Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Fenced-In Woman

Paulita Marchwell said hurriedly, “No, no. You go with the gentlemen, Mr. Mason. I certainly don’t want to interfere in anything of this sort.”

She smiled at Sergeant Camp. “I know the Las Vegas police would want to cooperate with me in every way, and I want to cooperate with them.”

She got to her feet, gave Mason her hand. “Nice to have met you, Mr. Mason. Perhaps I can see you again under other circumstances when you can — have more time.”

She gave him a significant look, turned and floated away.

Mason pushed back his unfinished drink and said, “Well, you fellows certainly seem to have spoiled things for me there.”

“You can always begin again where you left off,” Sergeant Camp told him. “Let’s go.”

Mason said, “All my baggage is here in my room.”

“You came over here in a hurry, didn’t you, Mason?” Tragg asked.

“I do many things in a hurry.”

“You bring any baggage?”

Mason said, “All my baggage is here in my room.”

Tragg said, “Well, we’ll only detain you a moment, Mason. We have an anonymous tip that you have a briefcase full of securities that were the property of Loring Carson, a briefcase with the words ‘P. MASON’ stamped on it. You carried it here from Los Angeles.”

Mason said nothing.

Sergeant Camp saw and pounced on the briefcase.

“Here it is,” he said to Lieutenant Tragg.

Tragg’s eyes narrowed. Then he looked at Mason, then back to Camp.

“Open it,” he said.

Sergeant Camp opened it.

“So you say he’s truthful!” he exclaimed.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Tragg said. “This is the first time I’ve ever known him to tell a lie.”

“What do you mean a lie?” Mason asked. “You didn’t ask me if I had a briefcase filled with securities. You asked me if I had securities given me by either Vivian Carson or Morley Eden. Every one of your questions related to securities I had received from them.”

“Okay, okay,” Tragg said. “Let’s agree that my questions may have been misleading. Now where did you get these securities?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Simply that I can’t tell you.”

“Nuts to all that stuff,” Camp said. “You can do whatever you want to, Tragg, but I wouldn’t believe this guy on oath. We’re taking this briefcase.”

“Inventory the contents,” Mason said.

“Nuts,” Camp repeated. “We’ll take the inventory at Headquarters. Come on, Tragg.”

The two officers marched out of the room, taking the briefcase with them.

Mason walked over to pick up the phone. “When’s the next plane to Los Angeles?” he asked.

Perry Mason sat with Morley Eden in the attorneys’ visiting room at the jail.

“If I’m to be your attorney, Morley,” he said, “you have to tell me what happened.”

Morley Eden looked at him with anguished eyes. “I can’t do it, Mason.”

“Nonsense. You can always tell your attorney anything.”

Eden shook his head.

“Why not?”

“It’s too damned... In the first place, if you knew the true facts in the case you wouldn’t believe them, and in the second place you wouldn’t represent us.”

“Did you kill him?”

“No.”

“Do you know who did?”

“No.”

“But you want me to represent you and Vivian Carson?”

“Yes. We’re going to be indicted by the Grand Jury. We’ll be jointly charged with first-degree murder, and they’re going to make out one hell of a case, Mason, I’ll tell you that. They’re going to make out a case by circumstantial evidence that — I don’t know if you can beat it.”

Mason said, “That’s all the more reason why you should tell me what actually happened. I have to know what I’m up against. The best defense to circumstantial evidence, provided, of course, that a man is innocent, is the truth.”

“I tell you,” Eden said, “the truth isn’t going to help you. It would give you a hopeless case. As long as they’re relying on circumstantial evidence you’re going to have to go in there and try to beat it. I don’t know how much they have. They may have a little or they may have a lot. If they have all of it we’re lashed to the mast. We’ll never get out of the mess. Your only hope, our only hope, is that they don’t have all of it. We were trapped by circumstances. I can’t even discuss it.”

“Why do you want me to represent Vivian Carson?” Mason asked.

“Because we’re going to be charged together in an indictment.”

“That doesn’t make any difference,” Mason said. “If you didn’t kill him, perhaps Vivian Carson did, and I don’t want my hands tied in your defense by—”

“No, no, no, Vivian didn’t kill him. I know that. I swear it.”

“How do you know she didn’t?”

“Because she was... Because I know .”

Mason regarded the man with thoughtful eyes. “Look here, Morley,” he said, “is there any chance that you think you’re in love with Vivian Carson?”

Morley Eden met his eyes. “I know I’m in love with her, Mason. It’s something that I never thought could happen to me. It’s one of the most devastating emotional storms I ever experienced. I... I can’t begin to tell you what she means to me or how it happened. It just hit me — well, from the first minute I saw her.

“And that’s one of the things that you’re going to have to take into consideration. After all, she and Loring Carson were still married. There had been a divorce decree but it was only an interlocutory judgment. The interlocutory would have to run for six months before there would be a final dissolution of the marriage. The prosecution will use my love for her as a motivation for the murder of her husband.”

“When did all this happen?” Mason asked.

“What?”

“Your falling in love with her.”

“Almost from the first time I saw her.”

“That, as I remember it,” Mason said, “was when she was in a very abbreviated bikini.”

“All right, it was,” Eden said. “And she seemed — well, there was something essentially feminine about her, a daintiness, a grace, a— She was a, vision of loveliness.”

“You were lonely,” Mason said. “You’d been a widower, you’d been living by yourself. You came to your house, found a fence running through it. You opened the door, went into the house trying to find what in the world had happened, and there you found this woman, this vision of loveliness, as you call it. Then a little later you saw her by the pool, taking a sunbath in a bikini.

“She had quite evidently planned the whole thing: the setting, the discovery, the bikini she was wearing — probably even the lighting effect. She knew about when you were due back. She wanted you to—”

“All right, suppose she did,” Eden said. “You know what she wanted at the time. She wanted me to file suit against Loring Carson. She wanted to try and discover some of the hidden assets which she was satisfied he’d been concealing in preparation for the divorce action. She has told me all about it. She intended to get me to make a pass at her and then take me before the court on contempt proceedings — in case I didn’t file suit against Loring Carson.”

“All right,” Mason said, “go on. Tell me about the development of this emotional storm.”

“The next morning she was nice to me. She handed me coffee through the fence and...”

“And you started to get acquainted?” Mason asked.

“Yes. It was just a start.”

“Then what?”

“Then you came out and she staged that lingerie show and hang it, Mason, the thing appealed to me. The gameness of the woman; her ingenuity; the way she was fighting back with the cards stacked against her. I was there in the house and after the party was over — well, she pulled back those silly curtains and I was in the living room and I looked at her and suddenly started laughing, and then she began to laugh and then we sat and visited for — well, it was a long time.”