The Case of the Sleepwalker's Niece

Chapter 9

Mason dropped the pillow, jumped backwards and clapped his hand over Edna Hammer’s mouth. “Shut up,” he said, stifling the screams she had been about to emit. “Use your head. Let’s find out what we’re up against before we spread an alarm.”

“But the knife!” she half screamed as he lowered his hand from her lips. “It’s all bbbbloody! You can see what’s hhhhappened. Oh, I’m so ffffrightened!”

“Forget it,” Mason told her. “Having hysterics isn’t going to help. Let’s get busy and find out where we stand. Come on.”

He strode out into the corridor, walked down to the door of his room, tried it, found it locked, banged on it, and, after a moment, heard the sound of heavy steps, the clicking of a bolt, and Dr. Kelton, his face covered with lather, a shaving brush held in his right hand, said, “I’m already up, if that’s what you came for. The smell of broiling bacon filters through that window and…”

“That,” Mason told him, “isn’t what we came for. Get the lather off your face and come in here. You don’t need to put on a shirt, just come the way you are.”

Dr. Kelton stared steadily at Mason for a moment, then went to the washstand, splashed water on his face, wiped off the lather with a towel, and, still drying his face and hands, accompanied them across the corridor to Peter Kent’s room. Mason raised the pillow. Dr. Kelton leaned over to stare at the bloody blade, so eloquent in its silent accusation. Kelton gave a low whistle.

“It’ll be Maddox,” Edna Hammer said, her voice hysterical. “You know how Uncle Pete felt toward him. He went to bed last night with that thought in his mind… Oh, hurry, let’s go to his room at once! Perhaps he isn’t dead—just wounded. If Uncle Pete was groping about in the dark… perhaps he…” She broke off with a quick, gasping intake of her breath.

Mason nodded, turned toward the door. “Lead the way,” he ordered.

She led them down the corridor, down a flight of stairs, into a corridor on the opposite wing of the house. She paused in front of a door, raised her hand to knock and said, “Oh, no, I forgot Maddox changed rooms with Uncle Phil. Maddox is over here.”

“Who’s Uncle Phil?” Dr. Kelton asked.

“Philip Rease, Uncle Pete’s halfbrother. He’s something of a crank. He thought there was a draught across his bed and asked Maddox to change rooms with him last night.”

She moved down to another door, knocked gently and, when there was no answer, glanced apprehensively at Perry Mason and slowly reached for the door knob. “Wait a minute,” Mason said; “perhaps I’d better do this.” He pushed her gently to one side, twisted the knob and opened the door. The room was on the north side of the corridor. French doors opened onto a cemented porch some eighteen inches above the patio. Drapes were drawn across these windows so that the morning light filtered into the room, disclosing indistinctly a motionless object lying on the bed. Mason stepped forward and said over his shoulder to Dr. Kelton, “Be careful you don’t touch anything, Doctor.”

Edna Hammer came forward a doubtful step or two then walking rapidly to Perry Mason’s side, clung to his arm. Mason bent over the bed. Abruptly the figure below him stirred. Mason jumped back. Frank Maddox, sitting up in bed, stared at them with wide eyes, then, as his surprise gave way to indignation, he demanded, “What the devil’s the meaning of this?”

Mason said, “We came to call you for breakfast.”

“You’ve got a crust,” Maddox said, “invading the privacy of my room this way. What the devil are you trying to do? If you’ve been through any of my private papers, I’ll have you arrested. I might have known that Kent would resort to any underhanded tactics. He poses as a bighearted, magnanimous individual, but it’s all pose with him. Dig below the surface, and you’ll find out just what a damn skunk he is.”

Mason said in a low voice, “How about Mrs. Fogg, Maddox—is she a skunk, too?”

Maddox’s face showed sudden dismay. After a moment he said, “So you know about her?”

“Yes.”

“And that’s what you came to see me about?”

“On the contrary,” Mason said, “we came to call you for breakfast. Come on, let’s go.”

“Wait a minute.”

Maddox thrust his feet out from under the covers, groped for his slippers. “About this Fogg business, Mason, don’t believe everything you hear. There are two sides to that.”

“Yes,” Mason remarked, “and there are two sides to a piece of hot toast. Right now I’m interested in both of them. We’ll discuss the Fogg matter later.”

He led the way from the room, holding the door open until the others had stepped into the corridor, then pulling the door shut behind him with a bang. “What’s the Fogg case?” Edna Hammer asked.

“An ace I was keeping up my sleeve; but when he started making a fuss I had to play it. He’ll be a good dog now.”

“But what is it?” she asked. “If it concerns Uncle Pete, I…”

“While we’re here,” Mason said, “I think we may just as well take a complete census.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s just make certain none of the others are—indisposed. Who sleeps here?”

“Mr. Duncan.”

Mason pounded his knuckles on the door. A booming voice said suspiciously, “Who is it?”

Mason smiled at Dr. Kelton and said, “Notice the legal training, Jim. When I knocked at your door you opened it. When I knock at a lawyer’s door he wants to know who it is.”

“Perhaps he’s hardly presentable to ladies,” Dr. Kelton pointed out, but Duncan, fully dressed, even to his necktie and scarf pin, flung open the door, saw who it was, and glowered at them in belligerent appraisal.

“Well,” he asked, “what do you want?”

“First call for breakfast,” Mason told him.

“Is this,” Duncan asked, adjusting his spectacles, and raising his head so that he could regard them through the lower part of the bifocals, “a new innovation which Mr. Kent has instituted?”

“You may consider it such,” Mason replied, turning away from the door.

“This room,” he asked Edna, “is, I suppose, where your Uncle Phil sleeps.” He indicated the door before which she had first paused.

“Yes. Maddox slept there until last night, then Uncle Phil changed with him.”

“Well,” he said, “let’s call your Uncle Phil.”

He tapped on the panels. There was no answer, and he tapped more loudly. Duncan, who had been standing in his doorway, came striding out into the corridor and said, “What’s the big idea?”

Mason, his face showing a puzzled expression, pounded loudly with his knuckles, turned the knob, opened the door and entered the room. Mason took a single step toward the bed, whirled around, blocked the others in the doorway, and said to Dr. Kelton, “Get that girl out of here.”

“What’s the matter?” Edna Hammer asked, and then, as she interpreted his silence, screamed.

Duncan, pushing importantly into the room, said, “What’s the trouble here? What’s happening?”

Maddox, attired in pajamas and slippers, shuffled along the corridor until he joined the group in the doorway. Dr. Kelton, taking Edna Hammer by the arm and pushing her from the room, remarked to the other two, “Just keep out, please.” Duncan’s big paunch blocked the doorway. Dr. Kelton, also heavily fleshed, but not as big in the stomach, pushed up against Duncan. “Let the woman out,” he said.

Duncan shoved. “I’ve got a right to know what’s happening here,” he said.

“Let the woman out,” Dr. Kelton repeated.

Duncan cleared his throat, continued to shove. Dr. Kelton, slightly lowering his shoulder, braced himself, gave a heave, sent Duncan staggering backwards. Edna Hammer, sobbing into her handkerchief, left the room. Duncan, recovering his balance, pushed through the door, saying, “You saw what he did, Maddox. Let’s get at the bottom of this.”

Mason, raising his voice, called to Dr. Kelton. “I think you’d better come back, Jim, we’ll want a medical man, and I want some witness to see that these two buzzards don’t frame anything.”

Duncan protested, “Upon behalf of my client, I resent… Oh, my God… Oh, my good God, the man’s been murdered!”

Dr. Kelton, walking to the bed, looked down at the bloodstained bedclothes, at the greenishgray features which stared with glassy eyes half open. He placed his fingers on the sides of the neck, turned to Mason and said, “It’s a job for the coroner—and the police.”

“We’re all getting out of this room,” Perry Mason ordered, raising his voice. “A murder’s been committed. The Homicide Squad will want things left exactly as they are. Everybody leave the room, please, and don’t touch anything.”

Duncan, glowering suspiciously, said, “And that applies to you as well as to us.”

“Certainly it does.”

“Go ahead and get out, then, don’t think you can herd me around like a sheep. I don’t know what authority you have to take charge of things.”

“I suggested,” Mason told him, “that we’d all leave the room. If you want to stay, that’s quite all right.”

He pushed past the paunchy lawyer, said, “Come on, Jim, we’ve given them warning. If they want to stay in here, they can explain it to the Homicide Squad.”

Duncan, suddenly suspicious, grabbed Maddox by the arm. “Come out, Frank,” he said, “come on out. He’s trying to trap us.”

“They knew someone had been murdered. They thought I was the one,” Maddox said.

“Come out, come out,” Duncan insisted. “We’ll talk outside. I have some information, but I’ll only give it to the police. Don’t let that man Mason frame anything on you, Frank.” They scrambled from the room.

“I demand,” Duncan said, in the corridor, “that the police be called in immediately.”

Perry Mason was moving toward the telephone. “You’re not demanding any louder than I am,” he retorted. He reached the telephone and called police headquarters, said to the desk sergeant, “There’s been a murder committed at the residence of Peter B. Kent. It’s in Hollywood at 3824 Lakeview Terrace… This is Perry Mason, the lawyer, talking… I’ll explain that when you get here. I’ve closed up the room. Very well, I’ll lock it, if I can find the key.”

As Mason turned from the telephone, Dr. Kelton drew him to one side. “There’s one angle of this you want to consider, Perry.”

“What’s that?”

“If,” Dr. Kelton pointed out, “your client, Peter Kent, had intended to commit a deliberate murder, he’s laid a swell foundation by building up this sleepwalking business.”

“What makes you think he planned anything like that, Jim?”

“That shaking act he put on.”

Mason suddenly faced Dr. Kelton. “Look here, Jim,” he said, “if you don’t want to miss all your morning appointments, you’d better get out of here. I’ll have to stick around. There’s no reason for you to.” Dr. Kelton nodded. His face showed relief. “You can,” Mason said, “take my car.”