The Case of the Dubious Bridegroom
- Автор: Гарднер Эрл Стенли
- Серия: Perry Mason #35
- Год: 1949
- Язык: английский
- Год: William Morrow
- Жанр: Классические детективы
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“We’re getting into the field of a different proverb now,” Tragg said, smiling. “At this point you can refer to the good old proverb that too many cooks spoil the broth.”
“Didn’t Ethel Garvin commit suicide?” Mason asked.
“She did not commit suicide,” Tragg said. “The bullet in her head produced almost instant death.”
“Well?” Mason asked.
“She was shot while she was in the right-hand seat of the car. Someone drove her for some little distance, then parked the car and pulled and hauled the body over until it was behind the driver’s seat. He then pushed the left arm through the spokes of the wheel, shut off the lights and ignition and drove away in another car.”
“That had been following?” Mason asked.
Tragg shook his head and said, “Frankly, Mason, I don’t think so. It looks as though the murderer had gone to a certain spot and had parked the getaway car. Then he’d gone out and joined his victim, shot her right in the head at close range, then driven the car for some little distance, perhaps quite a few miles, to the point where his own car had been parked and was waiting for a getaway. The murder may well have been committed while she was in Los Angeles. The murderer drove Ethel Garvin’s car up as close to his own car as he dared, then got out, stood on the running board of his own car, pulled the body over behind the steering wheel, fixed everything the way he wanted, then stepped into his own car and drove away.”
“Unless, of course, he had an accomplice waiting,” Mason said, “which would make it a two-man job.”
“Which would make it a two-man job,” Tragg told him, “but for certain reasons, we don’t think that it was. We think that it was a one-man job.”
“How come?”
“Well, to begin with, if there had been an accomplice waiting in the getaway car, the tendency would have been for the murderer to have driven the car with the body in it to a stop and then the getaway car would have driven alongside. Actually it was the other way around. The murderer even had to back once in order to get the car with the body in it in exactly the position that he wanted. Then he got over into the other car.”
“That’s good deductive reasoning,” Mason said.
Tragg turned to Garvin. “Now, I know this is a painful subject,” he said, “but if your wife was murdered, I know you’ll do everything in your power to clear it up. Despite the fact that you’d been separated, despite the fact there was some friction between you, you would want to clean it up, wouldn’t you?”
Garvin hesitated.
“Let’s put it this way,” Tragg said, his eyes cold as ice, “you wouldn’t want to put yourself in a position of seeming to protect a murderer, would you, Mr. Garvin?”
“Of course not,” Garvin said hastily.
“I thought not,” Tragg told him. “Now then, if you’ll just come back across the border we’ll...”
“What about this bigamy warrant, Tragg?”
“I tell you, that’s out of my jurisdiction. That’s between this man and the D. A. But whether he comes back with me or whether he doesn’t isn’t going to help matters any. He’s a defendant in a bigamy rap. I don’t know what the D. A. will do. He may dismiss the case now that the complainant is dead. He may just keep on continuing or he may let the guy plead guilty and apply for probation. I’m not interested in bigamy; I’m interested in a murder.”
“That’s the difference between us,” Mason said cheerfully. “I’m interested both in the murder and in the bigamy charge.”
“Well,” Tragg said irritably, Mason’s manner forcing him to lose his good nature, “don’t think that this man has any choice in the matter. He’s faced with a rap for bigamy. We can get him out of Mexico any time we want him out. There’s an easy way and a hard way. I’m asking him to come the easy way.”
“We prefer to go the hard way,” Mason told him cheerfully.
“Now, don’t be like that,” Tragg said to Mason. “You know we can bring this man back any time we want him. We can nail him on an absolutely dead-open-and-shut bigamy charge. He has no possible defense to that and we can get him extradited from Mexico to face it. I thought we could expedite this murder investigation by not having to go through all that red tape.”
Mason said, “You face an interesting situation on that bigamy charge.”
“Phooey!” Lieutenant Tragg said. “Don’t hand me that line of double-talk, Mason. You know as well as I do that the Mexican divorce this man had isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. You also know that the Mexican marriage is a bigamous marriage.”
Mason said, “There’s some interesting law involved, Lieutenant. Section 61 of our Civil Code provides that a second marriage made during the lifetime of an undivorced spouse is illegal and void from the beginning.”
“That’s what I was telling you,” Lieutenant Tragg said.
“On the other hand,” Mason said, “Section 63 of the Civil Code also contains some very interesting language.”
“Such as what?” Tragg asked.
Mason took a piece of paper from his pocket, on which he had copied Section 63 of the Civil Code.
“Listen to this, Lieutenant: ‘All marriages contracted without this state, which would be valid by the laws of the country in which the same were contracted, are valid in this state.’ ”
Tragg said, “What are you getting at? That marriage in Mexico wasn’t any better than the divorce.”
“Exactly,” Mason said, “but Mexico recognized the divorce.”
“Well, what if it does?”
“Notice that language again,” Mason said. “I’ll read it to you once more.” He again held up the paper and read, “All marriages contracted without this state, which would be valid by the laws of the country in which the same were contracted, are valid in this state.”
Tragg tilted his hat back and scratched his head. “I’ll be damned,” he said.
“There you are,” Mason said. “The marriage is legal in Mexico. Therefore, it’s legal in every other country, particularly in the state of California, because the California law specifically so provides.”
“But look here,” Tragg said. “It’ll be possible to prove that these two people left California in order to perpetrate a fraud on the marriage laws of California and...”
Mason smiled, and shook his head. “Read the case of McDonald versus McDonald, 6 California (Second) 457. It’s also reported and discussed in 106 A. L. R. 1290 and is reported in the Pacific Reporter in 58 Pacific (Second) Page 163. That case holds squarely and fairly that where people leave California for the sole purpose of contracting a marriage, in defiance of the laws of California, and go to another state, and, as a part of that general scheme, a marriage is contracted in that state, that marriage is valid. It is a legal and binding ceremony in California, regardless of the fact that such marriage is not only contrary to the laws of California but contrary to the under-lying policy of the laws of California.”
“Well, dammit,” Tragg said, “the divorce in Mexico is no good in California, you have to admit that.”
“I don’t admit it, but I’m willing to concede it for the purpose of the argument.”
“Then the marriage has to be bigamous.”
“The marriage is as good as gold,” Mason said.
“You mean that this man has two wives and...”
“He doesn’t now,” Mason said, “but until an early hour this morning he did have. He’s in the rather unique position of having committed legal bigamy and having had two perfectly legal wives.”
“You’re nuts, Mason. You’re pulling a lot of double-talk and a lot of fast legal stuff in order to get me mixed up. You may be able to put up a good razzle-dazzle for a jury, but that’s all it is.”