“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.”
Chapter Thirteen
Paul Drake, perched on the rounded arm of the client’s overstuffed leather chair, said, “Why don’t you get rid of this thing, Perry?”
“What thing?”
“This chair.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s old-fashioned. It’s out of style. Modern law offices don’t have these things any more.”
“I have it,” Mason said.
“Why?”
“It makes the client feel comfortable. He’s relaxed. He feels more at home. He’s inclined to tell his story. You can’t get a story out of a client who’s uncomfortable — that is, if he’s telling the truth.
“On the other hand, if he isn’t telling the truth, I let him sit in that chair for a while and then ask him to sit in the straight-backed chair across the desk so I can hear him better. That chair is just as uncomfortable as I can make it.”
“That chair,” Drake said, “is an invention of the devil.”
“When you want someone to tell the truth,” Mason said, “you put them in a comfortable chair and give them every assurance of stability, sympathy and comfort — that is, if they’re co-operative.”
“And if they’re not, then you put them in that uncomfortable chair?”
“That’s right. The more awkward they can be made to feel, the more they have to shift their position in order to try and be comfortable. Then I let them feel they’re giving themselves away by being unable to sit still. Once a man begins to shift his position and cross his legs and recross them, I look at him accusingly, as much as to say, ‘Aha, my lad, the falsehoods you are telling are making you uncomfortable.’ ”
“Well,” Drake said, “you’d better get your client, Maxine, and put her in the uncomfortable chair, Perry.”
“What’s the matter?”
“She’s been lying to you.”
“What about?”
“Well, let’s put it this way, Perry. I don’t know just what she’s told you but I think she’s been lying to you.”
“Go on,” Mason said.
“Did she tell you that she was supposed to have had a child out of wedlock, that actually it was her sister’s child, that her sister had been cheating on her husband while he was overseas and that this was her sister’s child?”
“Go on,” Mason said as Drake hesitated.
“Well,” Drake said, “apparently it’s the other way around. The child was Maxine’s but it was agreed between her and the sister that she’d tell this cock-and-bull story about the sister having cheated on her husband. The husband knows all about it and was willing to ride along in order to cover up for Maxine.
“The child was born while the husband was overseas, all right, but it was born to Maxine and not to the sister, Phoebe Stigler. However, Maxine and Phoebe went together down to a small community where they could say they had swapped identities. They had a midwife where the child was born, and subsequently, after a lot of legal hocus-pocus, the child was adopted by Homer and Phoebe Stigler.”
“The police know that?” Mason asked.
“Know it?” Drake said. “Hell’s bells, you haven’t heard anything yet. The father of the child was Collin Max Durant.”
“What!” Mason exclaimed.
“That’s what the police think. They’re trying desperately to get the evidence all lined up.
“I’ll tell you something else. They have a woman who knows that Maxine was in her apartment as late as eight o’clock.”
“She couldn’t have been,” Mason said. “She called you from the bus station at seven-fifteen.”
“She said she was calling from the bus station,” Drake said. “That’s a cheap way to get an alibi. A person goes to a telephone booth, gets the number of the phone in a far-away pay station, calls up someone who isn’t in, then leaves a message saying, ‘I’m at such and such a number. It’s a telephone booth. Please call me back.’ Then after she gets done committing her murder and cleaning up, she goes down to the telephone booth and waits for the call.
“Maxine Lindsay knew she was going to have to take a powder. She removed everything from her apartment that she didn’t want the police to find. She also wanted her canary to have good care so she took it and left it with some very close friend. Then she got in touch with you and told you this grandstand story, gave Della Street the key to her apartment and was on her way.
“She’s using you and she’s using me to help build up an alibi, to confirm her story that she called from the phone booth at the bus depot.”
“How do the police figure Durant was the father of the child?”
“They figure it out on a basis of circumstantial evidence. Durant was hanging around Maxine during that time and they were pretty thick. I guess the police can dig up some registers at motels that are in the handwriting of Collin Durant.”
“Someday,” Mason said, “I’ll get a client who will tell me the truth and the surprise will knock me out. No, wait a minute, I’ll put it another way. Someday we’ll get a client I can believe.”
“I hate to hand you these jolts,” Drake said, “but that’s what you pay me for.”
“What about the hundred-dollar bills?” Mason asked.
“I can’t find them, I can’t find any indication that Durant ever had but one bank account or ever went near any other bank. I’ve had photographs and operatives with photographs calling on every bank in town. No one knows him except the little branch bank where he had an account under his own name. At the time of his death he had a balance of thirty-three dollars and twelve cents.”
“With ten thousand dollars in his pocket,” Mason said.
Drake nodded.
“And a week or so earlier he had hundred-dollar bills that he used to buy painting supplies and pay off the artist. How about other hundred-dollar bills, Paul?”
“Those are the only ones I could find.”
“Keep digging,” Mason said. “Right now you have only started.”
Chapter Fourteen
Deputy District Attorney Thomas Albert Dexter got to his feet and said, “May it please the Court, this is the time fixed for the preliminary hearing in the case of the People of the State of California versus Maxine Lindsay. The People are ready.”
“Ready for the defendant,” Mason said.