The Case of the Demure Defendant

Chapter Seventeen

The adjournment of court left the audience in a state of confusion which, as one newspaper subsequently stated, “broke all records for pandemonium even in a Perry Mason case.”

Hamilton Burger, dazed, chagrined and angry, pushed his way from the courtroom. Jackson Newburn and his wife, in custody, were escorted toward the jail, Jackson Newburn begging his wife to tell the truth. Sue Newburn, tight-lipped and angry, was heard to say, “You weak-kneed bounder! You welsher! You double-crossing little rat. You’ll never get another cent of my money as long as you live,” and Newburn, properly humble but still conscious of the main issue, said, “Honey, you haven’t any money, and the hell of it is you aren’t going to have any.”

Della Street and Paul Drake huddled around Mason and the defendant, congratulating them. Nadine Farr, laughing and crying by turns, was completely hysterical.

A policewoman said, “I’m sorry but I’m going to have to keep her in custody. The Court didn’t formally release the defendant as yet.”

Mason patted Nadine on the back. “Everything’s okay now, Nadine. Just relax.”

She nodded, cried, wiped the tears away, started to laugh, then impulsively threw her arms around Mason, drew herself close up against him and kissed him.

Newspaper photographers, watching for some catchy bit of action, shot off a whole series of flash bulbs.

One photographer who had missed out said, “Would you mind doing that again, miss? I didn’t get it.”

“Not at all,” she said, and promptly accommodated him.

The policewoman, smiling indulgently, waited until the photograph had been taken, then led Nadine away.

“Well,” asked Paul Drake, “what do you make of it now? What’s Hamilton Burger going to do?”

“Lord knows,” Mason said. “But the interesting thing is that ninety-nine chances out of a hundred he’s going to do the wrong thing.”

“In what way?”

“He’s going to try to prosecute Sue Newburn for murder.”

“Well?”

“And this time,” Mason said, “he’s got no confession. He can’t prove the corpus delicti, he can’t prove that Mosher Higley died from cyanide of potassium poisoning, and he can’t prove how it was administered.”

“Of course Jackson Newburn’s testimony will—”

Mason chuckled.

“What’s the matter?” Drake asked.

“Jackson Newburn’s testimony won’t be admissible,” Mason said. “A husband can’t testify against his wife in a proceeding of that sort unless the wife consents. So now we can enjoy the spectacle of Hamilton Burger, after having been repeatedly described in the papers as ‘beaming,’ running around in a hopeless trap like a puppy chasing his tail and not being able to catch it.”

“But do you mean to say she can get away with deliberate murder without being caught?” Drake asked.

“Who said she committed deliberate murder?”

“Well, didn’t she?”

“You may have overlooked the significant thing about the testimony Newburn gave,” Mason said.

“I thought I got it all.”

“You missed the significant part.”

“What was that?”

“Remember,” Mason said, “that when John Locke went out to the house to try and get the cyanide pills, he sent Cap’n Hugo to Nadine’s bedroom to get the bottle. Cap’n Hugo brought it to him. He gave it to John Locke. There were four tablets short. It has never been disclosed what happened to those four tablets.”

“Good heavens, Chief,” Della Street said, “you don’t for a moment suppose that Nadine Fair really did poison him and—”

“You forget that Nadine Farr was interrogated under truth serum,” Mason said. “She was sufficiently drugged so that Dr. Denair got a good reaction. She told the story as she knows it.”

“But that bottle of cyanide — why, Chief, according to what John Locke says, that bottle of cyanide, all except four tablets, must have been out of the house by the time Nadine mixed that chocolate.”

“That’s right,” Mason said. “But remember that four tablets were missing.”

“Then her story was true. She did take that bottle of chemical sweetening—”

“That bottle of chemical sweetening,” Mason said, “was thrown in the lake. That’s the bottle that was recovered, the one that Hamilton Burger had as Exhibit B. That’s the one with the shot in it from the shotgun shell. That really was chemical sweetening.”

“But then,” Paul Drake asked, “how did Mosher Higley die?”

“There’s one other alternative,” Mason said, “and I think you have all overlooked the significant thing in Newburn’s testimony which was to the effect that when his wife slipped out toward the dining room, there was no one in sight, that she couldn’t find Nadine or Cap’n Hugo, that the double boiler containing the chocolate was on the stove, all melted, and—”

“You mean that she really did put the cyanide in at that time?”

Mason shook his head and said, “At that time Nadine must have been out to market, but what about Cap’n Hugo?”

“What about him?”

“He told us he was in the dining room all the time, washing windows.”

“Jackson Newburn didn’t see him. Apparently, Sue Newburn didn’t see him. Cap’n Hugo was the one John Locke sent after the bottle of cyanide. When he produced the bottle there were four tablets short.

“Cap’n Hugo felt very sympathetic toward Nadine Farr. He didn’t like the way Mosher Higley was treating her. He’d been with Mosher Higley for many years. He undoubtedly knew all about Rose Farr, all about the scandal, all about the death of Higley’s partner. Who can say otherwise than that Cap’n Hugo decided things had gone about far enough. It was time for him to retire to that little shack by the sea where he could get some good fishing, and time for Nadine to quit being pushed around.”

Paul Drake looked at Mason with consternation. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “When you stop to figure it out, it all fits in, it all clicks. Good Lord, Perry, what are you going to do? Are you going to tip Hamilton Burger off so he can grab Cap’n Hugo before he gets out?”

Mason said, “We’ll let Hamilton Burger paddle his own canoe for a while, Paul. After all, he wouldn’t welcome our help — at least, at the present time.

“After he realizes the legal problem of proof he’s up against, I might have a little chat with him — or perhaps you’d better, Paul. He might be less resentful if the information came from you.

“So if you’ll just hang around, Paul, I think at the proper time you can very tactfully place Burger under obligation to you — but leave me out of it.”

It took a good deal to bring expression to Paul Drake’s ordinarily impassive face, but this time his eyes were wide with surprise and a dawning comprehension.

“I’ll be damned!” he repeated slowly.