Erle Gardner: The Case Of The Stuttering Bishop

A nurse entered the room and said to Hamilton Burger, "Mr. Burger, your office wants you on the telephone."

"Not now," Burger said, his eyes on Stella Kenwood. "Tell them I can't be interrupted. There are one or two matters I want to clean up here before..."

The nurse said, "They said I was to tell you it was very important; that it was a new development in the Brownley matter."

Burger frowned thoughtfully. "I can plug a phone in here," the nurse said.

Burger nodded to the nurse, turned to Stella Kenwood and said, "Are you going to make a written statement, Stella?"

She said, "Why not? I've told you everything, and I feel better. I'm a wicked woman, but I don't want my daughter to suffer."

The nurse brought a desk telephone, plugged it in and handed it to Burger, who said, "Hello," and then frowned thoughtfully as he listened for several seconds. He glanced significantly at Perry Mason and said, "Leave things just as they are. Don't touch anything. Get Philip Brownley and Janice Brownley to make the identification; but don't let them see it until I get there. Have a shorthand reporter on the job. You'll have to stall things along for a few minutes because I can't get away from here for ten or fifteen minutes yet. I'm getting a written statement." He hung up the telephone, caught the significance of Mason's lifted eyebrows and nodded his head. "Yes," he said, "found just a few minutes ago."

Stella Kenwood, her chin sunk on her chest, had apparently paid no attention to the conversation.

CHAPTER 17

The speedometer needle of Mason's car quivered at around seventy miles an hour. Della Street, in the front seat beside him, lit a cigarette with the electric lighter, took it from between her lips and proffered it to Mason.

"No, thanks, Della," he said, "I'll drive now and smoke afterwards."

Paul Drake, in the back seat, yelled, "Take it slow, Perry. There's a curve ahead."

Mason said grimly, "When you were at the wheel, you looped the loop on this curve and thought it was funny. Now I'm driving, and you'll take it and like it."

The car screamed into the curve, lurched, straightened, skidded and then, as Mason depressed the foot throttle to the floorboards, came out of the turn and into the straightaway. Drake heaved a sigh of relief and let go his hold of the robe rail. Della Street, exhaling cigarette smoke, said, "Do they know whether he died from drowning or from the gunshot wounds, Chief?"

"If they know, they aren't saying," he told her. "It'll probably take a fairly complete post-mortem to tell."

"And you've already pointed out to them what they're up against," she said. "If he died by drowning, they can't convict Stella Kenwood of murder. Just what could they do to her?"

"Prosecute her for assault with a deadly weapon with intent to commit murder. However, having guessed wrong on the crime the first time they made a pass at it, it isn't going to be so easy to get a conviction in front of a jury. Burger will realize that, so he'll move heaven and earth to make a perfect case now."

"And if he died of the gunshot wounds?" she asked.

"That'll make a murder case out of it," Mason said, "only then they've got to prove how the car happened to be driven over the edge of the wharf, and that's not going to be so easy, because, regardless of what the autopsy surgeons say, if Renwold Brownley was able to drive the car off the wharf, a jury won't think he was dead when he went over the edge. And there'll be a lot of sympathy with Stella Kenwood. Then, if Brownley was killed by the bullets, someone must have driven the car over. That someone would have been an accomplice."

"Of course," Della Street pointed out, "he could have recovered consciousness and started to drive the car. He could have put it into low gear and, in a half-conscious condition, driven along the pier thinking it was a road. Then he could have died with the car still in gear, and the weight of his body depressing the foot throttle..."

Mason interrupted with a laugh and said, "That's something that could have happened. Remember that a district attorney has to prove to a jury beyond all reasonable doubt what actually did happen."

Drake yelled, "For God's sake, Della, quit talking so much and let him drive the car. That truck almost sideswiped us! It was the hand throttle which sent the car over the pier. You're a swell secretary, but don't try to make a detective out of yourself, because women can't develop the type of minds detectives need to have - and don't distract Mason's attention with a lot of arguments, or we'll all be corpses!"

Della said, "It's your cold that makes you such a grouch, Paul. Don't think just because you're a man, God gave you a corner on detective ability."

"That isn't what I meant," Drake explained. "I don't want to argue it now; but being a detective means you have to remember thousands of details and automatically fit any theory into the facts. You illustrated the point just now by forgetting about that hand throttle."

Mason grinned and said, "Don't argue with him, Della. He's got a cold and he's full of dope, fever and egotism."

Della Street lapsed into frowning silence. Drake closed his eyes. Mason, devoting his entire attention to driving the car, sent the speedometer needle shivering upward.

"Did Mr. Burger arrange to have both Janice Brownley and Philip Brownley come down to identify the body?" she asked at length.

Mason nodded.

"Why?" she wanted to know.

Mason said, "We'll know more about that when we get there. Incidentally, Paul, I'm getting a theory about this case. It's never going to be really solved until we've found out about that stuttering bishop. Is Harry Coulter going to be there?"

"Yes. He got the flash, and should be there before we arrive, or get there right afterwards."

"I want him to look over that car of Janice Brownley's," Mason said. "It's a yellow Cadillac. I want him to see if there's anything about it he can recognize."

Drake nodded, and Mason slowed as he approached the more congested district of the harbor.

"Her alibi's pretty air-tight," Drake pointed out, as Mason made a boulevard stop. "Paul Montrose has a pretty good reputation. He's a notary public working in a real estate office. He swears that Stockton got him out of bed to come in and join the party."

"Why did he do that?" Mason asked, throwing the car into second and stepping on the throttle.

"Because Stockton wanted some disinterested witness to back up his testimony."

"He had his wife," Della volunteered.

"Yes, but he wanted someone else," Drake said wearily.

"And," Mason said, frowning, "this was before Janice arrived, wasn't it?"

"Yes, about five minutes before, according to Montrose's statement."

"Well, we'll see what we'll see," Mason said, swinging the car to the right. "Hello, there are a lot of cars here."

"Mostly news photographers," Drake said. "Wait a minute, this cop is going to stop us."

A uniformed policeman stepped out, held up his hand and said, "You can't go out on the pier, boys."

While Mason hesitated, Drake, with the ready wit of a detective who has had to resort to extemporaneous prevarications on numerous occasions to crash police lines, pointed to Della Street and said, "We've got to go there. This is Janice Brownley. District Attorney Burger told her to get here just as fast as she could to identify the body of her grandfather."

"That's different," the officer admitted. "I had instructions about her, but I thought she was already there."

Drake shook his head and said, "Drive on, Perry. Be brave, Janice. It'll soon be over."

Della Street dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief, and the officer stood to one side.

"Suppose Harry Coulter could get through all right?" Mason asked.