Эрл Гарднер: The Case of the Dubious Bridegroom

“And,” Virginia went on, “that was all I did know. I just jumped in the car and did exactly as he told me.”

Mason looked at Della Street. “Got it all down, Della?”

Della looked up from her shorthand notebook.

“I guess that does it,” Mason said, grinning at Paul Drake. “You can see what happened, Paul. Because Garvin told his wife to meet him there at the site of the property they had once owned, Denby knew right where to go. He knew where that property was located. He drove my car down there and parked it by the side of the road. He then probably walked back forty or fifty yards and waited. When Ethel saw a car parked there she naturally supposed it was her husband’s car. She slowed down. Denby stepped out of the shadows. He had Virginia Bynum’s revolver in his hand. He killed Ethel, pushed her body over to the right-hand side of the car, drove her car up alongside of my car, stepped out into my car, pulled Ethel’s body over behind the steering wheel, dropped the gun on the ground, got in my car, drove back to Oceanside, changed cars with Virginia and beat it back to Los Angeles.

“He’d been arranging an alibi for a long time. There’s nothing about a dictated Dictaphone record that shows when it was dictated. He’d been carefully saving up a supply of dictated cylinders dealing with a lot of technical phases of the corporation’s business which would sound as though they’d been dictated the night before the stockholders’ meeting. All he had to do was to get back to the office long enough to pick up those records and put them on the desk of his transcribing secretary. Of course, she would be firmly convinced he’d been working all night.”

Mason turned to Della Street, “Della, call the secretary of the Bar Association. Get him on the line for me.”

When Della Street had the call through, Mason, grinning, said, “This is Perry Mason talking. Your grievance committee wants to have me appear tonight to explain how it happened that I tricked Mortimer C. Irving into identifying my car as the car he saw parked on the road by Oceanside when the murder was committed. You are kindly advised that it was my car Irving saw parked there. Now, if you can tell me any rule which makes it unethical or illegal for me to persuade a witness to tell the truth you’re welcome to disbar me.”

And Perry Mason, winking at his attractive secretary, hung up the telephone.