The Case of the Lazy Lover

21

Perry Mason, his long legs elevated so that his feet rested on the corner of the desk, tilted back in his swivel chair and grinned at Paul Drake.

“You know, Paul,” he said, “the possible significance of those tracks never occurred to me until after I started studying them at lunch. That’s the bad part of circumstantial evidence. It can really trick you and trap you.

“I told you that Bernice Archer was a smooth individual. Tragg let her talk with Fleetwood up there in the jail, and the minute she knew what had happened she told Fleetwood to insist that Mrs. Allred had been in the luggage compartment of the automobile. She made Fleetwood tell her where the automobile had been parked and she jumped in her car and drove up there and by daylight Wednesday morning she had left tracks which would substantiate Fleetwood’s story. And it was such a cinch to do. All she needed to do was to take any kind of a short pole, walk slowly from the highway out to where the automobile had been parked, then put the pole in the ground to steady her and give her leverage to jump down to a place about where the luggage compartment of the automobile would have been, and then run back to the roadway. When she did that, she didn’t notice Overbrook’s tracks coming out to the automobile and stopping. If she had, she could have pinned the murder on Overbrook right then.”

“Well who the devil did kill him?” Drake asked.

Mason grinned. “Now, Paul, don’t start taking on the duties of the police. It’s up to the police to decide that. The only thing we’re supposed to do is get Mrs. Allred off.”

“Well who do you think killed him?”

Mason said, “When Overbrook went out to investigate on Monday night, he must have had some weapon with him. He evidently didn’t have a gun. He’s a big, strong, powerful giant of a man and he had some sort of a club, probably a jack handle. I have an idea that Allred had regained consciousness by the time Overbrook got there, that he was probably moaning, that Overbrook got in the car, backed it down the roadway and started to go to a doctor, that somewhere along the line he discovered the identity of his passenger and then there were words, accusations and perhaps Allred made a grab at Overbrook. Overbrook cracked him over the head.”

“How do you deduce all this?”

“Because of the blood in the luggage compartment,” Mason said. “No story so far has accounted for that blood. Bernice Archer was smart enough to know that the first person to tell a story that would account for that blood would have the inside track, so she deliberately made up a story for Fleetwood to tell and then went out and made tracks to substantiate that story.

“She was so anxious to have a fall guy for the police that she gilded the lily. But the minute Fleetwood told a story that accounted for the bloodstains and had tracks that would back it up he became the fair-haired boy child of the police.

“If she’d kept out of it, the tracks would eventually have given Fleetwood an out, but she couldn’t realize that. Neither one of them realized what perfect tracking conditions existed at the spot where the car was parked.

“When Bernice went out there she only hoped to be able to make some significant tracks to back up Fleetwood’s story. When she found what she had to work with, she really went to town.

“Now I claim that if that blood didn’t come from Mrs. Allred’s bloody nose, it must have come from a wound in Allred’s head. I think that Overbrook became panic-stricken when he realized what he had done and started to conceal the body by putting it in the luggage compartment. Then he realized that wouldn’t do him any good, and then he got the idea of taking the body out and putting it in the front of the car and driving the car over the grade.”

“Why couldn’t it have been Fleetwood who put the body in there?”

“Because,” Mason said, “Allred weighed about a hundred and seventy-five pounds. Fleetwood is rather a slender chap and not particularly strong. Overbrook is the strong, husky farmer who could have handled a body like that without much trouble. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s up to the police to worry about that. They’ve laid an egg, and they can hatch it.”

Drake chuckled.

“How about the forged check?” Della Street asked.

“That,” Mason said, “is an interesting case of where Allred really outsmarted himself.

“You can see what Allred planned to do. He intended to get Fleetwood out with his wife and then kill them both and run the car over a mountain precipice. He had a perfect scheme there. All he had to do was keep his wife out with Fleetwood until tongues began to wag, and then let the bodies of the guilty lovers be found in the bottom of a deep canyon.

“Now Mrs. Allred wanted me to protect Pat. Her husband didn’t want me messing around in the case. He wanted to have a free hand. He talked her into destroying the letter she had written me, but she was still going to send the check.

“So Allred got a bright idea. Why not keep me from getting to work on the case by seeing that I had two checks. One of them could be forged. He felt certain that when I got two checks in the same amount I’d refrain from doing anything until I could get in touch with Mrs. Allred.

“And Allred felt he only needed just one day’s time. By Monday night it would be all over. And if he could fog the issues so the check Mrs. Allred sent me wasn’t cashed on Monday, it would never be cashed then because a person’s death automatically cancels any outstanding checks.

“Mrs. Allred had hurriedly typed the letter to the bank at Las Olitas. It was lying there on the table by her typewriter and checkbook. Allred slipped a sheet of carbon paper underneath it, traced the signature with a pointed instrument, perhaps the point of a nail file, on a check and made out the body of the check after Mrs. Allred had left. Remember, he didn’t go to Springfield with them, but followed them after a few minutes.

“He made his wife believe that Patricia Faxon had run into Fleetwood with her automobile. You can follow Allred’s reasoning all the way through. He wanted to murder Fleetwood, and he made two attempts at it. He thought he had killed Fleetwood the first time when he slugged him with a club and left him lying by the hedge.

“Allred ran along the side of the hedge when Fleetwood started to leave the place. He was waiting on the street side of the hedge, just as Fleetwood came out on the patio side at the opening by the driveway. It only took one good, heavy blow to crumple Fleetwood to the ground. Allred thought he had killed him. Then Allred dragged the body back a little ways, took his own car and parked it in such a position that when Patricia came driving up, it was almost certain that she would cut a corner of the hedge. Even if she hadn’t, Allred could have gone out and crumpled the fender after the car was in the garage and then had Patricia thinking she had struck Fleetwood with that fender as she made the turn.

“Then Fleetwood regained consciousness. That meant Allred had to work out some other bulletproof murder scheme. When Fleetwood pretended amnesia, Allred saw another opportunity. He got Fleetwood to go with Mrs. Allred, Mrs. Allred telling Fleetwood she was his married sister, and Allred coming to me and saying that Fleetwood had run away with his wife.”

“Allred certainly went in for complicated schemes,” Drake said.

“He schemed himself right into a grave,” Mason said. “Evidently he hired a car and driver to take him to the Snug-Rest Auto Court and just about the time he was getting there, Fleetwood must have been trying for a getaway.

“Allred had a gun and he forced Fleetwood to stop the car and let him in. From that point on, Fleetwood’s story could be the truth. The only part about it that’s a lie is the story about Mrs. Allred’s being in the luggage compartment. And Fleetwood and Bernice Archer hatched up that story to account for the bloodstains on the carpet of the luggage compartment.”

“And Mrs. Allred changed her story to you because she felt that was her best way out?” Della Street asked.

“Sure. Fleetwood and his girl, Bernice Archer, made such a convincing story that Mrs. Allred suddenly realized she stood a better chance of going free by falling in with their story than by trying to tell the truth. The artistic way Bernice fixed up the story was that it gave Mrs. Allred almost a perfect out on a plea of self-defense — and, of course, it got Fleetwood out of a jam.

“Circumstantial evidence never lies, but it isn’t always easy to interpret it correctly.”

“Well, all’s well that ends well,” Della Street said. “This case certainly expanded into a lot of complications from a forged check. I suppose it was that check which really aroused your suspicions, Chief.”

Mason smiled. “The thing which really made me suspicious was the stories everyone had about the lazy lover. The picture of Fleetwood eloping with Mrs. Allred and then sitting back and letting her do all the running around and registering at the motel while he sat in the car, too lazy to move. Well, somehow when that picture was sketched I began to think Allred might have something up his sleeve in the way of a whole deck of marked cards.”

“That’s a good way to file it,” Della Street said smiling, “The Case of the Lazy Lover.”