The Case of the Curious Bride

Bride

November, 1934

Helen Crocker – a seemingly diffident soul who is most anxious to secure information for "a friend"…

Della Street – the perfect secretary, whose insight into human nature is a valuable asset to her boss…

Paul Drake – the quick-witted private detective who gets himself a job by working a hunch…

Nell Brinley – a secretive trained nurse and "a receiver of other people's telegrams"…

Gregory Moxley – a man with a way with the women…

Rhoda Montaine – a bride with pride – and ideals…

Carl W. Montaine – Rhoda's husband, who doesn't make the best use of his fortune or his family…

Doctor Claude Millsap – a lovesick physician…

C. Phillip Montaine – a pedigreed multi-millionaire, Carl's father and his worst enemy…

Danny Spear – a wide-eyed, yokelish private eye…

John Lucas – belligerent and wily deputy district attorney…

Benjamin Crandall – something in his memory rang a bell…

"I'm calling," she said, "on behalf of a friend."

"Yes?" asked Perry Mason tonelessly.

"My friend's husband has disappeared," she said. "I understand there's an expression known as 'legal death' that covers such matters, isn't there?"

Perry Mason didn't answer her directly. "Your name," he asked, "is Helen Crocker?"

"Yes."

"Your age?" he inquired abruptly.

She hesitated a moment. "Twenty-seven," she said.

"My secretary thought you were a bride," the lawyer went on.

She squirmed uncomfortably in the big leather chair. "Please," she said, "let's not discuss me. After all, my name or my age doesn't make any difference. I told you that I was calling on behalf of a friend. You don't need to know who I am. I'm simply a messenger. Your fee will be paid – in cash."

"My secretary," Perry Mason went on, "doesn't usually make mistakes. She felt quite positive you had been recently married."

"What ever gave her that impression?"

"Something about the way you fingered your wedding ring, as though it were new to you."

She spoke with quick desperation, after the manner of one who is reciting a speech which has been learned by rote. "My friend's husband was in an airplane. It's been a good many years ago. I don't remember the exact location, but it was somewhere over a lake. It was foggy. Apparently the pilot was trying to come close to the water, and he hit the water before he knew what was happening. A fisherman heard the plane but couldn't see it. He said it sounded as though it was just a few feet above the surface."

"Are you a bride?" Perry Mason asked.

"No!" she said with swift indignation.

"Are you," asked Perry Mason, "certain the plane was wrecked?"

"Yes, they found some wreckage. I think it was what they call a pontoon – I don't know much about airplanes. They found the body of one of the passengers. They never found the body of the pilot, nor the other three passengers."

"How long have you been married?" the lawyer inquired.

"Please," she said, "leave me out of it. I have already explained to you, Mr. Mason, that I am trying to get information for a friend."

"I take it," Mason said, "there was some life insurance, and the insurance company refuses to pay until the body has been recovered?"

"Yes."

"And you want me to collect the insurance?"

"Partially that."

"What's the rest of it?"

"She is wondering about her right to re-marry."

"How long since her husband disappeared?"

"About seven years I think, perhaps a little longer."

"No one," asked Perry Mason, "has heard from the husband in the meantime?"

"No, certainly not. He died… But, about the divorce."

"What divorce?" the lawyer inquired.

She laughed nervously. "I'm afraid I'm getting the cart before the horse," she said. "This woman wants to remarry. Some one told her that unless her husband's body had been discovered she would have to get a divorce. That seems foolish. Her husband is dead, all right. It seems foolish to get a divorce from a dead man. Tell me, could she re-marry without getting a divorce?"

"It's been over seven years since the disappearance?"

"Yes."

"You're positive of that?"

"Yes. It's been more than seven years now… but it wasn't when…" Her voice trailed off into silence.

"When what?" Mason asked.

"When she first met this man she's going with," Helen Crocker finished lamely.

Perry Mason studied her with calm, contemplative appraisal and did not seem conscious of the fact that he was staring. Helen Crocker was not beautiful. There was a touch of the sallow about her complexion. Her mouth was just a bit too long, her lips too full. But she was well-formed, and there was a sparkle to her eyes. Taken all in all, she was not hard to look at. She bore his scrutiny calmly, a touch of defiance in her eyes.

"Was there," asked Perry Mason, "anything else that your friend wanted to know about?"

"Yes. That is, she's curious about it, that's all just curious."

"Curious about what?" Mason asked.

"Curious about what you lawyers call the corpus delicti."

Perry Mason became rigid with watchful attention. His eyes stared with cold steadiness as he asked, "What did she want to know about it?"

"She wanted to know whether it was true that, no matter what evidence they had against a person, they couldn't prosecute her for murder unless they found the body. Is that right?"

"And she wanted to know," said Perry Mason, "just to satisfy her curiosity, is that it?"

"Yes."

"So this friend of yours," Perry Mason went on, with steady remorseless insistence, "finds it necessary to produce the body of her dead husband in order to collect the insurance and be free to re-marry, and, at the same time, has to keep that body concealed in order to escape a prosecution for murder. Is that it?"

Helen Crocker came up out of the chair as though she had received an electric shock. "No!" she said. "Certainly not! Not at all. It's just curiosity that made her want to know about that last. She'd been reading a book."

There was a scornful smile in Perry Mason's eyes. His manner became that of a big dog who has condescended to amuse himself for a few minutes with the gambols of a puppy, and, having wearied himself of the purposeless playing, walks toward a shady corner with an air of complete dismissal. He pushed back his swivel chair, got to his feet and stood looking down at her with a patient smile. "Very well," he said, "tell your friend if she wishes to have her questions answered she can make an appointment through my secretary. I'll be glad to discuss the matter with her."

Dismay flooded Helen Crocker's features. "But," she protested frantically, "I'm her friend. She sent me to find out. She can't come herself. You can give me the information and I'll give it to her."

Perry Mason's eyes continued to hold a smile. There were mingled contempt and amusement in his manner. "No," he said, "that's a poor way to get legal information to the ears of a client. Tell her to come in and see me – I'll talk with her." Helen Crocker started to say something, but checked herself with a single quick intake of the breath. The lawyer walked across the office, twisted the knob of the door that led to the corridor and held it open. "You can," he said, "get out this way."

His face held the expression of a poker player who calls the bluff of an opponent. But that expression underwent a sudden change as Helen Crocker elevated her chin, clamped her lips together, said, "Very well," and swished past him through the open door and into the corridor. Perry Mason stood in the door waiting for her to turn, but she did not once look back. Her heels clicked down the corridor with quick, nervous steps. A descending elevator cage caught her signal almost as soon as she jabbed her thumb against the button. Her back was still to Perry Mason as the cage door slammed shut and the elevator dropped smoothly out of sight.

"What was the trouble?"

"She tried to pull the old line on me, the one about a mysterious friend who wanted certain information. She asked me several questions. If I'd given her the answers, she'd have walked out and tried to apply the law I had stated to the situation that terrified her. The results would have been disastrous."

"Was she frightened?"

"Yes." Between Della Street and Perry Mason was that peculiar bond which comes to exist between persons of the opposite sex who have spent years together in an exacting work where success can only be obtained by perfect coordination of effort. All personal relations are subordinated to the task of achievement, which brings about a more perfect companionship than where companionship is consciously sought.

"So what?" asked Della Street, pencil still poised over the book.

"So I quit playing," Mason said, "and told her she'd better tell her friend to make an appointment with me. I figured she'd weaken and tell me the story. They usually do. This one didn't. She sailed out of the office and didn't once look back as she went to the elevator. She fooled me."

Della Street's pencil made irrelevant designs in the upper corner of the blank page. "Did she tell you she'd been recently married?"

"No. She wouldn't even admit that."

Della Street's nod of the head was a quietly emphatic assertion. "She's a bride, all right."

Mason slid his right leg over the corner of her desk, pulled a cigarette case from his pocket, took out a cigarette and said, almost as though thinking out loud, "I shouldn't have done it."

"Done what?" she asked.

"Done what I did," he mused. "What right have I got to sit back with that 'holier than thou' attitude and expect them to come clean with a total stranger? They come here when they're in trouble. They're worried and frightened. They come to me for consultations. I'm a total stranger to them. They need help. Poor fools, you can't blame them for resorting to subterfuges. I could have been sympathetic and drawn her out, won her confidence, found out her secret and lightened the load of her troubles. But I got impatient with her. I tried to force the issue, and now she's gone.

"It was her pride that I hurt. She knew that I'd pierced her subterfuge of lies. She knew that inwardly I was mocking her; and she had too much pride, too much character and too much self-respect to come clean after that. She came to me for help, because she needed help. When I refused her that help, I betrayed my calling. I wasn't playing the game."

Della Street moved her hand toward the cigarette case.

"Gimme," she said.

Absently, the lawyer extended the cigarette case to her. Their companionship was such that no apology from Perry Mason for having helped himself without proffering the cigarette case was expected. On the other hand, there was no necessity for the secretary to ask permission to smoke during office hours. In more formal law offices, where results were subordinated to methods, a secretary would have stood in apparent awe of her employer, an awe that would have been but a thin and spurious veneer covering inner amusement and a complete lack of respect. But Perry Mason specialized in trial law, mostly criminal law. His creed was results. Clients came to him because they had to. There was no repeat business. Ordinarily a man is arrested for murder but once in a lifetime. Mason realized that his business must come from new clients, rather than from those who had previously been acquitted. As a result, he ran his office without regard for appearances or conventions. He did what he pleased when it suited him to do it. He had sufficient ability to scorn the conventions. Lawyer and secretary lit cigarettes from a single match.

"She'll go to some other lawyer, chief," Della Street said reassuringly.

Perry Mason shook his head in slow negation. "No," he said, "she's lost confidence in herself. She'd rehearsed that story about her friend. God knows how many times she'd rehearsed it. Probably she didn't sleep much last night. She went over this interview in her mind a hundred times. She planned a breezy method of approach. She was going to try and be casual about it. She could be hazy about names, dates and places because her 'friend' had been a little hazy with her. Lying awake last night, staring into the darkness, turning the situation over and over in a mind that had become weakened by worry, it seemed a perfect scheme. She thought she could get the legal information she wanted without tipping her hand. Then I ripped off the cloak of her deception so easily and so casually that she lost confidence in herself. Poor kid! She came to me for help and I didn't give it to her."

"I'll make the charge just the amount of the retainer," Della Street said, making notes in the daybook.

"Retainer?" Mason echoed blankly. "There isn't any retainer – there isn't any charge."

Della Street's eyes were troubled. She shook her head gravely. "I'm sorry, chief, but she left a retainer. I asked her for her name and address and the nature of her business. She said she wanted some advice, and I told her that I presumed she understood there would be a charge. She became irritated, opened her purse, jerked out a fifty dollar bill and told me to use that as a retainer."

Mason's voice held self-reproach. "The poor kid," he said slowly. "And I let her go." Della Street's sympathetic hand dropped to his. Fingers – fingers that had grown strong from pounding typewriter keys – squeezed a message of silent understanding.

A shadow formed on the frosted glass panel of the outer door. The knob clicked. It might have been a client with an important case, and it spoke volumes for the manner in which Perry Mason conducted his office and lived his life that he made no effort to change his position. Della Street hastily withdrew her hand, but Perry Mason remained with one hip resting on the corner of the desk, smoking his cigarette, staring with steady, uncordial eyes at the door.

The door swung open. Paul Drake, head of the Drake Detective Bureau, regarded them with protruding, glassy eyes which held a perpetual expression of droll humor, an effective mask, covering a keen intelligence which passed upon life in the raw. "Hello, folks," he said, "got any more work for me?"

Perry Mason managed a mirthless grin. "God, but you're greedy! I've been keeping your whole detective agency busy for the last few months, and now you want more!"

The detective moved away from the door, let it click shut behind him. "Did a little jane in brown, with snapping black eyes, leave your office about six or seven minutes ago, Perry?" he asked.

Perry Mason slid from the desk, and turned to face the detective, his feet spread apart, his shoulders squared.

"Spill it!" he said.

"Did she?"

"Yes."

The detective nodded. "This," he said, "is service with a capital 'S.' That's what comes of maintaining friendly relations with a detective bureau that's in the same office building…"

"Cut the comedy and give me the dope," Mason ordered.

Paul Drake spoke in a husky, expressionless voice. He might have been a radio announcer droning through a list of stock exchange quotations, utterly insensible to the fact that his words spelled financial independence or economic disaster to his listeners.

"I'm coming out of my office on the floor below yours," he said, "when I hear a man's feet coming down the stairs from this floor. He's running fast, until he hits my floor, and then he forgets he's in a hurry. He saunters over to the elevator, lights a cigarette, and keeps his eye on the indicator. When the indicator shows that a cage has stopped at your floor, he pushes the down bell. Naturally, the same cage stops for him. There's only one passenger in it – a woman about twenty-six or seven, wearing a brown suit. She's got a trim figure, a full-lipped mouth and snapping black eyes. Her complexion isn't anything to write home about. She's nervous, and her nostrils are expanded a bit, as though she's been running. She looks frightened."

"You must have had binoculars and an X-ray machine," Mason interrupted.

"Oh, I didn't get all this in the first glance," the detective told him. "When I heard this guy tearing down the stairs, and then saw him start to saunter as he hit the corridor, I figured it would be a good plan to ride down on the same elevator with him. I thought I might be drumming up a job for myself."

Mason's eyes were hard. Smoke seeped through his nostrils. "Go on," he said.

"The way I figure it," the detective drawled, "was that this guy was a tail. He'd followed the jane to your office and was waiting in the corridor for her to come out. He was probably parked at the head of the stairs, keeping out of sight. When he heard your door open and the jane go out, he gave a quick glance to make sure it was the party he wanted. Then he ran down the stairs to the lower corridor and sauntered along to the elevator, so he could catch the same cage down."

Mason made an impatient gesture. "You don't have to draw me a diagram. Give me the dope."

"I wasn't sure she'd come from your office, Perry," the detective went on. "If I had been, I'd have given it more of a play. The way the thing stacked up, I thought I'd see what it was all about. So when they got to the street, I trailed along for a ways. The guy was tailing her all right. Somehow, I don't figure him for a professional shadow. In the first place, he was too nervous. You know, a good tail trains himself never to show surprise. No matter what happens, he never gets nervous and ducks for cover. Well, about half a block from the building, this woman suddenly turns around. The man that was back of her went into a panic and ducked for a doorway. I kept on walking toward her."

"You think she'd spotted one or the other of you?" Mason asked, his growing interest apparent in his voice.

"No, she didn't know we were living. She'd either thought of something she'd forgotten to ask you, or else she'd changed her mind about something. She didn't even look at me as she went by. She turned around and started back toward me. She didn't even see the chap who was standing in the doorway, trying to make himself look inconspicuous, and making such hard work of it that he stuck out like a sore thumb."

"Then what?" Mason inquired.

"She walked fifteen or twenty steps and then stopped. I figured that she'd acted on impulse when she turned around and started back. While she was walking back, she got to arguing with herself. She acted as though she was afraid of something. She wanted to come back, but she didn't dare to come back, or perhaps it was her pride. I don't know what had happened, but…"

"That's all right," Mason said, "I know all about that. I expected she'd turn and come back before she got to the elevator. But she didn't. I guess she couldn't take it."

Drake nodded. "Well," he remarked, "she fidgeted around for a minute and then she turned around again and started down the street once more. Her shoulders were sagging. She looked as though she'd lost the last friend she had in the world. She went past me a second time without seeing me. I'd stopped to light a cigarette. She didn't see the chap who had been sticking in the doorway; evidently, she didn't expect to be tailed."

"What did he do?" the lawyer asked.

"When she went by, he stepped out of the doorway and took up the trail."

"What did you do?"

"I didn't want to make it look like a procession. I figured that if she came from your office and was being shadowed, you'd like to know it, but I wasn't certain she'd come from your office, in the first place; and I had work to do, so I figured I'd tip you off and let it go at that."

Mason squinted his eyes. "You'd know this chap, of course, if you saw him again – the one who was trailing her?"

"Sure. He's not a bad looking guy – about thirty-two or thirty-three, light hair, brown eyes, dressed in tweeds. I'd say he was something of a ladies' man, from the way he wore his clothes. His hands were manicured. The nails were freshly polished. He'd been shaved and massaged in a barber shop. He had that barber shop smell about him, and there was powder on his face. A man usually doesn't powder his face when he shaves himself. When he does, he puts the powder on with his hands. A barber pats it on with a towel and doesn't rub it in."

Perry Mason frowned thoughtfully. "In a way she's a client of mine, Paul," he said; "she called to consult me and then got cold feet and didn't. Thanks for the tip. If anything comes of it, I'll let you know."

The detective moved toward the door, paused to grin back over his shoulder. "I wish," he drawled, "you two would quit holding hands in the outer office and looking innocent when the door opens. I might have been a client. What the hell have you got a private office for?"