Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Stepdaughter’s Secret

“What about the half that you’d held out on him?” Mason asked.

“The way I was playing it, that was a separate deal with Eve Amory. That was none of his business.”

“And how did you intend to make him give you the half of the three thousand dollars he’d collected from the defendant?”

“Well,” Kelsey said slowly, “there are ways and ways. Take my line of business, you have ways of insuring that people who give you a double-cross pay up afterwards.”

“What is your line of business?” Mason asked.

Kelsey grinned and said, “Now we’re getting back to where we started. I told you I’m not going to talk about my line of business. Nobody’s giving any immunity for anything except this one blackmail deal.”

“And you get immunity for that.”

“That’s right.”

“Provided your story stands up,” Mason said.

Kelsey said, “You just try to punch a hole in it, Mister. I’m telling you the truth and you just try to find a loose joint in what I have told you. I’m not foolish enough to make a deal with the DA and then try to hold out anything and get my neck in a noose. If my story stands up, I get immunity. If it doesn’t stand up, I don’t. They can say lots of things about Kelsey but they can’t say he’s too dumb to know which side of the bread has the butter.”

“So you have quite an interest in bringing about the conviction of the defendant in this case,” Mason said.

“I have quite an interest in being sure I tell the truth,” Kelsey said. “I don’t care what effect it has. If it ties Mrs Bancroft up with murder, that’s her hard luck. But on the kind of a deal I have, I’m telling the truth and I don’t care who gets hurt.”

“You know Gilly was going down to the yacht club to meet Mrs Bancroft?”

“I knew what he told me, yes.”

“And when he didn’t show up you didn’t make any attempt to go down there to the yacht club?”

“I did not. I stayed right in that house and waited for him to come back. I figured I’d give him that much of a chance to shoot square.”

“And if he had given you half of the three thousand, would you have given him half of the three thousand you were going to get from Eve Amory?” Mason asked.

“Oh, Your Honour,” the district attorney said, “I think this question is argumentative and is entirely outside the field of legitimate cross-examination. I’ve given the defendant every latitude with this witness because I realize the man is one whose background makes his story open to question.

“If there’s any loophole in his story I’m just as anxious to find it out as defence counsel. But certainly, asking him about what he intended to do in the event he’d been successful in blackmailing Miss Amory into giving him a document on which he could subsequently collect the three thousand dollars that was in the hands of the authorities, is hardly within the issues in the present case.”

“I think it’s argumentative,” Judge Hobart ruled. “However, I felt that in a matter of this sort, and dealing with a man of this sort, defence counsel should have every latitude. I think I’ll overrule the objection. Answer the question.”

“Well,” Kelsey said, “I’ll put it this way. If Gilly had played square with me, I think I’d have cut him in on that other three grand. Yes, I think I would have. I’ve got a reputation to sustain — but I was pretty suspicious of Gilly after he’d tried to double-cross me by boosting the ante from fifteen hundred to three thousand and figuring that he’d get the first crack at that coffee can, dip out the extra fifteen hundred and destroy the note... Well, I didn’t feel too friendly toward the boy. I just made up my mind he was a chiseler and I’d even up with him on this deal and then I didn’t want any more to do with him.

“We have a code of ethics in my business, the same as any other, and the people I’m doing business with are entitled to rely on my reputation — only, I’m not going into my business, Mr Mason. I’m just talking about this one deal and that’s all.”

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

District Attorney Hastings said, “I will call as my next witness Dr Morley Badger, the coroner’s physician and autopsy surgeon.”

Dr Badger took the stand.

Mason said, “We will stipulate Dr Badger’s professional qualifications subject to the right of cross-examination.”

“Very well. Thank you,” the district attorney said.

He turned to the witness. “Dr Badger, you were called on the eleventh of this month to perform an autopsy?”

“I was.”

“On whom did you perform the autopsy?”

“Willmer Gilly; at least, it was a cadaver whose fingerprints have been introduced in evidence as being those of Willmer Gilly.”

“What did you find as to the cause of death?”

“A .38 calibre bullet had penetrated the man’s heart. It had entered the chest, penetrated the heart, and lodged against the spine.”

“What can you say in regard to death?”

“It was instantaneous, as nearly as one can measure those things.”

“What about motion after the shot?”

“There would have been no motion after the shot. The bullet not only went through the heart but lodged in the spinal column. The only motion would have been a falling motion due to gravitation. The man fell where he was struck and died where he fell.”

“What time did you perform your autopsy?”

“About nine-thirty on the evening of the eleventh.”

“How long had the man been dead?”

“Approximately twenty-four hours.”

“Can you fix it any closer than that?”

“Medically, I would say the man had died between eight and eleven p.m. of the preceding day; judging from extraneous evidence, I can pinpoint the time of death a little more accurately.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“The man had died within approximately an hour and a half to two hours after ingesting a meal of canned pork and beans.”

“You may inquire,” the district attorney said.

“No questions,” Mason said.

“What!” District Attorney Hastings exclaimed in surprise. “No cross-examination?”

“No cross-examination,” Mason said.

“If the Court please,” Hastings said, “I see it is approaching the hour of the noon adjournment and that is our case. We only need to show in a preliminary hearing of this kind that a crime has been committed and that there is reasonable cause to connect the defendant with the crime. I think we have abundantly established our case.”

“It would seem so,” Judge Hobart said, “unless, of course, the defendant wishes to put on a defence.”

“The defendant would like to have an adjournment,” Mason said, “until tomorrow morning.”

“Do you intend to put on any defence?” Judge Hobart asked. “It is, of course, unusual in preliminary examinations of this sort and I warn counsel that once a prima-facie case has been established, mere conflict of evidence would have virtually no effect on the ruling of the Court. It is this Court’s duty to bind a defendant over when there is reasonable cause to believe the defendant has perpetrated a crime. The question of credibility of witnesses in the event of a conflict in the testimony is exclusively within the province of the trial jury.”

“I understand, Your Honour,” Mason said. “However, the defence is entitled to a reasonable continuance and I would like to have a continuance until tomorrow morning in order to ascertain whether we wish to put on testimony.

“I would also like to make a public statement in court at this time. Inasmuch as the defendant has sustained some damage in the press because of her refusal to make any statement whatever to the investigating officers, and inasmuch as I have been largely responsible for that attitude on the part of the defendant, I would like to announce that immediately following the adjournment of this case there will be a press conference at which the defendant will tell a full and complete story to the newspaper reporters as to exactly what happened on the night of the murder.”