The Case of the Fenced-In Woman

Chapter 16

Perry Mason and Della Street sat with Morley Eden and Vivian Carson in the lawyer’s private office.

“Now then,” Mason said, “there’s no one here except your lawyer, his secretary and the four walls of this office. You people are going to tell me what happened. You’ve been acquitted of the murder. You can never be prosecuted for it again.

“In order to get you acquitted I had to throw suspicion on the principal witness for the prosecution. That was a part of my legitimate duties as an attorney representing you. I had to create a reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors.

“However, I am not certain that Nadine Palmer murdered Loring Carson, and by George, you’re going to help me find out who did. If she did, we’re going to have her prosecuted and if she didn’t we’re going to see that her name, which has been batted around plenty as it is, is not going to be besmirched any further.

“Now then, you two, start talking.”

Eden looked at Vivian Carson.

She hung her head. “You tell him,” she said.

“All right,” Eden said, “here’s what actually happened. And if you had known the facts, or if the police had found out the facts, we would have been convicted of first-degree murder without so much as a chance.”

“All right,” Mason said, “what happened?”

“From the first moment I saw Vivian Carson,” Morley Eden said, “I was strongly attracted to her.”

“It was mutual,” Vivian Carson said. “This is a horrible confession for a woman to make, but I trembled like a leaf when I was around him.”

Morley Eden put his arm around her, patted her shoulder.

“Go on,” Mason said, “we’ll start from there. It was love at first sight.”

“Well, almost at first sight,” Morley Eden said.

“In a bikini,” Mason commented dryly.

“All right,” she said, “I planned that deliberately. I wanted to arouse his attention. I wanted to get him — well, I wanted to get him to make some overt act so I could cite him for contempt and make him simply furious against Loring.”

“All right,” Mason said, “we’ll take all that for granted. That’s the way it started out. Now then, what happened after that?”

Morley Eden said, “On the evening of the fourteenth, Vivian told me her car was in need of repairs. She asked me as a matter of neighborly accommodation if I would mind driving her down to a nearby garage and bringing her back.

“By that time we had begun to get fairly well acquainted and had made something of a joke about our so-called neighborly cooperation.

“I drove her to the garage, then she remembered something that she had forgotten to bring to the house. It was in her apartment. I told her I’d be glad to drive her to her apartment and bring her home. Then the question of dinner came up and I invited her to dinner. We went to dinner and after dinner went to a show. Then we went to her apartment to get the things she wanted, and while we were there we got to talking.

“She pointed out that this was what she called neutral ground and I said something about a fence and she said there was no fence between us here, and the next thing I knew I had her in my arms and — well, after that time passed rather rapidly. We started making plans, sitting there talking into the small hours of the night. I just didn’t want to break the spell, and I don’t think she did.

“And then suddenly we heard a key in the lock, the door opened and Loring Carson was standing there. He made some remarks that were decidedly insulting to his wife, remarks that were off-color and which were unbelievably coarse. I hit him. He got up and we had a fight. I threw him out of the door and told him if he ever came back or if he ever molested Vivian I’d kill him.”

“Did anyone hear that?” Mason asked.

“Heavens, yes,” Morley Eden said. “That’s one of the things that bothered me. One of the neighbors heard the whole business, but that neighbor was sympathetic and evidently kept his mouth shut. I don’t know why the police didn’t suspect something like this and question the neighbors, but apparently they didn’t have any idea that Vivian and I had been together in her apartment that night.

“The woman who saw us put the car in the garage volunteered the information to the police, but the police acted on the assumption we were both elsewhere during the night.”

“Then what happened?” Mason asked.

“After I threw Carson out, we waited until daylight, then we had breakfast and went out. Loring Carson’s car was parked in front of the fireplug and there was a tag on it.

“I decided it might be a good thing to move it so I took the brake off and pushed the car a little way down the hill so that it was away from the fireplug. When Carson barged into the apartment he had been drinking. Maybe he didn’t know he’d parked in front of a fireplug. But Vivian thinks it was all deliberate — a last-ditch stand to avoid the fraud suit by creating evidence that would jeopardize the interlocutory judgment. Otherwise, why would he have a key to the apartment? Vivian certainly hadn’t given him one.”

“But what happened to him after he left the apartment?” Mason asked. “He must have driven up in his car. Why didn’t he leave in it — after finding you two together there?”

“I don’t know,” Eden said. “That’s one of the things that bothered me. We could look out of the apartment window and see the car parked there. I think perhaps I would have — well, we would have left before daylight if the car hadn’t been there but... Well, that’s the way it was. We thought he might have a gun and... well, we didn’t know what would happen.”

“Then what?” Mason asked.

“Then I came to your office and signed the verification on the complaint. While I was doing that, Vivian was seated in my car down in the parking lot. I couldn’t help thinking what a surprise it would have been if you had known that.”

Mason glanced at Della Street, nodded.

“We went home,” Eden said, “and went in my side of the house. We saw a man lying there in the living room and ran down, and it was the body of Loring Carson. He was lying there with a knife in his back, and he had evidently been stabbed by someone who had jabbed the knife into his back from the other side of the barbed-wire fence.

“It was a horrible predicament. Vivian recognized the knife as belonging to the set in the kitchen. And we had found the body together and we simply couldn’t go to the police and tell them we had been out together — spent the night together — had trouble with Loring Carson, and then discovered his body.

“So I told Vivian that I’d drive her to her apartment and we’d hide Loring’s car in her garage where it would be safe until dark, and then we’d leave it someplace where it could be found. Then I said I’d drive her up to the garage where her car was being repaired, that she could drive her car, that we could buy another knife to take the place of the knife that was missing from the kitchen and that I’d come out there to meet with the newspaper reporters at the time you had called the news conference, and that we’d all go into the house and that they could discover the body of Loring Carson at that time.

“I realize now it was a fool thing to do. We should have gone to the police and taken them into our confidence but... well, that’s the way it was. After we’d once started covering up we could never have told the truth. No jury on earth would ever have believed us. It was up to you to take the case the way it was and go at it blind.”

“I see,” Mason said. “I—”

The telephone on Mason’s desk jangled in a series of short sharp rings.

“That’s Gertie’s signal that Lieutenant Tragg is barging his way in and—”

The door opened and Tragg stood on the threshold.

“Well, well, well,” he said, “I seem to be interrupting a conference.”

“You not only seem to be, you are,” Mason said.

“Well, that’s too bad,” Tragg said.

“And I may point out,” Mason said, “that having been acquitted of the murder of Loring Carson, my clients are of no further interest to the police, so your inopportune entry is all the more inexcusable.”

Tragg grinned and said, “Now, keep your shirt on, Mason. Take it easy. My business is not with your clients, but with you.”

“With me?”

“That’s right,” Tragg said, casually seating himself in a chair, tilting his hat on the back of his head and grinning amiably. “You’ve left us with something of a problem, Mason.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, there’s a lot of newspaper pressure demanding that we go ahead and arrest Nadine Palmer but we haven’t a case against her. You bamboozled the jury into turning your clients loose on the ground of reasonable doubt. In other words, you created a reasonable doubt in their minds that Nadine Palmer had done the job. But you can’t prove it, and we can’t prove it. That leaves us behind the eight ball.”

“The district attorney,” Mason said, “got into this thing without consulting me, and he can get out of it without my help.”

“Quite right, quite right,” Tragg said. “I thought you’d feel that way but, on the other hand, I just had an idea that you might want to cooperate with the police department; that is, not the department as a whole, but with Lieutenant Arthur Tragg as an individual.”

Mason grinned. “Now that,” he said, “puts it on something of a different basis.”

Tragg said, “I’ll buy your reasoning that we got a little bit off on those wet shirt sleeves. Come to think of it, a man as fastidious about his personal appearance as Loring Carson would certainly have taken off his coat and rolled up his right shirt sleeve before he reached into the swimming pool to pull that ring and open the doorway to the concealed receptacle.

“Then I’ll go a little further with your reasoning. He still had his coat off but he had rolled his sleeves down. He had completed his business with the secret receptacle. He went back into the house and was just about to put on his coat when he saw something that caused him to go running out into the patio, and at that time there was something that arrested his attention in the swimming pool. That, in all probability, was just what you thought it was: a nude woman swimming back under the fence with a plastic bag containing the securities which had been lifted from the receptacle.

“Loring Carson bent down and grabbed her. He may have tried to hold her head under water, but he certainly grabbed her by the shoulders. He was struggling for the bag.

“She eluded him and swam back under the barbed-wire fence.

“Carson couldn’t get over that fence, he couldn’t get around it, and the only way he could have got underneath it would have been to have jumped into the swimming pool fully clothed.

“This solution didn’t appeal to him but he had keys to both sides of the house so he ran out around the barbed-wire fence and into the other side of the house. The girl had her clothes in that side of the house and Carson thought that if he stood guard over the clothes the girl would be forced to put in an appearance. So he stood there and got a knife in his back from the other side of the fence.

“Now then, I want some co-operation.”

“What co-operation?” Mason asked.

“I don’t want to be the fall guy in this thing,” Tragg said. “Your clients have been acquitted. They can never be prosecuted again. I don’t want them to confess if they’re guilty, but if they are guilty I would like to have you tell me that I’d be wasting my time trying to pin the crime on somebody else. That will be a confidential communication which will never be broadcast, never be released to the press. It’s simply a statement for my personal satisfaction.”

“For your personal information,” Mason said, “I would suggest that you continue your investigations, Lieutenant. I have every reason to believe that my clients are innocent. I’d stake my reputation on it.”

“Well now, that’s something,” Tragg said, his keen eyes sizing up Vivian Carson and Morley Eden. “Perhaps they’d tell me what actually did happen, just for my own guidance.”

Mason shook his head. “They’re not going to tell anyone their story,” he said.

“Do you know it?” Tragg asked.

“I know it,” Mason said, “and it isn’t going to be told.”

Tragg sighed.

Mason said, “There are a couple of fairly legible latents on that briefcase. Why don’t you run them down?”

Tragg shook his head. “Of all the damn-fool things any attorney ever did,” he said, “that business of making the jurors believe they were experts on fingerprints— Why, do you know I found out what went on in the jury room. Every one of those twelve people hypnotized themselves into believing that two of the smudged latent fingerprints on that hinged tile were the fingerprints of Nadine Palmer, and that her fingerprint was on the briefcase. Of course, there were certain points of similarity. I think you can find about four or five. We don’t consider we have a good identification unless we have eleven points of similarity, but there was no way of getting that before the jury — not the way you handled the case — and when those jurors found four points of similarity they immediately became fingerprint experts... That was the damnedest thing anybody ever did.”

“Well,” Mason said, “the prosecutor brought it on himself. He told the jurors that there was nothing to this business of fingerprint comparison, that they could see for themselves, that they could take the exhibits into the jury room.”

Tragg grinned. “For your private, confidential information, Perry, Morrison Ormsby is not the most popular deputy in the district attorney’s office right at this moment. In fact, there is a certain amount of hostility developing toward him. I wouldn’t doubt if he finds it advisable to go into private practice soon.

“Some of the newspaper reporters are getting the story from the jurors and they’re going to make quite a play of it. We nearly always have latents which aren’t identified,” Tragg went on. “If all defense attorneys could handle things the way you did we’d be in trouble all the time. Of course, it was Ormsby’s fault. But you baited the trap for him, and he walked right into it.”

“There is one point,” Mason said, “one which you may have overlooked.”

“What’s that?” Tragg asked.

“I never saw the briefcase which really contained the securities in my life until I saw it in the room and then I had this new briefcase sent in from the curio shop and put the old one in my suitcase. I had to do that so I could establish later on in court the time that I had received the briefcase; otherwise your witnesses would have claimed I carried those securities from Los Angeles; that I had received them from my clients and was taking them with me to get them discounted somewhere.”

“I know, I know,” Tragg said. “I tried to tell the Las Vegas police that you wouldn’t have been that stupid but they wouldn’t listen.”

“All right, Tragg,” Mason said, “I’m now going to get you the original briefcase that I found in my room. I think you may develop some latent fingerprints on that which may match the unidentified latent fingerprints you found on the lip of the receptacle there at the swimming pool.”

“What the hell do you suppose I came up here for?” Tragg asked. “Of course we’ll have to find the person who made the unidentified fingerprints. We’d have to have an identification of some sort, some standard of comparison.”

“Exactly,” Mason said. He went to the safe, took out a cellophane envelope containing the briefcase which had been left in his room at Las Vegas.

“Notice, Lieutenant,” he said, “that this briefcase has gilt letters stamped on it reading ‘P. MASON.’ ”

Tragg nodded.

“Rather an unusual way to mark a briefcase,” Mason said. “One would mark it either ‘Perry Mason’ or simply with the initials ‘P.M.’ or perhaps with only the last name, ‘Mason.’ ”

“Go ahead,” Tragg said.

“Now, if you’ll notice these letters carefully,” Mason said, “the last part of the name seems to be a little more legible than the first two initials. In other words, this briefcase may originally have been marked with the initials ‘P.M.’ and then the last four letters were stamped on at a later date, the stamping being made so that the period at the end of the ‘M’ was obscured by the new letter ‘a.’ ”

“Go on,” Tragg said. “You’re doing fine.”

“Everybody seems to have overlooked the fact that Loring Carson had to have some way of getting out to the place where his body was found.”

“Sure he did,” Tragg said. “We didn’t overlook that. That was elemental. He drove out in his car and your clients certainly took his car and drove it back to the garage under Vivian Carson’s apartment.

“They intended to keep it there until night when they didn’t stand quite so much chance of being picked up, and then take it out and leave it somewhere where it couldn’t be traced to them.”

“If they did that,” Mason said, “why would they have taken the car to Vivian Carson’s garage?”

“I’ll admit,” Tragg said, “that’s one of the things that puzzles me.”

Mason said, “Loring Carson came here from Las Vegas. He didn’t come alone. Neither do I think he came with his girlfriend, Genevieve Hyde. I think he had fallen for the Las Vegas system.”

“What’s that?” Tragg asked.

“When one begins to get a little tired of a hostess,” Mason said, “another one cuts in. The one who is particularly adept at that in this case is a young woman by the name of Paulita Marchwell, and since her initials are ‘P.M.’ I wouldn’t doubt in the least if that briefcase didn’t belong to Paulita; if she hadn’t gone to Los Angeles with Loring Carson or arranged a meeting here; if Carson hadn’t left his car somewhere and had driven out to the house with Paulita. He told her to wait in the car. He wanted to put some securities in a place of concealment. He deliberately parked on Eden’s side of the house in case Paulita got curious and started to nose around.

“He had retained keys to the house. He walked around the fence to the side door, went inside and opened the lid.

“Paulita knew generally what was going to happen and what he was there for. All she needed was to find the place of concealment. She got into the Eden side of the house — probably through a window — stood where she could look out on the swimming pool and see what Carson was doing.

“The minute he deposited his securities and additional cash — I suspect it was a wad — and turned back into the house, Paulita stripped off her clothes and went like a flash into the water. She swam over to the receptacle, opened it, got out its contents and swam back under the fence.”

“What was Carson doing all this time?” Tragg asked.

“Going out to the car, he found it empty and put two and two together. Paulita hoped it would take him long enough for her to get on her clothes and stroll casually from the side of the house, saying, ‘Loring, dear, what a beautiful place. I was looking around. If you built this you certainly are to be complimented. It’s a terrific job.’

“However, before she had a chance to do any of this Carson dashed through the front door and saw her running naked out of the swimming pool, carrying the plastic bag. He stripped off his coat and went after her. She ran back to the swimming pool and jumped in but Carson was able to grab her, perhaps by the hair. He reached for her neck, tried to hold her head under water, but she dove down and under the fence.

“So then Carson stood wondering just what to do, put on his coat and stood guard over her clothes, feeling pretty certain she wouldn’t dare run out onto the highway in the nude, and he had taken the keys when he left the car.

“She did better than that. She took a knife from the rack, tiptoed on bare feet, stuck the knife in his back, grabbed her clothes from under the fence, put them on, grabbed the car keys from his body, jumped in the car and took off.

“Then my clients entered the house. They found Carson’s body and knew that they were in a terrific jam. In place of calling me and asking my advice then and there, they tried to concoct a story.”

“A wonderful theory,” Tragg said. “Would there be any way on earth it could be proved?”

Mason said, “You might ask Genevieve Hyde some questions. She went to Los Angeles by plane, I understand. It’s barely possible she had a tip Paulita was stealing her boyfriend and decided to do a little investigating. She’s closemouthed, but she won’t lie. At least, I don’t think she will.

“And put yourself in Loring’s place. If the nude was not the girl who had driven him out there he’d have asked the girl who was waiting in the car to go in one side of the house while he went in the other and they’d have cornered this nude intruder.

“The fact he didn’t play it that way is persuasive evidence that the nude was the young woman who had driven him out there in her car.”

Tragg thought that over. “And Nadine Palmer?” he asked at length.

“Nadine Palmer did what any woman would have done,” Mason said. “Having seen that receptacle, she wanted to find what was in it. She ran down the path from where the car was parked, but notice this, Tragg: the trail does not come in down below the barbed-wire fence; the trail comes in on the bedroom side of the house. In order to get over to the receptacle she simply slipped off her outer garments and dove in the pool, clad in bra and panties. She dove under the barbed-wire fence, found the receptacle was empty, went back, took off her underthings, squeezed out the water, put them in her purse, put on her dress and then heard voices as Morley Eden and Vivian Carson entered the house.

“She flattened herself against the wall, and from then on she’s telling the truth as to what happened.

“Don’t underestimate the intelligence of a jury. It really was one of her fingerprints that was on the lip of the receptacle.”

Tragg shook his head. “We couldn’t get enough points of identification to get a conviction.”

Mason grinned. “We got enough points of similarity to raise a reasonable doubt. But there were other unidentified latents. Try Paulita Marchwell.”

Tragg thought things over, suddenly got to his feet.

“You’ve got a point,” he said. “I think I’ll go to Las Vegas.”

Tragg left the office.

Morley Eden looked at Vivian.

“You see,” Vivian said, “I knew we should have confided in Mr. Mason at the start.”

Eden took out a checkbook. “I think,” he said, “twenty-five thousand dollars would be about right as a fee in the case, Mason, and I’m going to penalize myself another twenty-five thousand for holding out on my attorney and forcing you to go at it blind.”

Della Street cleared off a place on the desk for Eden’s checkbook.

The three watched him as Eden wrote out a check: Pay to the order of Perry Mason — Fifty thousand dollars.