Erle Gardner: The Case of the Drowning Duck

“Who?” Copeland asked.

“Mrs. Burr.”

Judge Meehan’s chair squeaked just a little. “You mean she murdered her husband?”

Mason said, “She found out about the old case and about what we were investigating. She’d put two and two together. It tied in with her husband’s financial worries and the fact that Mrs. Dangerfield had arrived in El Templo. She ran into Mrs. Dangerfield on the street. Mrs. Burr put two and two together, and she knew. What’s more, Burr knew that she knew.

“Mrs. Burr is highly emotional. She doesn’t like to stay put. Her record shows that after she’s been married just so long, she gets restless. Witherspoon may have thought those embraces were fatherly or platonic, but Mrs. Burr didn’t. Mrs. Burr was looking around at the Witherspoon ranch and the Witherspoon bank account. And she’d found out her husband was guilty of murder.”

“How did she find it out? Where was her proof?” Judge Meehan asked.

Mason said, “Look at the evidence. The nurse was fired when she tried to unpack the bag which Burr kept by his bed. What was in that bag? Books, flies, fishing tackle — and what else?”

“Nothing else,” Copeland said. “I was personally present and searched the bag.”

Mason smiled, “After Burr’s death.”

“Naturally.”

“Wait a minute,” Judge Meehan said to Mason. “That room was full of deadly gas fumes. Until the windows had been smashed open, no one could have got in there to have taken anything out of the bag, so you’ve got to admit that the things that were in the bag when Ben Copeland searched it were the things that were in the bag when Burr was murdered, unless the murderer took something out.”

Mason said, “Well, let’s look at it this way. Burr got the acid in the cyanide for Mrs. Dangerfield to use. He got plenty while he was getting it, and he had both acid and cyanide left in his bag. He may have intended to double-cross Mrs. Dangerfield — or perhaps his wife, who was getting altogether too suspicious. Everything was sitting pretty as far as he was concerned, and then he got laid up with a broken leg. As soon as he became conscious and rational, he asked his wife to bring that bag and put it right by the side of his bed. He didn’t want anyone else touching it. You can imagine how he felt when the nurse announced she was going to unpack it. Someone who wasn’t a trained nurse might fail to appreciate the importance of the acid in the bag with the cyanide. But with a nurse — well, you can see what would have happened.”

“Now, wait a minute, Mason,” Judge Meehan said. “Your reasoning breaks down there. Mrs. Burr wouldn’t have killed her husband. She didn’t have to kill him. All she had to do was to go to the sheriff.”

“Exactly.” Mason said, “and that’s what she was intending to do. Put yourself in Burr’s position. There he was in bed, trapped. He couldn’t move. His wife not only knew he was guilty of murder, but had the proof. She was going to the sheriff. The nurse all but made the discovery of Burr’s secret. His wife already knew it. Burr fired the nurse. He was hoping that some opportunity would present itself to kill his wife before she went to the sheriff, but he was laid up in bed. He realized he was trapped. There was only one way out for Roland Burr.”

“What?” Judge Meehan asked, so interested that his jaws had quit moving.

Mason said, “The nurse knew all about acids and cyanides, but she didn’t know anything about fishing. Burr got her to hand him an aluminum case, saying that it held some blueprints. He slipped it under the bed covers. That was his fishing rod. He was naturally very bitter about Witherspoon. He knew that his wife intended to get rid of him, and then marry Witherspoon. So Burr decided he would spike that little scheme right at the start. He had only one way out, but in taking it, he intended to have a sardonic revenge on the man whom his wife had selected as the next in line for matrimonial honors.

“He made it a point to ask Witherspoon to get the fishing rod for him in the presence of witnesses. It was a fishing rod he already had concealed under the covers in the aluminum case. As soon as he was left alone, he took out the fishing rod, put two joints together, placed the third joint on the bed within easy reach, screwed the cover back on the aluminum case, dropped it down to the floor, and gave it a good shove. It rolled clear across the room. Then Burr opened the bag. He took out the things he was afraid the nurse would find, the bottle of acid and the cyanide. He put them on a moveable table on wheels which had been placed by the side of his bed. He dumped the acid into a vase that was on the table, dropped the cyanide into it, took the butt of the fishing pole, and pushed the table just as far as he could push it. Then he picked up the tip of the rod with his left hand and held it as though he had been inserting it in the ferrule.”

Judge Meehan was too interested to take time out to expectorate. He held his lips tightly together, his eyes on Mason.

“And then?” District Attorney Copeland asked.

“Then,” Mason said, very simply, “he took a deep breath.”

Della Street said reproachfully to Perry Mason, “You certainly do give a person plenty of scares, don’t you?”

“Do I?”

“You know darn well you do. When it came two o’clock and the judge didn’t come out to go on with the case, and then the deputy sheriffs began to go around picking up people here and there, I decided they’d nailed you on the charge of tampering with evidence or being an accessory or something.”

Mason grinned. “The district attorney was a hard man to sell, but once he got the idea, he really went into action. Let’s go pack and get out of here.”

“What about Witherspoon?” she asked.

Mason said, “I think I’ve had about all of Witherspoon I want for a while. We’ll send him a bill on the first of the month, and that will wind up our acquaintance with Mr. John L. Witherspoon.”

“Has Mrs. Dangerfield confessed?”

“Not yet. But they’ve got enough evidence on her now to really build up a case. They found the box which was checked at the Pacific Greyhound station, the bottle of detergent and, best of all, where she’d burned a letter of instructions from Burr. The ashes still held enough writing so they can prove the conspiracy. Also they got a few fingerprints from Milter’s apartment.”

“You’d have thought she’d have worn gloves up there,” Della Street said.

Mason laughed. “You forget that she’d put on a striptease act to scare away visitors. A woman doesn’t appear at the head of the stairs wearing next to nothing, and with gloves on her hands.”

“No. That’s right,” Della Street admitted. “How about Lois and Marvin?”

“Off on a honeymoon. Did you bring along the papers in that will-contest case, Della?”

“They’re in my brief case, yes. I thought you might find time to work on them.”

Mason looked at his watch. “I know a desert inn,” he said, “run by a quaint old man, and a woman who makes the most marvelous apple pies. It’s up at an elevation of about three thousand feet where there’s a lot of granite-rock dikes to be explored, interesting groups of cacti — where we’d be completely undisturbed, and could check over the papers in that whole tile, dictate a plan of strategy and a preliminary brief...”

“What causes all the hesitation?” Della Street interrupted.

Mason grinned. “I just hate to get so far away from an interesting murder case.”

Della grabbed his hand, said, “Come on, don’t let that hold you back. You don’t have to worry about finding cases any more. They hunt you out. My Lord, how frightened I was when Lois Witherspoon got up and started to tell what she knew, and I realized you were just sparring for time!”