“Yes.”
“Can you do it?”
“I think so.”
“Let me talk to the officer in charge,” Mason said.
A moment later the official voice came on the line once more.
Mason said, “I’m attorney for Diana Douglas. I have instructed her to make no statement except in my presence. We waive any hearing in San Francisco in favor of a hearing before a magistrate in Los Angeles County. We make no objection to being transported from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Aside from that we make no stipulations, no admissions, no concessions, and as attorney for Miss Douglas I insist that I be present at all interviews and at all questioning. I wish to be notified the moment she arrives in Los Angeles.”
“If you’d let us talk things over with her, we might be able to straighten this out,” the officer said. “We don’t want to bring her down to Los Angeles unless there’s some real reason for it. If she can explain some of the circumstantial evidence in the case, and I certainly hope she can because she’s a very nice young woman who seems to have had a lot of trouble lately, we’ll turn her loose.”
“That’s certainly nice of you,” Mason said. “It’s a wonderful line. It’s caused a lot of people to talk themselves into prison. For your information, I have instructed Diana Douglas not to talk unless I am present, and I am instructing you not to interrogate her except in my presence. I don’t want her interrogated by anybody unless I am there. I am making a record of this conversation so that any further attempts to get information from Miss Douglas will be a violation of her constitutional rights. I think you understand the situation.”
“Well, as her attorney, will you explain certain things that we’d like to clear up?” the officer asked.
“I explain nothing,” Mason said.
“Do you know when your client first noticed that her BankAmerica credit card was missing?”
Mason laughed into the telephone.
“What’s so funny?” the officer at the other end of the line asked.
“You are,” Mason said, and hung up.
13
In the consultation room at the County Jail, Diana regarded Mason with tear-swollen eyes.
“Have you had any trouble with the police?” Mason asked.
“They’ve been wonderful to me,” she said, “just so kind and considerate and— Mr. Mason, it wouldn’t hurt to tell them certain things, would it?”
“What things?”
“Well, about finding the money and about Edgar and about why I put the ad in the paper and—”
“And where would you stop?” Mason asked.
“Well, I suppose I’d have to stop somewhere. I suppose you’d want me to.”
“Of course,” Mason said, “you wouldn’t want to talk yourself right into the gas chamber. You’d want to stop sometime before you got there, but the trouble is you wouldn’t know where to stop.”
“Yes,” she said, “I suppose I’d have to, but they’ve been so nice and considerate and—”
“Sure,” Mason said, “that’s part of the technique. With some people they’re nice and considerate. With some women they’re perfectly gentlemanly and fatherly. Then, if that doesn’t work, they try the other tactic. They become hard-boiled and try all sorts of things.
“In recent years the courts have frowned on some of these police tactics, and the result is that they try to work up a case by getting the evidence rather than forcing the defendant to incriminate himself. But if anyone is willing to talk they’re always willing to listen and many a person has talked himself right into the penitentiary, and I mean many an innocent person. He’s made statements without knowing all of the facts.”
“But I know all the facts,” she said.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Who killed Moray Cassel?”
She winced at the question.
“Did you?” Mason asked.
“No.”
Mason said, “Look here, Diana, you can be frank with me. I’m the only one you can be frank with. It’s my duty to see that you have a defense whether you’re innocent or guilty.
“Now then, you were to meet me on that six twenty-seven plane Thursday night. You didn’t do it. I saw you the next morning and you had quite a story about having been followed by someone whom you couldn’t shake off, someone who frightened you so you resorted to all sorts of evasive tactics and got there too late to catch the plane.
“Actually, you didn’t even try to catch that plane. That story that you made up about someone following you was a lie to account for what you had done with your time.
“I gave you the information that the blackmailer was Moray Cassel. I gave you his address. You decided that I was never going to pay off a blackmailer and that might not be the thing that your brother wanted. So, you took it on yourself to second-guess my play. You took a taxicab to the Tallmeyer Apartments. You went up to see Moray Cassel. While you were up there something happened. You opened your purse, perhaps to take out a gun. When you opened your purse, your BankAmerica credit card fell out and you didn’t miss it at the time.
“Later on you went to the airport. You wanted to buy your ticket to San Francisco and pay for it yourself, and that was when you missed your BankAmerica credit card for the first time.
“Now then, the police either know this much or surmise this much or can get evidence which will come pretty close to proving this much.”
She shook her head.
“Yes, they can,” Mason said. “The police are unbelievably clever. You have no idea what dogged footwork will accomplish in an investigation. They’ll find the cab driver who took you to the Tallmeyer Apartments.”
She gave a sudden, quick intake of her breath.
“Oh, oh,” Mason said, “that hurt... You little fool, do you mean that you took a cab directly to the Tallmeyer Apartments and didn’t try to cover your tracks?”
“I was in a terrible hurry,” she said. “I wanted to see him and then catch that plane with you. I thought I had time enough to pay him a quick visit and if... well, if... I was going to use my own judgment.”
“In other words,” Mason said, “if you felt that you could clean up the whole business with a five-thousand-dollar pay-off instead of putting that five-thousand dollars into the bank and getting a check to yourself as trustee, you were going to pay him the five thousand dollars and try to make a deal with him by which your brother would be out of trouble.”
“Well, yes...”
“Why didn’t you do it?” Mason said.
“Because he was dead.”
“Go on,” Mason told her.
She said, “I got into the apartment house. It was one of these hotel-type apartment houses where they have a doorman on duty at the elevator, but he was busy parking a car for somebody and I slipped right on by him into the elevator. I went up to the ninth floor. I found apartment nine-o-six. I tapped on the door.
“Nothing happened, so I tapped again and when nothing happened I tried the knob. I don’t know what in the world possessed me to do that but I did and the door opened and...”
“Just a minute,” Mason said, “were you wearing gloves?”
“I... no.”
Mason sighed and shook his head. “Go on,” he said.
“I got in there and at first I didn’t see him. I didn’t see anybody, but I said, ‘Who-whoo, is anybody home?’ and walked in. And then I saw him lying there on his back on the bed. Oh, Mr. Mason, it was terrible, terrible. Everything was soaked in blood and...”