Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Reluctant Model

“Just a minute,” Dexter interrupted. “It may be better if we cover this by question and answer, Mrs. Newton. Now, can you give us the time that you saw the defendant?”

“Yes, sir, I can, exactly.”

“When was it?”

“Two minutes before eight o’clock in the evening.”

“And what was she doing when you saw her?”

“She was leaving her apartment. She walked rapidly from the apartment to the stair door.”

“Did she have anything in her hand?”

“She was carrying her canary.”

“You may cross-examine,” Dexter said.

Mason started his cross-examination with the caution that a veteran lawyer uses when it becomes apparent the prosecution has dumped a witness in his lap knowing the defense attorney will have to cross-examine and that every answer the witness makes to questions on cross-examination is going to damn the defendant still more.

Mason said, “How long have you lived in this apartment house, Mrs. Newton?”

“Four years.”

“Do you know how long the defendant has lived there?”

“About eighteen months.”

“Are you inclined to be neighborly?” Mason asked smiling.

“Well, I mind my own business but I’m friendly, yes.”

“Now, do you work?” Mason asked. “Are you home all the time?”

“I don’t work, and I’m not home all the time,” she said. “I come and I go as I please. I have an income and I don’t have to work.”

“That’s very fortunate,” Mason said. “When did you first get acquainted with the defendant?”

“I saw her very shortly after she moved into the apartment.”

“That wasn’t my question,” Mason said. “I wanted to know when you first got acquainted with the defendant. When did you first talk with her?”

“Well, I don’t know. I’ve said good morning and things like that. I guess I did that very shortly after she moved into the apartment.”

“I understand. But let me put it this way. When did you first start visiting with the defendant, talking with her?”

“Well, I don’t know as I ever did talk with her much. She was a body who always kept pretty much to herself, and from what I’d heard around the apartment house—”

“Now, never mind what you’ve heard,” Mason said, “and please try not to volunteer information, Mrs. Newton. This hearing is being conducted according to strict rules of law and I want to ask you questions and have you answer just those questions and not volunteer any other information. Otherwise it might be necessary for me to ask the Court to strike out the parts of your answer that are not responsive.”

“Just don’t volunteer any information,” Judge Madison said. “Just listen to the question, then answer it. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

Mason said, “May I have the indulgence of the Court for just a moment, please?”

Mason turned to Maxine. “What about her?” he whispered. “Do you know her?”

“She’s a gabby busybody,” Maxine said. “She likes to visit with everybody in the apartment house and find out all about their affairs and then go blabber-mouth everything she finds out. She’s lying. She lives on my floor, but I didn’t go out at eight o’clock, and I didn’t have any canary with me. I don’t know what happened to my canary. I—”

“Never mind the details,” Mason said. “I just wanted to get the picture. There’s something funny here. Either the prosecutor wants me to lead with my chin and ask some question that will enable her to give a devastating answer, or there’s a weak point in her testimony and he was trying to cover it up with a very terse direct examination.”

Dexter tilted back in his swivel chair at the counsel table, smiling across at Mason, knowing from long experience the predicament in which the lawyer found himself.

“That witness,” Mason said, “is booby-trapped. I hardly dare open up any new gambit, and yet I have to cross-examine her.”

The lawyer looked up to see Judge Madison regarding him with a somewhat quizzical smile.

Mason returned to questioning the witness.

“Your apartment is on the same floor as that on which the defendant’s apartment is located, Mrs. Newton?”

“That’s right.”

“And you were in your apartment at the time you saw the defendant?”

“I was not.”

“You were then perhaps walking down the corridor toward the elevator?”

“I was not.”

Mason hesitated a moment wondering whether he dared to quit or would have to go on and, catching a glimpse of Dexter’s countenance, knew that he was walking into a trap.

“Were you,” Mason asked, “standing still in the corridor, Mrs. Newton?”

“I was standing still in the corridor,” she said. “A friend of mine was coming up in the elevator and I was standing just outside the doorway of my apartment.”

“So your friend could find the apartment without difficulty?” Mason asked.

“Yes!”

“Was this friend a man or a woman?”

“Objected to as not proper cross-examination, incompetent, irrelevant, immaterial,” Dexter said.

“The objection is overruled,” Judge Madison said. “The Court wasn’t born yesterday, Mr. Dexter, and the Court recognizes the technique you have used with your direct examination on this witness. I’ll state one thing: The defense is going to have every latitude in the way of cross-examination. Proceed, Mr. Mason, and the witness will answer the question.”

“It was a man,” Mrs. Newton snapped.

“And this man had phoned that he was coming up in the elevator?”

“Yes.”

“And just how do you fix the time as being exactly two minutes of eight?” Mason asked.

Dexter’s smile broadened into a grin.

“Because he was going to watch a certain television program with me. He was late and I was afraid that the television program would start before he arrived. So when he telephoned I looked at the clock and it was just a few minutes before eight o’clock, so I went to the apartment door and held it open for him.”

“Now let’s get the location of your apartment,” Mason said. “You’re on the same floor as the apartment occupied by the defendant?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you say that when the defendant left her apartment she went to the stairs instead of the elevator?”

“That’s right.”

“And the stairs are located near the elevator?”

“They are not! They are located at the opposite end of the corridor.”

“And the defendant’s apartment is between you and the elevator?”

“Between my apartment and the stairs,” she said.

“Oh, I see,” Mason said. “Then you were standing in the corridor by the door of your apartment eagerly awaiting the visit of your boy friend.”

“I didn’t say he was my boy friend, and I didn’t have to be eager about it!” the witness snapped.

“Let me put it this way,” Mason said. “You were anticipating the visit of a man who was coming to call on you; you were alone in your apartment at the time?”

“Yes.”

“He was going to watch a television program with you?”

“Yes — among other things.”

“I see,” Mason repeated, with a slightly mocking smile, “among other things, I believe you said?”

“That’s what I said! ”

“And you were waiting by the door of your apartment so that this friend of yours, this masculine friend, if you object to the term ‘boy friend,’ Mrs. Newton, wouldn’t miss the apartment?”

“Well, I was showing him the apartment.”

“Then this was the first time he had been up there?” Mason said.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Well, I’m asking you that. Was it the first time he had been up there?”