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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“She’s certain of the time?” Drake asked.
“Sure she is,” Mason said. “That’s the advantage of having a clock that chimes.”
“Loud chimes?”
“Sure, I heard it. I heard it chime ten o’clock that night when I went to bed. I...”
He broke off as he saw Señora Miguerinio emerge from an elevator and come rolling down the corridor with an enormous clock under her arm. She flashed a good-natured smile at Perry Mason, and said, “How do you theenk, Meester Mason? Does the husband come back to his wife and again make the honeymoon in my little hacienda, no?”
“Oh sure,” Mason said, with an air of great confidence. “What are you doing with the clock, Señora?”
“The deestrict attorney he wants those clock.”
“Why?” Mason asked.
“Because he ees to show heem to the jury.”
“What clock is it?” Mason asked, keeping his manner exceedingly casual.
“Thees ees the clock from my hotel, the clock that I have to tell the time.”
“The one that strikes the chimes?” Mason asked.
“Sure, strikes the chimes,” she said, and then added, “during the day it strike the chimes.”
“During the day?” Mason inquired.
She nodded. “Sure, during day, yes. During the night, no. He wake the guests up. People like to hear the chime of the clock in Mexico during the daytime but at night and the chimes go off, no?”
“And what happens to the chimes during the night?” Mason asked.
“Thees ees electric clock,” she said, “weeth chimes. Here ees a sweech on the side of the clock. When you don’t want the chimes you pool thees sweech like thees and the chimes go off, no?”
“You mean when you pull this switch the chimes don’t sound any more?”
“That’s right. You pool the sweech and the chimes he don’t go until you pool the sweech back up. Every night when I go to bed, just before I go into my bed, I pool the sweech down and the chimes he don’t sound no more. Then in the morning when ees time for people to get up and ees nice and sunny and warm, why then I pool the sweech up and the chimes start once more.”
“So the district attorney wants to see the clock?”
“Sure, the clock ees to be sold to the government. He shows heem to the jury and then have to put heem in court and the law ees going to buy me a new clock to take the place of thees one. I tell them I am a poor widow woman and I cannot afford to buy a new clock, I cannot bring thees clock in unless I have one for my hotel. You cannot run a hotel without a clock. No?”
“Certainly not,” Mason said.
“Well,” she said, “I have to go see the deestrict attorney. He tole me to come just as soon as court ees out because he wants to talk weeth me about my testimony. I have to go back on the weetness stand weeth the clock.”
“Well,” Mason said, “we’ll go on to lunch.”
“You enjoy your lunch, señor,” she said.
“Oh sure,” Mason told her, “we will. Thank you.”
They turned and resumed their walk down the corridor.
Drake muttered an exclamation under his breath.
“Good heavens, chief,” Della said in a hushed whisper.
“Enjoy your lunch,” Mason repeated sarcastically.
Seventeen
Mason, Paul Drake, and Della Street settled back on the cushions of the booth in the restaurant.
“I don’t think I can eat a thing,” Della Street said. “It’s ghastly.”
Mason, a confident smile on his face, said, “Don’t do that, Della. People are sitting all around us, watching us, wondering what we’re talking about, how we’re feeling. Keep smiling, keep confident, keep happy, make an occasional joke, and discuss what’s happening in low tones.”
“Exactly what is happening, Perry?” Paul Drake asked.
“I don’t know for sure,” Mason told him. “I’m afraid that the testimony of this man, Scanlon, is going to stampede that jury. I personally think Scanlon...”
“You surely don’t think Garvin actually did place that call, then get in his car and drive to Oceanside?”
Mason said, “I think Garvin was fool enough to get in his car and go somewhere. When you’ve cross-examined a lot of people on the stand over a period of years, you form an impression as to whether a man is telling the truth or lying just by the way he answers questions. Now, I’ll admit that while I managed to put Scanlon in a somewhat disadvantageous position, and while the police didn’t play fair in not having a line-up, the fact remains Scanlon is trying to tell the truth, and he gives me that impression.
“Now let’s suppose that he did have some difficulty in recognizing the man who was in that telephone booth putting through the call. Nevertheless, he isn’t at all dubious about the conversation which took place, and I know from experience the walls between those two booths are paper-thin. And the police must now have the record of that telephone call and it must have been to Ethel Garvin.
“Now let’s suppose for the moment Scanlon didn’t recognize Garvin when Garvin left the booth. Who else in that hotel could possibly have put through such a call to Mrs. Garvin?”
“When you look at it that way,” Drake admitted, “it’s pretty tough.”
Mason said, “I recognized at once that the weak point in Scanlon’s testimony was the statement he made concerning his recognition of the party he had seen leaving the telephone booth. Therefore, I concentrated on that. But you’ll note that I was particularly careful not to cross-examine him about the conversation itself. Naturally, I picked on the weakest link in the chain.”
“Well, for my part,” Drake said, “when Mrs. Garvin gets on the stand and swears absolutely that her husband was with her all night, I’d say the jury would be pretty apt to believe her.”
“Of course,” Mason pointed out, “you get into more trouble there. She’s fixing her time by the chimes on the clock and...”
“Didn’t she say she looked at her watch once?”
“Yes, but she definitely stated that she heard the chimes. Now suppose the chimes weren’t sounding. That, of course, brands her testimony as false right there.”
They gave that matter thoughtful consideration for a moment.
Mason threw back his head and laughed.
They looked at him in surprise.
“Come on,” Mason said, “a smile at least! Let’s pretend there’s been a joke about something.”
The others tardily joined him in half-hearted merriment.
“On the other hand,” Mason went on after a moment, smiling as though amused at some funny story he was telling, “the deadly part of the thing is that the question of whether there were chimes, or whether there were not chimes, depends entirely upon the testimony of the Señora Miguerinio. It all depends on what she thinks she did. Just as a person will quite frequently forget to wind a clock when he goes to bed, just as he will forget to put the cat out, so Mrs. Miguerinio may have forgotten to shut off the chimes on that particular night. If only I hadn’t gone to sleep at ten o’clock — if I had only stayed awake another half hour even, I could have told whether her testimony about shutting off the chimes was true.”
“That’s what comes of having a clean conscience,” Drake said. “You... wait a minute, Perry, here comes one of my men.”
One of Drake’s operatives stood in the doorway looking over the diners.
Drake held up his hand with his index finger extended, saying, as he did so, to Mason, “I told him I’d be here. He’s got a pipe line into one of the court attaches, who doesn’t have any idea this man is one of my operatives. He wouldn’t be coming here to look for me unless it was important.”