Erle Gardner - The Case of the Empty Tin

“What did you tell them?”

Drake said apologetically, “I only had four or five minutes after I telephoned headquarters before the radio officers showed up. I didn’t have time to think up an absolutely iron-clad story. I could have improved it if I’d had a little more time. I...”

“What was it?” Mason asked.

“I couldn’t be absolutely certain who she was. Looking at things fast, it looked like an open-and-shut case of suicide. So I told the cops that I’d got a telephone message from a woman who said she wanted to tell me something before it was too late, that if I’d jump in my car and get out to that address fast, I’d find out something in connection with the Hocksley murder that would interest me.”

Mason grinned. “You couldn’t have done any better than that if you’d tried all night, Paul.”

Drake shook his head. “You overlook the weak point in it”

“What?”

“I didn’t see how I could tell them I’d stalled around very long after getting that telephone call. I didn’t know just when she’d pulled the trigger, but I surmised it had to be after she’d talked with you on the telephone. That would mean a medical examination would show she’d been dead for perhaps as much as an hour before I’d notified the cops. That wouldn’t look so well. So I told the cops I was working on something at the time which kept me from leaving the office, that I’d told her I’d be right out, but had put my car in the garage and there’d be a little delay. I felt that that way I could stall her along. That’s what I told the cops.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said.

“They wanted to know how long it was after the telephone conversation before I got there. I told them it might have been an hour, and I could see they didn’t believe that. They said that if I’d been on the track of something as important as that sounded, I’d have got out there sooner.”

“So then what?” Mason asked.

“So I told them that I hadn’t paid too much attention to time, that it had seemed quite a long while to me because I had so much to do, but that it might have been less than an hour; perhaps forty-five minutes, or perhaps even half an hour. And then I got myself in a jack pot. The times were all wet.”

Mason frowned. “You mean,” he said, “that she had been dead for more than...”

“She’d been dead ever since midnight,” Drake said, “and probably before.”

“How do they know?”

“Taking the temperature of the room and the temperature of the body and estimating how long it takes a body to lose a degree of heat, and all that stuff,” Drake said.

Mason frowned. “It couldn’t have been midnight. She talked with me over the telephone.”

“That’s what I thought,” Drake said, “but I wasn’t in a position to do any arguing.”

Mason said, “I guess that’s it, Paul.”

“What?”

“She was killed around midnight. That makes it murder.”

“But she talked with you and...”

“No,” Mason said. “A woman talked with me, a woman who had a rather well-bred voice. That is, the tones were smoothly harmonious, but there was something wrong with the way she spoke, as though she had a marble in her mouth. That explains it.”

“Explains what?” Drake asked.

Mason said, “It was a woman who talked with me. This woman said she was Mrs. Perlin. It was a cinch to pull that on me because I’d never heard Mrs. Perlin speak and didn’t know her voice. But the one who called the other person was one who said she was speaking for Mrs. Perlin because she was unable to come to the phone.”

“What other person?” Drake asked.

Mason said, “Right at the moment, Paul, that’s neither here nor there.”

The detective looked at him, sighed, and said, “It’s probably there, but it sure as hell ain’t here.”

Mason said, “When I looked down at the body, it didn’t seem to me that she’d been a woman who would have had a voice such as the one I’d heard on the telephone. So I asked — this other party — if the housekeeper had been up in the world at one time, and then had some bad luck. Had to go to housekeeping. That would have accounted for the well-bred voice, you know.”

“What was the answer?”

“Negative.”

Drake lit a cigarette. “That means,” he said, “that the party who was with you was someone who knew the housekeeper pretty well, someone who knew the housekeeper’s past, someone who was interested in the Hocksley case because a message brought that person out there. Probably a girl. Give me one guess, Perry.”

“Don’t take it,” Mason warned.

Drake removed the cigarette from his mouth, blew smoke at the smoldering end. “I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you, Perry, but there’s just a chance you and some feminine accomplice could be nominated for a murder rap. You might even be elected.”

“If the woman died before midnight?” Mason asked.

“That’s what you say.”

“I ought to know.”

Drake said, “If you’re going to keep messing around in murder cases, you’d better get married — so you’ll have some corroboration when it comes to bedtime alibis.”

“What the deuce are you talking about?” Mason said irritably. “Why the devil should I need an alibi?”

“Darned if I know,” Drake said, “but I have a hunch Lieutenant Tragg is going to become very inquisitive about what you were doing last night.”

“Tragg doesn’t even know I was anywhere within a mile of Hillgrade Avenue.”

Drake said, “Tragg gets around.”

Mason pushed back his chair. “You’ve been up all night, Paul. It gives you a pessimistic outlook.”

Drake regarded him moodily. He said, “You’re always pulling fast ones, and then expecting me to back your plays without telling me what it’s all about. I’m warning you that if Lieutenant Tragg finds out you were out at Hillgrade Avenue last night, or if he finds out the real reason why you didn’t call me back inside of an hour·, you’re going to have trouble.”

“What is the real reason I didn’t call you back inside of an hour?” Mason asked.

Drake regarded the lawyer thoughtfully. “If it’s what I think it is, I hope I’m not right.”

Mason laughed. “Come on. Out with it.”

Drake held up his left hand with the fingers extended. With the forefinger of his right hand, he checked off the points as he made them. “First,” he said, “you aren’t kidding me a bit. The reason you didn’t call me was because something very important did turn up. Two, that something important was of a nature which would interfere with a telephone call. Three, you didn’t discover anything from that contact which was particularly new. Otherwise, you’d have passed along the information, so I’d have something to work on. Four, it was a contact which knew a lot about the housekeeper, but one you had to keep absolutely dark. Five, it put you in such a spot that you don’t dare to confide even in me. You’re trying to kid me out of it. Now then, what’s the answer to those five points?”

Mason said, “I’ll bite, Mr. Bones. What is the answer to those five points?”

“Opal Sunley,” Drake said.

Mason got up. “I warned you not to make that guess, Paul. I try to keep you out in the clear and you jump right into the middle of the fire.”

Drake grinned. “I was in the frying pan, anyway,” he said.

Della Street, humming a little tune as she opened the door to Mason’s private office, carrying the morning mail under her arm, stopped short with surprise, said, “Well, well, is this getting to be a habit?”

Mason grinned at her. “Come on over and sit down.”