Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Reluctant Model

“Yes, sir.”

“The pattern is quite uniform. It follows a general pattern?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And once it has developed it does not change unless the body is moved?”

“That is right.”

“So that an autopsy expert could only tell very, very generally what time death occurred from post-mortem lividity?”

“I would say so, yes.”

“And rigor mortis is also such a variable that you can only tell very generally when death took place?”

“Yes.”

“Now in regard to body temperature, Doctor, what can you say about that?”

“Well, the body loses temperature at a uniform rate.”

“Depending, however, on the temperature of the room?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The temperature of the body at the time of death?”

“We always assume a normal temperature at the time of death in case of this sort.”

“But you don’t know that it exists? That’s only an assumption?”

“Well, yes.”

“And the rate of loss of temperature depends on the clothing?”

“Yes, to a very large extent.”

“You didn’t know the temperature of the room in which the body remained until removed by the police?”

“It was seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit.”

“You went to the room?”

“Yes,”

“And did what?”

“I used the newest method of ascertaining the time of death by the Lushbaugh method. By using this method incorporating an electrical direct reading thermometer with a thermistor in a plasticized probe, I was able to determine the precise rate at which body temperature was decreasing.

“This method enables one to ascertain the time of death to within thirty to forty minutes.

“I used this so-called ‘death thermometer’ method in this case. The result agreed with all the other physical evidence I was able to evaluate and pinpointed the time of death.”

“You fix the earliest time of death as seven-forty?”

“Using this method, yes.”

“And the latest time as eight-twenty?”

“Yes.”

“Could death have occurred at seven-thirty-nine?”

“That’s quibbling.”

“It could have been seven-thirty-nine?”

“Perhaps.”

“It could have been seven-thirty-eight?”

“Well, I’ll put it this way, Mr. Mason. I fixed those time limits as the extreme limits under this test. The probable time of death was midway in that period, again under this test. ”

“That’s all,” Mason said.

“Call Matilda Pender,” Dexter said.

Matilda Pender, a rather attractive woman in her early thirties, was sworn, testified that she was a ticket seller at the bus depot, that she had seen Maxine Lindsay on the night of the thirteenth, that she had noticed her particularly because the girl seemed distraught and excited.

“During what time intervals did you observe her?” Dexter asked.

“Approximately between eight o’clock and eight-twenty.”

“What was she doing?”

“Standing by a telephone booth.”

“Now, did you see her before that?”

“No, sir.”

“Cross-examine,” Dexter said.

“She could have been there prior to eight o’clock without your seeing her?” Mason asked.

“I noticed her because she was nervous.”

“Exactly,” Mason said. “If she hadn’t been nervous you wouldn’t have noticed her. In other words, there was nothing other than nervousness to differentiate her from the hundreds of other persons who pass through that bus depot in the course of a day.”

“Well, I noticed her because she was nervous.”

“I am asking you,” Mason said, “if that was the reason you noticed her.”

“I have told you. Yes.”

“And if she hadn’t been nervous, you wouldn’t have noticed her.”

“No.”

“Then if she had been there prior to eight o’clock but hadn’t been nervous, you wouldn’t have noticed her.”

“I suppose not, no.”

“She could have been there from six o’clock and if she hadn’t been nervous you wouldn’t have noticed her.”

“If she’d been there that long I would have noticed her.”

“From six to eight-twenty?”

“Yes.”

“Even as it was, and she was nervous, you didn’t notice her immediately, did you?”

“I suppose not.”

“So you now feel she must have been there some time before you noticed her even with all the nervousness that you have testified to.”

“I don’t think she could have been there very long before eight o’clock.”

“But she must have been there before eight o’clock,” Mason said, “because when you saw her, you saw her at the phone booth and she was nervous. You didn’t see her when she entered.”

“No.”

“Then she had entered before you saw her?”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t know how long before?”

“No.”

“Then if something happened to make her nervous at eight o’clock, that would account for your noticing her.”

“I noticed her because she hung around the telephone booth and acted in a nervous manner.”

“Exactly,” Mason said. “So what you are actually testifying to is that at eight o’clock this woman became sufficiently nervous for you to notice her.”

“Yes.”

“Now, that nervousness, of course, could have been due to some telephone call that she put through, some information she received on the telephone?”

“It could have been due to anything. I’m not trying to state what caused the woman to be nervous, but only that she was nervous.”

“And because of that nervousness you noticed her?”

“Yes.”

“That’s all,” Mason said.

“Call Alexander Redfield,” Dexter said.

Mason said, “I will stipulate as to Mr. Redfield that he has all of the qualifications of an expert in the field of ballistics and firearms identification, subject to my right to cross-examine. I am only making this stipulation to save time on the direct examination. I reserve the right to cross-examine as to his qualifications if I so desire.”

“Very well. We will accept that stipulation.”

Dexter turned to the witness. “Mr. Redfield, did you receive three bullets from Dr. Phillip C. Foley?”

“I did.”

“And did you place those bullets where you could be certain they were not contaminated in any way?”

“I did.”

“And later on, did you compare them with a weapon for the purpose of seeing whether they had been fired from that weapon?”

“I did.”

“Can you tell us something generally about firearms identification and bullet matching?”

“Each barrel has its own peculiarities,” Redfield said. “There are, of course, class characteristics, such as the number of lands, the pitch, the direction of the pitch, the rotation, the width and spacing. Those are what we call class characteristics. For instance, the Colt Firearms Company manufactures barrels having certain distinctive class characteristics. The Smith and Wesson barrels have entirely different class characteristics.

“In addition to these class characteristics there are also what we refer to as individual characteristics. Those individual characteristics are the result of those minute imperfections in a barrel which cause striations on a bullet which is fired through that barrel.

“Given a gun and a fatal bullet which is not too badly disfigured by impact, we are nearly always able to fire a test bullet through the gun and match it with the fatal bullet so that we can tell positively whether the fatal bullet was fired from the gun in question.”

“And you tested these bullets, which were given you, with a firearm?”

“Yes, sir, with a Hi-Standard nine-shot twenty-two revolver of the brand known as Sentinel. That is a particular brand made by the High Standard Manufacturing Corporation. The number of this particular gun was one, one, one, one, eight, eight, four. It had a nine-shot cylinder, a two and three-eighths inch barrel.”