“She can be produced in a very short time if necessary.”
“The police want her.”
“She’ll be only too glad to render what assistance she can to the police.”
“And exactly what do you want?”
“What’s the use of beating around the bush?” Mason asked. “I understand Eva Martell signed a statement and swore to it. In case that statement contains an incorrect recital of fact, I want to be sure that nothing is going to be done about it.”
“So that’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“And that’s the reason you’re jockeying for position around here instead of bringing your client in and having her say, ‘Look, I made a mistake.’ ”
“Of course it is,” Mason said angrily. “What the hell did you think? That I was going to lead with my chin?”
“You have led with it.”
“Bosh!” exclaimed Mason.
“Adelle Winters is guilty of cold-blooded murder. We can prove it. Your client is an accessory after the fact — and probably before the fact.”
“Hang it, Gulling, if my client doesn’t come out in the open and admit she’s mistaken, but simply sits tight, what the hell are you going to do about it?”
“You’ve asked a question,” Gulling said. “Now I’ll tell you the answer. Adelle Winters had a .32-caliber gun and it was loaded with a very distinctive type of obsolete bullet. That gun was in her possession up until two-twenty yesterday afternoon, when she dropped it into a garbage pail. At approximately two o’clock Robert Hines was killed with a bullet fired from that gun — a bullet exactly matching the shells that were left in the gun, and also matching a bullet that the ballistics experts fired from that gun.
“Eva Martell swears she was with Adelle Winters every minute of the time. That being the case, we’re going to convict both of them of murder. And I’ll tell you how we’re going to do it, Mr. Mason. When police took Adelle Winters into custody last night, the matron went through her clothes and took her personal possessions. And what do you think she found?”
Mason tried to keep a poker face. “I don’t see that anything she could have found would make any difference.”
“Don’t you indeed, Mr. Mason!” Gulling said with cold irony. “Well, perhaps you’ll change your mind when I tell you that she found Robert Dover Hines’s wallet with his identification cards, his driving license, and three-thousand-odd dollars in currency of large denominations. There’s your motive for the murder. And when your sweet, innocent little actress friend gets on the witness stand and swears that she was with Adelle Winters every minute of the time, she’s going to be convicted of first-degree murder. And if she changes her story, she’s going to be convicted of perjury. I’m tired of having people give this office the run-around.
“And I’m going to tell you something else, Mr. Mason. Eva Martell is wanted by the police. They hold a felony warrant for her arrest. She is now a fugitive from justice. If you conceal her, you yourself will be an accessory, and you know what that means. I’ll give you until noon today to have Eva Martell surrender to the police. In the event she doesn’t, we’ll take proceedings against you. And I think that represents everything this office has to say on die subject. Good morning, Mr. Mason.”
Chapter 10
Mason sat on one side of the heavy, coarse-meshed screen that ran the length of the visitors’ room in the jail. On the other side sat Adelle Winters.
“Mrs. Winters,” Mason said, “I’m going to put the cards on the table. I was trying to help Eva Martell, and I thought at the time it was an easy case — now I find out that it isn’t.”
“Why isn’t it?”
“Because of the things you have done. Police feel that you and Eva deliberately planned to murder Hines for the purpose of getting his money.”
“That’s absurd!”
“They can build up a pretty strong case.”
“Eva is absolutely innocent. But I’m in a mess — I know that.”
“You seem to have dragged Eva in with you.”
“But I wouldn’t have done that for worlds! I love that girl like a daughter. Are you going to be my lawyer, Mr. Mason?”
“I don’t think so. I got in here because I told the jailer that I had to talk with you as an attorney to find out whether I’d take your case. That still holds true. But what I want to know is where Eva stands in this.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what happened, Mr. Mason. When you spoke to me about the danger of carrying that gun, I pretended not to pay any attention. Actually I was very much impressed. I realized that someone might make it appear we had committed a technical crime. And as I understand it, there’s a law that if you have a gun in your possession when you’re committing a crime, you can’t get probation — you have to go to the penitentiary.”
“Generally that’s true.”
“Well, I decided to get rid of the gun. From your office I went back up to the apartment, and the first thing I did there was to take the gun out of my purse and put it in the sideboard drawer. Then — later, when we were planning to get out — I took it out of the drawer and put it on top of the sideboard. But in the excitement of gathering my things together and getting out, I forgot it. Down in the lobby I did some telephoning. I called Hines several times, and got no answer. I called you, and kept hearing the busy signal. Then I suddenly remembered about the gun. So I told Eva to wait — that I had forgotten something and had to go back upstairs.”
“What time was this?”
“Oh, perhaps two o’clock, perhaps a little after.”
“So what did you do?”
“I went up in the elevator, walked along the corridor, opened the door of the apartment. The gun was there on the sideboard. At the time, I didn’t notice anything strange about it; but afterwards I recalled that when I’d left it the muzzle had been pointing toward the wall, though when I picked it up the muzzle was pointing toward me. The door to the bedroom was closed. I didn’t open it — fortunately. The murderer must have been in there right then.
“So I picked up the gun, turned toward the door, and then noticed that wallet lying on the floor near the bedroom door. I swear to you, Mr. Mason, I didn’t any more than look at it, see that it was Mr. Hines’s wallet, and push it down inside my blouse. I intended to give it to him when I saw him, which I thought would be soon.
“I left the apartment and picked up Eva, and we took a cab to the Lorenzo Hotel; it took less than five minutes. At the hotel I went at once to the ladies’ room and opened my purse to get my compact. When I did that, I smelled a peculiar powder smell. It came from the gun, of course. So I looked at it, and one shell had been fired. I smelled of the barrel, and it smelled of fresh powder. I wanted to get rid of it, so I took it out to that garbage pail and dumped it in.
“And that’s the real, honest-to-goodness truth, Mr. Mason — every word of it!”
“I want to believe your story, Mrs. Winters,” Mason told her. “I’m anxious to believe you’re innocent. But the story you have just told doesn’t convince me, and I don’t see how you can possibly expect a jury to believe it.”
“Oh, I can improve on it, Mr. Mason, if I have time,” she assured him.
“You mean you’re going to change that story?”
“Sure — to make it better.”
“Regardless of the facts?”
She snorted. “Facts don’t mean a damn thing. Lots of times, the truth isn’t very convincing. But I’m pretty good at fixing up stories, Mr. Mason, and I can improve this one considerably. As it is, I’ve told you the real truth — I wouldn’t tell that to anyone else.”