosecution’s case — then, when we find that weak point, bearing down hard on it and turning it into a reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors.

“So now, while we have the time, we’ve got to run down every possible lead that we can in order to find something that we can translate into a reasonable doubt. The police are going to be uncovering evidence, and they’re not going to share that evidence with us until they have to. They certainly aren’t going to take us into their confidence.”

“Do you,” she asked, “want the diary?”

Mason said, “I’m an officer of the court. I couldn’t suppress evidence. I couldn’t have a diary in my possession for ten seconds without telling the police that I had it.

“On the other hand, as an officer of the court, I am obligated to protect your confidences. You tell me that you have the diary. I can advise you to surrender that diary to the police. But if you don’t choose to follow my advice, there’s nothing I can do about it except keep quiet. I have a professional obligation to respect your confidence.

“Now, then, what about your son?”

“What do you mean?”

“The officers are going to find out about him. What kind of an impression will he make?”

“A very fine impression, Mr. Mason. He’s a nice, well-mannered young man. He...”

“Where’s he living?”

“He’s living in the old Baud home. After Melinda and August were killed he inherited all their property, and he has been living on there in the house.”

“O.K.,” Mason said, getting up with an air of finality, “we’re going to go call on your son, and let’s hope we beat the police to it.”

Mason nodded to Della Street. “Let’s go.”