The Case of the Fenced-In Woman

Chapter 12

Perry Mason sat with Morley Eden in the attorneys’ visiting room at the jail.

“If I’m to be your attorney, Morley,” he said, “you have to tell me what happened.”

Morley Eden looked at him with anguished eyes. “I can’t do it, Mason.”

“Nonsense. You can always tell your attorney anything.”

Eden shook his head.

“Why not?”

“It’s too damned... In the first place, if you knew the true facts in the case you wouldn’t believe them, and in the second place you wouldn’t represent us.”

“Did you kill him?”

“No.”

“Do you know who did?”

“No.”

“But you want me to represent you and Vivian Carson?”

“Yes. We’re going to be indicted by the Grand Jury. We’ll be jointly charged with first-degree murder, and they’re going to make out one hell of a case, Mason, I’ll tell you that. They’re going to make out a case by circumstantial evidence that — I don’t know if you can beat it.”

Mason said, “That’s all the more reason why you should tell me what actually happened. I have to know what I’m up against. The best defense to circumstantial evidence, provided, of course, that a man is innocent, is the truth.”

“I tell you,” Eden said, “the truth isn’t going to help you. It would give you a hopeless case. As long as they’re relying on circumstantial evidence you’re going to have to go in there and try to beat it. I don’t know how much they have. They may have a little or they may have a lot. If they have all of it we’re lashed to the mast. We’ll never get out of the mess. Your only hope, our only hope, is that they don’t have all of it. We were trapped by circumstances. I can’t even discuss it.”

“Why do you want me to represent Vivian Carson?” Mason asked.

“Because we’re going to be charged together in an indictment.”

“That doesn’t make any difference,” Mason said. “If you didn’t kill him, perhaps Vivian Carson did, and I don’t want my hands tied in your defense by—”

“No, no, no, Vivian didn’t kill him. I know that. I swear it.”

“How do you know she didn’t?”

“Because she was... Because I know.”

Mason regarded the man with thoughtful eyes. “Look here, Morley,” he said, “is there any chance that you think you’re in love with Vivian Carson?”

Morley Eden met his eyes. “I know I’m in love with her, Mason. It’s something that I never thought could happen to me. It’s one of the most devastating emotional storms I ever experienced. I... I can’t begin to tell you what she means to me or how it happened. It just hit me — well, from the first minute I saw her.

“And that’s one of the things that you’re going to have to take into consideration. After all, she and Loring Carson were still married. There had been a divorce decree but it was only an interlocutory judgment. The interlocutory would have to run for six months before there would be a final dissolution of the marriage. The prosecution will use my love for her as a motivation for the murder of her husband.”

“When did all this happen?” Mason asked.

“What?”

“Your falling in love with her.”

“Almost from the first time I saw her.”

“That, as I remember it,” Mason said, “was when she was in a very abbreviated bikini.”

“All right, it was,” Eden said. “And she seemed — well, there was something essentially feminine about her, a daintiness, a grace, a— She was a, vision of loveliness.”

“You were lonely,” Mason said. “You’d been a widower, you’d been living by yourself. You came to your house, found a fence running through it. You opened the door, went into the house trying to find what in the world had happened, and there you found this woman, this vision of loveliness, as you call it. Then a little later you saw her by the pool, taking a sunbath in a bikini.

“She had quite evidently planned the whole thing: the setting, the discovery, the bikini she was wearing — probably even the lighting effect. She knew about when you were due back. She wanted you to—”

“All right, suppose she did,” Eden said. “You know what she wanted at the time. She wanted me to file suit against Loring Carson. She wanted to try and discover some of the hidden assets which she was satisfied he’d been concealing in preparation for the divorce action. She has told me all about it. She intended to get me to make a pass at her and then take me before the court on contempt proceedings — in case I didn’t file suit against Loring Carson.”

“All right,” Mason said, “go on. Tell me about the development of this emotional storm.”

“The next morning she was nice to me. She handed me coffee through the fence and...”

“And you started to get acquainted?” Mason asked.

“Yes. It was just a start.”

“Then what?”

“Then you came out and she staged that lingerie show and hang it, Mason, the thing appealed to me. The gameness of the woman; her ingenuity; the way she was fighting back with the cards stacked against her. I was there in the house and after the party was over — well, she pulled back those silly curtains and I was in the living room and I looked at her and suddenly started laughing, and then she began to laugh and then we sat and visited for — well, it was a long time.”

“How long?”

“Until the small hours of the morning, if you want to know.”

“And you knew you were in love with her?”

“Yes.”

“Did you tell her so?”

“Now look. Mason, that has nothing to do with the case; but as a matter of fact, I...”

“Did you or didn’t you?” Mason asked, as Eden hesitated.

“I didn’t,” Eden said, “but she could tell that I was tremendously interested in her and I realized that I was drawing out a side of her that had lain dormant for a long time. She had been the victim of a terribly unhappy marriage. She had been married to a louse, a heel, a—”

Mason held up a warning hand. “The man is dead. You’re going to be accused of murdering him. Don’t cultivate that type of thinking.”

“I don’t care,” Eden said. “That’s what he was. He was a louse. Here he was, married to Vivian, and he was neglecting her, running around with another woman and, in place of going to her frankly and telling her what had happened and that he wanted his freedom and trying to give her an opportunity to salvage something of her life, making a fair division of the community property and doing what should have been done under the circumstances, he started trying to cheat her out of what was rightfully hers. He hired a detective under such circumstances that — well, it may have been an innocent mistake, but I’m inclined to think he deliberately framed the whole business so he would have some excuse for blackening her name in the press, ruining her reputation. Then he started concealing assets, juggling things around so that no one could tell anything about his net worth and—”

“All right,” Mason said, “all right. It’s plain to be seen that you’re looking at the entire situation through her eyes.”

“I am,” Eden said, “because her eyes have the true perspective.”

Mason said, “When the prosecution gets all that it will have a swell motive. Now I want to know what happened. I want to have it so you can go on the witness stand if you have to and—”

“Let me tell you this, Mason,” Morley Eden said, “please believe me. I tried something and it didn’t work. I thought I could outsmart the police. It was perhaps the most ghastly decision I ever made in my life. It’s got us both in a situation where we’ll be crucified by what we have done.

“Now then, so far it’s only circumstantial evidence. I understand a good lawyer can beat a case of circumstantial evidence.”

“It depends on the evidence,” Mason said.

“Well, there’s always a chance as long as the case is based on circumstantial evidence alone, but the minute we go on the stand and tell our story we’re crucified. You’d never stand a chance of getting us off then. No lawyer would.”

Mason said, “I’ll do this much, Eden. I’ll stay with the case until I find out what the evidence is against you. If at the close of the prosecution’s case I decide that you’re going to have to go on the stand, then you’re going to have to tell me your story and then you’re going to have to go on the witness stand.”

“Will there be time for all that?”

“I’ll be able to have a brief adjournment from the time the prosecution finishes with its case and the time we have to start putting on the defense,” Mason said. “I’ll take your case with the understanding that if, at that time, I think the case against you is too strong to be knocked out of court without your testimony, you’ll then tell me exactly what happened.”

“All right,” Eden said, “it’s a deal.”

He reached out and gave the lawyer his hand. “The only thing is,” he said, “you’re to go up to that point simply looking for weak places in the prosecution’s case and not feeling in the back of your mind that you’re going to rely on what Vivian and I can tell you.”

Mason shook hands. “It’s your funeral,” he said. “And I mean that literally.”