The Case of the Duplicate Daughter

Chapter Eight

Perry Mason sat in the counsel room at the county jail and looked across at Carter Gilman as the latter entered the room.

“All right, Gilman,” Mason said. “What seems to be the trouble?”

“Mr. Mason, I don’t know. I swear I don’t.”

“Save the swearing until you get in front of a jury,” Mason said. “Then you’ll have to be sworn. Now, tell me what happened.”

“I had been in Las Vegas and came in on an early plane. I was supposed to be at the office this morning, but I thought I’d go to the house first. However, I never got there. Police were waiting at the airport and they picked me up and said they wanted to question me.”

“What about?”

“About the death of Vera Martel.”

“You know she’s dead, then?”

“Oh, yes. They told me that.”

“And what did you tell them?”

“I told them that... well, I finally admitted that I had been to see you about Vera Martel.”

“Oh, you did, did you? And why did you tell them you had been to see me?”

“Because I thought she was trying to blackmail some member of the family.”

“Now you say some member of the family,” Mason said. “Originally you told me she was trying to blackmail your wife.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking things over.”

“All right,” Mason said, “go on. What else?”

“Well, they asked me about my workshop and what kind of woods I’d been working with and where I bought my woods, and they asked me what I’d been doing in Las Vegas.”

“What were you doing?”

“Gambling.”

“Win anything?”

“No.”

“How much did you lose?”

“I guess I just about broke even.”

“Rather an uneventful trip,” Mason said.

“Well, I had my ups and downs.”

“Did they ask you when you first learned Vera Martel was trying to blackmail some member of the family?”

“Oh, yes. They asked me everything.”

“And what did you tell them in answer to that question?”

“I told them that I had seen Miss Martel’s car parked near my office on two occasions and near my house once. I also said a Miss Martel had called the house a couple of times.”

“Those were times when you were home alone?”

“Yes.”

“And you asked Vera Martel for her name?”

“She gave her name and said for Mrs. Gilman to call as soon as she came in.”

“And you gave your wife those messages?” Mason asked.

Gilman hesitated.

“Now look,” Mason said, “let’s quit beating around the bush. I don’t think Vera Martel was ever inside your house, I don’t think she ever called your wife. I’m pretty certain that you never delivered any messages to your wife saying that she had called and that your wife will so tell the police.

“Now, what happened is that Roger Calhoun hired Vera Martel because he had heard there was some sort of a scandal connected with Glamis and he wanted to find out what it was.

“Vera Martel dug up something and then she decided to play it smart. She started playing both ends against the middle. She wanted to know how much Roger Calhoun was willing to pay to get the information and how much you were willing to pay not to have her give it to Calhoun.

“So,” Mason went on, “yesterday morning you had a date with Vera Martel. She was to meet you in your workroom. You were to pay her ten thousand dollars. She came a little earlier than you expected and you wanted to get away from Muriell’s field of vision, so, despite the fact you’d eaten a full breakfast, you sent Muriell back to the kitchen to do some more cooking—”

“Good heavens! How do you know all this?” Gilman interrupted.

“I make it my business to know things,” Mason said. “You got up and left the table. You went out to the workshop. Vera Martel took the ten thousand dollars and then told you she wanted some additional money. You lost your temper and flew at her in a rage. She may have pulled a knife or a gun. You choked her and then, frightened to death at what had happened, stuffed her body in the trunk of your car, drove out to where you could hide the body. Then you went back and got Vera Martel’s car where it had been parked near your place, and...”

Gilman was shaking his head emphatically.

“Just listen for a while,” Mason said. “You got her car, drove out on Mulholland Drive, put her body in the car, ran the car over the grade.

“Then you decided you’d start building an alibi for yourself. You had an appointment with me at eleven thirty. You did your best to try and make it, but you had been doing a lot. You were a few minutes late.

“So you told me this story about Vera Martel and about what you wanted me to do, knowing all the time that Vera Martel was dead. Then you went out and started building your alibi. You arranged to have someone with you all the time. You didn’t know just when Vera Martel’s body would be discovered, but you knew that the longer you could postpone discovery the better chance you had.

“So you decided to trap me and use me as a witness to show that Vera Martel had been alive some time after she was actually murdered. So you fixed up a message with your secretary about your fingerprints, and had your secretary, whom you felt you could trust, call me from a telephone pay station at Graystone 9-3535 — that’s only a few blocks from your office. You had your secretary call me from that station while you were standing beside her. You had her try to disguise her voice by talking rapidly and say that she was Vera Martel, that you had been to see me, that you had given me the name of Edward Carter, that actually you were Carter Gilman, that you were a fool, that I was to ring you at that number and give you a message about fingerprints.

“So I rang you up at that number. I gave you that message and you pretended to be tremendously impressed by it and very frightened. You hesitated and you wanted to know how in the world Vera Martel could have known you were there unless you were being shadowed. Then, after you had put on a pretty good act, you hung up and your secretary called the office to see if you had come in yet. You dashed back to whatever place it was where you were building an alibi, probably a conference with some banker since that pay station is within three blocks of a branch bank where you do business.

“Later on, you went to Las Vegas. The records of the airplane company will show what plane you took. Once in Las Vegas you didn’t need to be quite so careful. Now, I don’t know what you went there for, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if it wasn’t to try and get into the office of Vera Martel to look for incriminating documents.

“That’s generally the plan you had worked out. By following it, you’ve bought yourself a one-way ticket to the gas chamber. Your secretary is loyal and she’d do just about anything you asked her, but when she finds out that she’s given a choice of being an accessory after the fact in a murder or telling the police the truth, she’ll tell the truth. They’re probably grilling her right now.

“If you’d called me as soon as it happened and had given me the facts, I might have been able to do something to help you. We might at least have made it look like manslaughter or second-degree murder. But now, with all this elaborate skulduggery you’ve worked out, you’ve made the whole thing appear to be premeditated murder and they’re going to get a verdict of first-degree murder.”

Mason quit talking and let his eyes bore into Gilman’s panic-stricken eyes.

“Well?” Mason asked at length.

Gilman shook his head.

“All right,” Mason said, “What’s the truth?”

“I’ll tell it to you,” Gilman said, “but I won’t tell it to any other living soul. I won’t go on the witness stand. I won’t even admit it if you should ask me.”

“All right,” Mason said. “Go on, tell me what happened.”

“I’m... I’m protecting someone; someone I love very much.”

“Who?” Mason asked.

Gilman shook his head.

“Who?” Mason asked.

“All right,” Gilman blurted, “I’m protecting a member of my family.”

“That’s a little better,” Mason said. “Now perhaps we can do something. Tell me what happened.”

“I was eating breakfast,” Gilman said. “I knew that Vera Martel was trying to find out something about the family.”

“How did you know that?”

“I’ll come to that in a minute.”

“All right,” Mason said. “What happened at breakfast?”

“I saw Vera Martel hurry down the driveway and enter Nancy’s darkroom.”

“Go on,” Mason said.

“I was absolutely thunderstruck,” Gilman said, “to think that she would come to my house. I knew then that the situation was very desperate, that there was something in the nature of a pay-off that was taking place.

“I intended to go down the driveway and have a showdown with Vera Martel.

“Now, this is important, Mr. Mason, and you must remember it. In order to keep from arousing Muriell’s suspicions I didn’t dare to sit there just looking out the window. I had to be pretending to read my paper, so I can’t swear to exactly what happened. I was looking at the paper part of the time.”

“Go on.”

“I got Muriell out in the kitchen cooking and I got up quietly from the table, dropped the paper on the floor and was about to tiptoe out of the front door when I looked out of the window and saw...”

“Yes,” Mason said.

“I saw a member of my family running from the workshop with a face that was indicative of panic.”

“Who was it?” Mason asked.

Gilman shook his head. “I’ll never tell even you that, Mason, because I know that if you take my case you’re going to try to save my bacon, and as an ethical lawyer you’ll save it at the expense of anyone whom you think is guilty.”

“All right,” Mason said, “we’ll let it go at that for a while. You saw a member of your family coming out of the workshop. So then what happened?”

“Then I hurried out of the front door. I ran on tiptoe along the cement driveway. I opened the door to the darkroom and hurried across the darkroom to the door to the workshop. I opened that and at what I saw nearly fainted.”

“What did you see?”

“There was a pool of crimson on the floor which at first I took to be blood. There was a broken chair. There was money all over the floor of the workshop — hundred-dollar bills just scattered everywhere.”

“All right, go on,” Mason said. “What did you do?”

“I dropped my napkin, I guess. I just stood there. Then I saw that the pool of red I had thought was blood was actually red enamel which was leaking from the loose cap of a can of red enamel which had been knocked off the workbench. I went over and picked up the can and put it back on the shelf right side up. Then I realized what must have happened.”

“What must have happened?” Mason asked.

“This member of my family had gone out with a lot of money in hundred-dollar bills to pay for blackmail and... well, Vera Martel had raised the ante and there had been violence.”

“So what did you do? Did you ask this member of the family about it?”

“I did not,” Gilman said. “I ran and jumped in my car and started the motor and started looking for Vera Martel. I knew she couldn’t have gone far. I circled the block, then I cruised around the various streets and I couldn’t find her, but I did find her car parked within a half a block of the house.”

“How did you know it was her car?”

“It had a Nevada license on it.”

“How did you know it was her car?” Mason asked.

“It... all right, I’ll tell you the rest of it. Roger Calhoun did hire Vera Martel to find out something about a scandal in the family. My secretary, Matilda Norman, who has been with me for some time and is intensely loyal, found out about it from Roger’s secretary when a few words came in over the intercom before Calhoun realized it was open. For your information, Roger Calhoun’s secretary, Miss Colfax, hates his guts, but she has to play up to him because she’s drawing about twice the ordinary salary. However, she found out enough to know that Roger had Vera Martel in there and was going to pay her money to find out something about the family and she knew that Vera Martel came from Nevada.”

“So what?”

“So she came and told Matilda Norman, and Tillie told me.”

“And you,” Mason asked, “busted in on Calhoun and Vera Martel and asked him what the hell he thought he was doing?”

“That’s what I should have done,” Gilman said. “I’m afraid I did the wrong thing.”

“What did you do?”

“I wanted to find out more about what was going on, so I went down to the parking lot and looked around for cars with a Nevada license. I found one and I really gave it the works. I found keys in a key container in the lock and looked in the key container and found an identifying tag of Vera Martel with a Las Vegas address.”

“Go on,” Mason said.

“There was some modeling clay in my car. I went over to it, took out the clay and made an impression of the keys in the key container.”

“What did you do that for?” Mason asked.

“I simply don’t know,” Gilman said. “I just wanted to find out everything I could. I was in a panic at the idea that some scandal might be uncovered in connection with my family.

“I’ve known for a long time that there might have been something a little irregular — that is, a little premature about the birth of Glamis, but... that wouldn’t have been enough. It had to be something in addition to that, and I wanted to find out what it was.”

“So you got the idea that while Vera Martel was available you’d make duplicate keys and go over and search her office?”

Gilman hesitated a moment, then nodded.

“You certainly have stuck your neck in a noose,” Mason said. “Is that what you were doing last night?”

“Yes.”

“What did you find?”

“I found that somebody had beat me to it,” Gilman blurted. “The office was a wreck. Papers were scattered all over the floor. You couldn’t find anything in the filing case in any kind of order. All of the papers had been mixed up. Someone had pulled everything out and just thrown them helter-skelter on the floor.”

“Did you have sense enough to wear gloves?” Mason asked.

The look of dismay on Gilman’s face was Mason’s answer.

“All right,” Mason said. “You probably left fingerprints all over the place. You’ve given them the most perfect first-degree murder case Hamilton Burger ever had. There’s only one peculiar thing about all this and that is that I am halfway inclined to believe you... Now, what did you do when you finished cruising around yesterday morning looking for Vera Martel? You say you found her car parked within half a block of your place. What did you do with your car?”

“I drove to the place where I usually take the bus and parked my car on the side street.”

“That’s how far from your house?”

“About four blocks.”

“All right. You left the car there. Then what did you do?”

“I didn’t know what to do, Mr. Mason. I was in a daze. I took a bus for the office, but I never went there. I walked around for some time, then I decided to go home and have a showdown with my family. So I got on the bus and went back almost to my house, and then suddenly realized that I had that appointment with you and that I had better go and see you, that I could dump the whole thing in your lap. So I got off the bus, caught another bus back and came up to your office to keep my appointment.

“Now, you’re wrong about me having Matilda Norman ring you up to make you think that Vera Martel was alive at that time. I was afraid that you might be working a little too leisurely. I wanted to give you a challenge. I knew that if Vera Martel made it seem she was outwitting you, you’d get on the job and do something about it. So I fixed up this scheme with my secretary... but how in the world you found out who it was calling is more than I’ll ever know.”

Mason said, “There’s no time for you to ask me questions. I’m asking you questions. You try to answer them. There were three people beside yourself in that house — Muriell, your wife and Glamis. Since Muriell was up and cooking the breakfast she could well be the one you saw running out of the workshop. That’s rather an interesting possibility.”

“Actually, there were four people beside myself in the house,” Gilman said.

“Who was the fourth?”

“A young man from up in the northern part of the state somewhere. Hartley Elliott, a rather personable young chap, a manufacturers’ agent.”

“What about him?”

“He has been going with Glamis and he escorted her home at some time around two or thee o’clock in the morning... The way young people do things these days really gets me.”

“Go on,” Mason said.

“Well, as I get the story now, he parked his car and went up and sat on the porch with Glamis for a while and he left the ignition on in the car. When he came back to turn the ignition key into the starting position, the battery simply refused to take hold, so Glamis suggested that he come on up and spend the night in one of the guest rooms.”

“How many guest rooms?”

“Two.”

“Where are they?”

“Upstairs, on the north side. The guest room that he occupied was directly over the dining room. As a matter of fact, I heard him moving around up there and that tended to confuse me. I didn’t know that he had spent the night there... not until later.”

“How much later?”

“Last night, when I called Muriell from Las Vegas. Muriell was very much concerned about me and I could see that she was curious about me... Well, we talked for some little time on the telephone and she told me about Hartley Elliott staying there overnight.”

“You paid for the call?” Mason asked.

“No, I didn’t. I called collect.”

“From Las Vegas?”

“Yes. I asked for Muriell and told the operator to reverse the charges.”

“So, in case they were needing any more clues,” Mason said, “they have a long-distance call to help out.”

Gilman said, “Mr. Mason, if I have to, I’ll plead guilty. You can make some sort of a deal with the prosecutor by which I can plead guilty to manslaughter, and then, what with my position and background, I can get out in a year or two.”

Mason said, “You listen to me. I’ll tell you what you can do and what you can’t do when the time comes. In the meantime, you don’t say one single word to anybody about pleading guilty to anything. You just keep your mouth completely, entirely shut. You tell everybody that your attorney has given you instructions not to discuss the case in any way, not to discuss your family, not to discuss your background, not to discuss your business. Now then, I want to know one thing. Did you kill her?”

“Mr. Mason, honestly I did not.”

“But you felt she probably had been killed, and you are morally certain that someone in your family did kill her?”

“Yes.”

“Was it Muriell?”

“I am not going to answer.”

“Was it Glamis?”

“I won’t be cross-examined.”

“Was it your wife?”

“I’ve told you, Mr. Mason, that I am not going to ever tell anybody. That name will never pass my lips as long as I’m alive.”

“Was it Hartley Elliott?”

“Heavens, no. I wouldn’t take a rap simply to protect him.”

“Well,” Mason said, “you’re either a devoted husband, father and step-father, or else you’re a damn good actor. And right at the moment I don’t know which, but I intend to find out.

“Now, you sit tight, and under no circumstances discuss the case with anyone.”

“Where are you going now?”

“I’m going out to your house,” Mason said. “I’m going to talk with the various members of the family, and while I’m talking with them I’m going to try to make up my mind whether any one of them is lying, and, if so, which one it is. And if none of them are lying I’ll feel pretty certain that you murdered Vera Martel out in your workshop and have concocted a story that is designed to arouse my sympathy and cause me to use my best efforts in softening up the district attorney so you can, as they say in crook parlance, cop a plea.”

And Mason turned, signaling to the guard that the interview was over.