“What gave you that idea? There’s a car with a red light turning in the driveway. I suppose that’s my transportation. You got it here pretty fast.”
“We try to work fast, Mr. Mason,” the undersheriff said. “It just happened we had a radio car cruising in your neighborhood and just oddly enough they were making a canvass of the various motels trying to find where Mr. Davenport had stayed.”
“Well, I’m glad I saved you some trouble,” Mason said, and hung up as two broad-shouldered deputy sheriffs pushed their way into the lobby.
Chapter 8
The police car pulled in to the curb and as Mason was escorted into the building, a tall man with a good-natured grin came forward and extended his hand.
“Perry Mason?”
“That’s right.” Mason said, taking the proffered hand.
“I’m Talbert Vandling,” the man said. “I’m the district attorney here in Fresno. Looks as though I’m going to be trying a murder case with you on the other side.”
Mason sized the man up. The cool, steady eyes, the easy, relaxed affability which emanated from him.
“I think,” he said, “you might be rather a dangerous antagonist.”
“I’d try to be,” Vandling told him. “Now what’s all this about you opening a letter up in Butte County?”
“Am I supposed to have opened a letter?” Mason asked.
“The D.A. up there thinks you did.”
“Was it a crime?”
“Well,” Vandling said, “that depends on how you look at it.”
Mason smiled at him. “I take it you have troubles of your own down here in your county.”
“You can say that again.”
“Then I take it it won’t be necessary for you to borrow any problems from Butte County in order to keep yourself comfortably busy.”
Vandling threw back his head and laughed.
Mason said, “I understand you’re holding Mrs. Edward Davenport here. She’s my client. I want to talk with her and advise her as to her rights.”
The smile left Vandling’s face. “There are some things about that case I can’t understand, Mason. Now I don’t want to prosecute anyone who isn’t guilty. According to her story she knows nothing about the murder. In other words, she’s innocent.”
Mason nodded.
“Unfortunately,” Vandling said, “there are some circumstances which make it impossible for me to accept her story at face value.”
“How about the corpse climbing out of the window?” Mason asked.
“That’s one of the things I was coming to,” Vandling said. “I’m going to put my cards on the table and I’d like to have you put your cards on the table.”
“Well,” Mason said, “let’s not do it all at once. You put down one of your cards and I’ll see if I can match it.”
“All right,” Vandling said. “The police made an investigative blunder. I’ll be perfectly frank in telling you that.”
“How come?”
“The man who saw the figure, apparently clad in pajamas, climb out of the window and drive away has slipped through our fingers.”
“How did that happen?”
“He gave a fictitious address and presumably a false name to the officers.”
“And the officers let it go at that?”
Vandling said, “Figure it out for yourself. He was registered there at this motel. He wasn’t alone. The couple was registered as husband and wife. He told the officers about having seen the figure in pajamas getting out of the window and driving away in the automobile. The officers asked for his name and address. He gave them the name and the address under which he was registered. The officers checked that. They found that he’d registered the night before under that name and they let it go at that. They didn’t ask to see his driving license. They didn’t check the number of his car. They didn’t ask for any identification. It was a hell of a blunder. The only reason they were so lax was because at that time they felt certain there wasn’t any corpse, that a man who had been locked in was making a getaway from an unattractive wife.”
Mason’s eyes hardened. “Go on.” he said.
“Evidently this man started doing a lot of second thinking. He realized that if he was going to be a witness his real identity and perhaps that of his companion would come out. So he got away from there fast.”
“And the officers don’t know who he is?”
“Haven’t the faintest idea. They have the name that he gave them, but I’m pretty certain it isn’t his right name. The address is fictitious and the license number of the automobile that he put on his motel registration was false.”
“How do you know?”
“We’ve checked the owner of the automobile that’s registered under that license. He’s in the southern part of the state, he’s married, has a family, and there’s no question that he isn’t the man we want. Moreover, he hasn’t left his home in the past forty-eight hours and neither has his automobile. He hasn’t loaned the car to anyone and it couldn’t possibly have been up here in this part of the state.”
Mason said, “That man in the motel has become the most valuable witness for the defense.”
Vandling nodded.
“If that had been a witness whose story had been of value to the prosecution,” Mason said, “I don’t think he’d have slipped through the fingers of the police.”
Vandling said, “Well, there are certain implications in what you say and in the way you say it that I don’t like.”
“There are certain implications in what has happened that I don’t like.”
Vandling’s infectious smile came back. “Are you going to be hard to get along with?” he asked.
Mason’s lips smiled at the man, but his eyes remained cold and hard. “Yes,” he said.
“I was afraid of that,” Vandling told him. “Of course, Mason, let’s be fair about this. If the man had been a witness for the prosecution his statement would have indicated that a murder had been committed. Right?”
“I suppose so.”
“So the officers would have known that they were working on a murder, that they’d be dragged over the coals if the witness slipped through their fingers and they’d naturally have taken steps to check his identity and make sure they had the means of locating him as a witness.
“But as it was, this man’s story indicated that no crime had been committed. Therefore the officers were more careless than would have otherwise been the case—at least I hope they were. It was an investigative blunder and I don’t like it. I don’t feel easy about it at all.”
“That was an important witness,” Mason said. “The police should have seen that he was available.”
“I agree with you.”
“So where does that leave us now?” Mason asked.
“I’m afraid,“Vandling said, “it leaves you and me in a position where we have a conflict of interests. The way things look now I’m going to have to put a murder charge against Myrna Davenport. I’m going to have to prosecute that charge. Naturally I don’t want to do it if Ed Davenport actually did climb out of the window of that motor court.
“However, even if we found that witness, about all he could testily to was that he saw a figure, which he presumes was a masculine figure, clad in pajamas, getting out of the window, that he noticed the man was barefoot, that he got in an automobile and drove away. The figure matches the general description of Ed Davenport.”
“You’ve found the body?” Mason asked.
“We’ve found the body.”
“Any question but what it’s Ed Davenport’s body?”
“None whatever.”
“How was the body dressed?” Mason asked.