The Case of the Sulky Girl

Chapter 17

Paul Drake perched on the edge of Perry Mason's desk and shook tobacco from a cloth sack into a brown paper which he held expertly between cigarettestained fingers.

"Well," he said, "we've got our contact with Mrs. Mayfield. But it isn't getting us anything. We had one devil of a time. The police had her in custody as a material witness for a while."

"Have you worked the rough shadow business on her yet?" inquired Mason.

"Not yet. We're building up to it. We've got a woman operative who's posing as a woman who's been abroad as a governess, and is now out of work. We've checked back on Mrs. Mayfield and found all about her early associates. We managed to run one of them down and got all the dope from her about the names of the people she knew, and all that sort of stuff."

"This woman is getting across all right?" asked Mason.

"I'll say she's getting across. She's got Mrs. Mayfield confiding in her, all of her troubles with her husband, and all that sort of stuff."

"But she hasn't said anything about the murder?" asked Mason.

"Not a peep so far. That is, of course, she mentions that she was taken to the District Attorney's office and held for awhile as a material witness until they got a signed statement out of her, and a lot of that stuff. But she isn't going into details. All that she's telling is simply a rehash of what she's told the newspapers."

"How about Don Graves?" inquired the attorney. "How are you getting along with him?"

Paul Drake put the finishing touches on the cigarette.

"We're making some real progress there," he said, "We've got a young lady operative who has contacted him, and Graves is falling for her like a ton of brick. He's telling her everything he knows."

"About the case?" asked Mason.

"About the case, about everything. He's turning himself inside out."

"This woman must be good," said Mason.

"I'll say she's good," explained Drake enthusiastically. "She'd knock your eye out. She's got one of those confiding techniques that snuggles up and looks at you with big eyes, and seems to listen all over. You just naturally ache to tell her things. My God, every time I go out with that broad, I sit down and start telling her all of my troubles; about the girl that jilted me in my childhood, so that I never got married, and all that stuff.

"You've seen a guy when he's about ninetenths drunk, going around and weeping on the necks of total strangers and telling all of his private affairs? Well, that's just the way this jane works. She affects the fellows just about like ninetenths of a drunk. They fall all over her and spill everything."

"That's fine," said Mason. "What have you found out?"

"So far, just stuff you don't want to hear," said the detective. "It don't help your client a damn bit."

"All right," said Mason, "give me the lowdown, and don't try to put a sugar coating on it. Give me the facts."

"The facts are," said Drake, "that this Celane girl had on a pink negligee the night the murder was committed. Graves was sent by Edward Norton to ride up with Judge Purley and Arthur Crinston to get some documents. He kept looking back toward the house as they went around the curves in the road and when they got to the point in the road where he could look up at the window in Edward Norton's study, he saw somebody standing back of Norton, who was seated at his desk.

"More than that, he says that he saw the man swing a club down on Edward Norton's head, and Norton collapsed across the desk. He says that he saw the arm, shoulder and head of a woman, and that he thinks he is positive of the identity of both the man and the woman. The woman had on a pink negligee."

"He made that statement to the District Attorney's office?" asked Mason.

"Yes, he's made it, and subscribed and sworn to it."

"That isn't the statement he made the first time," Mason pointed out. "When they were making their first investigation, Graves said that he saw the man in the room, who struck the blow, and didn't see anyone else except Norton."

"That won't help you any," said Drake casually. "You can't prove that."

"They took the statement down in shorthand," said Mason.

Drake laughed.

"Those notes have been lost. I'm just telling you in the event you don't know it," he said. "I made it a point to ask one of the newspaper reporters to inquire of the shorthand stenographer who took down the statements there that night. Strange as it may seem, something happened, and the notebook had been misplaced. It's disappeared."

He grinned at the lawyer.

Perry Mason stared down at the surface of his desk, his brows in straight lines of frowning concentration.

"The dirty crooks," he said. "The D.A. always howls to high heaven about the crooked criminal lawyers who manipulate the facts. But whenever the D.A. uncovers any evidence that gives the defendant a break, you can bet something happens to it."

The detective shrugged his shoulders.

"The D.A.'s want convictions," he said.

"Can your operative get into Mrs. Mayfield's room in Norton's residence, Paul?" Mason asked.

"Sure. That's a cinch."

"All right, I want her to make a report on every dress that's in there. In other words, I want to see if there's a pink dress or a pink negligee in there."

Paul Drake squinted at the lawyer significantly.

"It wouldn't be such a hard job to put one in there," he said.

"No," said Mason, "I'm going to play fair."

"What's the use of playing fair?" asked Drake. "They didn't play fair with you."

"I can't help that," said Mason. "I think I've got an out in this case, and I'm going to play it fair and square. I think I can beat the rap if I can get a decent break."

"Listen," said Paul Drake, drawing his feet up to the desk, and sitting crosslegged on the corner of it, "you haven't got an out in this case. They've got your client as good as convicted right now. Look what they've got on her. She's the one that would have benefited by the old man's death. In fact, with that marriage hanging over her head, she either had to kill him, or lose an estate that's worth a big bunch of money.

"This fellow, Gleason, may have married the woman because he loved her, or he may have married her because he wanted her money. Nobody knows which, but he gets all the credit for marrying her for money. The theory of the prosecution is that when he found out about the trust provision, he and the girl tried to reason with Norton. When Norton wouldn't listen to reason, Gleason made up his mind he'd bump him off. They had a big squabble. He'd have killed Norton right then if it hadn't been for Crinston coming to keep an appointment. So Gleason waited around until Crinston left, then jimmied a window to make it look as though burglars had broken in from the outside. Then he cracked down on Norton's head.

"He probably hadn't figured on any robbery at the time. He just wanted to make it look like robbery, so he turned the pockets insideout. He found so much money in the wallet, he decided to keep it. Then he heard Crinston coming back, and had to do something quick. He knew the chauffeur was drunk, so he dashed down and planted as much of the evidence on him as he could, and then beat it.

"Frances Celane was with Gleason when the murder was committed. She's got the devil of a temper when she gets aroused. Probably she was in a rage, but Gleason married her for her dough. It was a deliberate crime on his part. He'd probably worked out the burglar plant while Crinston was talking with Norton. When he heard the car coming back, he realized he must have been seen, or that something had gone wrong, so then he framed the chauffeur, just as a second string to his bow."

Perry Mason stared at the detective with his eyes cold and hard.

"Paul," he said, "if they go into court on that theory, I'm going to bust it wide open."

"You're not going to bust anything wide open," Drake told him. "They've got all kinds of circumstantial evidence. They've caught the girl in half a dozen lies. Why did she say that she was out in the Buick sedan when she wasn't? They can prove that the car never left the garage. Mrs. Mayfield has worked up that end of the case for them; and the butler will swear positively that the car was there all the time. They can prove the ownership of the club that killed Norton, and they can prove that the girl had some of the money that came from Norton…"

Perry Mason jerked to rigid attention.

"They can prove the girl had the money?" he asked.

"Yes," said Drake.

"How?" asked the lawyer.

"I don't know exactly how, but I do know that it's part of their case. They've got it all worked up. I think it's through the Mayfield woman."

"Well," said Mason wearily, "we're going to have a chance to find out. I'm going to force them to bring that case to an immediate trial."

"Force them to an immediate trial?" exclaimed Drake. "Why I thought you were stalling for delay. The newspapers say that you are."

Perry Mason grinned at him.

"That," he said, "is the way I'm forcing them to a trial. I'm yelling for continuances, and asking for additional time, as though my clients would be stuck if I didn't get them. Naturally, they're opposing my continuances. After I've got the D.A.'s office to make that opposition sufficiently vigorous, I'm going to admit that I'm licked, and let them bring the case on for trial."

Drake shook his head.

"They won't fall for that one," he said, "it's too old."

"It won't be old the way I dress it up," said Mason. "What I want you to do is to play this rough shadow business on Mrs. Mayfield, and also on Don Graves. I want to see if we can't frighten some facts out of them. Neither one of them is telling the truth—not yet. And I want to find out more about that money, whether the District Attorney had proof or just suspicions."

"You going to try and saddle the murder off on Mrs. Mayfield and her husband?" asked Drake.

"I'm going to represent my client to the best of my ability," Mason insisted.

"Yeah, I know that line," the detective told him, "but what does it mean?"

Mason tapped a cigarette end on the polished surface of the desk.

"The way to get to the bottom of a murder," he said, "is to pick out any pertinent fact which hasn't been explained, and find the real explanation of that fact."

"Sure," said Drake, "that's another generality. Get down to earth. What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the reason Norton had for claiming the Buick sedan was stolen," said the lawyer.

"What's that got to do with it?" Drake wanted to know.

"Everything," insisted Perry Mason. "That's an unexplained fact in that case, and until we get the explanation of that fact, we haven't got a solution of the murder."

"That's a good line of hooey for the jury," commented the detective, "but it doesn't really mean anything. You can't explain everything in any case. You know that."

"Until you can explain it," doggedly insisted Mason, "you haven't got a complete case. Now remember that the prosecution is going to rest its case on circumstantial evidence. In order to get a conviction on circumstantial evidence, you've got to exclude every reasonable hypothesis other than that of guilt."

The detective snapped his fingers.

"A lot of lawyer talk," he said. "That doesn't mean anything to the newspapers, and the newspapers are going to be the ones who will determine whether or not your client gets convicted."

"Well, before I get done with this case," Mason remarked, "the newspapers are going to figure that Buick car is the most important fact in the entire case."

"But the automobile wasn't stolen. It didn't leave the garage."

"That's what the butler says."

Drake's face suddenly became hard with concentrated attention.

"You mean that the butler is lying?" he asked.

"I'm not making any statements right now," said Mason. Drake spoke in a monotone, as though thinking out loud.

"Of course if the butler had taken the car and disconnected the speedometer, and maybe gone for a little drive, and Norton had telephoned the police that the car was stolen, and he wanted the driver picked up, no matter who it might be, and then the butler had come back and found out about that telephone call…"

His voice trailed off into silence. He sat motionless for a few minutes, then shook his head sadly.

"No, Perry," he said, "that won't work."

"All right," said Mason, smiling, "I'm not asking you what'll work and what won't work. I want facts out of you. Get the hell off of my desk, and let me go to work. Put your rough shadows to work just as soon as you can. I'm anxious to find out what they uncover."

"You're representing both Gleason and the woman, eh?" asked Drake.

"Yes, I am now. Frances Celane is going to stand by her husband. She's told me to represent him."

"All right, I'm going to ask you something that's been asked me by a dozen different people. I hope you won't take any offense, but it's for your own good, because everybody in town is talking about it. They're saying that if the lawyer for the defense has any sense why doesn't he try to get separate trials and try the man and the woman separately? In that way they'd have to try the man first, and you'd have a chance to find out all their evidence and crossexamine all their witnesses before they got down to a trial of the woman."

"I couldn't get separate trials for them," said Mason. "The court wouldn't allow it."

"Well, you could at least make the attempt," said the detective.

"No," said Mason with a smile, "I rather think I'm satisfied the way things are now. I think we'll try them together."

"Okay," said Drake, "you're the doctor. I'll get the rough shadows at work just as soon as I can."