The Case of the Buried Clock

Chapter 20

The selection of the jury in the case of The People of the State of California vs. Milicent Blane and Jefferson Macon consumed a day and a half. At two o’clock in the afternoon of the second day, the jurors, having been sworn to try the case, settled back comfortably in their seats and looked expectantly at the district attorney.

Thomas L. McNair, the new, brilliant trial deputy, walked over to stand in front of the jurors to make his opening statement.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I will make no detailed statement of what we intend to prove. I shall let the evidence itself speak for the prosecution. I have long thought that it was presumptuous for a district attorney to tell intelligent men and women what the evidence means, or what he expects it to mean. I shall, therefore, merely content myself with showing that on the first day of October, of the present year, the defendants murdered Jack Hardisty, the husband of the defendant, Milicent Hardisty. I shall leave you, ladies and gentlemen, to deduce what happened. I will call as my first witness, Frank L. Wimblie, from the coroner’s office.”

Mr. Wimblie, having been duly sworn, testified to routine matters, the finding and identification of the body, the taking of photographs showing the position and condition of the body. He was followed on the stand by Dr. Claude Ritchie, one of the autopsy surgeons.

Dr. Ritchie, having duly qualified, testified that he had examined the body of Jack Hardisty; that death had been caused by hemorrhage and shock produced by a bullet wound which had been fired into the back of the decedent, entering just to the left side of the spine, ranging downward from behind the shoulder blade. The bullet had not been found in the body.

McNair sought to emphasize this point, so that the jury would be certain to get it. Despite the fact that he had, of course, known of this peculiar feature of the case for weeks, he managed to put surprise into his voice. “Did I understand you correctly, Doctor? The fatal bullet was not found in the body?”

“That is right. The bullet was not found.”

“May I ask why?”

“It had been removed.”

“It could not have dropped out?”

“Impossible.”

“And it didn’t go entirely through the body?”

“No, sir. There was no wound of exit.”

McNair glanced significantly at the jury. “Now, Doctor, did you discover any other unusual condition in connection with your examination of that body?”

“I did.”

“What was it?”

“A drug had been administered.”

“Indeed! Can you tell us the nature of that drug?”

“In my opinion it was scopolamine.”

“What is scopolamine, Doctor?”

“It is a drug which remains in the mother-liquors in the preparation of hyoscyamine and atropine from henbane seed, and those of Datura Stramonium.”

“Of what use is scopolamine?”

“Among other things, scopolamine is used to detect, or rather to prevent, falsehoods.”

“Can you explain that, Doctor?”

“Yes. Mixed with morphine, in proper proportions, scopolamine has the power of submerging certain inhibitory areas of the brain, yet at the same time leaving intact the patient’s memory, hearing and powers of speech. In fact, the memory is sharpened beyond the normal conscious memory. Cases are on record in which persons under the influence of scopolamine have confessed to minor traffic crimes which had been completely forgotten during their ordinary everyday existence.”

“And you state that this drug has a tendency to prevent lies?”

“That is right. Henry Morton Robinson cites, in Science versus Crime, experiments performed upon subjects under the influence of scopolamine in which they were urged to tell falsehoods and attempted to do so. They were incapable of falsifying their statements.”

McNair glanced at the jury, then turned once more to the doctor. “What can you tell us, Doctor, about the time of death?”

“The time of death was between seven-thirty and ten o’clock in the evening of October first.”

“Those represent extreme limits, Doctor?”

“Those represent extreme limits, yes, sir. If I were to express it according to the law of averages, I should say that the chances were about one in fifty that the man met his death between seven-thirty and seven-forty-five; that there was about one chance in fifty that he met his death between nine-forty-five and ten o’clock; I would say that there were about thirty chances out of fifty that the man met his death between eight-forty-five and nine o’clock in the evening.”

“From the nature of the wound, was death instantaneous?”

“I would say not. I would say that the patient lived for perhaps five minutes to perhaps an hour. On an average, I would say probably a half hour. I am basing that answer upon the extent of the internal hemorrhage.”

McNair turned to Perry Mason. “You may cross-examine.”

Mason waited until the doctor’s eyes turned to him, then asked, “Could you tell whether the decedent had been killed while he was in bed, or placed in bed after he had been shot?”

Dr. Ritchie said frankly, “I can’t tell — that is, I cannot answer that question positively. You will understand that I am a physician and not a detective. I make certain medical deductions from the state of the body. That is all.”

“I understand, Doctor. By the way, were there any powder burns upon the skin of the decedent?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you examine the decedent’s clothes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you notice whether there was any bullet hole in the coat the decedent had been wearing?”

“Yes, sir. There was such a hole.”

“The coat, then, had evidently been removed after the shot was fired.”

Dr. Ritchie smiled. “As I have stated, Counselor, I am not a detective. That inference is for the jury, not for me.”

McNair’s smile was almost a triumphant leer.

Mason nodded. “You are also a professional gambler, Doctor?”

Dr. Ritchie’s smirk was lost in indignation. “Certainly not! That is an unwarranted question.”

It was Mason’s turn to smile. “Your making up of a list of chances, Doctor, indicated a knowledge not usually possessed by the physician. May I ask if your ‘book’ on the time of death based on the number of chances out of fifty is merely a casual estimate, or founded on mathematical calculations.”

Dr. Ritchie hesitated while he mentally canvassed the possibilities of standing up to a cross-examination on the laws of probability. “An offhand estimate,” he admitted sheepishly.

“And an estimate entirely outside the medical field?”

“Only in a manner of speaking.”

“You have never had any experience in making book or determining the mathematical laws of chance?”

“Well... no.”

“So you made an offhand estimate which is probably erroneous?”

“Well, it was a guess.”

“So you were willing to make a guess, and swear to it as a fact?”

“Well, it was an estimate.”

Mason bowed. “Thank you very much, Doctor. That is all.”

Judge Canfield, somewhat by way of explanation, said to the jury, “Mr. Perry Mason is representing the defendant, Milicent Hardisty. Dr. Jefferson Macon is acting as his own counsel. I will, therefore, ask Dr. Macon if he has any questions on cross-examination.”

“Yes,” Dr. Macon said. “How did you determine the presence of scopolamine?”

“I relied principally upon the bromine test of Wormley, although I used both Gerrard’s test and Wasicky’s test.”

“And it is your contention,” Dr. Mason asked indignantly, “that I administered scopolamine to this person in order to make him talk and answer questions before he was murdered?”

Dr. Ritchie turned slightly toward the jury to deliver his answer. “That, Doctor,” he said, “is your own suggestion. I am drawing no inferences. I am merely testifying to the facts that I found.”

Dr. Macon muttered, “That’s all.”

“My next witness,” McNair announced, “will necessarily be a hostile witness. I dislike to call him, but there is no alternative. I will call Vincent P. Blane, the father of the defendant, Milicent Hardisty.”

Blane took the stand. His face showed plainly the effects of worry, but he was still very much master of himself, poised, courteous, dignified.

“Mr. Blane,” McNair said, “because of your relationship to one of the defendants, it’s going to be necessary for me to ask you leading questions.”

Blane inclined his head in a courteous gesture of understanding.

“You knew that your son-in-law, Jack Hardisty, had embezzled money from the Roxbury Bank?”

“Yes, sir.”

“There had been two embezzlements, I believe?”

“Yes, sir.”

“One of ten thousand dollars?”

“That is the approximate amount.”

“And when you refused to hush that up, Hardisty embezzled some ninety thousand dollars in cash, and advised you that if he was going to be short, he would make his embezzlement worth while; that if you kept him from going to jail and made good the ten thousand dollars he would return the ninety thousand dollars?”

“Not in exactly those words.”

“But that was the gist of it?”

“The facts of the matter are, that before the bonding company would issue a bond on Mr. Hardisty, it required certain guarantees. The upshot of the matter was that I virtually agreed with the bonding company that if it would issue the bond, I would indemnify them against any loss.”

“And did you ever recover the ninety thousand dollars?”

“No, sir.”

“Or any part of it?”

“No, sir.”

“That is all.”

There was no cross-examination.

“I will now call another hostile witness,” McNair said. “Adele Blane.”

Adele Blane, plainly nervous, took the witness stand, was duly sworn, gave her name and address, and looked somewhat apprehensively at the vigorous young trial deputy who seemed to have that peculiar quality of focusing the attention of the entire courtroom upon himself.

“You are familiar with the location of the mountain cabin owned by your father, and in which the body of Jack Hardisty was found on October second, Miss Blane?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you were at the cabin on the afternoon of October first?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you see Jack Hardisty there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What time?”

“I can’t tell you the exact time. It was sometime after four o’clock, and, I think, before four-forty-five, perhaps around four-twenty.”

“And that is the best you can do so far as fixing the time is concerned?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you saw Jack Hardisty drive up?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He stopped his car?”

“That’s right.”

“Did you see him take anything from his car?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What?”

“A spade.”

“Could you identify that spade if you saw it again?”

“No, sir.”

“Were you alone at the time?”

“No, sir. A Mr. Raymand was with me.”

“Mr. Harley Raymand?”

“That’s right.”

“And what did you do immediately after seeing Jack Hardisty at the cabin? Just describe your moves, please.”

“Well, I drove back to Kenvale with Mr. Raymand. I took him to the Kenvale Hotel. I—”

“Just a minute,” McNair interrupted. “Aren’t you forgetting something? Didn’t you see the defendant, Mrs. Hardisty, prior to that time?”

“Yes, that’s right. I met her in an automobile.”

“And where was she going?”

“I don’t know.”

“She was, however, driving on the road which led to the mountain cabin?”

“Well, yes.”

“And you had some conversation with her?”

“Yes.”

“You and Mr. Raymand?”

“Yes.”

“And she asked if her husband was up at the cabin?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“And you told her that her husband was up there?”

“Yes.”

“And she promptly started her car and drove away in the direction of the cabin?”

“Well — well, yes.”

“You know she went to the cabin, don’t you, Miss Blane?”

“No, sir. I don’t think she did go to the cabin.”

“You left Mr. Raymand at the hotel, and turned around and speeded up the road to the cabin, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Now, please tell us, Miss Blane, just what you found when you arrived at the cabin — or rather, just before you came to the road which turns off to the cabin.”

“I found my sister.”

“The defendant in this case?”

“Yes.”

“What was she doing?”

“She was standing near an embankment.”

“Did you notice any evidences of emotional upset — any external evidences?”

“She was crying. She was partially hysterical.”

“Did she make any statement to you about a gun?”

Adele Blane looked around her, as though she were actually in a physical trap, instead of merely being on the witness stand under oath to tell the truth, and faced with the probing, searching questions of a vigorous prosecutor.

“Did she say anything about a gun?” McNair repeated.

“She said she had thrown her gun away.”

“What were her exact words? Did she say she had thrown it down the canyon, on the brink of which she was standing?”

“No. She said she had thrown it — I can’t remember.”

“Did she say why?”

Adele looked appealingly at Perry Mason, but Mason sat silent. It was not the silence of defeat, but rather the silence of dignity. His eyes were steady. His face might have been carved from stone. His manner was confident. But, where the ordinary lawyer would have been throwing objections into the record, would have been storming and ranting, fighting for time, seeking to keep out damaging evidence, Mason was merely silent.

“Yes,” Adele Blane said. “She told me why.”

“What did she say?”

“She said that she was afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“She didn’t say.”

“Afraid of herself?”

“She didn’t say.”

“Obviously,” McNair said to the witness, “if she had been afraid of her husband, she would have kept the gun. Throwing it away means only that she was afraid of herself. Isn’t that the way you understood her, Miss Blane?”

Mason came to his feet then, quietly, confidently. “Your Honor,” he said, “I object to the question. It is argumentative. It is an attempt on the part of counsel to cross-examine his own witness. It calls for a conclusion of the witness. I have made no effort to prevent the facts from getting before the jury. Nor have I objected to the leading questions asked of this witness. But I do object to argumentative, improper questions such as these.”

McNair started to argue, but Judge Canfield gestured him into silence. “The objection,” he said, “is sustained. The question is clearly improper.”

McNair pounced back on the witness, resuming his attack with a redoubled fury, convincing jurors and spectators, as well as the witness, that here was a man who could not be stopped, who was only stimulated by rebuffs to fight harder.

“What did your sister do after that?”

“She got in her car.”

“Where was her car?”

“It was parked a short distance up the road.”

“You mean by that it was parked on the main highway?”

“Yes.”

“It was not parked on the side road which led up to your father’s cabin.”

“No.”

“And then what did she do?”

“Followed me back to town.”

“At your suggestion?”

“Yes.”

“And then what happened?”

“When I got to Kenvale, I missed her.”

“You mean that she deliberately avoided you?”

“I don’t know. I only know that she didn’t follow me to the house.”

“And what did you do? Where did you go?”

“I went to Roxbury.”

“Yes,” McNair said, somewhat sneeringly, “you went to Roxbury. You went directly to the home of the defendant, Dr. Jefferson Macon. You asked for the doctor, and were advised he was out on a call. Isn’t that right?”

“That is substantially correct.”

“And you waited for Dr. Macon to return, did you not?”

“Yes.”

“And when did he return?”

“At approximately ten-thirty.”

“And what did you say to the defendant, Dr. Macon?”

“I asked him if he had seen my sister.”

“And what did he say?”

“Just a moment,” Judge Canfield said. “The jury will be instructed that at this particular time, any statement testified to by this witness as having been made by Dr. Macon will be received in evidence only as against the defendant, Macon, as a declaration made by him. It will not be binding upon the defendant, Hardisty, or be received as evidence against her. Proceed, Miss Blane, to answer the question.”

She was close to tears now. “He said he had not seen my sister.”

“Cross-examine,” McNair snapped at Mason.

“No questions,” Mason said with calm dignity.

Then McNair apparently went off on a detour. He began introducing evidence concerning the spade which belonged to Jack Hardisty. A witness testified that he had seen Hardisty using a spade in the garden. Was there anything peculiar about that spade, anything distinctive, McNair asked? And the witness stated that he had noticed the initials J. H. cut in the wood.

Would the witness know that spade if he saw it again?

The witness thought he would.

With something of a flourish, McNair sent an attendant scurrying to an anteroom. He returned with a spade which was duly presented to the witness for identification.

Yes, that was the spade. Those were the initials. He was satisfied that that was the identical spade he had seen in Jack Hardisty’s hands.

There was no cross-examination.

McNair looked at the clock. It was approaching the hour of the afternoon adjournment. Obviously, McNair was looking for some peculiarly dramatic bit of evidence with which to close the first day’s evidence.

“Charles Renfrew,” he called.

Charles Renfrew proved to be a man in the early fifties, slow and deliberate of speech and motion, a man who quite evidently had no terror of cross-examination, but considered his sojourn on the witness stand with the satisfaction of a man who enjoys being in the public eye.

He was, it seemed, a member of the police force of Roxbury. He had searched the grounds about the house where the defendant, Dr. Jefferson Macon, had his residence and his office.

McNair said, “Mr. Renfrew, I am going to show you a spade which has been marked for identification in this case, and ask you if you have seen that spade before.”

“That’s right,” Renfrew said. “I found that spade—”

“The question was whether you had seen it before,” McNair interrupted.

“Yes, sir. I have seen it before.”

“When?”

“That day I made the search, October third.”

“Where did you see it?”

“In a freshly spaded-up garden patch back of the garage on Dr. Macon’s property.”

“And you’re certain this is the same spade you found at that place at that time?”

“Yes, sir.”

McNair’s smile was triumphant. “You don’t, of course, know how this spade was transported from that mountain cabin to Dr. Macon’s residence?”

Mason said, “Objected to, Your Honor, assuming a fact not in evidence as well as calling for a conclusion of the witness. There is no evidence that this was the spade Jack Hardisty had in his car.”

McNair said instantly, “Counsel is right, Your Honor, I’ll prove that tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ll withdraw this question.” He flashed a smile at the jurors.

Once more there was no cross-examination.

McNair went rapidly ahead. Rodney Beaton told of seeing the defendant, Milicent Hardisty, standing near the edge of a barranca by the roadway, some object in her hand, her arm drawn back. He couldn’t swear, he admitted, that she had actually thrown this object down the barranca. She might have changed her mind at the last minute. He also testified that the next day he and Lola Strague had been searching the vicinity of the granite outcropping. They had found a thirty-eight caliber revolver pressed down in the pine needles. He identified the gun.

Mason made no cross-examination.

Lola Strague, called as a witness, also told of finding the gun, and identified it. Then McNair, with a dramatic gesture, introduced in evidence records that showed this gun had been purchased by Vincent P. Blane two days before Christmas of 1941.

At that point McNair looked at the clock significantly and Judge Canfield, taking the hint, announced that it had reached the usual hour for the evening adjournment.

McNair left the courtroom wearing an expression of complete self-satisfaction wreathed all over his countenance. His exit was punctuated by brilliant flashes as news photographers took action shots for the morning editions.