The Case of the Demure Defendant

Chapter Fourteen

Mason sat in the visitors’ room at the jail. On the other side of the heavily meshed screen, Nadine Farr, looking complacent and more beautiful than ever, regarded Mason with calm, thoughtful eyes.

“Are you going to put me on the witness stand?” she asked.

Mason studied her thoughtfully. “Let’s get it straight, Nadine. If I put you on the witness stand, you’re going to have to tell about the letter your mother left for you.”

She was silent for several thoughtful seconds.

“So,” Mason said, “I’m going to have to know what was in that letter.”

She shook her head. “I told you I’d never tell that to anyone.”

“As your lawyer I’m going to have to know these things,” Mason told her.

Again she shook her head.

“Perhaps,” the lawyer went on, “you don’t appreciate just how desperate the situation is. Hamilton Burger is going to accuse you of blackmail. He’s going to claim that you blackmailed Mosher Higley into giving you a home, into giving you an education, into making you a residuary legatee under his will.”

“And then what?” she asked.

“And then the jury will be so prejudiced against you that if there is any evidence whatever that you poisoned Higley they’ll return a verdict of first-degree murder.”

“So what do we do?”

“So we counter,” Mason said patiently, “by showing them that you didn’t blackmail Mosher Higley.”

She met his eyes steadily. “Has it ever occurred to you that the reason I haven’t tried to explain what happened is that the district attorney is right?”

Mason raised his eyebrows.

“I blackmailed him,” she said, “and I’m only sorry I didn’t blackmail him for more.”

Mason glanced around apprehensively to where the matron was standing at the far end of the room.

“Get that bitterness out of your voice,” he said.

She said, “Mosher Higley was a murderer. He murdered my father and because of what happened he sent my mother to her death.”

“What happened to the letter your mother left for you?”

“I burned it.”

“What was in it?” Mason asked.

She said, “My mother tried her best to explain to me what had happened, to explain the reason that I had been born out of wedlock, to tell me the awful handicap that she had wished on me. That was what she tried to tell me. She tried to explain. But in between the lines I found some clues that I kept thinking over.

“At the time my father was supposed to have killed himself, the affairs of the partnership were involved in a scandal over the construction of a big schoolhouse. Mosher Higley had manipulated things so that my father had the responsibility for that job, but actually the payoff had been made by Mosher Higley. My father was supposed to have committed suicide when he learned that my mother was pregnant and that his wife was going to subpoena my mother as a witness in a divorce action. My father didn’t commit suicide. Mosher Higley killed him when my father faced Mosher Higley with proof that Higley was the one who was responsible for the crooked deal on the schoolhouse job. Mosher made it look like suicide.”

“Go on,” Mason said dryly.

She said, “Mosher Higley didn’t know what was in the letter my mother had left for me. He did know she had left a letter with the bank to be delivered to me when I was eighteen. I found out he was desperately afraid of what might be in that letter. He wondered how much my mother knew. I ran a bluff. I told Mosher Higley there was evidence in that letter that would prove that he had killed my father, that he had manipulated the affairs of the partnership afterwards so that he had cheated the estate out of a fortune. I threatened to hire detectives to prove that he was a murderer, that he had taken money which rightfully should belong to me as my father’s daughter, even if I was illegitimate.”

“Keep talking,” Mason said.

“That’s all there was to it. He agreed that I was to come and live with him in his house, that he was to finish my education which had been pretty sketchy. Believe me, the world had been pretty rough to me. I was an orphan and a bastard and I took all the hard knocks. I wanted an education. After that I didn’t care what happened.”

“You hated Mosher Higley?”

“I hated his guts and he hated me. We maintained an outward semblance of affection because I was living there in the house with him and I had certain duties as sort of a sublimated housekeeper. Believe me, I paid for everything I received. But the point is, I received it. I made the best settlement I could. It wasn’t the sort of settlement I wanted but it was the only way I could go ahead and get an education.”

“Then when the district attorney intimates that you blackmailed Mosher Higley,” Mason said, “he—?”

“He’s telling the absolute truth,” Nadine Farr said.

“If only you had come to me when you opened your mother’s letter and had let me handle things as your attorney,” Mason groaned.

“You couldn’t have done any better than I did,” she interrupted. “Remember there wasn’t the faintest shred of evidence. All there was was a suspicion. I had to run a bluff. I was free to use blackmail. You couldn’t have gone that far.”

Mason was thoughtfully silent for a few moments, then he said, “Not blackmail. I’d have put detectives to work and obtained proof.”

“You couldn’t. He was too smart. He’d covered his trail too well. But I knew how to frighten him and I did it. It was all right, for a while.

“Then he gradually came to a realization that I’d been bluffing. I don’t know what tipped him off, but he knew. So when John and I fell in love he played his trump card. He said I must get out of John’s life forever. He said if I didn’t disappear of my own volition he would tell John’s family all about my illegitimacy and that I was an adventuress, a blackmailer.”

Mason digested the information.

“Now then,” she said, “how does all that affect my case?”

“It makes it look as if you could have killed him.”

“That’s exactly the way I did feel. You’ve been saying I mustn’t lie to my attorney. All right, now I’ve told you the truth.”

Mason pushed back his chair, nodded to the matron.

“All right,” she said, “I guess that gesture of yours answers any questions I may have as to how much chance I stand in front of a jury.”

Mason’s face was granite-hard and utterly expressionless as he left the visiting room and faced the reporters who were waiting for him in the corridor.

“Well,” Mason asked, facing the exploding flash bulbs, “what do you want?”

“We want Nadine’s story,” one of the reporters said.

Mason’s smile was frosty. “You know you won’t get that. That will come out in court and not before.”

“All right,” one of the reporters said, “tell us about the case. What’s the situation? What’s going to be the position of the defense?”

“The position of the defense,” Mason said slowly and deliberately, “is that my client has been crucified upon a cross of coincidence. And that, gentlemen, is all you’re going to get out of me.”