Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Spurious Spinster

The woman on the bed smiled drowsily. “Can’t see well,” she said, “but...” She yawned, nodded prodigiously, then straightened and said, “Have a good ear for voices... whoever you are, you’re smart.”

Mason said, “Everything is going to be all right now, Miss Corning. I’m Perry Mason, an attorney who is going to help you.”

Mason turned to Tragg and said, “They were planning to use the substitute Miss Corning and make it appear that the real Miss Corning was an impostor. But then Miss Corning’s sister and her business agent wired they were corning from South America to be with her, and that necessitated a hurried change in plans.”

The woman on the bed struggled to wakefulness. “So Sophia came, did she?... Pain in the neck... so damned afraid I’m going to meet some fortune hunter and get married.” Again the woman yawned.

“All right,” Tragg said. “Now tell me about the money and I’ll put the rest of it together by myself.”

“I can’t be sure about the money,” Mason said. “Probably Campbell had a pair of shoes in a shoe box somewhere. Also, Elizabeth Dow was keeping her money in a shoe box. Campbell told his son they could trade treasure boxes and the boy inadvertently got the box with all the money in it Elizabeth Dow had stolen from the mining deal. She didn’t know it until after she heard Campbell talking over the telephone with Susan Fisher. Then she knew Carleton had got her cache of money instead of his daddy’s treasure — a pair of shoes.”

“And what happened to the box of money?” Tragg asked.

Amelia Corning yawned, tried to say something, yawned again, smiled, said, “I’ve got it... put it where they’ll never find it... not until I get ready... more coffee?”

“That’s all there is to it,” Mason said. “Elizabeth Dow, because of what she had learned while working as a governess, saw a wonderful opportunity to feather her nest. She rang up Ken Lowry, told him she was Miss Corning calling from South America, told him to do a lot of things that any sane businessman wouldn’t have done. But Lowry, being a square-shooting miner, accustomed to the outdoors and to dealing with people whose words were as good as their bond, and knowing that there may well have been a tax angle involved, followed instructions to the letter.

“Elizabeth Dow rented a post office box under the name of Corning Affiliated Enterprises.

“Lowry was loyal enough so that he...” Mason looked at his wristwatch and said, “We’re going to have to give this woman some more coffee, Lieutenant. We’re going to have to get her to a doctor and we’re going to have to use your official car in order to get all of us to court before four o’clock.”

Mason came hurrying into court exactly at four o’clock, just as Judge Elmer, impatient at the delay, was taking the bench.

“Do you wish to put on a defense, Mr. Mason?” Judge Elmer asked.

“I do,” Mason said. “I would like to recall Frank Golden, proprietor of the We Rent M Car Company, for a few questions on cross-examination.”

“We object!” Hamilton Burger shouted. “Here we go all over again. We—”

“The objection is sustained,” Judge Elmer interrupted. “If you have a case, Mr. Mason, put it on.”

“Very well,” Mason said. “I will call Frank Golden as my witness and then, if I may have the indulgence of the Court to make sure that my next witness has recovered from her drugged condition, I will call Amelia Corning as my second defense witness.”

“Call who?” Hamilton Burger shouted.

“Amelia Corning,” Mason said, smiling. “Frank Golden, will you take the stand, please? You’ve already been sworn.”

Golden took the witness stand.

“You rented this car to the defendant Sunday night,” Mason said. “She brought it back. After that, I rented the car. Did the car go out after the defendant brought it back and before I took it out?”

“I am afraid it did,” Golden said. “I was busy when the defendant brought it back. I made a note of the mileage, but I didn’t clear the records. I left the car parked out in front. Later on, when I went to look for it, it was gone. I assumed that my assistant had taken it and parked it. Later on, I found out he hadn’t done so.”

“How long was the car gone?”

“About an hour. It was returned shortly before you rented it and the speedometer showed it had been operated some thirty miles.”

“You said nothing about this?” Mason inquired.

“I wasn’t asked,” the witness blurted. “And since it might get me fired, I decided I wouldn’t say anything unless I was asked.”

“Thank you,” Mason said.

Della Street entered the courtroom and handed him a note.

“If the Court please,” Mason said, “a physician states that Miss Corning is unable to take the stand. I think, however, I will call Lieutenant Tragg as my next witness.”

Tragg, who had been whispering at the counsel table with Hamilton Burger, started for the stand. But the district attorney got to his feet, took a deep breath and said, “Your Honor, it will not be necessary. I wish to move at this time for a dismissal of the case against Susan Fisher and ask that she be released from custody.”

Hamilton Burger sat down.

There was a moment of stunned silence, then reporters, who had in some way been alerted to the fact that there would be spectacular developments, started pellmell from the courtroom in such an exodus that Judge Elmer had to wait for a few seconds before smiling down at Susan Fisher and saying, “The motion is granted. The case against the defendant is dismissed... and thank you, Mr. Prosecutor, for your attitude in the matter.”

Mason got up, picked up his briefcase, turned, and was suddenly smothered by a veritable avalanche of feminine enthusiasm as Susan Fisher, with her arms around his neck, crying and laughing at the same time, said, “Oh, you wonderful, wonderful man!”

Della Street, standing slightly to one side, smiled and said, “So say we all of us.”

“But I can never, never, never pay you,” Susan Fisher said tearfully. “Heaven knows how much you’ve spent and—”

“Don’t worry about that,” Della Street said. “He had a hunch. He said all along that Miss Corning would pay the bill.”

Mason said, “When a veteran trial lawyer examines a witness, Lieutenant, he gets a pretty good idea of whether that witness is telling the truth. When I asked Endicott Campbell about that money in the shoe box and about his son, I suddenly found that his answers were ringing true.

“I had cast him as the villain in the piece because he was a typical smug, overbearing little man trying to be big by bullying the office help. But it happened that on that shoe box full of money he was telling the truth.

“If he was telling the truth, then Elizabeth Dow had to be lying. And once that possibility confronted me, I suddenly saw the facts of the case in an entirely new perspective. It’s like one of those optical illusions where you see a flight of black stairs going up and then suddenly something snaps in your brain and you find you’re looking at a flight of white stairs going down.

“ One of the two spinsters had to be an impostor. We had assumed the first one was, but she was adept in the use of the wheelchair, and the minute I learned she had checked out of the hotel in order to make a secret trip to Mojave I realized that she had to be the genuine one. A spurious Miss Corning would never have wanted to go to Mojave.

“Once it dawned on me that Elizabeth Dow was lying and that the real Amelia Corning had disappeared, I suddenly remembered that my investigations had disclosed Elizabeth Dow had a friend who was a nurse and whose physical appearance dovetailed exactly with that of Amelia Corning.