Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Stepdaughter’s Secret

“Yes.”

“Let me see that photograph,” Hastings said.

“Certainly,” Mason said, handing the district attorney the two photographs.

“Now, wait a minute, wait a minute,” Hastings said. “This isn’t being fair to the witness. These are two different photographs.”

“He’s just sworn they’re photographs of the same person,” Mason said.

“Well, I submit that the witness should be advised...”

“Advised of what?” Mason said.

“That this second photograph is not a photograph of Willmer Gilly.”

Mason turned to the witness. “Do you see any difference in these pictures, Mr Kirby?”

The witness squinted his eyes, took the photographs, held his head back a ways and said, “They look the same to me but I don’t see so good without my glasses.”

“Do you wear your glasses all the time?”

“Sure.”

“Why didn’t you wear them today?”

“Well...”

“Why?” Mason asked.

“Well, I left them down at my room at the club.”

“Did anyone suggest that you might leave your glasses there?”

“Well, I was told that if I came in here wearing glasses and tried to make an identification that they’d make things pretty rough for me.”

“Why?”

“Well, they just said that it would be pretty rough for me.”

“Who said that?”

“The district attorney.”

“And told you to leave your glasses down at the yacht club?”

“He said it might be a good plan.”

“That,” Mason said, “was because you weren’t wearing the glasses on the night of the tenth, isn’t that right?”

“Well, you can’t wear glasses around water when a fog is coming in. It’s better not to have anything on at all. You can see clearer without glasses than you can with glasses. You take a lot of fog coming in and it gets all over the lenses and you just keep wiping it off and wiping it off and it’s better not to have them.”

“So you weren’t wearing glasses on the night of the tenth?”

“I told you it was foggy. The fog was coming in.”

“Then when you saw the man whom you later identified as Willmer Gilly, you weren’t wearing your glasses?”

“I told you I didn’t have them on while I was out there on the float. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

“But I’m just trying to check with your testimony,” Mason said patiently. “You didn’t have them on when you first saw Gilly.”

“No.’’

“Not at any time?”

“No.”

“Not when you saw the defendant?”

“No... but I recognized her all right.”

“Certainly you recognized her all right,” Mason said, “because you’ve known her for years. But you didn’t have your glasses on when you looked at these two pictures and you certainly testified that they were pictures of the same individual.

“Now, if the Court please, I wish to have the second picture marked for identification. That is a picture which I intend to connect up later on and I would like to have it marked for identification as defendant’s exhibit Number Two.”

“So ordered,” Judge Hobart said.

“I object to this type of cross-examination,” Hastings said. “This is the old razzle-dazzle for which counsel is noted. It’s a method of getting a witness mixed up.”

Mason smiled at the judge. “I’m not the one who asked him to leave his glasses down at the yacht club, Your Honour. The witness identified a picture which had been introduced in evidence by the People as that of Willmer Gilly, the person who was down at the yacht club on the night of the tenth with the defendant. I simply handed him two pictures and asked him if they were both pictures of the same person and he said they were.”

“The record speaks for itself,” Judge Hobart said. “The second picture may be marked for identification as defendant’s exhibit Number Two.”

“I can see all right without my glasses,” Kirby said. “I don’t wear them lots of times when I’m down there around the water, particularly at night.”

“I understand,” Mason said. “When the moisture gets on the lenses they’re something of a nuisance.”

“That’s right.”

“And since it was a foggy night on the night of the tenth you had the glasses off.”

“Well, it wasn’t real foggy the first part of the night but it was moist and damp, and then of course when the fog came in it wouldn’t have made any difference if you’d had a pair of binoculars on. You couldn’t see anything. That is, at any distance.”

“Thank you,” Mason said. “I have no further questions.”

Hastings hesitated for a long moment, then said, “No redirect.”

“Call your next witness,” Judge Hobard instructed.

“I’ll call Sheriff Jewett, the sheriff of Orange County, to the stand,” Hastings said.

Sheriff Jewett testified to having received a report from his deputy that a yacht was aground at the upper end of the bay, that a body was in it, that he went to the scene, arriving there about four o’clock in the afternoon. That he boarded the yacht, found the body, that a Coast Guard boat was standing by, that they took the yacht in tow and towed it to the Blue Sky Yacht Club where it was moored so that the boat could be searched for fingerprints and clues. That photographs were taken, that the body of Willmer Gilly was lying on its stomach facing the after portion of the boat, that the body was in the main navigating cabin, that there was a bullet hole in the heart. That he had subsequently supervised the removal of the body to the county morgue, that there an autopsy surgeon had recovered a bullet from the body, that the sheriff had taken charge of that bullet which he identified and which was introduced in evidence.

“You identified the body?” Hastings asked.

“Yes, sir. The body was that of Willmer Gilly.”

“Did you find where the decedent had been living prior to his death.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where was it?”

“It was in the Ajax-Delsey Apartments. That is called an apartment house, actually it is more of a rooming house with limited cooking facilities in most of the rooms.”

“Did you visit the decedent’s room or apartment in that house?”

“I did.”

“What did you find?”

“I found an iron bedstead with a rather thin, lumpy mattress, four army blankets, two pillows, two straightback chairs, one overstuffed chair, a toilet, a sink, a small shower, a few dishes, a two-burner electric plate.”

“Were there sheets on the bed?”

“There were no sheets.”

“A case on the pillow?”

“No pillowcase. A turkish towel had been placed over the pillow and it was quite soiled.”

“Was there a clothes closet?”

“No, sir. There was a small alcove across which a three foot length of pipe had been stretched and half a dozen wire coat hangers had been placed on that pipe. Three of the coat hangers had clothes on them, some slacks, a pair of overalls and a sports coat.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes, sir. In a hamper I found a skin-diving outfit complete with tanks. Acting on information contained in a label on the suit and the tanks, I found that the outfit had been rented from the Valley View Skin-Diving Outfitters. Rent had been paid for a week.”

“What else did you find?”

“I found a somewhat rickety kitchen table on which was a bottle of catsup, a plate, which had contained canned beans, a knife, fork and spoon and a coffee cup. There was a small electric ice box in which there was a quart carton of milk half full, a can of pork and beans about half empty, about half of a quarter pound of butter and about half a pound of raw hamburger.

“Above this ice box was a small cupboard which contained two cans of pork and beans, one can of chili con carne, a small bottle of Tabasco sauce, a pound container of sugar about half empty, two water tumblers, two coffee cups and saucers, four plates, two tin pie plates, a cream pitcher with a broken handle.