Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Daring Divorcee

“You’ve completed your testimony,” Judge Fallon said. “You can go back and sit in the office. This matter pending before this Court is quite important, and there’s certainly something sufficiently peculiar about the execution of such a will so that this Court is going to give the defense every opportunity on voir dire to inquire into the circumstances.”

“He can only inquire into the execution of the will, if the Court please, not into the circumstances surrounding it.”

“We’ll argue that point when we come to it,” Judge Fallon said. “Court is going to take a recess for thirty minutes and defendant will have an opportunity to serve a subpoena on Elvina Mitchell and have her here. If she is not here at that time, Court will take a further recess until she is here.”

Judge Fallon got up and left the bench.

Banner hurried down to have a whispered conference with Hamilton Burger.

Mason turned to Della Street, said, “Della, I have a hunch.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“Telephone the office,” Mason said. “Tell Gertie to grab a cab and come up here. Now, when Gertie comes I want her seated, not with the spectators, but over to the right in the jury box. I want her to have one of the office stenographers with her. Just the two of them seated there in the jury box.”

“Will Judge Fallon permit it?” Della asked.

“Judge Fallon will permit it,” Mason said. “I’ll ask him for permission in chambers.”

Paul Drake pushed his way forward and said, “Perry, is there any reason why Adelle Hastings would have taken an airplane late Monday afternoon and flown to Las Vegas?”

Mason frowned and said, “I don’t know, Paul. I had assumed from what she had told me that she had taken her car and driven to Las Vegas. But apparently she didn’t start until after she had gone to Ventura to close the deal on this piece of property on which she was negotiating with the advice and assistance of Simley Beason.

“That property was probably one of the big things on her mind. It was for that reason she was carrying a large sum of cash in her purse. She wanted to make a down-payment which would bind the deal. Why do you ask, Paul?”

Drake said, “I found out one of the things the prosecution has in reserve. That survey by the Chamber of Commerce in Las Vegas was on the up-and-up. They were making a survey to find out how many charter planes came in, in the course of a single evening; how many passengers they brought in, and just how important the charter service was.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said.

Drake said, “They have a witness under subpoena, a charter pilot named Arthur Cole Caldwell. He has a flying service and he left Los Angeles at five-thirty Monday night with a woman who had telephoned in a reservation for a charter plane. She wanted to fly to Las Vegas and wanted the plane to be ready to get into the air the minute she got there. She had telephoned at two o’clock in the afternoon and asked particularly to have this plane ready.”

“If she was in such a hurry,” Mason asked, “why didn’t she leave earlier?”

“The prosecution’s theory,” Drake said, “is that Adelle was in your office and then went to see Simley Beason and arranged with him to steal the gun out of the handbag she had inadvertently left in your office; that she didn’t have time to drive back to Las Vegas and then return to Los Angeles, so she chartered a plane.”

“Will Caldwell identify her?” Mason asked.

“Apparently he will; although the woman who chartered the plane was wearing dark glasses at the time, and he admits he didn’t get too good a look at her. However, he did charter a plane to someone who grabbed a taxi at the Las Vegas airport, went to Las Vegas, was in Las Vegas about an hour, then returned to the plane and was flown back to Los Angeles.”

Mason’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Della Street and I took a plane only a little after that, Paul. We had a twin-motored plane.”

“This was a twin-motored plane.”

“We couldn’t have been too far behind,” Mason said.

“Just long enough for your client to get in, have a drink, undress and take a bath,” Drake said.

Mason said, “It had been my idea that someone flew in to get Adelle’s gun so it could have been substituted for the murder weapon and—”

“Exactly,” Drake interrupted. “That’s the prosecution’s theory. Only they think that Adelle killed Hastings with his own gun, that she then intended to fly to Las Vegas, get her gun, substitute it for the fatal gun in her handbag and throw the fatal gun away where it would never be found.

“However, they think she was in such a hurry to put this through at split-second timing that she inadvertently left her handbag in your office and you uncovered the gun which was the real murder weapon. That meant her only hope was to get the gun out of her apartment, have Simley Beason get to your office early in the morning and make a substitution.”

Mason thoughtfully digested the information, said, “How did Caldwell make the identification?”

“From a photograph,” Drake said. “They put dark glasses on a photograph and Caldwell said it looked like the person he had flown to Las Vegas. They also let him peek into the detaining room and get a peek at her. You know how the police handle these things, Perry.”

“What else have you found out, Paul?” Mason asked.

“That address in Carson City,” Drake said. “Helen Drexel, Harley Drexel’s daughter, is a friend of Connely Maynard. Her father had built a little house on the back of his lot. It was not the type of house that would readily rent to permanent residents, but it was an ideal place for persons who were coming to establish a six weeks’ residence in order to be able to file suit for divorce.

“So Maynard quite naturally took it up with his girl friend, Elvina Mitchell, and she arranged to tout for the place and keep it filled up.”

Mason’s eyes narrowed. “Then, if Minerva Hastings went there to establish a residence in order to get her divorce, Minerva must have been friendly with Banner at that time.”

“Or, with Banner’s secretary,” Drake said.

“Then Banner was representing Minerva all along and was responsible for the situation getting to a point where Hastings thought he was divorced, made a bigamous marriage and still had a legal wife in the background.”

Drake nodded and said, “The friendship is between Helen Drexel and Elvina Mitchell. On the Monday in question, Helen Drexel had driven the family car in to do some shopping in Los Angeles. Since she always runs in to have a visit and a coffee break with Elvina Mitchell when she’s in town, and since the parking lot next to the building here was as centrally located as any, with reference to the shopping district on the one hand and Banner’s office on the other, she parked her car there and left it there while she did her shopping. It doesn’t have anything to do with the murder case but it’s an interesting fact, just the same, and it shows some sort of a tie-in.”

“I’ll say it does,” Mason said. “Thanks for the information, Paul. I’m going to think it over and see if I can’t make something out of it.”

As Judge Fallon ascended the bench after the thirty-minute recess, Hamilton Burger said, “If the Court please, the prosecution intends to call a witness who will identify the defendant as being a person whom he saw at a certain place. At the time, the defendant was wearing dark glasses.

“In order to be fair to both the witness and the defendant, it is imperative that at the time this witness sees the defendant for the first time in court he sees her wearing dark glasses. I am going to ask the Court to instruct the defendant to put on dark glasses during this session of the court, and to keep them on.”