The D.A. Calls It Murder

Chapter VI

Selby said to Frank Gordon, “Frank, I want you to find everything you can about the litigation in the Perry Estate.”

“I think I can tell you all about it,” Gordon said. “I know John Baggs, the attorney for Herbert Perry. He’s discussed the case with me.”

“What are the facts?”

“Charles Perry married Edith Fontaine in Yuma. The marriage wasn’t legal because Perry only had an interlocutory decree. He had the mistaken idea he could leave the state and make a good marriage. Edith Fontaine had a son by a previous marriage — Herbert Fontaine — he changed his name to Perry. Perry and his wife were killed in an auto accident. If there wasn’t any marriage, the property goes to H. Franklin Perry, the veterinary, a brother of Charles. If the marriage was legal, the bulk of the property vested in Edith on the death of Charles, and Herbert is Edith’s sole heir. That’s the case in a nutshell.”

“Who’s representing H. Franklin Perry?”

“Fred Lattaur.”

“Get a picture of the dead minister. See if either of the litigants can identify him.” He picked up the phone and said to the exchange operator, “I want Sheriff Brandon, please. Then I want Shirley Arden, the picture actress.” He held the line, and a moment later heard Rex Brandon’s voice.

“Just had an idea,” Selby said. “There were a pair of reading spectacles in that suitcase. Get an oculist here to get the prescription. Get a photograph of the dead man. Rush the photograph and the prescription to the oculist in San Francisco, whose name is on the spectacle case. Have him look through his records and see if he can identify the spectacles.”

“Shall I tell him the man’s a minister?” Brandon asked.

“Right now,” Selby said, “it looks as though he’s more apt to have been a gangster or a racketeer of some sort, perhaps a damn clever blackmailer. Get hold of Cushing over at the hotel and get an earful of the latest developments. Then, when you get a chance, get in touch with me and we’ll talk things over. I’m trying to locate a certain party in Hollywood.”

“Okay,” Brandon said cheerfully. “I’m running down a couple of other clews. I’ll see you later on.”

Selby’s secretary reported, “Miss Arden is working on the set. She can’t come to the telephone. A Mr. Trask says he’ll take the call. He says he’s her manager.”

“Very well,” Selby said, “put Trask on the line.”

He heard a click, then a masculine voice saying suavely, “Yes, hello, Mr. Selby.”

Selby snapped words into the transmitter. “I don’t want to say anything over the telephone which would embarrass you or Miss Arden,” he said. “Perhaps you know who I am.”

“Yes, I do, Mr. Selby.”

“Day before yesterday,” Selby said, “Miss Arden made a trip. You were with her.”

“Yes.”

“I want to question her about that trip.”

“But why?”

Selby said, “I think you’d prefer I didn’t answer that question over the telephone. I want to see both you and Miss Arden in my office sometime before nine o’clock tonight.”

“But, I say, that’s quite impossible,” Trask protested. “Miss Arden’s working on a picture and...”

“She won’t be working straight through until nine o’clock tonight,” Selby interrupted.

“Well, it’ll be rather late this afternoon when she finishes, and she’ll be tired.”

“I can understand that very well,” Selby retorted, “but this matter is sufficiently important for me to insist upon her presence.”

“But it can’t be important enough to...”

Selby interrupted. “I have ways,” he said, “of getting Miss Arden’s statement. There are hard ways and easy ways. This is the easy way — for you.”

There was a moment’s silence, during which the district attorney could hear the man at the other end of the telephone breathing heavily. Then the voice said, “At ten o’clock tonight, Mr. Selby?”

“I’d prefer an earlier hour. How about seven or eight?”

“Eight o’clock would be the earliest time we could possibly make it. Miss Arden, you know, is under contract, and...”

“Very well,” Selby said, “at eight o’clock tonight,” and hung up before the manager could think of additional excuses.

He had hardly hung up the telephone before it rang with shrill insistence. He took the receiver from the hook, said, “Hello,” and heard the calmly professional voice of Dr. Ralph Trueman.

“You wanted information about that man who was found dead in the Madison Hotel,” Trueman said.

“Yes, Doctor. What information have you?”

“I haven’t covered everything,” Dr. Trueman said, “but I’ve gone far enough to be morally certain of the cause of death.”

“What was it?”

“A lethal dose of morphine, taken internally.”

“Of morphine!” Selby exclaimed. “Why, the man had some sleeping tablets...”

“Which hadn’t been taken at all, so far as I can ascertain,” Trueman interrupted. “But what he had taken was a terrific dose of morphine, which induced paralysis of the respiratory organs. Death probably took place some time between midnight and three o’clock yesterday morning.”

“And when was the morphine administered?”

“Any time from one to two hours prior to death.”

“How?”

“Well, I’m not certain about that,” Trueman said, “but there’s some chance a tablet containing the deadly dose might have been inserted in the box of sedative which the man was carrying with him. In that event he’d have taken the morphia thinking he was taking an ordinary sleeping tablet. The tablets were wrapped in paper so that they’d naturally be taken in a consecutive order. I’ve made a very delicate test with some of the paper remaining in the box and get a definite trace of morphia.”

“Could that have been a possible error on the part of the druggist filling the prescription?” Selby asked.

“In a tablet of that size, with that amount of morphia,” Dr. Trueman said, “the chance of honest error would be just about one in ten million.”

“Then... then it was deliberate, carefully planned murder,” Selby exclaimed.

Dr. Trueman’s voice retained its professional calm. “That,” he observed, “is a matter of law. I’m merely giving you the medical facts.”