The Case of the Curious Bride (9 page)

"How soon after the bell stopped ringing?"

"Just a minute or two. I was afraid to stay in there."

"You don't know whether Gregory was dead or not?"

"No. He dropped to the floor when I hit him and lay motionless. Anyway I heard him fall. I guess I killed him. I didn't mean to. I just hit out blindly."

"So, shortly after the bell stopped ringing, you went downstairs, is that right?"

"Yes."

"Did you see anyone?"

"No."

"Where was your car parked?"

"Around the corner on the side street."

"You went to it?"

"Yes."

"Now, then, you'd dropped your keys in Gregory's apartment. Apparently you dropped them when you picked up the poker."

"I must have."

"Did you know they were missing?"

"Not then."

"When did you find it out?"

"Not until I read the newspaper."

"How did you get in the car?"

"The car door wasn't locked. The ignition key was in the lock. I drove the car back to the garage, and…"

"Just a minute," Mason interrupted. "You had closed the door of the garage when you left, but hadn't locked it?"

"Yes, I thought I locked it, but I didn't. It was unlocked."

"And it was still closed?"

"Yes."

"Just as you had left it?"

"Yes."

"So what did you do?"

"So I opened the door."

"And in order to do that, you had to slide it back along the run-way?"

"Yes."

"All the way back?"

"Yes."

"And you did that and then drove your car into the garage, is that right?"

"Yes."

"And you left the garage door open?"

"Yes. I tried to close it, but when I'd pushed it back, I'd shoved it over the bumper of the other car. It caught there, and I couldn't get it loose."

"And you went upstairs to bed?"

"Yes. I was nervous. I took a powerful sedative."

"You had a talk with your husband this morning?"

"Yes, he was up making coffee. I thought it was rather strange, because I'd given him enough hypnotic to keep him sleeping until late."

"You asked him for some coffee?"

"Yes."

"He asked you if you'd been out?"

"No, not that way. He asked me how I'd slept."

"And you lied to him?"

"Yes."

"Then he went out?"

"Yes."

"And what did you do?"

"I went back to bed, dozed a bit, got up, took a bath dressed, opened the door, brought in the milk and the newspaper. I thought Carl had gone for a walk. I opened the newspaper and then realized I was trapped. The photograph of the garage key was staring me in the face. I knew Carl would recognize it as soon as he saw it. What's more, I knew the police could trace me sooner or later."

"So then what?"

"So I telephoned the express company, had them express my trunk to a fictitious name and address, packed up my things, had a cab come, and rushed out here to take a plane."

"You knew there was a plane left about this time?"

"Yes."

Perry Mason pursed his lips thoughtfully.

"Have you any idea," he asked, "who the person could have been that was ringing the doorbell?"

"No."

"Did you leave the doors open or closed when you left?"

"What doors?"

"The door into the hallway from Gregory's apartment, and the door at the foot of the stairs, that leads to the street."

"I can't remember," she said. "I was frightfully excited. I was quivering all over and drenched with perspiration… How did you know about the garage door?"

"Your husband told me."

"I thought you said he told the police?"

"He did. He came to call on me first."

"What did he say?"

"He said he'd recognized the key that was photographed in the newspaper, that he knew you had tried to drug him; that you'd gone out, that he'd heard you come in, that you got the garage door stuck and lied to him when he asked you about it being open."

"I didn't think he was that clever," she wailed, "and that lie about the garage door is going to trap me, isn't it?"

"It won't do you any good," Mason said grimly.

"And Carl told you he was going to tell the police?"

"Yes. I couldn't do anything with him on that. He had ideas of what his duty was."

"You mustn't judge him by that," she said. "He's really nice. Did he say anything about… about any one else?"

"He told me he thought you might try to shield some one."

"Who?"

"Doctor Millsap."

Mason could hear her gasp. Then she said in startled tones, "What does he know about Doctor Millsap?"

"I don't know. What do you know about him?"

"He's a friend."

"Was he there at Moxley's house last night?"

"Good heavens, no!"

"You're sure?"

"Yes."

Perry Mason dropped another nickel into the telephone, gave the number of Paul Drake's office. "Perry Mason talking, Paul," he said when he heard the voice of the detective on the wire. "You've read the papers, of course."

The receiver made a succession of metallic sounds. Rhoda Montaine, crouched in the cramped position on the floor of the telephone booth, moved a few inches to one side, shifted her knees slightly. "Okay," Mason said. "You know the general situation then. I'm representing Rhoda Montaine. You probably know by this time that she's the woman you saw come out of my office yesterday. I want you to start a general investigation. The police must have taken photographs of the room where Moxley was found. I want to get some of those photographs. Some of the newspaper men should be able to give you a break. I want you to investigate every angle you can uncover. And here's something funny. There were no fingerprints on that doorknob. I want to know why… What if she was wearing gloves?… That would have concealed her fingerprints, but others must have been using that door. Moxley must have opened and closed it a dozen times during the day. I was there earlier in the day. It was a hot day, and my hands were perspiring. There must have been some fingerprints on that doorknob.

"Yes, keep on with Moxley. Find out everything you can about him and about his record. Interview the witnesses. Get all the dope you can. The district attorney will probably sew up the witnesses who are going to testify for him. I'm going to beat him to it if I can. Never mind that now. I'll see you later… No. I can't tell you. You get started. There'll be some developments within a few minutes. G'bye." Mason slammed the receiver back on the hook.

"Now," he said to Rhoda Montaine, "we've got to work fast. The men from the Chronicle will be here any minute. Those fellows drive like the devil. The police are going to question you. They're going to do everything they can to make you talk. They're going to give you all kinds of opportunities to bust into conversation. You've got to promise me that you'll keep quiet. Can you do that?"

"Yes."

"No matter what happens you're going to keep quiet?"

"Yes."

"Insist on calling me. Tell them you want me there whenever they get you on the carpet. Will you do that?"

"Of course. I've told you I would half a dozen times. How many more times do I have to tell you?"

"Dozens," he told her, "and that probably wouldn't be enough. They'll…" There was a gentle tap on the door of the telephone booth. Mason broke off and looked through the glass. A young man held a card against the glass. The card showed that he was a reporter from the Chronicle. Perry Mason twisted the knob of the door. "Okay, Rhoda," he said, "let's go."

The door opened. "Where's the girl?" asked the newspaper man.

Another reporter slipped around from behind the corner of the telephone booth. "Hello, Mason," he said.

Rhoda Montaine reached for Perry Mason's hand, got to her feet. The newspaper men stared at her in surprise. "She was in there all the time?" asked one of the reporters.

"Yes," Mason said. "Where's your car? You've got to rush her…"

The second reporter rasped out an oath. "The cops," he said.

Two men emerged from behind the low, glass-enclosed partition which separated the ticket office from the lobby. They came up on the run. "This," said Perry Mason, speaking rapidly, "is Rhoda Montaine. She surrenders to you gentlemen as representatives of the Chronicle, knowing that the Chronicle will give her a square deal. She has recognized the garage key which was published in the paper as the key to her garage. She…"

The two detectives swooped down on the group. One of them grabbed Rhoda Montaine by the arm. The other pushed a face that was livid with rage up close to Mason's face. "So that's the kind of a dirty damn shyster you are, is it?" he said.

Mason's jaw jutted forward. His eyes became steely. "Pipe down, gumshoe," he said, "or I'll button your lip with a set of knuckles."

The other detective muttered a warning. "Take it easy, Joe. He's dynamite. We've got the girl. That's all the break we need."

"You've got hell!" one of the reporters said. "This is Rhoda Montaine, and she surrendered to the Chronicle before you ever saw her."

"Like hell she did. She's our prisoner. We tracked her here and made the arrest. We get the credit."

One of the reporters moved toward the telephone booth. He grinned as he dropped a nickel and gave the number of the Chronicle. "In just about fifteen minutes," he said, "you boys can buy a paper on the street and read all about who gets the credit."

Gone was the patient air of philosophical contemplation which characterized many of his meditative indoor perambulations. He was now a grim fighter, and his restless walking furnished an outlet for excess physical energy, rather than a means of concentration. Paul Drake, the detective, a leather-backed notebook poised on his knee, took notes from time to time of the points of information Mason wanted uncovered. Della Street was seated at a corner of the desk, her stenographer's notebook under the tip of a poised pencil. She watched the lawyer with eyes bright with concentrated admiration. "They've buried her," Mason said, frowning at the silent telephone. "Damn them! They would work that trick on me."

Paul Drake looked at his wristwatch. "Perhaps," he volunteered, "they…"

"I tell you, they've buried her," Mason interrupted, his tongue savage. "I've arranged to be notified whenever she enters either headquarters or the district attorney's office. She's showed up at neither place. They've taken her to some outlying precinct." He flung about and snapped an order at Della Street. "Della," he said, "get to the files. Dig out the application for a writ of habeas corpus in the case of Ben Yee. Follow the allegations of that petition. I'll sign it as an attorney acting on behalf of the prisoner. Get one of the typists to rush it out. I'll slap them in the face with a habeas corpus. That'll smoke them into the open before they've got a chance to do too much damage."

Della Street, swiftly efficient, vanished from the office. Perry Mason whirled toward the detective. "Another thing Paul," he said. "The district attorney is going to sew up the husband."

"As a material witness?" Drake asked.

"Either as a material witness or as an accomplice. Anyway, he'll sew him up so we can't get at him. We've got to figure some way of getting at him. I've got to reach that man." He paced the floor in savage silence.

The detective volunteered a suggestion. "We could," he said, "fake a message that his father was ill in Chicago. They'd let him go to see his father if they thought you didn't know about it. It's a cinch he'd go by plane. We could watch the plane and stick one of my men on as a passenger. The operative could contact Carl and pump him dry en route."

Perry Mason paused in his restless pacing to frown thoughtfully. The door from the outer office opened, and Della Street returned to her seat at the desk. Slowly, the lawyer shook his head. "No," he said, "that won't do. It's too risky. We'd have to forge a signature to a telegram. They'd raise hell. It won't work."

"Why won't it work?" Drake demanded. "It's a good scheme. He'll…"

"The father," Mason said, "is the type that will come out here to have a hand in things. In fact, I'm sort of planning on bringing him here if he doesn't come of his own accord."

"Why?"

"Because I want to get some money out of him."

"You mean you want him to pay for defending Rhoda?"

"Yes."

"He won't do it."

"He will when I get done with him," Mason said, resuming once more the savage pounding of his heels as he strode up and down the office. Abruptly he whirled. "Here's one more thing. They've got to use the testimony of Carl Montaine to build up the case against Rhoda. Now, Carl Montaine is her husband. As such, he can't be called as a witness in a criminal case, to testify against his wife, unless the wife consents."

"That's the law in this state?" asked Paul Drake.

"That's the law."

"Well," asked Drake, "isn't that a break for you?"

"No," Perry Mason said, "because that means they'll start an action to annul the marriage between Rhoda and Carl Montaine."

"Not a divorce?" Drake asked.

"No, a divorce wouldn't do any good. They'd still have been husband and wife when the murder took place. What they'll do is start an action for annulment, on the ground that the marriage was void from the beginning."

"Can they do that?"

"Sure. If they can prove Rhoda Montaine had another husband living at the time she married Carl that second marriage would be void from its inception."

"Then the husband can testify?" Drake asked.

"Yes. Now, I want you to start digging out a lot of stuff about Gregory Moxley. I want to know all about his past life. It's a cinch the district attorney will have some of this. I want to get a lot more. I want to get everything about him, from soup to nuts. Dig into his past and find out, if you can, every one that he's victimized."

"You mean women?"

"Yes, particularly those that he went through a marriage ceremony with. This wasn't a first time with him. It was his mode of operation. Crooks don't usually change their modes of operation." Paul Drake scribbled in his notebook. "Now, there was a telephone call," Mason went on. "That's the telephone call that woke Moxley up. It must have come in some time before two o'clock. He had an appointment with Rhoda at two o'clock, and he mentioned over the telephone that he was going to meet Rhoda at two o'clock and that she was going to give him money. See if you can find out anything about that telephone call. It may be you can trace it."

"You think it came before two o'clock?" Drake asked.

"Yes, I think so. I think you'll find it was the telephone call that woke Moxley up. He was waiting for this two o'clock appointment. He lay down to get a few hours' sleep. Then the telephone rang and woke him up. He got up out of bed and answered it."

Drake's pencil traveled over the page of his notebook. "All right," he said, "what else?"

"There's the business of that shadow – the one who was tailing Rhoda Montaine when she came to this office. We haven't found out about him yet. He may have been a professional detective. If he was, some one hired him. You've got to find out who was willing to pay out good money to find out what Rhoda was doing."

Drake nodded. Mason swung to Della Street. "Della," he said, "I want to set the stage for some publicity. We've got a delicate job on our hands. If the first newspaper accounts sketch this woman as a nurse who drugged her husband, it's going to be bad for us. We've got to center the attention on the wrong that was done her by her husband, rather than the wrong that she did to her husband. One of the morning papers has a readers' column in which they publish letters from readers. Take a letter to that newspaper, to the attention of the editor of the readers' column. Be sure that it isn't on stationery that can be traced to this office."

Della Street nodded, poised her pencil. Perry Mason started to dictate quick, explosive words:

"I'm just an old-fashioned husband. Perhaps I have lived past my time. I don't know what the world is coming to, with those new ideas that make it seem that a person who has lived frugally and saved a part of his income is an economic leper, that motion picture actors can't be popular unless they punch women in the nose, but I do know that I swore to love, honor and cherish my wife, and I certainly shall try to do so to the best of my ability. The current press contains the account of a "law-abiding" husband who read in the papers some stuff that made it appear his wife had been in contact with a man who was murdered, shortly before his death. In place of trying to shield his wife, in place of going to her for an explanation, this 'law-abiding' husband rushes to the police and gets them to arrest his wife, and pledges his cooperation to help the police make out a case. Perhaps this is just the trend of modern times. Perhaps I have lived too long. Personally, I don't think so. Personally, I think the world is going through another one of those periods of hysteria.

"We look back on our spending orgy that culminated in 1929, and shake our heads sadly that we could have been swept off our feet by such contagious financial fallacies.

"Isn't it equally possible that some sweet spring morning we will wake up with a terrific headache and wonder if we weren't just as hysterical in our anxiety to sweep aside all of our old standards, to embark upon an orgy of governmental spending, when we should have tried governmental economy, to have penalized those who had weathered the economic storm with savings in the bank, and, last but not least, to have given the sanction of our prosecuting officers to a husband who would rush frantically to the nearest police station to snitch on his wife.

"Personally I think so, but then, I am just an "OLD-FASHIONED HUSBAND."

Paul Drake looked up at Perry Mason and said in his drawling voice, "What good's that going to do, Perry?"

"A lot of good," Mason said. "It's going to start a discussion."

"You mean about the husband?"

"Sure."

"Then why put all the political stuff in it?"

"Because I want to be sure that it starts a discussion. Lots of people wouldn't care enough one way or the other to write in and take sides with Rhoda or with her husband, but, by putting in this other stuff, there will be enough sentiment, pro and con, to bring in a flood of correspondence that will make the newspaper sit up and take notice, and it will assign a sob sister to play up the angle of the betraying husband."

Drake nodded slowly. "I guess," he said, "you're right at that."

"How about that photograph?" asked Perry Mason. "Did you get photographs of the room where the murder was committed?"

Paul Drake picked up a brief case which he had propped against the foot of his chair, pulled out a manila envelope and extracted four photographs printed on glossy paper. Mason took the photographs, spread them on his desk, studied them carefully for several minutes. Then he opened the drawer of his desk, took out a magnifying glass and studied one of the photographs through it. "Take a look at this, Paul," he said.

The detective pushed over to the desk. Perry Mason indicated a portion of the photograph. "Yes," Drake said, "that's the alarm clock. It was on a stand by the bed."

"And, as I understand it, Paul, the bed had been slept in but Moxley was fully dressed at the time he was killed."

"Yes."

"Then," Mason went on, "the importance of that alarm clock becomes doubly significant."

"Why?"

"Take a glass and look at it."

The detective nodded. "Yes," he said, "the alarm clock is pictured plainly enough to show the hands distinctly. The hands point to three seventeen. The figures in the right-hand corner of the photograph, where the police photographer made a note of the location of the camera, the time of exposure, and so forth, shows the picture was taken at three eighteen. That puts the alarm clock only a minute off, as compared with police time."

"That's only part of it," Perry Mason told him. "Take another look."

"What are you getting at?"

"By looking closely," Mason said, "you can see the dial in the upper part of the alarm clock, the dial that regulates the alarm."

"What about it?"

"It shows that the hand was set just a little before two o'clock."

"Sure," Drake said. "He had an appointment for two o'clock with Rhoda Montaine. He wanted to be awake when she called."

"Didn't leave him much time to dress," Mason remarked. "That hand looks to me as though it was set for perhaps five or ten minutes before two o'clock."

"Remember, he'd been her husband once. She probably had seen him in pajamas before."

"You still don't get my point," Mason said, drumming with his fingers on the edge of the photograph. "That telephone call woke Moxley up. Therefore, he didn't need the alarm. He was all dressed by the time the alarm went off."

Paul Drake's glassy eyes surveyed Perry Mason steadily.

"There's lots of your points I don't get," he said. "Why the devil don't you go in and plead self-defense? I'm not asking you to violate any of your client's confidences, but if she told you the truth, she's undoubtedly told you there was a struggle and she struck Moxley with the poker. It doesn't seem to me it would be a hard job to make the jury believe that was what happened. That's self-defense."

Perry Mason shook his head slowly. "That," he said, "is the danger of formulating a defense before you know all the facts."

"What's wrong with that as a defense?" asked the detective.

"In the first place," the lawyer replied, "there's that business of drugging her husband. You've got to understand something of the psychology of jurors in order to figure what they'll do in any given case, and it's not always easy to look at the thing just the way they're going to figure it. But one of the bad things in this case is that Ipral bottle. The fact that Carl Montaine's wife was a nurse, and that she placed a drugged drink in his hand, is going to do more to prejudice an American jury against her than anything that could possibly be uncovered in connection with the murder. Moreover, if she's going to plead self-defense, she's got to admit that she did the killing. I'm not certain that the prosecution can show she did the killing."

"They can show she was in the room at the time of death," Drake said. "The killing certainly must have taken place right around two o'clock, between two and two twenty, when the neighbors decided to notify the police. It's a foregone conclusion that Rhoda Montaine had left her house in the dead of night to go to Moxley's apartment. The fact that she was there is shown by the fact that her garage keys were there. She had to have the garage keys in order to open the garage doors when she started. She left them there. If she didn't kill him herself, the jury certainly is going to believe that she was there when the killing took place, and must know who did it."