Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Lonely Heiress

“Very well, if you want to get technical,” Hanover said angrily, “I’ll do it the hard way. Your Honor, I notice that it is approaching the noon luncheon hour, and if we may have a recess until two o’clock, I believe I can have witnesses here who will go through the long, tedious process of identifying something which the defendant knows very well is perfectly authentic.”

“It’s your case,” Mason said. “Put on the evidence if you want to.”

“I most certainly will,” Hanover snapped.

“Very well,” the Court said, “we’ll adjourn until two o’clock. The defendant is in custody and will be remanded. Two o’clock, gentlemen.”

Perry Mason and Della Street sat in a secluded booth in their favorite restaurant near the Hall of Justice.

Mason, sipping a glass of tomato juice, said, “Hanover’s trying to breeze through the case, making it appear that I’m being unduly technical.”

She nodded. “He’s making quite an impression on Judge Osborn.”

“Osborn,” Mason said, “is a fine, honest, direct, upright judge, but he never had much actual courtroom experience. His calendar is crowded and he’s in a hurry to get things cleaned up. He falls for tricks like that, whereas a judge who had been more accustomed to rough and tumble courtroom stuff would see what Hanover was trying to put over. Only, then Hanover wouldn’t try it. He’s pretty shrewd and he knows all of the various judges and how they react.”

The waiter served them salad and crackers.

Mason said, “Well, Della, we’ve seen their atomic bomb now. That knife is the piece of evidence we have to explain or else have-our client found guilty.”

“What possible explanation can there be? It was found concealed in her automobile,” Della said. “Gosh, Chief, it looks like curtains for Marilyn. That knife really clinches the case against her!"

Mason said, “Not necessarily, Della. There are two possibilities. Either Marilyn Marlow killed Rose Keeling with that knife, or else someone is deliberately framing a crime on her.”

“Robert Caddo?” Della Street asked, hopefully.

Mason played with his fork. “Darned if I know, Della. There’s another significant clue in the fact that Dolores Caddo never did call on Marilyn Marlow and try to make a scene. She admitted to me she called on Rose Keeling. I don’t think there’s any question but what she’s telling the truth. I don’t think there’s any question but what a visit from Dolores accounts for the torn sunsuit and the ink stains.

“But somehow something intervened before Mrs. Caddo went to call on Marilyn Marlow.

“Now let’s suppose that Mrs. Caddo called on Rose Keeling at eleven-thirty. Her time was more or less approximate, but we can assume that it was very shortly after Marilyn left. Mrs. Caddo rang the bell and Rose Keeling probably pressed the electric button which released the catch on the outer door.”

Della nodded, said, “Go on, Chief.”

Mason said, “Dolores went up and staged a scene. She threw some ink. Rose ran for the bathroom. Dolores made a grab at her, caught the neck of her sunsuit, tore it off, and Rose locked herself in the bathroom.

“Now, if that’s what actually happened, Marilyn Marlow has quite a bit of corroboration for her story that Rose wanted to play tennis. And if that part of her story is true, the rest of it can be true.

“Rose was not packing. She was unpacking. She suggested to Marilyn that they play tennis, and as soon as Marilyn left the apartment, she jumped out of her clothes and into a sunsuit. She got the tennis things out of the closet and about that time the bell rang. She went to the head of the stairs and sounded the buzzer which opened the door. Dolores Caddo entered and climbed the stairs, probably smiling affably until she got to the head of the stairs, and then, without any preliminary, said, ‘So you’re the woman who has been making passes at my husband!’ and splashed her with ink from a fountain pen she was holding in her hand in readiness for just such a move.

“Rose tried to tell her she hadn’t been making passes at anyone’s husband, and Dolores grabbed her and tried to spank her. Rose wrenched herself free and that’s when the ink-stained sunsuit was torn. Rose made a dash for the bathroom and locked herself in. Dolores felt she had done enough to embarrass her husband. I don’t think Dolores loses her temper the way she pretends to. She simply puts on an act to impress her husband and make him think twice before he goes out with any woman.

“Moreover, Dolores was frank enough in talking to me about having gone to see Rose Keeling. But when I told her Rose had been murdered, she thought that over and then decided she wanted no part of the entire affair. That’s when she started lying to Lieutenant Tragg.

“If she changed her statement to me because of the knowledge that Rose Keeling had been murdered, the statement that I made to her was the first intimation she had that Rose was dead. Naturally, then, she couldn’t have been the one who did the killing.”

“How about her husband?”

“Now there,” Mason said, “we have an entirely different situation. There was some cigar ash in the bedroom. Hang it, I wish I knew whether that burn on the wood floor where the cigarette had burnt down had been made by a cigarette Rose dropped when she was struggling with Dolores Caddo or whether it was dropped there by the murderer.

“It could hardly have been dropped there by Rose Keeling after she had taken the bath, and aside from Dolores Caddo’s visit, there was no reason for her to have dropped it before she went into the bathroom.”

“But the murderer could have dropped it.”

Mason said, “Rose Keeling wasn’t smoking a cigar. The cigar ashes indicate the presence of a man. If you have both a cigar and a cigarette present at the time the crime was committed, you’ve complicated the problem a lot. I feel certain that the cigarette must have been dropped by Rose Keeling when Dolores grabbed her, but I don’t know how we’re going to prove it.”

“But the murderer must have taken the knife from Marilyn’s apartment...”

“That’s right,” Mason said.

Della Street said, “Somehow I have the feeling that if we could know a little more about what Robert Caddo was doing about noon on the seventeenth we wouldn’t have any trouble getting the thing cleared up.”

Mason said, “He’s not very much of a smoker. He may smoke cigars. I’ve never actually seen him do so and I’ve never seen any cigars in his pocket.”

“That’s right,” Della Street admitted grudgingly.

Mason said, “Oh, well, let’s eat our lunch and we’ll go back and see what happens this afternoon.”

He went ahead with his salad and when he and Della had finished, paid the check and walked back toward the Hall of Justice.

Suddenly Della Street gripped his arm.

“Look, Chief. Do you see what I see?”

Mason stopped, followed the direction of Della Street’s gaze.

Robert Caddo, accompanied by Palmer and Ralph Endicott and Lorraine Endicott Parsons, was walking toward the courthouse, and at the moment Della Street spoke, Palmer Endicott was extending his cigar case. Robert Caddo took a cigar and with the practiced skill of a habitual cigar smoker bit off the end, scraped a match into flame, rotated the cigar as he lit it, to get it burning evenly, and then walked on toward the Hall of Justice, the cigar tilted up at a jaunty angle. Caddo’s facial expression was that of a man who has dined well, is prepared to enjoy a good cigar, and finds himself at peace with the world.

As court reconvened, Judge Osborn said, “Are you ready to proceed with the case of People versus Marlow, gentlemen?”