Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Crooked Candle

“It was an hour or so. I was at a cocktail party.”

“Where was your father?”

“He stayed at the office.”

“What time was it when you got to the yacht club?”

“I don’t know. It was still daylight, I remember that.”

“You jumped in the dinghy and started the outboard motor and went out to the yacht?”

“Yes.”

“And found Milfield’s body?”

“Yes.”

“Where was it lying?”

“Stretched out on the floor. The head was within just an inch or two of that brass-covered threshold.”

“The body wasn’t there when the police found it.”

“I know, the boat tilted when the tide went out and the body rolled over to the starboard side of the cabin.”

“How about that bloody footprint?”

“I didn’t know I’d stepped in the blood until I’d started up the stairs. Then the minute I put my right foot on the tread I felt that peculiar sticky feeling and looked down and saw what had happened.”

“What did you do?”

“I took my shoe off — both shoes, climbed up the companionway in my stocking feet.”

“Then what?”

“After I got in the dinghy I washed my shoes off. I thought I’d got rid of all the blood. It wasn’t until afterwards that I realized that I hadn’t. Some of it had dried between the upper part and the sole. I didn’t know how to get rid of them. So I simply decided to wrap them in a parcel, take them down to the parcel checking counter at the Union Terminal and leave them.”

“And the boat was on an even keel and the body of Fred Milfield hadn’t been moved when you got aboard?”

“That’s right. It was lying right there, the head almost touching the threshold.”

Mason said, “There has to be a way out of this mess. Not on your account. Not on your father’s account, but on Della’s account.”

He continued pacing the floor. Carol watched him silently.

Abruptly Mason whirled, picked up the phone. “They weren’t following Della Street,” he said. “That means they were following you. They’d followed every move you made. There must have been more than one detective. This claim check fell out of your purse. Someone picked it up and handed it to Della. Did you see him do it?”

“I remember seeing a man hand her something.”

“What did he look like?”

“He was around fifty and wore a gray suit. He had a very agreeable smile and...”

“Forget that agreeable smile. That was come-on. What color were his eyes, what color was his hair?”

Carol shook her head dubiously and said, “There was something funny about his nose. It seemed — it seemed rather broad.”

“Broken?”

“It could have been. Yes, that could have been it.”

“How tall?”

“Medium height.”

“Heavy?”

“Well, broad-shouldered.”

Mason dialed Paul Drake’s number on the telephone. “Paul,” he said, “I want all the dope on any police detectives who might be connected with homicide. I want to find out something about a man who may have been a prize fighter in his earlier days, about fifty, broken nose, broad-shouldered, medium height, light complexion, gray suit. Drop everything else and get the dope on him.”

“What’s so important about him?” Drake asked.

“He’s the one who handed Della Street the claim check after Carol dropped it. I’ve got to try to show that he was a police detective and that the police themselves pushed this claim check into Della’s hand. Make a police frame-up out of it. Get me?”

“I get you,” Drake said dubiously, “but that isn’t going to be easy. If you...”

Peremptory knuckles banged on the door of Mason’s private office.

Mason quietly dropped the receiver back into place, walked across the office and pulled the door open.

Lieutenant Tragg and two uniformed officers were standing in the hallway. Tragg’s smile was quietly confident.

“I told you I’d be back for her. Mason,” he said. “And this time it won’t do you any good to have a magistrate waiting. We’re ready to make a charge now.”

Mason turned to Carol Burbank. “Okay, sister,” he said grimly, “this is it.”

She said to Mason, “Please find Father and...”

“Don’t be silly,” Mason said. “The reason Tragg is ready to put a charge against you now is that he’s...”

“Got your father,” Tragg interrupted to finish.

“Exactly,” Mason said.

Judge Newark presided at the preliminary hearing of Roger Burbank and Carol Burbank, and the crowded courtroom gave evidence that the public realized only too well the underlying significance and far reaching importance of this hearing.

Giving some indication of the importance which the district attorney’s office attached to the case, was the fact that Hamilton Burger, the district attorney, was present in person, assisted by Maurice Linton, one of the most able of the younger trial deputies.

Maurice Linton, a slim, fiery man with quick, nervous gestures and a gift for oratory, arose to make a brief opening statement.

“Your Honor,” he said, “while I realize that it is somewhat unusual to make an opening statement in a preliminary hearing of this nature, yet, inasmuch as much of our evidence will be circumstantial, and as it seems quite evident from the number of witnesses subpoenaed and the preparations made by the defense that an attempt will be made to throw this case out of court at the end of this hearing, I want the court to understand what we are trying to prove.

“We intend to prove that Roger Burbank had a violent altercation with the deceased on the night of the murder; that thereafter, the defendant, Carol Burbank, endeavored to give her father a false alibi by suborning perjury. We intend to show that at an auto court where a political meeting was claimed to have been held, a collection of empty bottles holds the fingerprints of Carol Burbank, of Judson Beltin, and of no one else. We will also prove that the defendant, Roger Burbank, a strong, powerful man, a trained boxer in his youth, inveigled the decedent to his yacht and there murdered him.”

The judge looked to Perry Mason, “Do you desire to make any statement, Mr. Mason?”

Jackson, seated at Mason’s left, leaned forward and whispered, “I think he’s impressed by that statement. You’d better say something.”

Mason merely shook his head. “We’ll wait until we see how the case develops, Your Honor.”

“Very well. The prosecution will call its first witness.”

The prosecution called Lieutenant Tragg, introduced evidence of the finding of the body of Fred Milfield, the identification of the body, the position in which the body was found, the place where the yacht was moored, virtually all of the elements necessary to establish a corpus delicti.

“You may cross-examine,” Linton announced.

Mason seemed elaborately casual in his cross-examination. “The murder was committed aboard a yacht?”

“Yes.”

“And where was the yacht anchored?”

“I think if counsel will wait a little while,” Burger said, “that question will be satisfactorily answered. We have some witnesses who will produce charts, photographs and maps.”

“Then,” Mason said, “I feel that I should be entitled to postpone my cross-examination of this witness until after those are introduced.”

“No objection,” Burger said.

Mason announced with a smile, “That’s all, Lieutenant.”

Burger next called a surveyor, introduced a chart of the estuary, showing the place where the yacht was anchored, showing diagrams of the ulterior of the yacht, a diagram of the deck, of the cabin, then announced triumphantly, “You may cross-examine.”