“Always,” Lieutenant Tragg said. “The taxpayers take a dim view of a police officer waiting in a lawyer’s outer office while the lawyer composes his thoughts or perhaps gets rid of a client out of the side door — so we just come busting on in, as you call it.”
Tragg’s grin was friendly and affable.
“Well,” Mason said, “I don’t have any clients to be spirited out of the side door.”
“That’s right, you don’t,” Lieutenant Tragg said. “We’re going to pick up your client, Ellen Adair, and I’m afraid, Perry, we’re going to have to charge her with murder.
“Now she’ll want to have her lawyer present, and I thought it might be nice if you just came along with me... make it all cozy like a little family party... and it might save us time.”
“Where are you going to pick her up?” Mason asked.
“At the department store,” Tragg said. “That’s where she works. We hate to humiliate her, but, after all, Perry, you know the law is the law.”
“I hope you have evidence,” Mason said.
“Evidence?” Tragg said. “Why, of course, we have evidence. We wouldn’t pick her up without evidence — you know that, Perry — particularly a woman with a responsible position of this sort.”
Mason said to Della Street, “You run this store while I’m gone, Della. I might just as well accommodate the lieutenant.”
“Well, that’s mighty nice of you, Perry,” Lieutenant Tragg said. “It’s always so inconvenient to have to pick up someone, then have to call a busy lawyer and have him say he can’t get there for an hour or an hour and a half or two hours or whatever time limit he fixes so that his client can have an opportunity to think up a good story.”
“This time,” Mason said, “I’m going to be frank with you. Lieutenant.”
“Please do,” Tragg said.
“I’m going to advise Ellen Adair to say absolutely nothing. She’ll tell her story for the first time on the witness stand, if she is prosecuted.”
“Tut, tut, tut,” Lieutenant Tragg said; “now that’s not a smart thing to do, Perry.”
“It may not be smart, but I think it’s fair to handle it that way.”
“Well, of course, you do what you see fit,” Tragg said, “but we’re going to ask questions, and some of them she’d better have the answers for.”
“She may have the answers, but that’s no sign she’s going to give them,” Mason said. “I’m taking the sole responsibility of telling her not to answer questions.”
“Well, it’s your funeral,” Tragg said. Then he added with a chuckle, “Or is it?”
“Let’s hope it’s no one’s funeral,” Mason said. “Let’s go.”
Tragg said, “I have a squad car downstairs. We’ll be taking your client right to Headquarters. You’d like to ride with us?”
“I’ll ride with you,” Mason said.
The lawyer looked significantly at Della Street and nodded.
“Oh, that’s all right,” Tragg said, beaming; “go right ahead, Della, and pick up the telephone, call French, Coleman and Swazey, and tell her that we’re on our way out there. After all. Perry Mason, as an attorney, has to give some service to his clients. We’ll give her that much preparation.
“Come on, Perry.”
The two men left the office building. Tragg, in a rare good humor, seated himself in the front seat beside the driver, put Mason in the back seat, and said, “We’ll put your client in there, too, when we pick her up, Perry. We won’t try to do any talking until we get to Headquarters.”
Tragg turned to the driver. “French, Coleman and Swazey,” he said; “the executive offices.”
The police car threaded its way through the traffic with skillful handling, then, after a short run, parked in front of a fireplug at the big department store.
“Just wait here,” Lieutenant Tragg instructed the driver. “Want to come along, Mason?”
“Certainly,” Mason said; “that’s why I’m here.”
“It is for a fact,” Tragg said.
They went to the executive offices.
Tragg marched into the buyer’s office, pushed his way past a startled secretary, entered the private office, and said to Ellen Adair, “I guess you know why we’re here, Miss Adair.”
Mason said, “Ellen, you are going to be arrested for murder. I instruct you as your attorney to say nothing, to answer no questions.”
“Well, now, just a minute, just a minute,” Lieutenant Tragg said; “there’s a formality first. You don’t realize how our activities are all being subjected to formula these days.
“Now, Miss Adair, it’s my unpleasant duty to tell you that I am arresting you on suspicion of murder — the murder of Agnes Burlington. I want to warn you that you don’t have to answer any questions, that you don’t have to make any statements, that if you do make any statements they may be used against you. I want you to know that you are entitled to counsel at all times, and, for your information, Mr. Perry Mason, who is your attorney, was picked up by us and was advised that we we’re going to put you under arrest. He will be with you whenever you are interrogated.
“Now, then, I’m going to have to ask you to come to Headquarters and to advise you that you are under arrest.”
Ellen said, “I told you...”
“Hold it,” Mason interrupted, “hold it, Ellen. We’re not saying anything.”
“But I told him...”
“If you’ve already told him, he’ll remember what you said,” Mason warned, “but right now he’d like to get you to say something else.”
“Is there any reason why I can’t assert my innocence?” she flared.
“Every reason in the world,” Mason said. “He’ll get you talking on the little things, and the next thing you know you’ll be talking on the big things.”
“What big things, Counselor?” Tragg asked.
Mason grinned and said, “Some of the big things you’ve been uncovering.”
“Well, now, of course I don’t know what you mean by a big thing,” Tragg said, “but, for instance, we can prove that Ellen Adair’s car was in the driveway there at the Burlington duplex after the ground had become soft: a detective’s delight, Mason — it really is. I was very much surprised. We don’t ordinarily find anything that perfect.”
“Congratulations,” Mason said.
“Thank you, thank you very much, Perry. You see, she drove the car in and found the ground was soft and decided to back out, and she’s a good driver. Many drivers would have warped the front wheels a little bit, and that would have made them shovel the mud. You know how it is when the front wheels get out of line with the car in soft soil or sand.”
Mason nodded.
“But this woman,” Tragg said, “went out without turning the steering wheel. She just went in, found the ground was soft, and backed out, slowly and easily, without spinning the rear wheels; and the front wheels were just enough on a slant so that we got perfect impressions of the front wheels as well as the tires on the hind wheels. Of course, after a while the front wheels got into the groove and obliterated the tracks of the hind Wheels, but we got enough to make a perfect moulage. And all four wheels left perfect tracks. The ground was just the right consistency.”
“Indeed,” Mason said; “I thought when I looked at the ground that it was a little too soft and mushy to leave good impressions.”
“Well, that, of course, was later,” Lieutenant Tragg said. “We figure that the Adair car was parked in the driveway — or perhaps I should say driven into the driveway — and then backed out at just about the time of death.”
“When do you place the time of death?” Mason asked.
“That’s very tricky,” Lieutenant Tragg said, “and you’ll probably ask a lot of questions on cross-examination of the autopsy surgeons. But the best they can do with it is about twenty-four to thirty-hours before the body was discovered — rigor mortis had already appeared and left and there was, of course, well-settled postmortem lividity. If we knew when she had ingested the last meal it would help a lot, but evidently it was stuff she had cooked up herself there in the duplex and then she had washed the dishes, and so all we can tell is she was killed within about two hours of the time she ingested the food, but we don’t know exactly when that was.”