The Case of the Demure Defendant

Chapter Seven

Mason unlocked the door of his private office, picked up the telephone and said to the girl at the switchboard, “I’m back, Gertie, and I want you to call Della Street for me at the High-Tide Motel.”

“Yes, Mr. Mason, and you have someone out here who wants to see you, a woman who... well, she says it’s an emergency, something about this Nadine Farr case.”

“Come on in and tell me about her,” Mason said.

“Do you want Della first?”

“No, come in now. You can call Della afterward.”

A moment later Gertie stood in the doorway of the private office, her manner showing she was excited.

Gertie, a girl in her late twenties, inclined to put on weight with every chocolate sundae which she “simply couldn’t resist,” never failed to dramatize each incident which took place during the day. Long experience had taught Perry Mason and Della Street to discount her excitement.

She romanticized life and sex. In her more slender moments she was prone to indulge in tight sweaters while imprisoning herself in the tightest, firmest girdles that she could possibly wear. At such times she was happy. Then when the inevitable desire for sweets got the best of her curves, she would go to the other extreme, subsisting for two or three days on buttermilk and grapefruit juice, looking wan and weak, but fighting her avoirdupois with grim determination, only to surrender again as soon as she had partially achieved her objective.

“Gosh, Mr. Mason,” she said, “this woman seems to know all the answers. She’s born to the velvet. You get that feel about her and she’s been trying to tell me things about Nadine Farr. Are you interested in that case, Mr. Mason?”

“Very much,” Mason said smiling, “only I don’t think there’s going to be a case. What’s this woman’s name, Gertie?”

“Mrs. Jackson Newburn.”

“How old, Gertie?”

“Well, I’d say thirty-one or thirty-two. Della would probably say thirty-five. Della looks at their hands. I look at—”

“What’s her connection with the case?”

“She’s related to Mosher Higley, that is, she was related to him.”

“She told you what she wanted to see me about?”

“Well, she told me just enough to make me realize that it was important that she see you.”

“All right,” Mason said, “tell her I’ve been out, that I’ve just come in and that I’ll see her briefly.”

“And what about Della?”

“Telephone Della first, but don’t let anyone in the outer office hear whom you’re calling.”

Gertie looked at him reproachfully. “I never do, Mr. Mason. I use that device so that no matter how close they’re sitting they can’t hear.”

“That’s fine, Gertie. Call Della. And as soon as I’ve finished talking with her send Mrs. Newburn in.”

Gertie nodded, swirled into a rightabout-face and gently closed the door behind her.

A few moments later Mason’s phone tinkled and Mason, picking up the phone, heard Della Street’s voice at the other end of the line.

“How’s it coming, Chief?” she asked.

“Relax,” Mason said. “I think it’s all over.”

“How come?”

“Well,” Mason said, “the boys were pretty much upset. They went out to Twomby’s Lake to check up on things. They found that someone had beaten them to it. It didn’t take too much detective work to find out who that someone was. Then they located Arthur Felton, the boy who had recovered the bottle, learned from him that Mr. Mason had taken him to Hermann Korbel’s laboratory. So they dashed out there and grabbed the bottle before Korbel had finished his experiments. Then they started looking for me on the ground of tampering with evidence, compounding a felony, being an accessory after the fact and all the rest.”

“Chief,” Della Street said, her voice sharp with apprehension, “what did they—?”

“Relax,” Mason told her, laughing. “Right in the middle of their dramatic attempt to put me on the spot I telephoned Korbel. Korbel had managed to save scrapings from one of the tablets — a rather minute amount but still sufficient for his purpose. He had learned the nature of the pills just a few minutes before I phoned.”

“And what were the pills — cyanide?”

“The pills,” Mason said, “were the sugar substitute they were supposed to be. You can tell Nadine Farr to go about her business. She can get that load off her mind and off her conscience. Drop her wherever she wants to go and then drive back to the office.”

“Well, for pity’s sake!” Della Street said. “You mean that all of those pills were this sugar substitute?”

“That’s right, Della. The tests Korbel used were so sensitive that even if some of the other pills had been cyanide there would have been enough in his sample to show.

“Evidently someone in the house found this partially filled bottle of the sugar substitute, knew where Nadine kept the stuff and simply put this bottle in with the other. Is she there?”

“Yes.”

“Tell her, and then see if she has any questions.”

Mason held the phone, could hear the girls talking rapidly in tones of great excitement, then Della Street said, “Nadine wants me to ask you whatever became of the cyanide tablets she had in her room if those other tablets were the sugar substitute.”

Mason, radiating good nature, said, “Tell her I’m a lawyer, not a seer. She’d better go back and search her room again. It doesn’t make much difference where those tablets are. The big point is that the tablets she put in the chocolate were just what they were supposed to be and Mosher Higley died a natural death.

“Tell her she can go home. I haven’t time to talk with her now. Get on in here, Della, and I’ll buy you a dinner.”

Mason hung up the telephone, looked at the door to the outer office, waiting expectantly.

Within a few seconds Gertie, enjoying her role of taking Della Street’s place, escorted Mrs. Newburn into the office.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Newburn,” Mason said, smiling. “Come in and sit down.”

“Can I do anything else?” Gertie asked. “You want any notes taken or any—?”

“No, that’s all right,” Mason said.

“One of the other girls can watch the switchboard—”

Mason shook his head firmly.

Gertie, with disappointment in her eyes, swung back to her duties at the switchboard, and Mrs. Newburn came forward to extend her hand to Perry Mason.

“I know it was presumptuous of me to try to see you without making an appointment,” she said, “but the nature of my business was so confidential and so urgent that I felt you’d make an exception in my case.”

“Quite all right,” Mason said. “You talked things over with the girl at the switchboard and gave her an idea of what your business was — that always helps. It’s these people who are mysterious and refuse even to outline the general nature of their business who upset a day’s work. Now sit down and tell me just what you know about the Farr case.”

“I don’t know much about the Farr case but I know a lot about Nadine Farr.”

“All right, let’s have it,” Mason said, as Mrs. Newburn seated herself in the comfortable chair reserved for clients, and regarded Mason with steady, appraising eyes.

She was well-tailored, well-groomed, and her voice had the well-modulated timbre which one customarily associates with good breeding.

“I think first,” she said, “I should introduce myself. I am a niece of Mosher Higley.”

“You’re married?”

“Yes. My husband is in the oil business.”

“And you’ve been acquainted with Nadine Farr for how long?”

“A little over two years.”

“What is it you wish to tell me about her?”

She said, “Mr. Mason, I don’t want you to have the wool pulled over your eyes. Nadine is very, very adept at putting on an act, an act of sweet, cherubic innocence. She looks at you with wide-eyed sincerity, and all the time that little minx is wondering just how far she can twist you around her finger, and, believe me, she certainly means to twist you right around her finger. Everything that young woman does, every impulse she has is distinctly, decidedly, cold-bloodedly selfish.

“Now I understand that she’s been trying for one reason or another to make it appear that there was something sinister about the death of Uncle Mosher. There wasn’t. Uncle Mosher died of purely natural causes. He had a coronary thrombosis. The attending physician knows it, and that’s all there was to it.”

“Perhaps,” Mason said, “you misunderstood what Nadine was trying to do.”

“That’s entirely possible, Mr. Mason. Nadine hasn’t confided in me. She’s mysterious, secretive and furtive. She’ll twist every man in the world right around her fingers. She knows she can’t do it with alert women so she doesn’t try so hard with them. Occasionally you can catch her with her real character showing, if you’re a woman. With a man it’s virtually impossible. No matter what you do, she always resorts to that air of sweet innocence. She’ll look up helplessly, put herself entirely in your hands and somehow — and heaven knows how she does it with her background — appear shy and naive.

“I’m being catty, Mr. Mason. I’m not even going to try not to be. I’ll become more catty if I have to. I’ll claw and bite and I’ll fight.”

“What are you going to fight over?” Mason asked. “Are you by any chance feeling that your husband is straying off the reservation?”

Mrs. Newburn’s lips tightened. “Jackson,” she said, “like every other man I know, has completely fallen for her line. He thinks she’s just a sweet, innocent little girl who probably knows the facts of life but hasn’t applied them. He thinks that I’m persecuting her, that I’m jealous, that—”

“Is there anything to be jealous about?” Mason interrupted.

“I wish I knew,” she said. “Jackson is a male. He’s human. He has the predatory impulses which are part of the normal male temperament.

“Nadine doesn’t rely on the obvious come-hither approach. She uses the helpless, feminine technique, but, believe me, if she saw that anything, and I mean literally anything, was necessary to gain her ends she would only hesitate long enough to make it appear that her sweet innocence was being overcome by forces over which she had absolutely no control.

“And while I love Jackson, and respect him, if you’ll show me any normal male who wouldn’t fall for that line of approach, I’ll show you a man that I wouldn’t care to be married to. So there you are.

“Perhaps I am jealous. How do I know? However, that’s far afield from what I came to tell you.”

“All right,” Mason said. “What did you want to tell me?”

“Nadine called Mosher Higley her Uncle Mosher. Actually he wasn’t related to her. Uncle Mosher knew something about her that enabled him to appraise her true character. In any event, Mosher Higley was one man she couldn’t twist around her finger. He was the one man that I think she really and truly feared.”

“Why did she fear him?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Mason, that I’d give a pretty penny to find out. Uncle Mosher had something on her.”

“In what way?”

“Well — she was afraid of him, but she respected him. She never tried to wheedle him. She didn’t use this helpless innocence on him. She didn’t use anything. She just did what he told her to.”

Mason said, “You came here for some specific purpose. Why not tell me what it is?”

“I’m trying to tell you.”

Mason smiled and shook his head. “How did you happen to come here?”

“Because I wanted you to understand certain things.”

“But how did you happen to come here, to this office? How did you know I was connected with the case?”

“I was told.”

“By whom?”

“Cap’n Hugo.”

“Who’s he?”

“He was my uncle’s cook, housekeeper, chauffeur, handy man, chore boy and general factotum.”

“And what did he tell you?”

“He said Nadine had gone to a doctor who had given her a truth serum test. He said the doctor had taken down everything she had said on the tape and that she had said she had murdered Uncle Mosher.”

“And how did this Captain Hugo know that?”

“John had told him.”

“And who is John?”

“Why, John Avington Locke, the young man Nadine is trying to throw her hooks into.”

Mason smiled. “Her intentions, then, are honorable.”

“They’re permanent,” Mrs. Newburn said.

“And how did John Avington Locke know of this?”

“Nadine told him. The doctor, you know, played this tape recording back to her.”

“I see. So she told John, John told Hugo, Hugo told you.”

“Yes.”

“That was about the tape recording. But how did you know about me?”

“I learned that through the police.”

“Now,” Mason said, “we’re getting somewhere. How did it happen that you were discussing the matter with the police?”

“The police came to our house.”

“To interview you and your husband?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you tell them?”

“We answered questions.”

“And what were the questions?”

“They wanted to know all about family affairs, about Nadine Farr, and about Uncle Mosher’s death, and then after they had asked questions they told us that Nadine had gone to you and that you had gone to Twomby’s Lake and recovered the poison.”

“And then what did you tell them?”

“Then I was too completely flabbergasted to tell them anything.”

“How long ago was this?”

“I jumped in my car and came here the minute the police left.”

“Why?”

“Because, Mr. Mason, you’re being victimized. You’re... well, I gathered from the police that you were going to try to protect Nadine. She isn’t worth it. This whole thing is just another one of her schemes.”

“You think she murdered Mosher Higley?”

Mrs. Newburn laughed. “That’s what I’m trying to clear up for you. No one murdered him. Uncle Mosher died a natural death. I’m trying to let you see what’s happening, Mr. Mason.”

“Then why would Nadine have tried to create the impression that she killed your uncle — if we are to take the police version and assume that she did try to create that impression?”

“She did that very deliberately,” Mrs. Newburn said, “and she did it for a definite purpose.”

“What was the purpose?” Mason asked.

“Uncle Mosher had property valued at about seventy-five thousand dollars. He left a will which showed that he didn’t have the faintest idea of the real value of his property. Or perhaps it was his way of taking a parting slap at Nadine.”

“Tell me about the will,” Mason said.

“It provided that I was to receive the big two-story house where he lived, that I was to have the car, the furniture and all of that, but that Nadine Farr could live in the house until she had finished her schooling.

“Then he gave some cash bequests to my husband, to me, and to a college. He directed his executor to keep his factotum, Cap’n Hugo, on at half-salary for a reasonable period not to exceed four months. He provided that Nadine’s expenses were to be paid until she finished the current school year, and then he left all the rest, residue and remainder of his property to Nadine.

“The joke of it is that he left about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of bequests and the most that can be secured from selling his property at the moment would be about seventy-five thousand dollars.”

“So he really left Nadine with something less than nothing,” Mason said.

“That’s exactly it. I think it goes back to some sort of an arrangement he had somewhere with his partner in business. At one time Mosher Higley was quite wealthy and I think there had been a definite arrangement that he was to leave a will by which he had to make certain provisions for Nadine.”

“He disliked Nadine?”

“I won’t say that. He understood her.”

“All right, go ahead. You still haven’t told me about Nadine’s motive.”

“Well,” she said, “Nadine is very, very clever and very, very scheming. She understands the business implications of the will. My uncle owned a large acreage of Wyoming land which has at the present time a low market value.

“However, Standard Oil is going to put down a really deep test well on some adjoining property. If that well should come in, the property in the estate would be worth a lot more than the bequests in the will.

“Then Nadine would have the laugh on us. She’d inherit property Uncle Mosher never really wanted her to have. You see, leaving her everything that might be left over... well, it’s a peculiar situation.”

“I see,” Mason said, his eyes twinkling.

“So,” Mrs. Newburn went on, “anything she can do to keep the estate from being closed will be all to the good for her. She’s even willing to hatch up a murder case which she knows she can beat so she can keep the estate in probate.”

“You mean she’d confess to a purely fictitious murder?” Mason asked.

“Why not? What harm would it do? They couldn’t touch her, particularly if she pretended she was drugged at the time of the confession.”

“You think she’d do anything like that?”

“Of course she would. She’s doing it.”

“And all this elaborate pattern of emotional upset was simply an excuse to get the probate delayed?”

“Of course. Can’t you see what she’s doing? She wants to get the body of Uncle Mosher exhumed. She wants delay, delay, delay. And all the time she’s gambling on that oil well coming in — and she’s gambling with our money.”

“I thought it was in the estate.”

“Well, you can see what I mean.”

“Well,” Mason told her, “you may go home and quit worrying. The tablets that Nadine gave Mosher Higley were exactly what she thought they were when she put them in the chocolate — a sugar substitute.”

Mrs. Newburn’s face showed startled, incredulous surprise.

“So,” Mason said, getting to his feet, “your uncle died a natural death, and you can quit worrying.”

“But I still don’t understand. I—”

Mason stood looking gravely down at her. “I’m quite certain you don’t,” he said. “And if it’s going to be to Nadine Fair’s advantage to delay the closing of the estate and the sale of the Wyoming property until oil can be discovered, I’m in a position to assure you the statements you have made to me this afternoon will cause the probate judge to block any hurried sale of the property.”

Mrs. Newburn got up from her chair, started to say something, changed her mind, walked uncertainly toward the door, turned back and said, “Well, if Uncle Mosher left any oil property, we’re entitled to it. I suppose you feel I’m a cat, Mr. Mason.”

“I would say you had a dietary deficiency,” Mason said, smiling frostily.

“How come?”

“You don’t eat enough of the foods which generate the milk of human kindness.”

Suddenly angry, she glared at him. “Well, you just wait until you’ve had a little more experience with that baby-faced bitch and... well, see what you think then!” she spat

She flounced out of the door.