Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Fenced-In Woman

“I submit that in view of the manner and demeanor of this witness anything that defense counsel may say, any attempt to smear this witness will be a boomerang which will damn the defendants.

“The defendants left their fingerprints on that hinged tile which covered the hidden receptacle. Those damning fingerprints, silent evidence that both of these defendants touched the inside surface of that tile.

“The testimony that their fingerprints were there is uncontradicted. You can see those fingerprints for yourselves. The photographs are in evidence. Just look at those enlarged photographs and reach your own conclusions. You don’t have to qualify as an expert to tell when fingerprints such as these match. All you need is good eyesight and good judgment.

“The defendants had their hands on the inside of that tile, on the inside of that steel-lined receptacle.

“Why?

“Ask yourselves that question. No one has attempted to give you any reasonable explanation. There can be only one logical explanation. They murdered Loring Carson and took his hidden securities. They kept the cash. They wanted to transfer the securities. Their attorney, Perry Mason, had those stolen securities with him in Las Vegas.

“Was this a coincidence?

“Don’t be naive.

“Don’t let Counsel pull the wool over your eyes.

“I ask a verdict of guilty of first-degree murder against both defendants.”

Ormsby turned and walked back to his table.

Mason arose and smiled at the jurors.

“If it please the Court and you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I find myself at something of a disadvantage. The case against the defendants is predicated upon the testimony of one witness, Nadine Palmer.

“You have the assurance of the deputy prosecutor that Nadine Palmer is a reasonable, fair woman. Because she wouldn’t identify the nude woman she saw jumping into the swimming pool as being Vivian Carson, you are told that this is an indication of her sincerity, a barometer of her integrity, and any attack on her will be a boomerang to the defense.

“The witness, Nadine Palmer, doesn’t dare to come out and say that it was Vivian Carson she saw jumping in there because she knows it wasn’t Vivian Carson and if it should turn out at a later date that the person she saw was actually someone else, she would then be guilty of perjury.

“So she hedges, she twists, she turns and evades, she equivocates, and the district attorney’s office wants you to take that as a barometer of honesty.

“If that’s a barometer of honesty, then the barometer shows a pretty low pressure.

“Why didn’t she have the integrity to come right out and say that she hadn’t been able to recognize the person she saw, that she didn’t know who it was, that she couldn’t see her face. The sudden, startling apparition of this nude woman dashing out of the house and plunging into the swimming pool caught her entirely by surprise.

“You women on the jury will know how she felt. She saw this woman entirely unclad. The spectacle was one that startled her, and before she could gather her wits enough to take a good look the woman was in the swimming pool. After that she never saw the woman’s face.

“But did she see a nude woman? Did she see anyone, or is she simply transposing her story so that she describes the part which she played in this case, and pretends that she was an impartial witness watching the event from a distance?

“Why didn’t she go to the police with what she saw? Why did she rush home and take a shower, getting her hair all wet? Why were the cigarettes in her bag soggy? I’ll tell you why. It was because she was the woman who jumped into the pool, swam over and got the securities, and presently I’m going to prove it to you; and I’m going to prove it to you by your own senses and beyond any reasonable doubt.

“You ladies and gentlemen of the jury are mature people; you weren’t born yesterday; you know the habits of the police — when they have decided on a suspect, they marshal all the evidence indicating the guilt of that suspect, and all too frequently ignore evidence pointing to anyone else.

“I submit to you that the witness, Nadine Palmer, plunged in that swimming pool after she had learned the hiding place of the securities; that she put those securities in a plastic bag; that she started to swim back to get her clothes and found that Loring Carson had caught a glimpse of her as she jumped into the pool. Loring Carson ran back out of the house, and as Nadine Palmer tried to emerge from the swimming pool he grabbed her head and tried to hold her under water until she surrendered the bag of securities.

“How do we know this?

“Because both of Carson’s shirt sleeves were wet to the elbow. He didn’t get both arms wet opening the hinged tile. And when he reached for that hidden mechanism which raised the tile he did just what Lieutenant Tragg did when he reached for it. He did the only natural thing to do; he rolled up his right shirt sleeve.

“But even if he hadn’t rolled up his sleeves he couldn’t possibly have got his left arm wet reaching for that hidden release ring.

“The way he got both arms wet was by trying to grab a swimmer and hold her while she was in the pool. The swimmer got away from him.

“So what did Loring Carson do? He went into the house, found where she had left her clothes and stood guard over them, knowing that the swimmer wouldn’t dare go out in public attired only in filmy wet underthings.

“And presently I am going to prove to you that this swimmer was not the mysterious nude Nadine Palmer says she saw, but was Nadine Palmer herself.

“She was trapped. So she quietly went into the kitchen side of the house, picked up a knife and, in her bare feet, walked gently and silently to the fence where Loring Carson was standing over her clothes and with his back to the fence, and plunged that knife into his body.

“That one act disposed of everything that stood in her way, stood between getting possession of the securities and having a fortune in her own name on the one hand or being apprehended as a culprit on the other.

“So then the witness, Nadine Palmer, plunged into the swimming pool, again went under the barbed-wire fence, returned to the pile of clothes she had left in the living room on the bedroom side of the house and, in the presence of the corpse, stripped herself of her wet underwear, put it in her purse, put on her outer garments and then, and not until then, retraced her steps up the hill to where she had left her car, carrying the stolen securities with her.

“After regaining possession of her car, she went back to her apartment and was changing her clothes when I arrived. She was panic-stricken, particularly when she realized she had inadvertently given me an opportunity to see that the cigarettes in her handbag were soaked with water.

“She suddenly realized that she had to do something to account for a period of financial transition. She had been a woman in modest circumstances, getting along on a small salary, and now suddenly she had blossomed into wealth. How could she account for this wealth?

“I mentioned Las Vegas and that gave her the idea she needed. She would go to Las Vegas and cut a wide swath at the gambling tables. People wouldn’t know whether she was winning or losing over the long haul. Subsequently she could appear with this money and claim she had won it at the tables of Las Vegas.

“But she was too smart to bother with the securities because those could be traced, so what did she do? She put them in a briefcase, had the name ‘P. MASON’ stamped on the briefcase, took that briefcase to my room and planted it. Then she tipped off the authorities that I had a briefcase full of securities which had been given to me by my clients, the defendants in this case.