The Case of the Half-Wakened Wife

Chapter 12

Paul Drake, head of the Drake Detective Agency, had, like a doctor, learned to adjust his sleeping habits to the exigencies of his profession. He had learned to sleep with three telephones by the side of his bed. When he was working on an important case, he would waken with the ringing of one of these telephones, mechanically switch on the bedside lamp with one hand while he lifted the telephone receiver with the other. He would listen to some new development, correlate the matter in his mind, give instructions, hang up the telephone, slide back down into bed, turn out the light and be asleep almost as soon as he had reached the pillow.

A good detective, Drake frequently said, must have two essential qualifications. The first qualification is that not only must he not look like a detective, but he must look so much like a man in one of the other professions that he seems typical. The second qualification is that he must learn to take his sleep and his meals, when and if he gets them.

And then, Drake was wont to add with a whimsical smile, “If he has brains, it helps. But they’re not really necessary.”

Drake himself looked professionally sad, and whenever Della Street would tell him to cheer up, his stock rejoinder was, “Leave me alone, Della, I’m practicing looking like an undertaker. In my business it’s my biggest asset.”

Mason’s knuckles beat a tattoo on the door of Paul Drake’s apartment.

Almost instantly Mason heard bare feet hitting the floor, then steps coming to the door.

“Who is it?” Drake asked.

“Perry Mason, Paul.”

A lock clicked on the inside of the door.

“Della Street’s with me,” Mason hastened to add.

“In that case,” Drake said, “give me five seconds.”

A few moments later the door opened. Drake, attired in a bathrobe and slippers, his tousled hair in complete disarray, regarded them with a jaundiced eye and said, “I presume you two have committed matrimony or something and have got me up to tell me about it.”

“What an interesting way to spend a honeymoon,” Della Street exclaimed.

Mason said, “Don’t be silly, Paul. The husband who would let his bride look at you would be guilty of contributory negligence. If she thought men looked like that, she’d rush home to mother.”

Drake ran his fingers through his hair, said, “If you’d telephoned first, I’d have had my hair all slicked down, and been shaved.”

“And washed your eyes with cold water, I suppose.”

“Sure,” Drake said, “the sky’s the limit. I’d even have cleaned my teeth. It’s cold here. I’m getting back into bed. Find yourselves chairs and talk. Lift the pants out of that chair, Perry. Careful with them, my watch is in the pocket. What time is it, by the way?”

Mason looked at his wrist watch and said, “Five thirty-two.”

“Almost daylight,” Drake said. “What’s the trouble?”

“We want you to find a corpse.”

Drake slid into bed, pulled up the covers, punched the pillows up in back of his head, looked from Mason to Della Street and said, “Shucks, yes. When you come right down to it, a man should have known that it wasn’t romance that has been keeping you two on a nocturnal expedition. It’s crime that invariably furnishes the motivation for your gallivanting around.”

Mason moved Paul Drake’s trousers from the chair, said, “Sit down here, Della. I’ll sit on the foot of the bed.”

Drake moved his feet.

“You must admit that this is a novel variation,” Mason said, sitting on the foot of the bed.

“I don’t get it.”

“Usually,” Mason said, “we find the corpse and we want you to find the murderer. This time, we have the murderer and we want you to find the corpse.”

“Dragging a lake, or something I suppose,” Drake said.

“It’s not a lake, it’s a river.”

“And I have to drag it?”

“No, the police will be doing that.”

“Where do I look for the corpse then?”

“In a blonde’s apartment.”

“Sure, nothing to it,” Drake said. “I’m getting to be a genius at finding these things, Perry. You simply knock on the door... Let me see. It will be around six-fifteen’ I’ll knock on the door and say, ‘Pardon me Madam. I’m the field representative of the Bureau of Vital Statistics. We’re wondering if you have any old corpses around you’d like to turn in. We can give you a liberal allowance for a trade-in or, if you’re tired of corpses, we can make an outright purchase.’ Or, I might pose as a medical student looking for bodies to dissect. That would be a good line, ‘Pardon me Madam, but I’m a young medical student working my way through college. There’s a shortage of stiffs for dissection and I thought perhaps you could help me get my education.’ For an approach like that, you mustn’t wear a hat, cultivate an earnest, sincere smile... People are always willing to help someone through college. Hell yes, Perry, she’d dig up a corpse any time.”

Mason said, “When you get done wisecracking, you might listen to facts. We may not have too much time.”

“Okay, okay, go on. What’s the story?”

Mason said, “The story is too long to give you all the details. But I want to sell you on my theory of what happened. I’ll sketch the highlights.”

“Start sketching.”

“A man by the name of Scott Shelby. Something of a human enigma, plays them close to his chest and chisels around with oil leases. Married for the third time. Has a peach of a wife several years younger than he is. She’s a good scout, easy on the eyes and a beautiful chassis.”

Drake said to Della Street, “It’s all right, Della. He isn’t entirely hopeless. You notice that he doesn’t have much time to describe the murder, but when it comes to describing the guy’s wife he really goes to town.”

Della Street smiled. “You’d be surprised at what he notices, Paul.”

“Wouldn’t I?” Drake said. “Okay, Mr. Perry Mason, what about Mr. Shelby and his beautiful wife?”

Mason said, “We were on a yachting trip with them. The wife is wakened from a sound sleep by a telephone call. Her husband tells her to grab the gun that is on the dresser by the bed and rush up to the deck, to come quickly — it’s a matter of life and death.”

“So she calls you on the telephone, rolls over and goes to sleep,” Drake said, “and you want me to find the corpse.”

“No. She jumps up out of bed, doesn’t even stop to put a wrap around her or put on slippers, grabs the gun, runs in her bare feet toward where her husband told her to meet him. She’s just in time to see him floundering around in a peculiar way and then there’s a splash and he’s overboard. Just about that time she hears a shot, she let’s out a scream and runs up to the bow of the boat. She sees her husband down in the water, making a few feeble struggles. He calls her name in a faint voice, then he is swept by the current under the overhang of the boat. She thinks he’s going down the starboard side. As a matter of fact, he evidently drifted down the port side, gave a few spasmodic kicks and struggles, hitting against the side of the boat as he went downstream.”

“And the wife?” Drake asked.

“Ran slap into my arms,” Mason said.

“What time?”

“Around midnight.”

“Nice going,” Drake said to Della Street. “In my early childhood I used to practice penmanship by copying over and over ‘It’s the early bird that catches the worm.’ But look what happens to the guy who’s standing out on the starboard side of the boat, just waiting for wives to come along. He probably has been standing there three or four hours, and then his patience is suddenly rewarded. A beautiful wife clad only in a diaphanous silk nightgown, rushing along the deck, pops right into his arms. Nice going, Perry. No wonder you took so much time describing the anatomical charms of the wife. Any sign of the murderer?”

“Only the wife.”

“Tut, tut... Oh, by the way, Perry, what about the gun? Was she still carrying the gun?”

“She was still carrying the gun.”

“Any shells fired?”

“One.”

Drake raised his index fingers and slid one across the other. “Naughty, naughty, Perry. You’ve let the gal’s sex appeal ruin your judgment. If she had approached you in your office, you’d have taken one look at the case and said that it stunk. But, because she comes charging into your arms, you look down into her eyes and decide you’re going to protect her from the bold, bad police.”

“You think so?” Mason asked.

“Think so!” Drake exclaimed. “My gosh, Perry, if you’re telling me the story the way it happened, look at how absurd it is. In the first place, if someone had fired a shot, who fired the shot? The husband was down in the water mortally wounded, drifting past the boat, kicking at the sides as he went past. Where was the murderer? He’d hardly have been in the water, swimming around with the husband. Apparently he wasn’t on deck. Put yourself in the position of the jury. A woman smiles sweetly at them and says, ‘There I was, on deck, clad only in my nightdress, with a gun in my hand, and my husband was down in the water below me mortally wounded. There was no one else in sight, but it’s a perfectly natural predicament for a devoted young wife to be in. My lawyer will stand up and give you a complete and perfect explanation.’ And then she crosses her knees and smiles at you, Perry. That will be your cue to stand up to the jury and tell them how it happened.”

“You don’t know anything yet,” Mason said grimly.

“Well, go ahead. I’m always anxious to learn.”

“About sixty days ago she insured her husband’s life for fifty thousand dollars.”

“Oh-oh,” Drake observed.

“And four days ago she went to a drugstore and bought some arsenic.”

“Wanted to poison rats, I presume.”

“Exactly.”

“And what happened to the poison, Perry?”

“It turned up in papa’s soup.”

“I suppose he jumped up on the table and made squeaky noises like a rat and she thought that rats always ate soup and that would be a good place to put the poison.”

Mason said, “You see what I’m getting at, Paul?”

“Good Lord, yes. You’re tired of winning murder cases. You want to get one where you don’t stand a chance on earth. Hang it, Perry, I’m only half kidding. Why the hell don’t you sit in your office and let people come to you fully clothed. If you’d seen that girl with her clothes on, you’d have kicked her out on the street. I only have one suggestion to offer.”

“What’s that?”

“Let her put her nightgown back on and go to court in that. Perhaps she can do as much for the jury as she did for you. — But I doubt it.”

“So do I,” Mason said.

“Well, it’s your only chance.”

Mason said, “Look at the case a little more closely, Paul.”

“I hate to do it, Perry. It hurts me every time I consider it. And if you think the Drake Detective Agency is going to be sucker enough to get all worked up over a client like that, you’re nuts. I don’t want to touch the case with a ten foot pole, Perry. Much as I like your business and all that, I’m damned if I want to try and convince myself that a woman like that is innocent. Get someone who is more gullible and don’t tackle him so early in the morning.”

“Quit it,” Mason said. “We haven’t time.”

“Okay, but I’m just telling you how I feel. I don’t want any part of it.”

Mason said, “The woman is beautiful.”

“You told me that before.”

“Her eyes have that little half-humorous twinkle that you find in the eyes of beautiful women who have looked over life, have seen all there is to it, and are just a little amused by it all.”

“I know the type,” Drake said. “They are so beautiful that every man pursues them and they become faintly amused by the unvarying, universal response of all masculine mankind; so after a while they decide they can get away with anything, including a murder, if they just put on thin night clothes and manage to run into the arms of a famous lawyer.”

“The point I am getting at is that she’s intelligent,” Mason said. “At least, she thinks.”

“With all due respect to Della Street here, who is probably the only one I know who combines beauty and brains, the two are not necessarily inseparable,” Drake said.

“So,” Mason said, “we begin to consider the case against a woman.”

“It’s about time,” Drake muttered.

“She has a husband take out a tidy little insurance policy. She goes down to a drugstore, a drugstore in the immediate neighborhood where the police will be certain to look in case they start any sort of an investigation. She buys arsenic. She says she wants it for rat poisoning. Then her husband has a near fatal case of arsenic poisoning. It happens at a time when he is dining at a restaurant with his wife and no one else in the restaurant gets any poison, only the husband. And oh yes, Paul, something I almost forgot to tell you.”

“Don’t tell me that it’s more circumstantial evidence against the wife?”

“But it is.”

“What?”

“When the police examined the purse the wife was carrying the day the husband became ill from food poisoning, they found a little paper bag still containing some arsenic.”

“Well, isn’t that nice,” Drake said. “Really, Perry, I must go to court and hear you when you’re arguing that case to the jury. That’s going to be something!”

Mason said, “Now let’s forget the obvious for a minute and look at the thing from a common sense standpoint. If a woman were going to put a slug of arsenic in her husband’s soup while he went to answer the telephone or something, she would have taken along the necessary dosage and dumped the whole thing into the soup and stirred it up. She wouldn’t have sprinkled a little in and then very carefully left some in the bag so that the police could find it.”

“Oh, I see,” Drake said. “That’s going to be your defense. She couldn’t possibly have been that dumb. Is that it?”

“That’s it.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Why not?”

“About the arsenic, for instance. She might have dumped half of it in the soup and intended to save the rest of it for dessert. Then hubby decided that he didn’t, want any dessert or perhaps he didn’t go answer the telephone after the dessert was served or he might have held the telephone in a position where he could keep looking at the table so she didn’t dare to raise the upper crust of his pie and dump the rest of the nice little white powder that would make it so the insurance company would pay mama the money so she could run away with the other man.”

“Okay,” Mason said. “That’s fine. Now then, having done all of those dumb things and having gone home, she doesn’t dispose of the rest of the arsenic but leaves it in the purse for the police to find.”

“Well, of course,” Drake said, “you’re acting on the assumption that she looks ahead and sees that the police are going to realize that it’s arsenic poisoning, and most smart little women like that think that the doctor will make a death certificate of acute indigestion and that’s all they need to worry about.”

“So then,” Mason goes on, “she takes him out on a yachting trip and tries to kill him. In order to do that she waits until midnight, goes up to the bow of the ship, carrying a gun. She has evidently lured her husband up there. She gets him near the rail, gives him a push, and as he hits the water, leans over and gives him a nice little lead pill. Then she runs down the deck, still carrying the gun with one chamber fired, and runs into me.”

“Of course,” Drake said, “she didn’t know that she was going to run into you. Or did she?”

“Figure it either way,” Mason said. “She still couldn’t have been that dumb.”

“You can’t tell. Suppose she didn’t know you were on deck. She might have had a chance to run back to her stateroom, climb into bed, and be sleeping the sleep of the innocent when the captain knocked on the door and said, ‘I beg your pardon, Ma’am, but have you lost a husband?’ ”

“Sure,” Mason said, “that would have been perfectly swell. And there she would have been, lying so sweetly innocent, with the murder weapon on the dresser. Of course, no one would have suspected. It would have been the perfect crime.”

Drake scratched his head. “You’re beginning to get me sold,” he said. “Even a dumb cluck who depended on her curves to get her out of trouble would have thrown the gun into the brink.”

“As far as she could have chucked it,” Mason said.

“Go ahead,” Drake told him. “I’m getting interested now. What happened after that?”

“After that,” Mason said, “they threw out a life preserver with a flare attached to it. Nothing happened. They launched boats, rigged up a searchlight and cruised all around. No body.”

“Of course with a lead pill in him,” Drake said, “he’d have gone to the bottom.”

“Remember that he floated past the boat and managed to keep kicking at the side of the boat, pounding it so that people who hadn’t been awakened by the shot and the woman’s scream would be roused from their slumber by the jars on the side of the boat. — You know how it sounded. That sound was magnified along the water line of a trim yacht.”

“Even so,” Drake said, “the absence of the body doesn’t bother me so much. It could have sunk down to the bottom. A wounded man drifting past the ship naturally would try to cling to the side of the boat. He’d keep groping with his hands trying to find something to hang onto.”

Mason said, “Now we come to something else. He was buying a yacht, going to try it out over the week end. His wife and a few friends were going along.”

“I don’t get it, Perry.”

“And then this deal with Benton came up,” Mason went on, “and he had his wife phone Parker Benton suggesting this yacht trip. Get it?”

Drake frowned. “Deal me one more card, Perry. I’m beginning to get the idea.”

“All right,” Mason said, “now we come to something else. A short time before the murder I had been walking around the deck of the yacht and up in the bow I’d stumbled over a piece of rope, a rope about twenty feet long, about one inch rope.”

“What about it?”

“I kicked it out of the way.”

“I don’t get it,” Drake said.

“When I went back there a while after the shooting and the splashing, the rope was gone.”

“Go on,” Drake said. “You went up to take a look?”

“I went up to take a look.”

“No one there?”

“No one.”

“If the wife didn’t fire the shot, who did?”

“Don’t you get it, Paul? There’s only one person who could have fired it.”

“Who?”

“The husband.”

“You mean he shot himself?”

“Not himself. He just fired one shot in order to pass the buck to his wife. He had already fired one shot out of the gun that he left on the dresser for the wife to bring when he telephoned her. Now then, he had to work his timing just right. He had to wait until he saw her coming along the deck and then he had to struggle and sway in a peculiar manner and then topple overboard. Then he had to fire a shot and be in such a position that just as she leaned over the bow of the boat she’d look down and see him. He’d even call her name so that there could be a positive identification. Then he’d slip out of sight and drift along the side of the yacht, pounding and banging against the sides, so he’d be certain to waken witnesses, then he’d completely disappear.”

“Let’s hear more about the rope,” Drake said. “What does the rope have to do with it?”

“You see, Paul, the man had to go overboard, falling in a rather peculiar way. Then he had to be where his wife would see him when she reached the bow of the boat. There’s quite an overhang on the bow of a yacht that’s built along those trim lines. He had to be certain that the current didn’t sweep him away until after his wife had seen him. And in addition to that, he had to be where he could have one hand out of the water and fire a gun, and be sure it went off. He didn’t want that gun to get wet or have the barrel filled with water. He had to drop off the yacht in such a way that he could keep his right hand out of the water until after he’d fired the shot.”

“And you mean that accounts for the rope?”

“That accounts for the rope,” Mason said. “The best way to have done all that was to have looped a twenty-foot rope over the bow of the yacht. Then when he leaned over the side, he could manage to fall in just that peculiar manner. He could hit the water with a splash, but it would be a controlled splash. He’d have hold of the rope with his left hand and the gun would be held in his right hand. He’d fire the gun then let go one end of the rope and pull the rope down with him. Then he only needed to kick himself up against the current and the confused motions of a wounded swimmer would keep him in just the position he wanted until he looked up and saw his wife looking down at him. Then he could drift along the side of the boat.”

“Gosh,” Drake said, “he really must have loved his wife.”

“That’s the point,” Mason said, “I think he loved a nice little blonde real estate agent by the name of Ellen Cushing. He’d been divorced twice and had had the bite put into him for alimony. He didn’t want any more of that; so he decided he’d die this time. But when a person dies, there are certain formalities that have to be taken care of before he’s marked dead officially. Someone has to see the body and identify it. So why not pass the buck to his wife? Why not let her be the one to identify the body? And just to make sure that she was kept thoroughly occupied, he’d leave her framed with a nice little murder rap.”

“You see the thing had all been planned for this week-end yachting party, but it wouldn’t have looked so good if he’d gone bye-bye overboard at a time when he was surrounded only by his own friends. Then along came this deal with Parker Benton, and, of course, Benton’s been known as a yachtsman for years — pictures of his yacht in all the yachting magazines... If Shelby could get aboard that yacht and leave Parker Benton to do the explaining to the police... Get it?”

“I’m beginning to, okay. But why didn’t he compromise his case, get the dough and...?”

“Because he could never in the world have got a dime out of Benton until the escrow was closed. Benton would have demanded a quitclaim deed from Shelby, then given Shelby an order on the escrow. So, by playing it this way, and leaving the case wide open, Shelby felt certain the true facts would never have been even suspected, let alone uncovered.”

Drake ran his fingers through his hair, looked at Della Street, scratched the hair on top of his head, rubbed the palm of his hand along his temple, said, “Gosh, Perry, you almost convince me. I have to hand it to you. It’s the best story I ever heard to account for a woman running barefoot along a deck carrying a gun and saying, ‘Oh dear, something terrible has happened. My husband has just been murdered, but I don’t know what happened to the murderer. And the similarity of my having a gun in my hand is purely coincidental. No resemblance to any murderer living or dead is intended.’ It’s a hell of a swell story, Perry, but remember I’m only listening to your side of it. Something seems to tell me that if I were on a jury, when the district attorney got up and began to make his argument, I would fall for it like a ton of bricks. I’d bring in a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree. I can imagine that a good district attorney could pour on a lot of nice sarcasm and before he got done, the jurors would all be laughing at you.”

“That’s just the point,” Mason said. “The district attorney has the closing argument. I think that’s what happened, but we’ve got to get some proof.”

“And the proof?” Drake asked.

“The proof,” Mason said, “lies in the fact that the man must have had an accomplice, someone to help him out, someone who was camped downstream with a rowboat anchored out of the deep channel but where the current was strong. Scott Shelby must have kicked past the side of the boat, then gone on downstream, swimming under water, come up to the surface, quit swimming, turned over on his back and floated until he saw the signal of his accomplice in the rowboat, probably a shielded flashlight. Then he climbed aboard over the stern of the rowboat and his accomplice promptly cut loose from his anchor and silently sculled the boat to shore where they had an auto waiting. They’ll be working according to a tight little schedule. Scott Shelby will be on an airplane headed for the East or perhaps some place in Mexico. He’ll show up under the name of Scott Cushing and after a while his blonde wife will come to join him. Now that’s where you come in, Paul. I want you to get the best operatives money can buy. I want to get a whole flock of people scrutinizing the passengers who go out on airplanes. I want detectives to cover the morning outgoing trains at the depot. I want detectives to comb the river bank and see if they can find some trace of a blonde girl who rented a rowboat. And above all, Paul, if the scheme worked out according to schedule, Scott Shelby must have changed from his wet clothes to dry clothes in the girl’s automobile. I want to get hold of her automobile and see if we can find Shelby’s wet clothes. That’s why I’m in a hurry and that’s why we’ve got to work fast.”

Paul Drake came out of bed with a bound. “Give me those pants, Perry... It’s all right, Della, sit still. I’ll dress in the bathroom... Tell you what you do, Della. You can save some time. Ring up the agency and tell the night telephone operator to call the list of numbers on the emergency card that she’ll find in my upper right-hand desk drawer. Those are some men I can depend on. Let’s see, Perry. I’d better start some of them out before we... Della, look up Ellen Cushing’s address first and leave word for three of the operatives to meet us there. The first thing we do is to take a look at that blonde’s automobile.”

“That’s the way I figure it,” Mason said.

“Well, it will take those people probably an hour to get out of bed and assembled at the office. Okay, Della, you put through the call. I’ll dress.”