Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Lonely Heiress

Mason merely smiled.

Caddo said impatiently, “I tell you, the guy’s clever. I had an idea he’d...”

Mason said, “Anyhow, Caddo, you took it on yourself to be a self-appointed watchman for this place. Is that your story?”

“That’s right.”

“Why didn’t you have some police officer accompany you or wait with you?”

“You know why. I didn’t have anything to go on except suspicion. I...”

“You had a talk with Lieutenant Tragg tonight, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And at the time of that talk I told Tragg that you had heard your wife admit she’d been out here and had an argument with Rose Keeling.”

“I never heard any such statement. My wife never said that, or anything like it.”

“But, despite the fact that your wife never said any such thing, you, instead of going back to bed, jumped in your car and came out here to watch this flat, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

Mason smiled. “If you’d never known Rose Keeling, how did you know where the flat was?”

“I... I had the address.”

Mason laughed at the radio officer and said, “If you want to do yourself a good turn, lock this guy up.”

The officer’s head nodded almost imperceptibly.

Caddo, in a sudden panic, said, “You can’t get away with that stuff! Officer, I telephone you when I see people breaking into a house, and you come up and let them talk you out of it.”

“Nobody’s talking me out of anything,” the officer said, “but I don’t get the sketch. I don’t see what you were sticking around here for instead of being in bed and, personally, I don’t think you saw them go in that door. I don’t think they got in the door. I think they were standing here ringing the bell. Come on, now, break it up. On your way, all of you. I know who this man is and I can reach him whenever I want him. I’ll make a report as to exactly what happened.”

“And I’ll make a report,” Caddo said. “When Lieutenant Tragg... Damn it, I’ll call Lieutenant Tragg myself!”

“Okay,” the radio officer said, “go ahead and call him. But I don’t see anything here that won’t keep until morning. I’ll make a report so Lieutenant Tragg can do whatever he wants to.”

Mason said, “I demand, for the protection of my client, as well as myself, that a police guard be placed in charge here. I want to see that this evidence is preserved without being disturbed.”

“We’re short of officers,” the man said apologetically. “There’s been a lot of crime and...”

“I’m making that request,” Mason interrupted. “I’m making a formal demand on the police. In view of the fact that it now appears that Caddo is trying to enter that flat, I demand a guard.”

The officer said, “I’m going to dump this whole thing in the lap of Headquarters.”

Mason said, “You have a two-way radio phone there in your car. Go call them.”

“You getting this, Jack?” the officer called out to his partner who had been sitting in the car.

“Some of it.”

“Put through a call to Headquarters and tell them Mason is demanding a guard for this place.”

“On the ground that one of the interested parties was apprehended prowling around the place,” Mason said.

“You mean me?” Caddo asked.

“I mean you.”

“I haven’t been apprehended and I wasn’t prowling.”

“All right,” Mason said, laughing sarcastically. “Tell Headquarters that one of the chief suspects in the case has constituted himself a self-appointed guard to keep the flat under surveillance. When Homicide hears about that, they’ll want a guard.”

The officer said, “Okay, just a minute.”

He rolled up the window of the car so they could not hear him talking while he put through his call to Headquarters.

A few moments later he rolled down the window of the car. “Okay,” he said, “Headquarters is sending out a guard.”

Judge Osborn looked up from the papers he had been reading and said, “People versus Marilyn Marlow.”

“Ready for the Prosecution,” James Hanover said.

Mason arose. “Your Honor, the defendant is in court, represented by counsel. She has been advised of her rights and is ready to proceed with the preliminary hearing. The charge is first-degree murder and I am appearing upon behalf of the defendant.”

Deputy District Attorney Hanover said, “In view of Counsel’s statement, I will proceed with the evidence at this time. Call Dr. Thomas C. Hiller.”

Dr. Hiller was sworn in, droned through a list of his qualifications as an expert medical witness, testified that he had been called to the apartment of Rose Keeling, that he had tentatively fixed the time of death at about noon of the day on which he was called, perhaps a half hour earlier. He had subsequently performed a postmortem. There had been a blow on the head of sufficient force to render the decedent unconscious. Apparently while unconscious, she had been stabbed in the back with a knife having a blade approximately an inch and two-tenths in width and a thickness of perhaps two-tenths of an inch at the heaviest part of the knife. The length of the blade was, of course, something that he couldn’t swear to, but it had penetrated the body of the deceased to approximately seven inches.

Dr. Hiller gave it as his opinion that death had been practically instantaneous from the stab wound, but pointed out that also, in his opinion, the stab wound had been inflicted after the decedent had fallen to the floor and was stretched motionless and in approximately the same position as that in which her body had been found.

There had been considerable hemorrhage. The knife had been thrust in from the back or slightly to one side of the back. Microscopic tests he had made of the nails and other tests had indicated to him that the decedent had been bathing but a short time before the fatal injuries were inflicted.

“Cross-examine!” Hanover snapped truculently.

“No cross-examination,” Mason said.

Lieutenant Tragg was called to the stand.

He testified to his official position, testified to having been called to Rose Keeling’s flat on the day of the murder.

Asked to comment on the condition of the flat when he arrived, Tragg stated that Perry Mason and his secretary, Della Street, were, when he arrived, alone in the place with the body of the murdered woman.

He then went on to describe further the condition of the room, from time to time identifying photographs which were offered and received in evidence as being photographs taken under the supervision of the police force.

Then Hanover brought Tragg around to the effort he had made to find the murder weapon.

“Just tell the Court what search you made.”

“I looked through the flat, searching for the murder weapon. I couldn’t find it anywhere.”

“Now,” Hanover said, “I will ask you whether or not you located an automobile belonging to the defendant in this case.”

“I did.”

“Where was it?”

“In a public rental garage.”

“And do you know who had left it there?”

“I only know what was told me.”

“You cannot, of course, testify as to that. Is the proprietor of that garage in court, the one who gave you the information?”

“Yes, sir.”

Hanover smirked triumphantly.

Mason said, “There’s no need to call him. I will stipulate that I drove my client’s car into a public storage garage and left it there while my client went to a private sanitarium after she had been released on a writ of habeas corpus."

“Very well,” Hanover said. “That will save time. Thank you.”

He opened a small handbag, removed a box and approached the witness stand. From the box he removed a knife, stained and encrusted with dried blood.