Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Reluctant Model

“Very well, that’s your privilege,” Judge Madison said. “I may point out that it is very seldom, if ever, done in a preliminary hearing in a murder case.”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

Judge Madison said, “I suppose you know what you’re doing... Very well. Court will take a recess until three thirty... I would like to see counsel for the defendant in chambers, please.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Mason said.

Judge Madison left the bench and went into his chambers. Dexter said to Mason, “What kind of a stunt are you trying to pull now?”

“No stunt at all,” Mason said. “The defendant certainly has a right to let the Court know her story.”

“You mean to let the newspapers know it.”

“Any way you want it,” Mason said.

“It’s your party,” Dexter said, “and it’s your funeral.” He picked up his brief case and walked out.

Mason went into chambers, and Judge Madison, hanging up his robe in the closet, turned to the lawyer and said, “Now, look here, Mason. I’ve known you for a long time. You’re a shrewd, clever lawyer. You have a good-looking client who is very probably going to appeal to the sympathies of a jury, but you know this Court well enough to know that tears and nylon are not going to have any effect on my judgment.”

“Yes, Judge,” Mason said.

“All right. Don’t do it.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t put your defendant on the stand. You know better than that. You get her on the witness stand and there’ll be a record made of her testimony, they’ll try to tear her to pieces with cross-examination, and then when she gets in the Superior Court she has two strikes against her. Everything she says, every answer she gives, has got to be exactly like the story she told at the preliminary hearing. Now, I’d feel different about it if it could do any good, but I just want to tell you off the record what I told you on the record in court. I’m going to bind this defendant over for trial and no amount of explaining or denial on her part is going to stop me.

“It was her gun that killed Durant. He was killed in her apartment. She resorted to flight immediately after the murder. She left the apartment without even pausing long enough to pack up her things. All she took with her was her canary. She lied to the officers about the time she left the apartment and she went down to the bus station and stayed down there until she could get you on the phone. She concealed the gun in one of the lockers there and left it. Then she gave your secretary the key to her apartment and skipped out.

“Now, you may be able to beat that case in front of a jury. You’re clever and you have a good-looking client. But you can’t figure out any possible combination of facts which would keep a committing magistrate from binding the defendant over under circumstances such as that, so why lead with your chin?”

Mason said, “I’m taking a calculated risk.”

Judge Madison said, “The minute I make an order binding that defendant over for trial, every lawyer in the country is going to be grinning and stopping his brother lawyers and saying ‘Did you hear about Perry Mason’s goof?’ ”

“I know it,” Mason said.

“Damn it!” Judge Madison expostulated. “I’m your friend. I’m trying to keep you from doing something you’ll regret.”

“I’m going to take a calculated risk,” Mason said.

“All right,” Madison said, “go ahead and take it. But just remember that tears and nylon mean nothing to me.”

“I’ll remember,” Mason said.

Mason, in the detention room off the courtroom, smiled reassuringly at Maxine Lindsay as a policewoman brought her in.

“Maxine,” Mason said, “I’m going to do something that is ordinarily considered a great mistake. I’m going to put you on the stand in a preliminary hearing and let you tell your story.”

“I want to tell it.”

“They’re going to cross-examine you. They’re going to rip you up the back and down the front.”

“I expect that.”

“They’re going to cast slurs and innuendoes and they’re going on a fishing expedition.”

“What do you mean by a fishing expedition?”

“They’ll ask you all sorts of questions, hoping that you’ll lie about something. They’ll ask you about your past, about—”

“You mean they’ll inquire into my—”

“They’ll be circumspect,” Mason interrupted, “but they’ll ask you how long you lived in a certain place, at what address you lived; they’ll ask you if you were going under your own name or another name. In other words, they’ll try to explore. If you were living with some man as his wife—”

“I wasn’t.”

“I’m just warning you,” Mason said. “Now, I’m going to try to short-cut their cross-examination. I’m going to put you on the stand, let you tell a part of your story, then ask to withdraw you temporarily. I don’t know whether I can get away with that or not.”

“But won’t that just be postponing things?”

“It will be postponing them,” Mason said, “but it just may postpone them long enough so we can mix up the whole case. The way things stand in this case at present, you don’t stand a ghost of a show. The judge is going to bind you over for trial. That means you’ll be held without bail on a charge of first-degree murder. I don’t want that to happen. You don’t want that to happen.”

“Well,” she said, “I could take a little of it but I... I certainly don’t want to get convicted by a jury — particularly for something I didn’t do.”

“I know,” Mason said, “and I’m taking chances. But it’s a gamble I think we should take. I’m putting it right up to you, Maxine, if you don’t want—”

“I want you to do what you think is best, Mr. Mason.”

“I want to put you on the stand,” Mason said, “just long enough to get that false Feteet introduced in evidence. I think I can do it if I have your testimony. Now remember, Maxine, you’re twenty-nine. You’re a mature woman. Under present conditions people hardly expect that you are— Well, if you have ever lived with anyone as his wife, go ahead and say so when they ask you if you’ve ever used any other names. You can call it a common-law marriage. Just don’t let them catch you in a lie. No matter what you do, tell the truth, because they’ll have weeks to investigate every statement you make and if they can get you up in front of a jury and make you admit that you lied under oath, your chances of escaping conviction are very slim indeed.”

“I understand,” she said.

“All right,” Mason told her. “Here we go — and if you’ve been lying to me, heaven help you.”

Mason returned to rejoin Della Street.

Della Street, looking at shorthand notes, said, “Chief, did you get the significance of Gilbert’s answer to the question about the painting? I gathered from what he said that this was not one of the paintings that Durant had had him do.”

“I got it,” Mason said, “and I don’t know what it means. I’ve gone so far now that I can’t back up. I’ve got to keep moving. I think he may have misunderstood the question. However, I don’t dare to back up now.

“It may be that Durant didn’t deal with him directly on this, but was going to buy it after Gilbert had made the copy but— Didn’t he tell us that Durant had him paint it when we were at his studio? — No, wait a minute, I guess he didn’t say so in so many words.”

“I gathered he did,” Della Street said.

“No,” Mason said, frowning thoughtfully. “I asked him if he’d done paintings for Durant and he said he had. I asked him if they were forgeries and he said they weren’t forgeries in that sense of the word; that Durant sold them as conversation pieces which could be bought for peanuts. Then I asked him if he hadn’t done a painting of women under a tree in the style of Phellipe Feteet, and he hesitated a minute and then went over to the pile of paintings and pulled this one out and asked me if that answered my question.”