“I’d prefer not to answer that question.”
“You’d paid him a thousand dollars — this man, Gilly?”
“Yes.”
“And your daughter, Rosena, had paid three thousand dollars?”
“My daughter had not confided in me exactly what had happened, but I do happen to know that she also was being blackmailed.”
“Over the same thing?”
“Yes.”
“Then this subject of blackmail was something that affected her happiness as well as your own?”
“I’d prefer not to answer that.”
One of the other newspapermen said, “Do you know where your husband went after you went to sleep?”
“No.”
“He told you he was going down to the boat?”
“Yes.”
“Did you have any talk with him afterwards about whether he had been aboard the boat?”
“Yes. He said he drove down and couldn’t find the boat. He said that he walked out on the wharf. There was a thick pea-soup fog but I had told him that with the incoming tide the boat would be close enough to the wharf so he could see it. In fact, it would have been within... oh, I think ten or fifteen feet of the wharf by the time the tide had swung it around on the anchor.”
“He said he couldn’t see it?”
“Yes.”
“He admitted to you, however, that he went down to the bay after you became unconscious.”
“Yes.”
“And tried to find the boat?”
“Yes.”
“What time was that, that he went down?” Hastings asked.
“I don’t know, but I do know that it was around ten o’clock when I got home and got out of my wet clothes, and after I had told him my story — I guess it must have been ten-thirty or quarter of eleven before I went to sleep.”
“And your husband was with you until you went to sleep?”
“Yes.”
“Then,” Hastings said to the newsmen, “since the time of death was fixed at around nine o’clock it would have been impossible for her husband to have taken over and been the one who fired the fatal shot, which I think is the idea Perry Mason is trying to implant in your minds.”
The newspapermen looked at each other.
One of the men said, “I have some more questions but they can keep. This story won’t keep. I want to get it on the wires before I’m scooped.”
“You said it,” one of the other men said. “Let’s go.”
They went pell-mell out of the law library, leaving Hastings, the district attorney, behind.
“I have a few more questions,” Hastings said.
“Don’t you want to get your story on the wire?” Mason asked, smiling.
“No,” Hastings said, “not yet. I want to get some more information.”
Mason smiled at him and said, “Under the circumstances, Mr Hastings, I think your devotion to your occupation as district attorney of this county is more deep seated, loyal and sincere than your devotion to the paper which has temporarily given you a press card so that you could attend this conference.
“I wish to inform you that the interrogation period is over and Mrs Bancroft is not going to answer any more questions.”
Hastings turned to Bancroft and said, “How about you? You went down to the wharf and—”
“Don’t misunderstand us,” Mason said. “This is a press conference to hear the story of Mrs Bancroft. Her husband is not making any statement.”
Hastings said, “This is the same old run-around. You’re going to try to make it appear that her husband went down to the wharf, that there were two guns, that he was the one who shot Gilly and you’ll try to get Mrs Bancroft off and then when we try the husband you’ll make it appear that Mrs Bancroft was the one who fired the shot. As far as I’m concerned, your story crucifies her right now.
“And if she wants to claim self-defence, just let her try and explain why she didn’t notify the police right away.”
“Because,” Mason said, “she didn’t want to expose the matter which had been used as a means of blackmail. She didn’t want to have the police interrogating her about the subject of blackmail and about why she had taken Fordyce down to the yacht in the first place.”
Hastings said, “Let her tell that story on the witness stand where I’ve got an opportunity to cross-examine her and I’ll rip her story to shreds — and when she tries to tell that story, don’t think the Court will let you stand around and put words in her mouth. She’ll tell it according to the rules of evidence, the same as any other witness.
“As far as I’m concerned, this thing has been just a dress rehearsal and an attempt on your part to influence the press into giving her a sympathetic sob-sister background.
“I challenge you to put her on the witness stand tomorrow and let her tell that same story.”
“You prepare your case and I’ll prepare mine,” Mason said. “The press conference is over.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Sheriff Jewett said, “In view of your client’s statement, Mr Mason, I don’t see why you accused me of incompetent investigative technique in that I failed to mark the location of the yacht where we recovered it. Quite evidently the yacht had drifted with the rising tide down the bay and had come to rest there.”
“The point is,” Mason said, “that you don’t know what went overboard from that yacht. You don’t know what evidence might have been thrown overboard.”
“What makes you think any evidence was?”
“I think it was,” Mason said. “I think something very significant was thrown overboard. I also think that in the best police procedure any investigation worthy of the name would have marked the exact location of that yacht and had divers explore the bottom.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at,” the sheriff said.
“You’ll find out before I rest my case,” Mason told him.
The sheriff said, “All right, I’ll tell you the same thing you told the district attorney. You run your business and I’ll run mine.”
“Thank you,” Mason said, smiling. “As far as I’m concerned the press conference is over. I’ll see you tomorrow, Mrs Bancroft, and in the meantime don’t answer any more questions. Just say that you’ll tell your story at the proper time and in the proper place. From now on, keep your own counsel. Don’t tell anybody anything.”
Mason stalked out of the room.
Della Street said, “Why didn’t you show the sheriff up by proving that two typewriters had been used on that note?”
Mason smiled at her. “It won’t help our case to get the sheriff confused, but it will help our case to keep the blackmailers confused.”
“Why? One of them is dead.”
“Do you know that there were only two?” Mason asked.
She thought over his question for a few seconds. “No,” she admitted at length.
“Exactly,” Mason said, and then, after a pause, “Let’s eat.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was four o’clock when Mason got Paul Drake on the phone.
“You down there at the bay, Paul?”
“I’m down here.”
“What’s the weather?”
“Foggy again.”
“Damn it,” Mason said, “I was hoping the fog would lift.”
“Well, it may be lifting. It looks as though it’s getting a little lighter.”
“You’re camped down there by that wharf?”
“Hell, I’m on the wharf,” Drake said. “I’ve got a set of white coveralls with the name of an oil company all over the back and I’m ostensibly waiting for boats to come in to be refuelled.”
“All right, keep your eyes open,” Mason said.
“What am I looking for?”
“Divers,” Mason told him. “I think before the afternoon is over you’ll find the district attorney and the sheriff down there with some divers. I’ve got the sheriff worried. He thinks that maybe he should have explored the bottom of the bay around where the yacht was found, and I’m positive the district attorney will try to disprove Mrs Bancroft’s testimony by sending a diver down to look over the place where she says she jumped overboard. I think he’s convinced the actual murder took place out where the yacht was found.”