The Case of the Reluctant Model

Chapter Twelve

Maxine said tearfully, “I’ve followed your instructions, Mr. Mason. I haven’t talked and it’s been very, very hard.”

“Have they used any third-degree stuff?” Mason asked. “Did they keep you up all night?”

“No, not that. They let me get to sleep about midnight. But the newspapers were the bad ones.”

“I know,” Mason said. “Told you that the worst thing you could do was to keep silent; that if you’d give them a break and give them an interview, they’d handle it in such a way that it would arouse public sympathy; that if you didn’t give them a story, the only thing they could do was to describe you in a way that would alienate the public.”

“How did you know?” she asked.

“It’s the standard line,” Mason told her. “But I don’t want you making any statement until I’ve had a chance to check what information the police have.”

“What difference does that make?”

“It makes this difference,” Mason said. “Many and many a person would have gone scot-free if he hadn’t started lying about something that was completely nonessential. The police couldn’t prove the suspect was guilty of the crime but they could prove the suspect guilty of lying and then the person went all to pieces.”

“I’m not going to lie.”

“What about your canary?” Mason asked.

“I had one,” she said. “I want to know what happened to him. I tell you, I had a pet canary.”

“See what I mean?” Mason said.

“No, I don’t,” she told him indignantly.

“And,” Mason went on, “a lot depends on what the evidence shows as to the time of the murder. They’ll do everything in their power to influence the pathologist to fix the time of death as early as possible.

“Now, you’re going to have to help me, Maxine. You say you went to the bus station, phoned Paul Drake’s office, left word with him and then waited there.”

She nodded.

“Think,” Mason said. “Try and remember some of the people who were there. You are an attractive girl. You were hanging around the telephone waiting for a call. You were nervous. People would size you up.

“There’d probably be a wolf who was wondering if he could offer a little sympathy and make a pitch. There was probably a matronly woman who wondered if she should go over and give you a pat on the back.”

“But what good would all that do?” Maxine asked. “Even if they saw me.”

“If they saw you,” Mason said, “and you can describe them, we’d go to the ticket sellers at the bus depot and describe these people and see if we could find out where they went, what city they were visiting. Then we’d put ads in the paper there. We’d find out what buses left at about the hours you saw these people and talk with the bus drivers. We might — we just might get a lead.”

Maxine said, “I didn’t notice anybody. I was upset.”

“Didn’t notice anybody at all?” Mason asked.

“No.”

“How long were you there before I talked with you?”

“About an hour.”

“What time did you get there?”

“As nearly as I can tell, seven-fifteen.”

“And you didn’t notice anybody?”

She shook her head.

Mason said suddenly, “How well do you know George Lathan Howell?”

“I answered that question once,” she said.

“When?”

“When you were asking me about... romantic interludes, in your office.”

“I didn’t mean it exactly that way this time,” Mason said. “What I want to know now is whether there’s any chance he might be mixed up in this case in some way.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “Frankly, he has asked me to marry him.”

Mason said, “He sent me a wire saying he was making a two-thousand-dollar campaign contribution.”

“Two thousand dollars!” she exclaimed.

Mason nodded.

“That means he must have sold his car and borrowed all he could.”

“He loves you that much?” Mason asked.

“Apparently,” she said thoughtfully.

“All right, Maxine, this is once you mustn’t lie to me. Did he have a key to your apartment?”

She met his eye. “No.”

“But Durant did?”

“I gave him one — he demanded it that night.”

Mason regarded her thoughtfully. “You’re sure he hadn’t had it for some time and your present story isn’t so you can account for the key to your apartment the police found on his key ring?”

“Mr. Mason, I’m telling you the truth.”

“Let’s hope you are,” he said.

“I am.”

Mason said, “All right. I’ll rely on that. Heaven help you if you’re not telling me the whole truth.

“There’s going to be a preliminary hearing. I can cross-examine their witnesses. We don’t have any case to put on. They’ll have enough case to bind you over for trial — unless something happens and I can upset their apple cart. They have a case against you but I don’t know how much of a case. I don’t want you to make it any stronger than it is right now... And remember this. If they can prove that you weren’t hanging around at the telephone there at the bus depot, if they can prove that you left your apartment later than seven-fifteen, then you’re in big trouble.”

She nodded.

“You told them what time you left your apartment?” Mason asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I told them that much. I told them that I left the apartment at seven, that I didn’t go back, that I phoned you from the bus depot. I told them that I met you and Miss Street, that I couldn’t tell them any more without your permission — and, of course, I told them I wasn’t running away, that I was just going to visit relatives; then after they found out about my sister I admitted she was the one I was intending to visit.

“But I didn’t tell them anything about the case — you know, about the painting or the hold Collin Durant had on me.”

“Okay,” Mason said. “These preliminary hearings are pretty much a matter of routine. The judge will bind you over because the evidence will be all one way. You can’t get on the stand and tell your story.”

“I can’t?” she asked incredulously. “I thought I had that right.”

Mason shook his head.

“But I have to, Mr. Mason. I have to go on the witness stand. I know they’ll cross-examine me. I know it will be an ordeal. I know they’ll bring out things that were in my past. I know they’ll do everything they can to discredit me. But I simply have to tell my story.”

“Not at the preliminary examination,” Mason said. “You keep mum as a clam.”

“But why?”

“Because in the first place,” Mason said, “it won’t do any good. If I can beat the case, I’ll have to do it by showing that the prosecution hasn’t made out a case. It isn’t going to do any good to establish a conflict in the evidence.

“Once the judge binds you over and you get into the Superior Court in front of a jury, then the jurors listen to your story and listen to the prosecution’s witnesses and try to decide who’s telling the truth. But in a preliminary examination the judge doesn’t bother to resolve conflicts of evidence. He figures that’s up to the jury later on and in another court. If the prosecution puts on any case at all, that’s all there is to it.”

“All right,” Maxine said at length, “I guess I can take it if I have to. You’re the one who tells me what to do.”

Mason regarded her thoughtfully. “I have a feeling,” he said, “that you didn’t kill him. I also have a feeling that you’re holding out something. However, I’m going to know a lot more about the case and a lot more about you by the time we get finished with that preliminary hearing.”

“When will it be?” she asked.

“Within the next couple of days,” Mason said. “I want to find out what evidence they have. Then I’ll know more about the case.”

“Do they put on all their evidence?”

Mason said, “They try to hold out as much as they can, but my job is to needle them into putting on their whole case... Sit tight now. Tell the newspaper people that you’ll give them your story just as soon as I give you an okay. In the meantime, don’t say anything to anyone. Don’t do anything that would give the prosecution any ammunition.”