The Case of the Fabulous Fake

15

Judge Charles Jerome Elliott looked down from the bench and said, “This is the time fixed for the preliminary hearing in the case of People versus Diana Douglas, charged with the murder of one Moray Cassel. The defendant is in court and is represented by counsel?”

Mason arose. “I am representing the defendant, if the Court please.”

Judge Elliott nodded. “And the prosecution?” he asked.

Ralph Gurlock Floyd arose. “I am the trial deputy who will handle the prosecution, Your Honor.”

“Very well,” Judge Elliott said. “Now, I want to make a statement to both counsel. I am well aware of the fact that in the past counsel for the defense has made spectacular courtroom scenes in connection with preliminary hearings. I don’t approve of trying a case at a preliminary hearing.

“The object of a preliminary hearing is to try to find whether there is a crime which has been committed and if there is reasonable ground to connect the defendant with that crime. In that event the defendant is bound over to the Superior Court for trial before a jury.

“Now then, gentlemen, I am not going to test the credibility of witnesses in this Court. I am going to take the evidence at its face value. Once it has been established that a crime has been committed and once evidence has been introduced tending to show the defendant is connected with that crime, this Court is going to make an order binding the defendant over regardless of how much evidence there may be in favor of the defendant.

“In other words, I am not going to try to decide the weight of the evidence or the preponderance of the evidence. Of course, it is understood that in the event the defendant can introduce evidence completely destroying the prosecution’s case the situation will be different. But you gentlemen will understand that the chances of that are quite remote.

“Now that we understand the situation, you may go ahead, Mr. Prosecutor; put on your case.”

Ralph Gurlock Floyd, a dedicated prosecutor, who had been responsible for more death-penalty verdicts than any prosecutor in the state, and was proud of it, apparently felt that this prosecution of a preliminary hearing was somewhat beneath his dignity. But, having been assigned by Hamilton Burger, the District Attorney, to prosecute the case, he went about it with the savage, vindictiveness which was so characteristic of his courtroom manner.

His first witness was a chambermaid at the Tallmeyer Apartments.

“Did you,” he asked, “know Moray Cassel in his lifetime?”

“I did.”

“When did you last see him alive?”

“On Tuesday, the tenth of this month.”

“At what time?”

“At about four o’clock in the afternoon.”

“When did you next see him?”

“On the evening of Sunday, the fifteenth.”

“Was he alive?”

“He was dead.”

“What did you do?”

“I notified the manager of the apartment house, who notified the police.”

“Cross-examine,” Floyd snapped.

“No questions,” Mason said.

A police officer was called as a witness, then a deputy coroner. A diagram was introduced showing the position of the body on the bed as of 9 P.M. on Sunday, the fifteenth, when the body was discovered and the position of the various articles of furniture in the apartment.

Floyd next called William Ardley, the police officer who testified to searching the apartment for significant clues.

“What did you find?”

“I found a BankAmerica credit card issued to one Diana Douglas of San Francisco.”

“What did you do with that card?”

“I marked it for identification by punching two small holes in it in certain places which I selected.”

“I show you what purports to be a credit card from the Bank of America and ask you if you have seen that before.”

“That is the identical credit card.”

“You’re positive?”

“The card is the same and the pin holes are in the exact location that I placed them.”

“Cross-examine,” Floyd said.

“No questions,” Mason announced cheerfully.

Floyd regarded him thoughtfully, then put a fingerprint technician on the stand who testified to finding quite a few latent fingerprints in the apartment. Some of them were the fingerprints of the decedent. Some of them were the fingerprints of the maid who cleaned the apartment twice a week.

“Any other fingerprints?” Floyd asked.

“There were some we couldn’t identify.”

“Any others that you could?”

“Yes, sir. Two of them.”

“Where were they?”

“One of them was in the bathroom on the mirror of the medicine chest. The other one was on a nightstand table by the side of the bed where the body was lying.”

“Did you determine the identity of these fingerprints?”

“We did, yes, sir. One of them is the middle finger of the defendant’s right hand. The other is the thumb of the defendant’s right hand.”

“You’re positive?”

“We have more than enough points of similarity and several unusual characteristics.”

“Anything else in the bathroom?”

“There was a towel with blood stains on it, a moist towel where someone had evidently washed—”

“Objected to as conclusion of the witness,” Mason said.

“Sustained,” Judge Elliott snapped.

“A bloody towel,” the witness said.

“You have that here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Produce it, please.”

The witness produced a sealed paper bag, opened it, and took out a hand towel with the words TALLMEYER APARTMENTS embroidered in the corner. The towel was stained a faint rusty color.

“We offer to introduce it in evidence as People’s Exhibit B,” Floyd said.

“No objection,” Mason observed casually.

“You photographed the latent fingerprints?” Floyd asked.

“I did.”

“Will you produce those photographs, please?”

The photographs of the latent prints were produced and introduced in evidence. The prosecutor then introduced a whole series of photographs, showing the decedent on the bed with blood which had saturated the pillow, dripped down to the floor, and spread over the carpet.

An autopsy surgeon was called as a witness. He testified that he had recovered the fatal bullet from the back of the skull; that the bullet was of a type known as a .22-caliber, long rifle bullet; that it had penetrated the forehead on the median line about two inches above the eyes; that there had been a very considerable hemorrhage.

“When did death occur?” the prosecutor asked.

“In my opinion, making all of the tests we could, death occurred sometime between two o’clock on the afternoon of Thursday, the twelfth and five o’clock in the morning on Saturday, the fourteenth.”

“Was death instantaneous?”

“No, I don’t think so. Unconsciousness immediately followed the shot, and there was probably no movement of the body. But, despite the fact the victim was unconscious, the heart continued to pump blood into the brain which accounted for the very extensive hemorrhage. Death may have resulted in a period of ten or fifteen minutes after the fatal shot, or it may have been an hour. I can’t tell.”

“You say you recovered the fatal bullet?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What did you do with it?”

“I delivered it to the ballistics expert in the presence of two witnesses.”

“Could you determine the weapon from which that bullet had been fired?”

“Not definitely at the moment. We knew that it must have been fired from one of several makes of guns and we rather suspected that it had been fired from a gun with a long barrel because of—”

“Move to strike out what the witness rather suspected,” Mason said.

“It will go out,” Judge Elliott ruled. “Stick to facts, Mr. Witness.”

“Very well,” Floyd said with a triumphant smile. “We’ll withdraw this witness for the moment and put on other witnesses, then recall him. I will call Miss Smith, please.”

Miss Smith turned out to be a neatly dressed young woman in her early thirties.

“What is your occupation?”

“I am employed at the ticket counter of United Airlines at the Los Angeles Terminal.”

“Were you so employed on Thursday, the twelfth of this month?”

“I was.”

“I will ask you to look at the defendant and tell us if you have ever seen her before.”

“Yes, sir, I have.”

“Where?”

“At the ticket counter on the evening of Thursday, the twelfth.”

“At about what time?”

“It was exactly six-forty P.M.”

“Did you have a conversation with her?”

“Yes.”

“And what was that conversation?”

“She was very anxious to know if the plane which was due to leave at six twenty-seven had left on time or whether it would be possible for her to get aboard. I told her that the plane had left only about five minutes late, that she would have to wait approximately an hour and twenty minutes and take a flight leaving at eight o’clock.”

“What did she do?”

“She asked for a ticket to San Francisco.”

“And then?” Floyd asked, his manner triumphant.

“Then she produced her purse and said, ‘I’ll pay for it with a BankAmerica credit card.’ Then she raised her purse so I could briefly see it and suddenly dropped it down out of sight.”

“You say, suddenly?”

“Suddenly and self-consciously.”

“Was there any reason for such action?”

“She had a gun in her purse.”

“What sort of a gun?”

“A long-barreled gun with a wooden handle.”

“When you say a gun, you mean a revolver?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then what happened?”

“Then she fumbled around in her purse, keeping it below the counter so I couldn’t see inside of it, and said, ‘Oh, I seem to have misplaced my BankAmericard.’ Then she thought for a moment and said, ‘Did Mr. Perry Mason, the lawyer, leave a ticket here for me?’

“I told her that Mr. Mason had left two tickets which had been charged to his air-travel card. One ticket he had picked up, and the other one he had left to be picked up by Diana Douglas.

“Her face showed relief and she said, ‘I am Diana Douglas. I’ll take the ticket, please.’ ”

“So you gave her the ticket?”

“Yes.”

“And then what?”

“Then she left and I made it a point to look at the purse she was carrying. The gun in it distorted the purse’s shape and—”

“Move to strike out that it was the gun that had distorted the purse’s shape,” Mason said.

Judge Elliott hesitated, then said, “That may go out. The witness can state whether the purse was distorted.”

“The purse was distorted by some object which had been thrust into the purse, an object so long that the purse was out of shape.”

“Cross-examine,” Floyd said.

“Did you,” Mason asked, “ever pick the defendant out of a line-up?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You didn’t see her from the time you talked with her at the ticket counter until you went into the courtroom today?”

“I identified her picture.”

“But you didn’t pick her out of a line-up?”

“I did not. That wasn’t at all necessary, Mr. Mason. After the manner in which my attention had been attracted to the defendant, I would have picked her out anywhere.”

“That’s all,” Mason said.

Floyd put on his next witness with an air of triumph. He was a middle-aged individual who gave his occupation as part of a crew who cleaned up airplanes for the United Airlines.

“Are you familiar with the plane which left the Los Angeles Airport Terminal at eight o’clock on the evening of Thursday, the twelfth of this month, and arrived in San Francisco approximately an hour later?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you clean that plane?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you find anything unusual?”

“I did.”

“What was it?”

“It was a gun.”

“Where was that gun found?”

“The gun had been concealed in an opening underneath a pile of towels in one of the lavatories. I may state that these towels are placed in piles in the containers and are replenished from time to time. On this particular occasion I wanted to get at one of the connections for the plumbing, and in order to do that I had to remove the towels and insert my hand in the opening in the back of the towels. When I did that I felt some foreign object in there and drew it out, and it was this gun.”

“Did you take any steps to identify the gun?”

“I took it to my supervisor.”

“And what did the supervisor do?”

“He notified the police and, at the request of the police, we took down the statistics on the weapon.”

“What were the statistics?”

“This was a twenty-two caliber single-action revolver, having a nine-and-three-eighth-inch barrel and a wooden handle. On the gun was stamped Ruger twenty-two, with the words single six, the number, one-three-nine-five-seven-three and the name of the manufacturer, Sturm — S-T-U-R-M — Ruger — R-U-G-E-R — and Company, Southport, Connecticut. The initials E.D. had been carved in the handle.”

“I’ll show you a gun and ask you if that is the gun that you found.”

Floyd came forward and handed the witness the gun.

Diana Douglas’ hand clutched Mason’s leg, the fingers digging in so hard that the lawyer surreptitiously lowered his own hand to loosen her grip.

Diana’s face was tense, tight-lipped and chalky.

The witness turned the gun over in his fingers, nodded, and said, “This is the gun.”

“What was the condition of the gun when you found it?”

“It was fully loaded except for one shell which had been discharged.”

“This is a single-action gun, and, in other words, it has to be cocked and then the trigger pulled. It isn’t the so-called self-cocking gun?”

“No, sir, it is what is known as a single-action gun.”

“Cross-examine,” Floyd said.

“You have no idea how long the gun had been in that receptacle?” Mason asked.

“No, sir. I know when I found it, that’s all.”

“Thank you,” Mason said, “no further questions.”

Floyd introduced in evidence the sales register of the Sacramento Sporting Dealers, Inc., showing that the Ruger gun in question had been sold five years earlier to Edgar Douglas.

His next witness was a young woman who identified herself as a hostess on the eight o’clock plane to San Francisco on the night of Thursday, the twelfth. She had noticed Diana, observed that she was a passenger, had observed the peculiar shape of the cloth purse she was carrying when she boarded the plane. She stated that Diana was carrying a sort of overnight bag as well as the cloth purse, and when Diana went to the lavatory she noticed that she carried both the overnight bag and the purse with her, which the stewardess thought was rather peculiar. Aside from that, however, she could contribute no evidence. She hadn’t paid any particular attention to the purse after Diana had been in the lavatory.

Then Floyd pulled his trump witness, the ballistics expert who stated that the fatal bullet which had killed Moray Cassel had come from the gun which had been registered in the name of Edgar Douglas.

This expert was followed by the manager of the San Francisco apartment house, who stated that after the automobile accident which had rendered Edgar Douglas unconscious and had resulted in his going to the hospital, his sister, the defendant, had been given a key to her brother’s apartment and had been in and out, straightening things up.

Next Floyd introduced the doorman at the Tallmeyer Apartments. He had, he admitted, not seen the defendant when she entered the apartments, but he had seen her when she left; he noticed she had been carrying a black type of overnight bag and a black cloth purse. The purse was stretched to the limit by some rigid object which was within it. He had noticed the purse particularly.

Floyd introduced a purse which was identified as the property of the defendant and asked the doorman if he recognized the purse. The doorman answered in the affirmative. It was either that purse or one that was an exact duplicate of it.

Judge Elliott glanced at the clock and cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, it is nearing the hour of adjournment and it would certainly seem there is no use in prolonging this inquiry further. There is undoubtedly evidence that a crime has been committed and an abundance of evidence connecting the defendant with the crime. In fact, the Court has been rather surprised at the amount of detailed evidence put on by the prosecution.”

Floyd said, “The prosecution is all too well aware of the reputation of defense counsel and wishes to leave no possible loophole.”

“Well, it would seem that you have left no loophole,” Judge Elliott said, smiling. “I think, gentlemen, we can adjourn the hearing and bind the defendant over.”

Mason arose. “If the Court please,” he said with respect but very firmly, “the defense may wish to put on some testimony.”

“Why?” Judge Elliott asked.

“Because I believe it is our right.”

“You have a right to subpoena witnesses, that is true. But this Court is not called upon to judge the credibility of witnesses. This Court is not called upon to weigh questions of reasonable doubt. You certainly can’t claim that a prima facie case has not been established.”

“The question of whether a prima facie case has been established,” Mason said, “depends upon the evidence at the conclusion of the case and any attempt to decide a case without giving the defendant a day in court would be—”

“Oh, all right, all right,” Judge Elliott said impatiently. “We’ll continue the case until ten o’clock tomorrow morning. I want to warn counsel, however, that we have a busy calendar and the Court does not take kindly to fishing expeditions or attempts to try a case on the merits at a preliminary hearing. The Court warns counsel that this Court will not weigh the credibility of witnesses and that any question of conflicting facts will be determined in favor of the prosecution as far as this hearing is concerned. However, the Court will try to do nothing which will preclude the defendant from having a fair hearing on the merits before a jury in the Superior Court, at which time the credibility of witnesses can be raised and the doctrine of reasonable doubt will apply.

“It is simply a case of differing procedures in different courts. Do you understand that, Mr. Mason?”

“I understand it,” Mason said.

“Very well. The case is adjourned until ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

Mason placed a reassuring hand on Diana’s shoulder. “Keep a stiff upper lip, Diana,” he said.

“They’re going to bind me over to the Superior Court?”

“Probably,” Mason said, “but I want to find out as much about the case as I can before the Court makes its order.”

“And what happens when I get to the Superior Court?”

“You are tried by a jury. You have the benefit of any reasonable doubt.”

Mason bent forward to say in a low voice, “Where did you get that gun?”

“Just as I told you, Mr. Mason. It was on the floor with blood on it. I took it in the bathroom and washed the blood off and then put the gun in my purse. I had a hard time getting it in, and I guess that’s when I lost the credit card.”

“And you hid it in the airplane?”

“Yes, I took out the towels and felt all around in the back of the towel compartment and found this little opening way in back. I thought they’d never find the gun in there.”

Mason said, “Tell me — about the girls in the San Francisco office. Do you know who could have written that message to me?”

“It might have been any one of them.”

“It was written on an electric typewriter.”

“All the typewriters are electric,” she said.

“All right,” Mason told her, “keep a stiff upper lip. I’ll see you in the morning.”

The lawyer picked up his briefcase and left the courtroom.