The Case of the Reluctant Model

Chapter Seventeen

Mason, in the detention room off the courtroom, smiled reassuringly at Maxine Lindsay as a policewoman brought her in.

“Maxine,” Mason said, “I’m going to do something that is ordinarily considered a great mistake. I’m going to put you on the stand in a preliminary hearing and let you tell your story.”

“I want to tell it.”

“They’re going to cross-examine you. They’re going to rip you up the back and down the front.”

“I expect that.”

“They’re going to cast slurs and innuendoes and they’re going on a fishing expedition.”

“What do you mean by a fishing expedition?”

“They’ll ask you all sorts of questions, hoping that you’ll lie about something. They’ll ask you about your past, about—”

“You mean they’ll inquire into my—”

“They’ll be circumspect,” Mason interrupted, “but they’ll ask you how long you lived in a certain place, at what address you lived; they’ll ask you if you were going under your own name or another name. In other words, they’ll try to explore. If you were living with some man as his wife—”

“I wasn’t.”

“I’m just warning you,” Mason said. “Now, I’m going to try to short-cut their cross-examination. I’m going to put you on the stand, let you tell a part of your story, then ask to withdraw you temporarily. I don’t know whether I can get away with that or not.”

“But won’t that just be postponing things?”

“It will be postponing them,” Mason said, “but it just may postpone them long enough so we can mix up the whole case. The way things stand in this case at present, you don’t stand a ghost of a show. The judge is going to bind you over for trial. That means you’ll be held without bail on a charge of first-degree murder. I don’t want that to happen. You don’t want that to happen.”

“Well,” she said, “I could take a little of it but I... I certainly don’t want to get convicted by a jury — particularly for something I didn’t do.”

“I know,” Mason said, “and I’m taking chances. But it’s a gamble I think we should take. I’m putting it right up to you, Maxine, if you don’t want—”

“I want you to do what you think is best, Mr. Mason.”

“I want to put you on the stand,” Mason said, “just long enough to get that false Feteet introduced in evidence. I think I can do it if I have your testimony. Now remember, Maxine, you’re twenty-nine. You’re a mature woman. Under present conditions people hardly expect that you are— Well, if you have ever lived with anyone as his wife, go ahead and say so when they ask you if you’ve ever used any other names. You can call it a common-law marriage. Just don’t let them catch you in a lie. No matter what you do, tell the truth, because they’ll have weeks to investigate every statement you make and if they can get you up in front of a jury and make you admit that you lied under oath, your chances of escaping conviction are very slim indeed.”

“I understand,” she said.

“All right,” Mason told her. “Here we go — and if you’ve been lying to me, heaven help you.”

Mason returned to rejoin Della Street.

Della Street, looking at shorthand notes, said, “Chief, did you get the significance of Gilbert’s answer to the question about the painting? I gathered from what he said that this was not one of the paintings that Durant had had him do.”

“I got it,” Mason said, “and I don’t know what it means. I’ve gone so far now that I can’t back up. I’ve got to keep moving. I think he may have misunderstood the question. However, I don’t dare to back up now.

“It may be that Durant didn’t deal with him directly on this, but was going to buy it after Gilbert had made the copy but— Didn’t he tell us that Durant had him paint it when we were at his studio? — No, wait a minute, I guess he didn’t say so in so many words.”

“I gathered he did,” Della Street said.

“No,” Mason said, frowning thoughtfully. “I asked him if he’d done paintings for Durant and he said he had. I asked him if they were forgeries and he said they weren’t forgeries in that sense of the word; that Durant sold them as conversation pieces which could be bought for peanuts. Then I asked him if he hadn’t done a painting of women under a tree in the style of Phellipe Feteet, and he hesitated a minute and then went over to the pile of paintings and pulled this one out and asked me if that answered my question.”

“Well?” Della Street asked.

Mason said, “There’s something very strange here. I’m going to try and get that picture in evidence. Once I get it in evidence I’m going to make scrambled eggs out of the district attorney’s case; at least I’m going to try to.”

“And Paul Drake is busy serving subpoenas?” Della Street asked.

“Paul Drake is busy with subpoenas,” Mason said, “and the first thing you know all hell is going to break loose. Olney is going to be calling the judge and saying he doesn’t want to be a witness, and that he doesn’t know anything about the case, and he’ll have his lawyers bustling into court claiming that I’ve abused the process of the court, and, by the time we get done, we’ll have a three-ring circus around here.”

“And what will the judge do?” Della Street asked.

Mason said, “Unless I can pull a great big, fat, kicking rabbit out of the hat, the judge is going to bind Maxine over, but I can’t back up now. If I did, everyone would think that I found out Maxine was guilty during the recess, that she confessed to me or something, and I didn’t dare to go ahead. That would be highly detrimental to her when the case comes on for trial in front of a jury. I’m just going to tear in and thrust and slash and kick up such a hell of a commotion nobody will know who is accusing whom of what.”

“And what will the prosecution be doing all of that time?”

“The prosecution,” Mason said, “will be almost certain to have our esteemed contemporary, Hamilton Burger, the district attorney, attending the balance of the trial in person so that he can enjoy my discomfiture when I put the defendant on the stand and throw my case out the window.

“Hamilton Burger will be the one to take the credit for forcing me to commit a legal error.”

“He’s clever,” Della Street warned.

“I know he’s clever,” Mason said, “but I jumped in my boat and pushed it out into the middle of the stream. I’m just above the rapids now. I’ve either got to shoot them, or capsize. I can’t turn around and go back, and if I should try to, it would be much worse than being capsized once I got in the rapids. The only thing to do now is to keep on paddling downstream, pretending to be confident that I know a channel among the rocks.”