The Case of the Fenced-In Woman (24 page)

"I ask a verdict of guilty of first – degree murder against both defendants."

Ormsby turned and walked back to his table.

Mason arose and smiled at the jurors.

"If it please the Court and you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I find myself at something of a disadvantage. The case against the defendants is predicated upon the testimony of one witness, Nadine Palmer.

"You have the assurance of the deputy prosecutor that Nadine Palmer is a reasonable, fair woman. Because she wouldn't identify the nude woman she saw jumping into the swimming pool as being Vivian Carson, you are told that this is an indication of her sincerity, a barometer of her integrity, and any attack on her will be a boomerang to the defense.

"The witness, Nadine Palmer, doesn't dare to come out and say that it was Vivian Carson she saw jumping in there because she knows it wasn't Vivian Carson and if it should turn out at a later date that the person she saw was actually someone else, she would then be guilty of perjury.

"So she hedges, she twists, she turns and evades, she equivocates, and the district attorney's office wants you to take that as a barometer of honesty.

"If that's a barometer of honesty, then the barometer shows a pretty low pressure.

"Why didn't she have the integrity to come right out and say that she hadn't been able to recognize the person she saw, that she didn't know who it was, that she couldn't see her face. The sudden, startling apparition of this nude woman dashing out of the house and plunging into the swimming pool caught her entirely by surprise.

"You women on the jury will know how she felt. She saw this woman entirely unclad. The spectacle was one that startled her, and before she could gather her wits enough to take a good look the woman was in the swimming pool. After that she never saw the woman's face.

"But did she see a nude woman? Did she see anyone, or is she simply transposing her story so that she describes the part which she played in this case, and pretends that she was an impartial witness watching the event from a distance?

"Why didn't she go to the police with what she saw? Why did she rush home and take a shower, getting her hair all wet? Why were the cigarettes in her bag soggy? I'll tell you why. It was because she was the woman who jumped into the pool, swam over and got the securities, and presently I'm going to prove it to you; and I'm going to prove it to you by your own senses and beyond any reasonable doubt.

"You ladies and gentlemen of the jury are mature people; you weren't born yesterday; you know the habits of the police -when they have decided on a suspect, they marshal all the evidence indicating the guilt of that suspect, and all too frequently ignore evidence pointing to anyone else.

"I submit to you that the witness, Nadine Palmer, plunged in that swimming pool after she had learned the hiding place of the securities; that she put those securities in a plastic bag; that she started to swim back to get her clothes and found that Loring Carson had caught a glimpse of her as she jumped into the pool. Loring Carson ran back out of the house, and as Nadine Palmer tried to emerge from the swimming pool he grabbed her head and tried to hold her under water until she surrendered the bag of securities.

"How do we know this?

"Because both of Carson's shirt sleeves were wet to the elbow. He didn't get both arms wet opening the hinged tile. And when he reached for that hidden mechanism which raised the tile he did just what Lieutenant Tragg did when he reached for it. He did the only natural thing to do; he rolled up his right shirt sleeve.

"But even if he hadn't rolled up his sleeves he couldn't possibly have got his left arm wet reaching for that hidden release ring.

"The way he got both arms wet was by trying to grab a swimmer and hold her while she was in the pool. The swimmer got away from him.

"So what did Loring Carson do? He went into the house, found where she had left her clothes and stood guard over them, knowing that the swimmer wouldn't dare go out in public attired only in filmy wet underthings.

"And presently I am going to prove to you that this swimmer was not the mysterious nude Nadine Palmer says she saw, but was Nadine Palmer herself.

"She was trapped. So she quietly went into the kitchen side of the house, picked up a knife and, in her bare feet, walked gently and silently to the fence where Loring Carson was standing over her clothes and with his back to the fence, and plunged that knife into his body.

"That one act disposed of everything that stood in her way, stood between getting possession of the securities and having a fortune in her own name on the one hand or being apprehended as a culprit on the other.

"So then the witness, Nadine Palmer, plunged into the swimming pool, again went under the barbed – wire fence, returned to the pile of clothes she had left in the living room on the bedroom side of the house and, in the presence of the corpse, stripped herself of her wet underwear, put it in her purse, put on her outer garments and then, and not until then, retraced her steps up the hill to where she had left her car, carrying the stolen securities with her.

"After regaining possession of her car, she went back to her apartment and was changing her clothes when I arrived. She was panic – stricken, particularly when she realized she had inadvertently given me an opportunity to see that the cigarettes in her handbag were soaked with water.

"She suddenly realized that she had to do something to account for a period of financial transition. She had been a woman in modest circumstances, getting along on a small salary, and now suddenly she had blossomed into wealth. How could she account for this wealth?

"I mentioned Las Vegas and that gave her the idea she needed. She would go to Las Vegas and cut a wide swath at the gambling tables. People wouldn't know whether she was winning or losing over the long haul. Subsequently she could appear with this money and claim she had won it at the tables of Las Vegas.

"But she was too smart to bother with the securities because those could be traced, so what did she do? She put them in a briefcase, had the name 'P. MASON' stamped on the briefcase, took that briefcase to my room and planted it. Then she tipped off the authorities that I had a briefcase full of securities which had been given to me by my clients, the defendants in this case.

"Now, I can't prove that irrefutably and beyond all reasonable doubt because I am but one man; I am an attorney; I do not have the organization of the police, I do not have their facilities, I do not have their numbers, I cannot as an individual count on the cooperation of the Las Vegas police.

"However, if I can't prove it beyond all reasonable doubt, I can prove it to you to your satisfaction so that it will at least raise a reasonable doubt in your minds, and once I do that you must acquit the defendants. That is the law.

"You will notice in the exhibits in this case, exhibits of the briefcase containing certain latent fingerprints which the police say they were not able to identify. You will notice the photographic record of the fingerprints on the steel receptacle and on the lid of that receptacle that there are circled fingerprints which the police have determined, or at least they say they have determined, were the fingerprints of my clients.

"I am now going to ask you to take this fingerprint exhibit containing the known fingerprints of Nadine Palmer, fingerprints which have been testified to by the prosecution's expert as being her fingerprints, take those exhibits to the jury room and there compare the recorded fingerprints of Nadine Palmer with the fingerprints shown on those photographs which the police have not been able to identify; fingerprints which they say were badly smudged on the one hand, or could not be identified on the other.

"You don't need to be fingerprint experts to make this comparison. It is simply a question of looking for points of similarity. The police have shown you how this was done on the charts which were introduced showing the fingerprints of the defendants which were found on the lip of the tile-and of course the fingerprints of the defendants were found there. Why shouldn't they be? This was a house that was owned by the two defendants. Vivian Carson owned one half, Morley Eden owned the other. What would you do if you returned to your house and suddenly found a tile in the swimming pool was actually the lid of a hidden receptacle? Wouldn't you wonder what had been put in there? Wouldn't you go and bend over it and inspect it?

"The prosecution has claimed to show you that those were the fingerprints of the defendants on that receptacle, but they can't show you when they were made." Mason paused dramatically. "They can't show you whether they were made before the murder or afterward. They can't show you whether they were made before Loring Carson came to that house or not. They can't show you whether those fingerprints weren't made the night before when the defendants first discovered the hiding place of those securities and then waited to bait a trap for Loring Carson. By that simple act when Loring Carson came to that receptacle he could be apprehended and brought into court and forced to account for this fraudulently concealed community property, and be judged guilty of contempt because of the concealment of assets.

"Let's assume they tried that. Let's assume that something went wrong with their plan and suddenly, and to their consternation, they found Loring Carson murdered.

"Now then, ladies and gentlemen, I have here twelve magnifying glasses. I am going to leave these with the clerk of the court. The Court will instruct you that you are entitled to take the exhibits in this case with you and consider them in your deliberations. All I ask you to do is to take these photographs and the undisputed fingerprints of the witness Nadine Palmer and-"

"Just a moment, just a moment," Ormsby shouted. "I assign these remarks as misconduct. The jurors can't constitute themselves as fingerprint experts. Fingerprinting is a science. It is something which only a competent observer can do.

"Now then, if there's any question about it we'll reopen the case and let the sheriff's fingerprint expert demonstrate that the fingerprints which the police couldn't identify are not identifiable; that they don't have enough points of similarity to identify them with the prints of anyone. We can't have these jurors going in and making a hit – and – miss comparison. Why, even a fingerprint expert can't tell from only a limited number of points of similarity whether-"

"Now, just a minute," Judge Fisk interrupted. "You've made your objection and your assignment of misconduct. The Court is inclined to think the situation is somewhat irregular, but the Court realizes that Mr. Mason is right, the jurors have the right to take these exhibits with them and I don't know that we can place any limitation on what the jurors do with those exhibits."

"Thank you, Your Honor," Mason said, and he turned to the jurors and bowed. "You will remember that the prosecutor himself has told you in his opening argument that all you need to compare fingerprints is good eyesight and good judgment.

"The Court will instruct you that if, after you have studied all of the evidence, there is a reasonable doubt in your mind as to the guilt of the defendants, you must acquit. I thank you."

Mason sat down.

Ormsby, on his feet, throwing caution and discretion to the winds, angry and enraged, shouted and bellowed at the jurors, pounded the table, pointed a finger of scorn at Mason, accused him of unprofessional practice, stated that he hadn't called a fingerprint expert to show that the fingerprints which hadn't been identified by the police were those of Nadine Palmer because he was afraid to.

Mason sat and smiled, first at Ormsby, then at the jurors. It was the smile of a man who can afford to be magnanimous in victory; a man who is watching the hysterical rantings of a person going down to defeat and knowing it.

The jurors were out two hours and a half, then returned a verdict finding both defendants not guilty.

Chapter Sixteen

PERRY MASON and Della Street sat with Morley Eden and Vivian Carson in the lawyer's private office.

"Now then," Mason said, "there's no one here except your lawyer, his secretary and the four walls of this office. You people are going to tell me what happened. You've been acquitted of the murder. You can never be prosecuted for it again.

"In order to get you acquitted I had to throw suspicion on the principal witness for the prosecution. That was a part of my legitimate duties as an attorney representing you. I had to create a reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors.

"However, I am not certain that Nadine Palmer murdered Loring Carson, and by George, you're going to help me find out who did. If she did, we're going to have her prosecuted and if she didn't we're going to see that her name, which has been batted around plenty as it is, is not going to be besmirched any further.

"Now then, you two, start talking."

Eden looked at Vivian Carson.

She hung her head. "You tell him," she said.

"All right," Eden said, "here's what actually happened. And if you had known the facts, or if the police had found out the facts, we would have been convicted of first – degree murder without so much as a chance."

"All right," Mason said, "what happened?"

"From the first moment I saw Vivian Carson," Morley Eden said, "I was strongly attracted to her."

"It was mutual," Vivian Carson said. "This is a horrible confession for a woman to make, but I trembled like a leaf when I was around him."

Morley Eden put his arm around her, patted her shoulder.

"Go on," Mason said, "we'll start from there. It was love at first sight."

"Well, almost at first sight," Morley Eden said.

"In a bikini," Mason commented dryly. "All right," she said, "I planned that deliberately. I wanted to arouse his attention. I wanted to get him-well, I wanted to get him to make some overt act so I could cite him for contempt and make him simply furious against Loring."

"All right," Mason said, "we'll take all that for granted. That's the way it started out. Now then, what happened after that?"

Morley Eden said, "On the evening of the fourteenth, Vivian told me her car was in need of repairs. She asked me as a matter of neighborly accommodation if I would mind driving her down to a nearby garage and bringing her back.

"By that time we had begun to get fairly well acquainted and had made something of a joke about our so – called neighborly cooperation.

"I drove her to the garage, then she remembered something that she had forgotten to bring to the house. It was in her apartment. I told her I'd be glad to drive her to her apartment and bring her home. Then the question of dinner came up and I invited her to dinner. We went to dinner and after dinner went to a show. Then we went to her apartment to get the things she wanted, and while we were there we got to talking.

"She pointed out that this was what she called neutral ground and I said something about a fence and she said there was no fence between us here, and the next thing I knew I had her in my arms and-well, after that time passed rather rapidly. We started making plans, sitting there talking into the small hours of the night. I just didn't want to break the spell, and I don't think she did.

"And then suddenly we heard a key in the lock, the door opened and Loring Carson was standing there. He made some remarks that were decidedly insulting to his wife, remarks that were off – color and which were unbelievably coarse. I hit him. He got up and we had a fight. I threw him out of the door and told him if he ever came back or if he ever molested Vivian I'd kill him."

"Did anyone hear that?" Mason asked.

"Heavens, yes," Morley Eden said. "That's one of the things that bothered me. One of the neighbors heard the whole business, but that neighbor was sympathetic and evidently kept his mouth shut. I don't know why the police didn't suspect something like this and question the neighbors, but apparently they didn't have any idea that Vivian and I had been together in her apartment that night.

"The woman who saw us put the car in the garage volunteered the information to the police, but the police acted on the assumption we were both elsewhere during the night."

"Then what happened?" Mason asked.

"After I threw Carson out, we waited until daylight, then we had breakfast and went out. Loring Carson's car was parked in front of the fireplug and there was a tag on it.

"I decided it might be a good thing to move it so I took the brake off and pushed the car a little way down the hill so that it was away from the fireplug. When Carson barged into the apartment he had been drinking. Maybe he didn't know he'd parked in front of a fireplug. But Vivian thinks it was all deliberate-a last – ditch stand to avoid the fraud suit by creating evidence that would jeopardize the interlocutory judgment. Otherwise, why would he have a key to the apartment? Vivian certainly hadn't given him one."

"But what happened to him after he left the apartment?" Mason asked. "He must have driven up in his car. Why didn't he leave in it-after finding you two together there?"

"I don't know," Eden said. "That's one of the things that bothered me. We could look out of the apartment window and see the car parked there. I think perhaps I would have-well, we would have left before daylight if the car hadn't been there but… Well, that's the way it was. We thought he might have a gun and.. well, we didn't know what would happen."

"Then what?" Mason asked.

"Then I came to your office and signed the verification on the complaint. While I was doing that, Vivian was seated in my car down in the parking lot. I couldn't help thinking what a surprise it would have been if you had known that."

Mason glanced at Della Street, nodded.

"We went home," Eden said, "and went in my side of the house. We saw a man lying there in the living room and ran down, and it was the body of Loring Carson. He was lying there with a knife in his back, and he had evidently been stabbed by someone who had jabbed the knife into his back from the other side of the barbed – wire fence.

"It was a horrible predicament. Vivian recognized the knife as belonging to the set in the kitchen. And we had found the body together and we simply couldn't go to the police and tell them we had been out together-spent the night together- had trouble with Loring Carson, and then discovered his body.

"So I told Vivian that I'd drive her to her apartment and we'd hide Loring's car in her garage where it would be safe until dark, and then we'd leave it someplace where it could be found. Then I said I'd drive her up to the garage where her car was being repaired, that she could drive her car, that we could buy another knife to take the place of the knife that was missing from the kitchen and that I'd come out there to meet with the newspaper reporters at the time you had called the news conference, and that we'd all go into the house and that they could discover the body of Loring Carson at that time.

"I realize now it was a fool thing to do. We should have gone to the police and taken them into our confidence but.. well, that's the way it was. After we'd once started covering up we could never have told the truth. No jury on earth would ever have believed us. It was up to you to take the case the way it was and go at it blind."

"I see," Mason said. "I-."

The telephone on Mason's desk jangled in a series of short sharp rings.

"That's Gertie's signal that Lieutenant Tragg is barging his way in and-"

The door opened and Tragg stood on the threshold.

"Well, well, well," he said, "I seem to be interrupting a conference."

"You not only seem to be, you are," Mason said.

"Well, that's too bad," Tragg said.

"And I may point out," Mason said, "that having been acquitted of the murder of Loring Carson, my clients are of no further interest to the police, so your inopportune entry is all the more inexcusable."

Tragg grinned and said, "Now, keep your shirt on, Mason. Take it easy. My business is not with your clients, but with you."

"With me?"

"That's right," Tragg said, casually seating himself in a chair, tilting his hat on the back of his head and grinning amiably. "You've left us with something of a problem, Mason."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, there's a lot of newspaper pressure demanding that we go ahead and arrest Nadine Palmer but we haven't a case against her. You bamboozled the jury into turning your clients loose on the ground of reasonable doubt. In other words, you created a reasonable doubt in their minds that Nadine Palmer had done the job. But you can't prove it, and we can't prove it. That leaves us behind the eight ball."

"The district attorney," Mason said, "got into this thing without consulting me, and he can get out of it without my help."

"Quite right, quite right," Tragg said. "I thought you'd feel that way but, on the other hand, I just had an idea that you might want to cooperate with the police department; that is, not the department as a whole, but with Lieutenant Arthur Tragg as an individual."

Mason grinned. "Now that," he said, "puts it on something of a different basis."

Tragg said, "I'll buy your reasoning that we got a little bit off on those wet shirt sleeves. Come to think of it, a man as fastidious about his personal appearance as Loring Carson would certainly have taken off his coat and rolled up his right shirt sleeve before he reached into the swimming pool to pull that ring and open the doorway to the concealed receptacle.

"Then I'll go a little further with your reasoning. He still had his coat off but he had rolled his sleeves down. He had completed his business with the secret receptacle. He went back into the house and was just about to put on his coat when he saw something that caused him to go running out into the patio, and at that time there was something that arrested his attention in the swimming pool. That, in all probability, was just what you thought it was: a nude woman swimming back under the fence with a plastic bag containing the securities which had been lifted from the receptacle.

"Loring Carson bent down and grabbed her. He may have tried to hold her head under water, but he certainly grabbed her by the shoulders. He was struggling for the bag.

"She eluded him and swam back under the barbed – wire fence.

"Carson couldn't get over that fence, he couldn't get around it, and the only way he could have got underneath it would have been to have jumped into the swimming pool fully clothed.

"This solution didn't appeal to him but he had keys to both sides of the house so he ran out around the barbed – wire fence and into the other side of the house. The girl had her clothes in that side of the house and Carson thought that if he stood guard over the clothes the girl would be forced to put in an appearance. So he stood there and got a knife in his back from the other side of the fence.

"Now then, I want some cooperation."

"What cooperation?" Mason asked.

"I don't want to be the fall guy in this thing," Tragg said. "Your clients have been acquitted. They can never be prosecuted again. I don't want them to confess if they're guilty, but if they are guilty I would like to have you tell me that I'd be wasting my time trying to pin the crime on somebody else. That will be a confidential communication which will never be broadcast, never be released to the press. It's simply a statement for my personal satisfaction."

"For your personal information," Mason said, "I would suggest that you continue your investigations, Lieutenant. I have every reason to believe that my clients are innocent. I'd stake my reputation on it."

"Well now, that's something," Tragg said, his keen eyes sizing up Vivian Carson and Morley Eden. "Perhaps they'd tell me what actually did happen, just for my own guidance."

Mason shook his head. "They're not going to tell anyone their story," he said.

"Do you know it?" Tragg asked.

"I know it," Mason said, "and it isn't going to be told."

Tragg sighed.

Mason said, "There are a couple of fairly legible latents on that briefcase. Why don't you run them down?"

Tragg shook his head. "Of all the damn – fool things any attorney ever did," he said, "that business of making the jurors believe they were experts on fingerprints was- Why, do you know I found out what went on in the jury room. Every one of those twelve people hypnotized themselves into believing that two of the smudged latent fingerprints on that hinged tile were the fingerprints of Nadine Palmer, and that her fingerprint was on the briefcase. Of course, there were certain points of similarity. I think you can find about four or five. We don't consider we have a good identification unless we have eleven points of similarity, but there was no way of getting that before the jury-not the way you handled the case-and when those jurors found four points of similarity they immediately became fingerprint experts… That was the damnedest thing anybody ever did."