Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Fenced-In Woman

“Then I’ll go a little further with your reasoning. He still had his coat off but he had rolled his sleeves down. He had completed his business with the secret receptacle. He went back into the house and was just about to put on his coat when he saw something that caused him to go running out into the patio, and at that time there was something that arrested his attention in the swimming pool. That, in all probability, was just what you thought it was: a nude woman swimming back under the fence with a plastic bag containing the securities which had been lifted from the receptacle.

“Loring Carson bent down and grabbed her. He may have tried to hold her head under water, but he certainly grabbed her by the shoulders. He was struggling for the bag.

“She eluded him and swam back under the barbed-wire fence.

“Carson couldn’t get over that fence, he couldn’t get around it, and the only way he could have got underneath it would have been to have jumped into the swimming pool fully clothed.

“This solution didn’t appeal to him but he had keys to both sides of the house so he ran out around the barbed-wire fence and into the other side of the house. The girl had her clothes in that side of the house and Carson thought that if he stood guard over the clothes the girl would be forced to put in an appearance. So he stood there and got a knife in his back from the other side of the fence.

“Now then, I want some co-operation.”

“What co-operation?” Mason asked.

“I don’t want to be the fall guy in this thing,” Tragg said. “Your clients have been acquitted. They can never be prosecuted again. I don’t want them to confess if they’re guilty, but if they are guilty I would like to have you tell me that I’d be wasting my time trying to pin the crime on somebody else. That will be a confidential communication which will never be broadcast, never be released to the press. It’s simply a statement for my personal satisfaction.”

“For your personal information,” Mason said, “I would suggest that you continue your investigations, Lieutenant. I have every reason to believe that my clients are innocent. I’d stake my reputation on it.”

“Well now, that’s something,” Tragg said, his keen eyes sizing up Vivian Carson and Morley Eden. “Perhaps they’d tell me what actually did happen, just for my own guidance.”

Mason shook his head. “They’re not going to tell anyone their story,” he said.

“Do you know it?” Tragg asked.

“I know it,” Mason said, “and it isn’t going to be told.”

Tragg sighed.

Mason said, “There are a couple of fairly legible latents on that briefcase. Why don’t you run them down?”

Tragg shook his head. “Of all the damn-fool things any attorney ever did,” he said, “that business of making the jurors believe they were experts on fingerprints— Why, do you know I found out what went on in the jury room. Every one of those twelve people hypnotized themselves into believing that two of the smudged latent fingerprints on that hinged tile were the fingerprints of Nadine Palmer, and that her fingerprint was on the briefcase. Of course, there were certain points of similarity. I think you can find about four or five. We don’t consider we have a good identification unless we have eleven points of similarity, but there was no way of getting that before the jury — not the way you handled the case — and when those jurors found four points of similarity they immediately became fingerprint experts... That was the damnedest thing anybody ever did.”

“Well,” Mason said, “the prosecutor brought it on himself. He told the jurors that there was nothing to this business of fingerprint comparison, that they could see for themselves, that they could take the exhibits into the jury room.”

Tragg grinned. “For your private, confidential information, Perry, Morrison Ormsby is not the most popular deputy in the district attorney’s office right at this moment. In fact, there is a certain amount of hostility developing toward him. I wouldn’t doubt if he finds it advisable to go into private practice soon.

“Some of the newspaper reporters are getting the story from the jurors and they’re going to make quite a play of it. We nearly always have latents which aren’t identified,” Tragg went on. “If all defense attorneys could handle things the way you did we’d be in trouble all the time. Of course, it was Ormsby’s fault. But you baited the trap for him, and he walked right into it.”

“There is one point,” Mason said, “one which you may have overlooked.”

“What’s that?” Tragg asked.

“I never saw the briefcase which really contained the securities in my life until I saw it in the room and then I had this new briefcase sent in from the curio shop and put the old one in my suitcase. I had to do that so I could establish later on in court the time that I had received the briefcase; otherwise your witnesses would have claimed I carried those securities from Los Angeles; that I had received them from my clients and was taking them with me to get them discounted somewhere.”

“I know, I know,” Tragg said. “I tried to tell the Las Vegas police that you wouldn’t have been that stupid but they wouldn’t listen.”

“All right, Tragg,” Mason said, “I’m now going to get you the original briefcase that I found in my room. I think you may develop some latent fingerprints on that which may match the unidentified latent fingerprints you found on the lip of the receptacle there at the swimming pool.”

“What the hell do you suppose I came up here for?” Tragg asked. “Of course we’ll have to find the person who made the unidentified fingerprints. We’d have to have an identification of some sort, some standard of comparison.”

“Exactly,” Mason said. He went to the safe, took out a cellophane envelope containing the briefcase which had been left in his room at Las Vegas.

“Notice, Lieutenant,” he said, “that this briefcase has gilt letters stamped on it reading ‘P. MASON.’ ”

Tragg nodded.

“Rather an unusual way to mark a briefcase,” Mason said. “One would mark it either ‘Perry Mason’ or simply with the initials ‘P.M.’ or perhaps with only the last name, ‘Mason.’ ”

“Go ahead,” Tragg said.

“Now, if you’ll notice these letters carefully,” Mason said, “the last part of the name seems to be a little more legible than the first two initials. In other words, this briefcase may originally have been marked with the initials ‘P.M.’ and then the last four letters were stamped on at a later date, the stamping being made so that the period at the end of the ‘M’ was obscured by the new letter ‘a.’ ”

“Go on,” Tragg said. “You’re doing fine.”

“Everybody seems to have overlooked the fact that Loring Carson had to have some way of getting out to the place where his body was found.”

“Sure he did,” Tragg said. “We didn’t overlook that. That was elemental. He drove out in his car and your clients certainly took his car and drove it back to the garage under Vivian Carson’s apartment.

“They intended to keep it there until night when they didn’t stand quite so much chance of being picked up, and then take it out and leave it somewhere where it couldn’t be traced to them.”

“If they did that,” Mason said, “why would they have taken the car to Vivian Carson’s garage?”

“I’ll admit,” Tragg said, “that’s one of the things that puzzles me.”

Mason said, “Loring Carson came here from Las Vegas. He didn’t come alone. Neither do I think he came with his girlfriend, Genevieve Hyde. I think he had fallen for the Las Vegas system.”