The Case of the Spurious Spinster

Chapter 10

Perry Mason was up at seven forty-five. He shaved, showered, dressed and, without breakfast, stopped at a supermarket, bought two dozen large, luscious eating apples, drove the rented car down to the front of a junior high school, parked it near the curb, let the air out of the left front tire until the tire was flat, and stood helplessly by the car until a group of students came along chatting and laughing, completely immersed in their own world and their own problems.

“Hey,” Mason asked, “you boys want to make twenty bucks?”

The group paused and looked at him suspiciously.

“Here are the car keys,” Mason said. “I’ve got an appointment and I don’t want to get all mussed up changing a tire. Fact of the matter is, I don’t even know how to go about it. I don’t know where the tools are. Here are the car keys and here’s twenty bucks.”

“What do you know?” one of the boys said.

“Manna from heaven,” another remarked.

“I’m going to go over here to the snack bar and get a cup of coffee,” Mason said. “I’d like to have you do the best you can with it.”

Mason dropped a twenty-dollar bill on the seat of the automobile and walked across the street to the snack bar. “You boys help yourselves to some of those eating apples, if you want.”

Looking back, he saw boys literally swarming all over the car.

By the time the lawyer had finished his coffee and walked back across the street, the tire was changed and one of the boys standing by the car said, “Gee, thanks a lot, Mister. We felt we shouldn’t charge you that much. The boys felt they were sort of taking advantage of you.”

“Not at all,” Mason said. “I’m going to come out all right on this deal myself.”

By that time, a crowd of some fifteen or twenty boys had gathered around the car, those who had not been in on the tire-changing deal looked enviously at those who had.

One of the boys said suddenly, “Say, I’ve seen you before. I’ve seen your picture some place. Aren’t you... my gosh, you’re Perry Mason, the lawyer!”

“That’s right,” Mason grinned, and seating himself behind the steering wheel, left the door on the left-hand side of the car wide open while he visited with the boys for some four or five minutes. Then he closed the door and drove to his office.

He drove the car into the parking lot where he and Della Street kept regular stalls for their cars. Mason jumped out of the car and said to the parking lot attendant, “I’m in the deuce of a hurry. Would you mind parking it in my stall when you get a chance? Thanks a lot.”

Mason smiled his thanks and hurried to the elevators.

He stopped in at Paul Drake’s office. “Paul in yet?” he asked the switchboard operator.

“Not yet,” she said. “He left word that he was working until five o’clock in the morning and he was going to get a little shut-eye.”

“Ask him to come in as soon as he shows up, will you?” Mason asked, and went on down to his own office. He went in through the reception room and told the receptionist, “Della Street probably won’t be in today, Gertie. I’m going to be in my office for a while, but I may have to tell you to cancel all appointments.”

Gertie, always the romanticist, said with awe, “Gee, Mr. Mason, it isn’t another murder case, is it?”

“I’m afraid it is,” Mason told her.

“And you’re mixed up in it?”

Mason grinned. “Let’s say we have a client who may become involved.”

Mason walked back to his private office, seated himself and, picking up the phone, said, “Gertie, I want to get the Presidential Suite at the Arthenium Hotel. I’ll talk with anyone who answers the phone. I’m afraid it’s going to be rather a tough day today. We’re going to have to get along without Della and—”

“Oh, no, we aren’t. She’s just corning in,” Gertie said.

“What!” Mason exclaimed, jumping up out of his chair.

“She’s just corning in.”

Mason dropped the phone into its cradle, crossed the office with rapid strides, and jerked open the door to the private office just as Della Street was about to open it from the other side.

For a long moment they stood there all but in each other’s arms, then Mason said, “Good gosh, Della, I’m glad to see you! Although I suppose it’s bad news.”

“It’s bad news,” Della Street said.

“Come on in and tell me about it. Where have you been?”

“I,” Della Street announced, “have been in the district attorney’s office since six o’clock this morning. We were routed out of bed by deputy sheriffs from Kern County at a very early hour. Our friend, Lieutenant Tragg of Homicide, showed up and started questioning me in great detail.”

“What did you tell him?” Mason asked.

“I told him the truth,” Della Street said.

“All of it?”

“Well, there were some phases of the matter on which I didn’t elaborate, but I have never seen Lieutenant Tragg more insistent and there was a deputy district attorney who was positively insulting.”

“They didn’t have any right to hold you,” Mason said.

“That’s what I told them. But they had an answer for all that. They said I might be a material witness, that I might be aiding and abetting a felony, that I might be trying to conceal evidence... oh, they had lots of answers.”

“Did they give you a rough time?”

“They were rather insistent,” Della Street said, putting her hat in the hat closet and dropping wearily into a chair. “I think the deputy district attorney and one of the deputy sheriffs would have been really rough in an insulting sort of way if it hadn’t been for Lieutenant Tragg. He was probing and insistent, but very much a gentleman of the old school.”

“And what did Susan Fisher have to say?” Mason asked.

“As to that I wouldn’t know,” Della Street said. “They had her in a separate room and they never let us have a word together from the time they took us into custody. They brought her in, in one car, brought me in in another, and they interrogated us in separate rooms.”

“Well,” Mason said, “I guess the fat’s in the fire, the wind is about to start blowing.”

Gertie, in the outer office, gave a series of several short, sharp rings on the telephone and simultaneously the door from the outer office opened and Lt. Tragg stood smiling on the threshold.

“Good morning, Perry,” he said, and turning to Della Street, bowed, said, “I’ve already seen you this morning, Della.”

“You have for a fact,” she said.

Tragg said, “You’ll pardon me for walking right in without waiting to be announced, Perry, but as I’ve explained to you on several occasions, the taxpayers don’t like to have us cooling our heels in the outer office and sometimes after a man knows we’re waiting he takes steps which tend to defeat the purpose of our visit.”

“And the purpose of your visit this morning?” Mason asked.

“Well now,” Tragg said, “I was instructed to ask you to look at certain sections of the Penal Code.”

“Indeed,” Mason said.

“Sections having to do with concealing evidence, being an accessory after the fact, and things of that sort. But I’m not going to say anything about those sections.”

“And why not?” Mason asked.

“Because,” Tragg said, still smiling, “I’m satisfied you’re familiar with them already, Counselor, and quite probably have taken steps to see that they don’t apply.”

“Then what is the purpose of your visit?” Mason asked.

“Right at the moment,” Tragg said, “the purpose of my visit is to advise you that we’re taking into custody a rented car which you picked up late last night from the We Rent M Car Company... and I’m instructed to ask you just why you deemed it necessary to rent that particular car.”

“What particular car?” Mason asked.

“The one you rented.”

Mason smiled. “The reason I rented a car was because Della Street had work to do and you had ordered me to remain at a service station. It therefore became necessary for me to call a taxi to take me back to town from the service station after you finished questioning me. Quite naturally one doesn’t care to keep a taxi and pay taxi rates for ordinary driving. Even a fairly prosperous lawyer could run up too much of an expense account that way.”

“I dare say,” Lt. Tragg said. “I suppose you knew that the car you rented was the same one that your client, Susan Fisher, had rented earlier in the day and driven out to the place where the body of Ken Lowry was discovered?”

“No!” Mason exclaimed in surprise.

“You didn’t know that?”

“How was I to know that?”

“You rented a car from the same agency.”

“Certainly,” Mason said. “I believe it was the nearest car-rental depot to the service station where you ordered me to remain.”

“I see,” Tragg said. “In other words, it was just one of those coincidences.”

“You might call it that,” Mason said.

“And again, I might not,” Tragg said. “I’m quite certain the district attorney won’t.”

“All right,” Mason said. “You want to pick up the car. I take it you’ll give me a receipt, we’ll check the mileage on the speedometer at the present time and I’ll ring up the We Rent M Car Company and you can tell them that the police department is taking over and give them the mileage reading. I’d certainly hate to pay ten cents a mile for a lot of running around being done by the police department.”

“Oh, certainly,” Tragg said. “We’re always glad to cooperate with you, Perry.”

“Thank you.”

“Now then,” Tragg went on, “if we process this car for latent fingerprints and find that all of the fingerprints have been wiped from the car, it will be a very suspicious circumstance, Counselor. I think you can realize just how significant it will be and how suspicious.”

“I wouldn’t say that was a suspicious circumstance,” Mason said, “but I am quite certain that by the time the prosecution gets done with it it will be made to appear highly significant.”

“And it might leave you in a very embarrassing position,” Tragg pointed out.

“It might,” Mason agreed.

“You don’t seem to think it will?”

“I’m hoping it won’t, because I’m hoping that you won’t find that the car has been wiped free of fingerprints.”

“Well,” Tragg said, “we’ve located it down in the parking lot and we have a couple of fingerprint experts going over it. If you don’t mind corning down to the parking lot and checking the speedometer we’ll give you a receipt for the car and then take over.”

Mason sighed. “Well, I suppose I’ll have to. How long have you been working on the car?”

“Ever since you drove it in,” Tragg said, grinning. “You know, Mason, I’m willing to make you a bet.”

“What?”

“That the men report there isn’t a single fingerprint on that car except perhaps one or two of yours by the door... and do you know what’s going to happen if that is the case? I’m going to take you down to Headquarters for questioning, to find out whether you know anything about the fingerprints having been obliterated. I just thought I’d let you know so you could ask your highly competent secretary here to take care of canceling appointments in the event you don’t return to the office.”

Mason sighed and reached for his hat. “I always deplore these high-handed methods on the part of the police,” he said.

“I know, I know,” Tragg told him, “but the district attorney takes a very dim view of lawyers who go around obliterating evidence.”

“Evidence of what?” Mason asked.

“Evidence of murder.”

“What sort of evidence?”

“Well, for instance,” Tragg said, “I wouldn’t be too surprised if at one time Ken Lowry hadn’t been in that car and that his fingerprints might have been found in the car if they hadn’t been tampered with. For your information, Counselor, these fingerprint men are rather expert and if a car has been wiped free of fingerprints they can determine that fact — and, of course, since the car is in your possession, and since you would be the one who would have a strong motive to protect your client, the answer is more or less obvious.”

“I would say rather less than more,” Mason said. “Let’s go down and take a look at the car, by all means. Perhaps you’d better come along as a witness, Della, so you can check the mileage.”

“The more the merrier,” Tragg said. “Let’s go.”

Tragg led the way out of the office and escorted Mason and Della Street down the elevator, out through the side entrance of the building and into the parking lot.

Two men were working feverishly over the automobile Mason had parked. Another man with a fingerprint camera was busily engaged in taking photographs.

“Well?” Tragg asked, as they approached the car. “You found that it had been wiped clean?”

One of the men turned to Tragg. His face contained an expression of complete exasperation. “In all of my experience, Lieutenant,” he said, “I’ve never found a car with more fingerprints on it than this. The thing is fairly plastered. They’re just all over the car — front, back, windshield, windows, steering wheel, rearview mirror — the thing is plastered with prints.”

For a moment the smile faded from Lt. Tragg’s face. Then he drew a deep breath and bowed to Perry Mason. “One has no respect for an adversary who is unworthy,” he said. “It’s going to give me a great deal of pleasure to return to the prosecutor and tell him that there was no reason to bring you in for questioning.”

“You expected to find fingerprints on the car?” Mason asked.

“Well,” Tragg said, “I didn’t think that they’d find the car had been wiped free of all fingerprints. I was instructed to tell you that I was certain such would be the case, but somehow I had an idea it wouldn’t be quite that easy. However, I hardly expected to find the car fairly crawling with fingerprints. Would you mind explaining how that happened?”

Mason shrugged his shoulders. “I guess quite a few people must have touched the car,” he said. “Perhaps the police were looking it over before I brought it in.”

“Don’t be silly,” Tragg said.

One of the fingerprint men who had been standing nearby said to Tragg, “It looks as though one of the national political parties had been holding a convention in the damn car. It’s nothing but prints.”

Tragg bowed, raised his hat in a gesture which might have been one of farewell to Della Street or might have been a gesture of respect to Perry Mason. “Under the circumstances,” he said, “there is no reason to interfere with your activities of the day, Counselor. Good morning.”

“Good morning,” Mason said, and taking Della Street’s arm, walked over to check the mileage on the speedometer.

“Seventeen thousand, nine hundred and forty-eight and two-tenths. Is that right, Lieutenant?”

“That’s right,” Tragg said.

“Make a note, Della,” Mason told her.

Della Street made a note.

“Goodbye, Lieutenant.”

“Au revoir,” Lt. Tragg said. “I will doubtless see you later on.”

“Oh, doubtless,” Mason told him, and escorted Della Street back to the office building.

As Mason and Della Street entered the elevator and waited for it to get a load, Paul Drake came hurrying in, signaled the elevator starter to hold the cage, and sprinted to get in just as the door closed.

“Hi, Paul,” Mason said.

The detective jerked to startled attention, whirled towards the back of the cage, saw Mason and Della Street, and said, “Gosh, am I glad to see you.”

“Something?” Mason asked.

“Lots of somethings,” Drake said. “I’ll walk down to your office with you and tell you the news in the corridor...” He glanced significantly at the other passengers in the elevator who were watching and listening with the curiosity of people who lead humdrum lives and obtain a vicarious thrill from time to time by eavesdropping.

Mason nodded and as the cage began to empty at intervening floors, moved over to join Drake so that the three of them left the elevator together and started down the corridor.

“They’ve arrested your client,” Drake said.

“I know that,” Mason told him. “They even had Della Street in custody for a while.”

“Okay,” Drake said, “I’m going to tell you something, Perry. They’ve got some sort of an absolute ironclad bit of evidence that I can’t find out about, but I’ll tell you one thing. This is once you’re defending a guilty client.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m not,” Drake said, “but my informant is. I got a straight tip from Headquarters to tell you to get out from under on this case.”

“I can’t get out from under, Paul. I’m in too deep. What about the rest of it?”

Drake said, “I have Endicott Campbell located. He came home about five o’clock this morning. No one knows where he had been. He drove up in his automobile, entered the driveway to the garage, entered the house, and has been there ever since.”

“What else?”

“Police now have a bulletin on Amelia Corning. She wheeled her chair out of the freight elevator last night and that’s the last anyone has seen of her.”

“This man who operated the freight elevator — do the police know about him and his waiting in the alley?”

“Oh, sure,” Drake said. “Just as soon as they started an official search they inquired of all of the elevator operators and this fellow who runs the freight elevator told them his story.”

“And they have no trace of her?”

“Not a trace.”

“That’s strange,” Mason said. “A partially blind woman in a wheelchair could hardly vanish into thin air.”

“Well, she did,” Drake said. “And remember this is the second time within forty-eight hours. The first person, who was impersonating Amelia Corning, vanished; now Amelia Corning has vanished.”

“One person,” Mason said, “was impersonating Amelia Corning. Therefore it was a very simple matter for her to vanish. All she needed to do was to get up out of the wheelchair, take off the dark blue spectacles and be on her way. But with the real Amelia Corning it’s a gray horse of another color.”

The lawyer unlocked the door of his private office, stood aside for Drake and Della Street to enter, said, “All right, Paul. Now we’ve got to go to work. We’ve got a bunch of fingerprints to check.”

“We’re going to have the deuce of a time,” Drake said.

“How so?”

“Police have a lot of power,” Drake pointed out. “They can go to the man who runs the We Rent M Car Company and tell him they want his fingerprints. They can go to Endicott Campbell and ask if he has any objections to giving them his fingerprints. Then they compare those fingerprints with the ones in the car.

“We’re in a different position. We’ve got a flock of lifts of fingerprints and all we can do is to eliminate certain ones gradually and then guess at the other ones. We don’t have the power the police have.”

“What about the man who took the prints? Do you suppose he will turn in the photographs to the police?”

“He will if he knows the police are looking for them.”

“When will he know that?”

“Perhaps not for a day or two,” Drake said. “It depends on how the publicity hits the newspapers. There’s really something weird about this case, Perry, and don’t underestimate Endicott Campbell. There’s one smooth, fast, clever operator.”

Mason said, “I made a mistake there, Paul. I should have had you keep a couple of shadows on him and find out where he went and what he was doing. Of course we had no way of knowing Amelia Corning was going to disappear.”

“Naturally,” Drake said.

“All right,” Mason told him, “you get busy and find out everything you can. Get every possible scrap of information. In the meantime, take these lifts of fingerprints and try to match them up. By this time the police have booked Susan Fisher, so they’ll have her fingerprints. The coroner will have taken the fingerprints of Ken Lowry. Whether we can find fingerprints of Amelia Corning is another question. I think they may have taken them in connection with her passport visa or some other governmental red tape in connection with immigration. They’re probably on file somewhere.”

“Suppose either Amelia Corning or Ken Lowry had been in that rented car,” Drake said. “Suppose fingerprints are identified.”

Mason thought for a moment, then slowly shook his head. “If either of them was in that car,” he said, “we’re licked.”

Drake said, “Somehow I have a peculiar feeling in the pit of my stomach over this one, Perry. I think they’re laying for you.”

“Well,” Mason said, “you won’t have any difficulty getting the fingerprints of Ken Lowry. He’s at the morgue. Get somebody working on that right away.”

“I already have,” Drake said. “Let me have the lifts and I’ll go down to my office. I instructed my office to get fingerprints as soon as the coroner had made them.”

“The coroner would let them go?” Mason asked.

“Sure,” Drake said. “They handle that stuff as a matter of course. They fingerprint every corpse that comes in for autopsy.”

“How was the murder committed, do you know?”

“A jab into the heart; a single stab wound, evidently a stiletto letter opener.”

“Where was the point of entrance, front or back?”

“Side,” Drake said. “It evidently caught Ken Lowry completely by surprise. He was with someone he trusted.”

“All right,” Mason said. “You start working on those fingerprints.”

“I can check on Lowry’s fingerprints within a few minutes,” Drake said. “Let me call my office. I’ll have the prints sent down here.”

Drake called his office, said, “I’m in Mason’s office. Did you get the fingerprints of Ken Lowry from the coroner?... Good... Send them down, will you?”

Within thirty seconds Drake’s switchboard operator was at the door with the set of fingerprints and Drake sat down at the desk. Mason got the lifts from his briefcase and handed them to Drake.

Drake sat there with a magnifying glass, examining first one lift and then the other against the ten fingerprints which had been received from the coroner’s office.

Suddenly Drake looked up, an expression of dismay on his face. “Hold everything, Perry,” he said.

“What is it?” Mason asked.

“Let me make sure,” Drake said.

He held one of the lifts a few inches above the print which had been received from the coroner’s office, then slowly folded the magnifying glass, put it down on the desk, looked up at Perry and said, “This time you’ve done it. Ken Lowry’s fingerprint was one of those lifted from the automobile.

“If you notify Lieutenant Tragg that you have that print you’ve given your client a one-way ticket to the gas chamber and if you don’t notify him, you’ve put yourself in the position of concealing vital evidence in a murder case.”

Mason thought the matter over for a minute, then said, “We’ll do neither, Paul. Ring up your man who lifted the fingerprints. Tell him the car is figuring in a murder case and he should develop his photographs of the prints and take them to the police immediately.”

“Without letting anyone know that you suggested he do so?”

“That’s right.”

“That makes you vulnerable on both flanks,” Drake said. “The police have the information and you don’t have the credit of turning over the evidence to the police as a potential defense.”

Mason nodded. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, Paul. If the police start working on me they won’t have so much time to work on Susan Fisher. I’ll be a distraction.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” Drake said lugubriously, “they’ll take time to work on everyone, including me.”