The Case of the Demure Defendant

Chapter Three

Promptly at nine-thirty the next morning, Della Street said to Perry Mason, “Dr. Denair is here for his appointment.”

“The girl with him?” Mason asked.

She nodded.

“How does she look, Della?”

Della Street hesitated for a moment, then said, “Good-looking.”

“Anything else?”

“Demure.”

“A negative personality?”

“Definitely not, but... oh, you know, she has good-looking legs but doesn’t show them; nice curves but doesn’t push them out or wiggle; beautiful eyes but she keeps her eyelids lowered; nice hands and they’re crossed on her lap. Her eyes are definitely interesting; they’re eloquent but soft-spoken, if you get what I mean. You probably won’t until you’ve seen her.”

Mason nodded, said, “I’ll go out and do the honors, Della.”

He walked out to the outer office, shook hands with Dr. Denair, said, “How are you this morning, Bert,” and was introduced to Nadine Farr.

The lawyer ushered them into his private office, saw that they were comfortably seated and said, “I suppose you wonder why you’re here, Miss Farr.”

She raised her lashes. For a moment eyes which Della Street had described as eloquent but soft-spoken, looked into Mason’s, then she lowered her eyelashes and said, “Dr. Denair told me I should come. It’s a part of his treatment, I guess.”

Dr. Denair cleared his throat. “It’s this way, Miss Farr, as your doctor I feel that you have something troubling you. As a doctor I can perhaps diagnose the nature of the trouble but I might not be able to cope with whatever the difficulty might be.

“Now Mr. Mason is a lawyer. He’s one of the best lawyers in this part of the country. I’ve ascertained that something is bothering you. If you’ll tell Mr. Mason what it is, perhaps he can help you.”

She looked up at him and shook her head in a perplexed manner. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m losing my appetite. I’m not sleeping well and... well, if Dr. Denair says something is bothering me I assume he must be right, but for the life of me I can’t tell you what it is.”

Mason regarded her in thoughtful appraisal.

“Perhaps,” Dr. Denair said, “I can tell Mr. Mason something that—”

“Not yet,” Mason interrupted sharply.

Dr. Denair looked at him questioningly.

Mason said, “We must have one thing definitely understood. If Miss Farr should tell me anything, I want it to be a privileged communication. She must ask me to be her attorney. She herself must tell me what it is that’s bothering her.”

Nadine Farr laughed nervously. “I’m sorry, Mr. Mason, there isn’t a thing I can think of — no reason why I should go to an attorney.”

Mason and Dr. Denair exchanged glances.

“Any emotional entanglements?” Mason asked.

“No,” she said, her eyes lowered.

“Are you,” Mason asked, “in love?”

Her breasts moved as she gave a deep sigh. Once more the soft-spoken, eloquent eyes were briefly revealed. “Yes,” she said, and then lowered her eyelids.

“And,” Mason asked, “you have perhaps been through some tragedy in connection with that love?”

Her eyes met his once more, and then shifted to Dr. Denair. She moved restlessly in the chair.

“Why not tell him, Nadine?” Dr. Denair asked.

She said, “I feel like a butterfly impaled on a pin with scientists studying me through a magnifying glass.”

“It’s for your own good,” Dr. Denair said kindly. “We’re trying to help you, Nadine.”

She took a deep breath, raised her eyes to Mason, and suddenly there was a transformation in her face. The demure personality seemed to fade. Her eyes flashed. Her nostrils dilated slightly with emotion. She said, “All right, I’m a butterfly! You people are dissecting me and classifying me, but I’m human! I have human emotions! I’m capable of intense feeling.

“How would you people feel if you were in love, if you loved someone and that someone loved you, and then another person who had a terrible, horrible grip on you told you that you must simply walk out of this man’s life, that you must vanish forever without leaving a trace, without ever communicating with the man you loved?”

“That,” Dr. Denair said, “is better. If you can release your pent-up emotions, Nadine, if you can tell us, and then perhaps if you can cry a little, it will relieve the emotional tension.”

“I’m not the crying kind,” she said. “I’ve taken it on the chin all my life. But you people who are so smug in your established positions, so damn secure, so assured of having all the good things out of life — well, just try putting yourself in my position.”

“Who told you that you’d have to go away, Nadine?”

She started to say something, then shook her head. After a moment she settled back in the chair, once more a demure, quiet young lady, self-effacing.

“Was it Mosher Higley?” Dr. Denair asked.

“Mosher Higley is dead.”

“I know he’s dead, but did he tell you that you had to disappear, that you had to go away and leave the man you loved?”

“One doesn’t speak ill of the dead.”

“Was he related to you?”

“Not really.”

“You called him your uncle?”

“Yes.”

“Did you love him?”

She hesitated for a moment, then said, “No.”

“Did you hate him?”

There was a long silence. Suddenly she looked up at Dr. Denair. “Why do you have to tear me to pieces in this way? I came to you for help. All that I wanted was to get some kind of a sleeping pill or something so I could sleep nights. I wanted something so I wouldn’t be so terribly jittery. You gave me this truth serum test and then told me I had to see a lawyer — why?”

Dr. Denair said kindly, “I’m going to tell you why, my dear. Now this is going to be something of an emotional strain. You’re going to have to steel yourself and, above all, you must remember that we’re trying to help you.”

“Don’t worry about the emotional strain,” she said, laughing bitterly. “I take an emotional strain every morning before breakfast. People have been pushing me around ever since I was no higher than the arm of this chair — and don’t think I have a persecution complex. If you knew the truth, if you knew what had happened, if you knew the things that... oh well, there’s no reason why I should tell you people my troubles.”

“But that’s exactly what we want, Nadine,” Dr. Denair said.

She looked at him, then seemed to retire within herself and close the door.

“Well?” Dr. Denair prompted after she had been silent for a few moments.

“What did you find out when you gave me the truth serum test?” she asked. “What did I talk about?”

“I’m going to tell you,” Dr. Denair said. “I’m going to play a tape recording of what took place. You may have some difficulty understanding just what you said because your voice at times was thick — like a person talking in her sleep.”

“I’d like to hear what I said,” she remarked, her face a mask.

Dr. Denair connected up the tape recording machine, started the motor running.

“Now please,” he said to Nadine Farr, “don’t say anything, don’t interrupt. Listen to all of this.”

“Very well,” she said.

The tape recorder gave the first preliminary sounds of contact, then Dr. Denair’s voice, coming through from the loud-speaker of the tape recorder, filled the room.

“What is your name?”

Mason glanced from the corner of his eye at Nadine. She was sitting perfectly motionless, her hands folded on her lap, lashes lowered, her face calm and without expression.

All four people in the office sat in silence. The spool of tape unwound slowly. The tape-recording machine, reproducing the voices with utmost fidelity, filled the room with sound. It was as though the people in the office were grouped around the couch where Nadine Farr was answering questions under the influence of the drug.

When Nadine Fan’s voice said simply, “I killed him,” three pairs of eyes turned toward the young woman who was seated in the big chair.

Her face didn’t change expression by so much as the flicker of an eyelash.

At length the tape-recorded interview came to a close. Dr. Denair got up and switched off the machine.

“Well?” he asked Nadine.

She met his eyes, started to say something, then stopped.

“Mr. Mason is a lawyer,” Dr. Denair said gently. “He wants to help you. Knowing you as I do, I feel that what you said may have been incorrect or that there very probably were extenuating circumstances.”

Her eyes remained fixed on Dr. Denair. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to try to help you, my dear.”

“Are you going to the police?”

Mason answered the question. “Not yet, Miss Farr. Dr. Denair consulted me. He asked me what he should do. I told him that he had no right as a doctor to conceal the commission of a serious crime, yet on the other hand you were his patient and it was his duty to protect you and to protect your confidences.”

“Isn’t that rather a contradictory statement?” she asked.

Mason smiled. “It might be so construed. We felt that we should institute an investigation before we did anything. And we thought that perhaps you could help us with that investigation. You see, Miss Farr, Dr. Denair is my client.”

She looked from one to the other, then abruptly got up out of the chair.

“You wish to say something?” Mason asked.

She shook her head.

“After all, my dear,” Dr. Denair said, “you can’t go around with this inner emotional tension. There are no drugs in the world that will cure you. You might be stupefied into insensibility, but there is only one medicine which will cure you, and that is to relieve yourself of this inner emotional strain.

“While you were under the influence of drugs you gave us a clue as to what it is that’s bothering you. Now perhaps if you’ll tell us the rest of it—”

She walked over to Dr. Denair, picked up his hand, looked pleadingly in his eyes. “Doctor,” she said, “could I have... could I have twenty-four hours to think it over? I—” And suddenly she began to cry.

Dr. Denair, on his feet, glanced meaningly at Mason and nodded. He slipped his arm around her shoulders, patted her reassuringly. “It’s all right, Nadine,” he said, “we’re your friends, and we’re only trying to help you. You’re carrying an emotional burden that no human being whose nervous system is as delicately balanced as yours can possibly hope to carry.”

She pushed herself away from him, grabbed her purse from the chair, opened it, took out a handkerchief, wiped her eyes, blew her nose, said, “If you only knew how I hate crybabies. I guess that’s the first time I’ve cried in... well, I don’t know how long.”

“Perhaps,” Dr. Denair said kindly, “that’s one of the troubles. You’ve tried to be too self-sufficient, Nadine. You’ve tried to fight the world.”

“The world has fought me,” she said calmly. “May I go now?”

Dr. Denair said, “I’m going too, Nadine. You may ride with me.”

“I don’t want to ride with you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want any more questions right now.”

She started toward the door, then suddenly came back to give Perry Mason her hand. “I know you think I’m ungrateful,” she said. “I’m not. I think you’re... you’re grand.”

She smiled at Della Street. “And thank you so much for the sympathy in your eyes, Miss Street. I’m glad I met you people. I’m sorry I can’t explain — not right now.”

She turned and with head held high walked out of the office.

Dr. Denair shrugged his shoulders.

Mason said, “In her quiet way, back of that demure personality, she is one hell of a fighter.”

“You can say that again,” Della Street said.

“What’s your opinion now, Bert?” Mason asked Dr. Denair. “Do you think she could commit murder?”

“I wish I knew,” Dr. Denair said. “I’m supposed to know something about psychiatry, but this is one girl who has me stumped.”

Mason indicated the tape recorder. “Well,” he said, “keep that tape recording in a safe place.”

“And in the meantime what’s my legal status?” Dr. Denair asked.

Perry Mason thought that over. “Technically,” he said, “you’re vulnerable. Practically, you’re in the clear as long as you have come to me, are following my advice and we’re investigating the case and... and one other thing.”

“And what’s that other thing?” Dr. Denair asked.

“That no one else finds out about what’s in that tape recording,” Mason said.