The Case of the Fenced-In Woman (9 page)

Eden appeared with a pillow slip. "Will one be all right, Lieutenant?"

"One will be fine, thank you," Tragg said.

He knelt by the body, then started removing articles from the pockets.

"Well, well," he said, as he opened a folded book of traveler's checks, "five thousand dollars in hundred – dollar traveler's checks in the name of A.B.L. Seymour. It looks as though our man had an alias for purposes of his own, perhaps fooling the income – tax department. Perhaps we'll find he has a little love nest somewhere with all the complications that go with a dual life.

"Now in this wallet," Tragg went on, "are thousand – dollar bills, fifteen of them. And here's a wallet in his hip pocket with hundred – dollar bills. This man was what you might call well heeled. Now let's see. You are interested in the keys… Here are the keys."

Tragg extracted a leather key container.

"Now, Mr. Eden, if you'll step down this way with your house key, I'll check it with the keys in this key container and see if perhaps Mr. Carson had, as you suggested, retained a key to your house. Pardon me, the suggestion didn't come from you, it came from Perry Mason. Not, of course, that it makes any great difference in one way, but in another way it makes all the difference in the world. I have found that suggestions made by Mr. Perry Mason are nearly always pertinent but quite frequently tend to confuse the issues rather than clarify them, at least for the moment."

Morley Eden produced his keys.

"Now, let's see," Tragg said, "this is the key.. to what? The front door?"

"The front door."

"There seems to have been a key removed from your key container. There's a vacant space there. Would you know anything about that?"

Eden glanced uncomfortably at Perry Mason.

Tragg said, "Well! Flashing signals of distress to your attorney, eh? So this vacant spot in the key container may well become quite significant. Perhaps we'll look into that first, Mr. Eden, if you don't mind. And if your attorney doesn't mind."

"Not at all," Mason said. "I asked Mr. Eden for the key to the other side of the house, which he took rather hurriedly from the key container and handed to me. With that particular type of key container, it's easier to pull the little lever and take out the key clips one at a time than to remove the key from the clip itself."

"I see," Tragg said thoughtfully. "And this key that was removed and given to you, Mr. Mason, what door does that fit?"

"The door to the other side of the house; that is, the side door."

"The side that was awarded to Mrs. Carson?" Tragg asked.

"That's right."

"Perhaps if you'd be good enough to produce that key, Mason, I'll check that key also and see if Carson perchance had keys to both sides of the house."

Mason handed over the key.

"Thank you," Tragg said with exaggerated courtesy. "You'll pardon me for rambling along here, just sort of thinking out loud, but I'm wondering if perhaps you didn't walk into your own trap. When you suggested that Carson had keys to the house and therefore could get in at any time you overlooked the fact that I'd ask Morley Eden for his keys in order to make a comparison. Of course when he produced, his keys, the vacant place in the key container became readily apparent and so you were called upon to produce the key to the other side of the house. However, never mind. I take it the other side of the house is unoccupied at the moment?"

"Mrs. Carson lives there," Eden said.

Tragg, his shrewd eyes making a quick comparison of the keys he had taken from the body of Loring Carson with the keys in Morley Eden's key container, said "And why would Mr. Mason want the key to Mrs. Carson's side of the house?"

"I don't know," Eden said.

"I didn't think you would," Tragg said. "Mason, in his more subtle moments, seldom confides what he has in mind to anyone, least of all to his clients. Doubtless he thought he could protect your interests in some way, but perhaps Mr. Mason will be good enough to explain."

"I wanted to take a quick look in that side of the house to see if the murderer might be there," Mason said.

"That was brave of you, Mason."

"Oh, I don't know," Mason said casually, "the murder was committed with a knife. After a murderer uses a knife, he's finished with his weapon. It isn't like a gun which shoots one bullet after another."

"Now that's logical, very logical indeed," Tragg said. "And perhaps you thought the murderer was a woman? It's nice to have you civilians usurping the prerogatives of the police, but rather embarrassing at times. You do have a way of contaminating evidence, you know. Now I think, Mr. Mason, if you have no objection, you and I will walk right over to the other side of the house and we'll just see what it was you wanted to inspect."

"I think you'll find Mrs. Carson there now," Mason said.

"Oh, you do," Tragg said. "I take it that that use of the word 'now' indicates that she wasn't there when you first went over, Mason."

"That's right, she'd been shopping."

"Well, well, we keep getting more and more information," Tragg said. "I think we'll now go talk with Mrs. Carson before she has a chance to do any more thinking about the instructions Perry Mason doubtless gave her."

Tragg turned to one of the men. "Now look," he said, "I want to get this moisture up from the floor; every drop that we can save. When the squad car comes and delivers these sterile vials and pipettes, I want you men to use them carefully. First you uncork the vial. Then you take one of these pipettes and insert it in the pool of moisture and gently suck on the other end of the pipette. That draws the moisture up into the pipette. Don't let it come up far enough to touch the end of the pipette or mingle with the saliva. Then remove the pipette from the puddle, put the end in the vial and blow gently until you have expelled the contents. Keep doing that as often as is necessary until you get both puddles absorbed.

"And when the coroner's office gets here, explain that I'm very anxious indeed to get the exact time of death. I want to know just as much as we can about that-postmortem lividity, body temperature. Find out when food was last ingested, check the contents of stomach and the large intestine. In short, get me everything possible on the time of death… And now if you're quite ready, Mr. Mason, I think we'll go over and call on Mrs. Carson. I'll let you perform the introductions and after that, I'll thank you to refrain from any interruption until I have asked a few questions about your activities. Now, how do we go?"

"We go out the front door, down the driveway and around the big post with the wires anchored to it," Mason said.

"We can't get out around the swimming pool?" Tragg asked.

"Not around that way. It's a very deep lot. The barbed – wire fence goes right across the patio, crosses the surface of the swimming pool, goes across the tiled sun deck on the other side, and then down the hill for at least a couple of hundred feet."

"When she put up a fence, she put up a good one," Tragg said.

"I have reason to believe the purpose of the fence was to subject Morley Eden to the greatest amount of annoyance possible," Mason said.

"Well, it seems to have been rather effective," Tragg said. "I can't imagine someone living in a house with a taut, heavy – gauge barbed – wire fence running right through the middle of it… But come. Mason, we're delaying matters, and somehow I have an idea that any delay is playing right into your hands. What did you tell Mrs. Carson?"

"I told her her husband had been murdered."

"Did you indeed," Tragg said. "Now that's very unfortunate. You know, Mason, the police like to be the ones who make announcements of that sort, and then we can see from the expression of surprise, regret or otherwise, just how the person takes the news. Sometimes we get very valuable clues that way."

"I'm sorry," Mason said, "but I thought she should know."

"You took it upon yourself to be a committee of one to tell her?"

"No," Mason said, "I went in that side of the house just to see if the murderer might be hiding there and she came in and.. well, she caught me by surprise."

"By surprise, eh? What were you doing?"

"Just getting ready to look around. No, come to think of it, I believe I was using the phone."

"Using the telephone?" Tragg said. "Well now, that's interesting. Let's see. The newspaper reporters were here. Evidently they came out to cover the story of the action for fraud on the house that was divided by a barbed – wire fence.

"When they saw that body lying there, that was a news dividend which must have made them think they'd hit the jackpot. I presume there was a brief period of inspection while photographers were messing around, and then the reporters dashed for the telephones and tied up every available telephone in sight. So you wanted to get to a telephone for reasons of your own, and all of the accessible telephones were taken… I wonder if Mrs. Carson heard any part of your conversation."

"You'll have to ask her," Mason said.

"I certainly will," Tragg said, his eyes twinkling. "Please don't let me overlook that point, Mason. If it should slip my mind, just nudge me and call it to my attention, will you? And now if you're quite ready, we'll go across and meet Mrs. Carson."

"May I ask if any of the keys on Carson's key ring fit the doors of the house?"

"I can't tell you about that until I've tried them carefully," Tragg said, "but several of them seem to be identical. I think Mr. Carson probably did retain keys to the place. However, we'll make a more thorough test of the keys a little later on. Right now, if you don't mind, Mason, I'd like very much to have you introduce me to Mrs. Carson."

Tragg cupped his hand under Mason's elbow, kept pace with him as they walked back up the stairs and out of the front door.

"We have to go all around that fence at the end?" Tragg asked.

"That's right," Mason said.

"Well, I think we can make better time in a car. Here's one blocking the driveway. Is that by any chance yours, Mason?"

"That's mine."

Tragg held open the car door. The group of reporters held in one place by the officer surged forward insistently. "Lieutenant, when are we going to have a chance to interview you?" one of the men called.

"In just a short time," Tragg said reassuringly. "I'm going to ask you boys to be patient. You've already photographed the scene and telephoned in your stories. I'll let you have news just as soon as there's any news to give you-provided, of course, it doesn't interfere with apprehending the murderer."

"Any ideas?" one of the men asked.

"I don't think I care to be interviewed at the present time."

"Where are you taking Mason? What's the idea?"

Tragg said in a low voice, "Come on, Mason, get that motor going. Let's be moving along."

The lawyer started the motor.

Tragg waved his hand reassuringly to the newspaper reporters. "You'll have to wait there a few minutes, boys," he said. "We don't want to have you messing up the evidence."

They drove around the fence post up the other side of the divided driveway.

"That fence certainly makes it inconvenient, doesn't it?" Tragg said.

"Very."

"If there hadn't been a double driveway, one going to the front door and one going to the side door, it would have been very annoying."

"I think it's quite annoying even the way it is," Mason volunteered.

"Yes, I dare say it is. Now, Mason, did you use this key to the side door?"

"I used it."

"Did you have permission from the owner?"

"I had permission from the owner. Morley Eden is the owner."

"Well now, that's subject to question. I believe there's a decree of some sort, you said?"

"An interlocutory judgment which is not a final disposition of the matter," Mason said, "and then, of course, there's always the right of appeal. I prefer to reach my own legal conclusions from all the facts."

"Hmm – m," Tragg said, "a typical lawyer's answer."

Mason parked the car in front of the side door.

"There was, I believe, a restraining order?" Tragg asked.

"I violated the restraining order," Mason said, "there's no question about that. That, however, is a matter between Judge Goodwin and me."