The Case of the Fenced-In Woman (10 page)

"I see," Tragg said. "I'm just getting the facts straight. Now if you don't mind, Mason, we'll first try this key to the door just so I can check on your story. It's not that I doubt your word at all, but I may have to testify in court later on, and you have a most devastating type of cross – examination, you know."

Tragg, keeping up a running fire of conversation, tried the key in the door, clicked back the lock, opened the door, then pulled it shut and pressed his finger against the bell.

Chimes sounded on the inside of the house.

A few moments later the door was opened by Vivian Carson.

"Mrs. Carson," Mason said, "this is Lieutenant Tragg of Homicide. He would like to-"

Tragg interposed his shoulders between Mason and the woman.

"Would like to ask a few questions," Tragg finished with his most engaging smile. "I must warn you that anything you say may be held against you and you do not have to answer without benefit of counsel. But I can assure you, Mrs. Carson, we sympathize with you and we're going to make this just as painless as possible. Now just where were you at the time the murder was committed?"

"I don't know," she said, looking him straight in the eye, "because I don't know just when the murder was committed."

"Quite right," Tragg said. "That's a very good answer. One might almost think it had been suggested by Perry Mason's coaching. If you don't mind," Tragg went on, "we'll just go through to your part of the living room. By the way, just how is the house divided?"

"The fence runs through the living room. Most of it is on my side of the fence due to the dining area," she said. "I have the utility room, the kitchen, the showers and dressing room for the pool and the servant's quarters. I've been living in the servant's quarters."

Tragg said. "You have the kitchen?"

"That's right."

"May we look in the kitchen, please?"

She started to lead the way, when suddenly Tragg stopped and inspected the waxed tiles of the entranceway.

"Now you'll forgive me," he said, "but there's a spot here which has much less gloss than the rest of the tile floor. The refraction of light is not nearly as great-has something been spilled here?"

"I came in with groceries," she said. "Mr. Mason told me of my husband's death and I dropped the groceries. They were heavy and the strength just seemed to drain out of my arms."

"I see, and what happened?"

"Milk and salad dressing," she said. "The milk carton came open and the bottle of salad dressing broke. I cleaned the mess up.

"I see. Now, where was Mason standing?"

"At the telephone."

"And what was he doing at the telephone?"

"He was phoning someone."

"And did you hear the conversation?"

"I heard part of it, perhaps just about all of it."

"What did he say?" Tragg asked. "I'm very much interested in why Mr. Mason found it so necessary to get to a telephone that he would violate the restraining order of a court of law. After all, you know, an attorney is an officer of the court and is supposed to uphold the dignity of the court. What did you hear him say?"

"He was evidently giving instructions to someone on the telephone. He wanted to have someone shadowed."

"Did you get the name of the person he wanted shadowed?"

"Nadine Palmer."

Tragg's notebook was whipped out and his ball – point pen hurried across the page. "Nadine Palmer," he said. "Now do you know who she is?"

"Nadine Palmer," Vivian Carson said, "is the woman my husband's detective shadowed and reported to have been caught in indiscretions."

"Well, well," Tragg said, "and Perry Mason was telephoning someone to have her shadowed."

"That's right. He said that he wanted her tailed. I remember the expression quite clearly."

"Yes, yes, wanted her tailed. Now did he mention the name of the person he was talking to?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Perhaps the first name," Tragg said, "Perhaps Paul?"

"Yes, yes, that was it!" she exclaimed. "I remember now, he called him Paul. That was just as I came in the house."

"And then what happened?"

"Then I think Mr. Mason sensed my presence and looked around, and I was very sarcastic and told him to make himself right at home and help himself to anything he wanted."

"And that sarcasm, I take it, rolled off Mason like water off a duck's back. But what did he say-what did he do as far as the telephone was concerned?"

"He simply hung up and at that time he told me my husband had been murdered."

"And you dropped the groceries?"

"That's right."

"You picked them up?"

"Yes."

"And where did you put them?"

"In the kitchen."

"Well, if it's all right with you, we'll take a look in the kitchen," Tragg said. "And, by the way, where did you buy the groceries?"

"At the supermarket."

"The one near the top of the hill?"

"No, that's a rather small market. I said the supermarket,"

"Oh yes, and where was that?"

"That's down in Hollywood."

"You have the ticket?"

"Oh yes, I have the ticket from the adding machine."

"That's fine," Tragg said. "Those tickets are usually numbered and we can find out a lot about the time you were there by checking the number on the ticket and checking with the records of the cash register. Now if you'll just lead the way, please."

Vivian Carson went into the kitchen. Tragg's eye caught the groceries piled on the sink.

"Four bags of groceries," he said. "Four big bags."

"Yes."

"Now let's see," Tragg said, "since Mason was in the house when you arrived and since you dropped two bags of groceries, those must have been the first two – bags. Then you returned and got the second two bags and…?"

"Mr. Mason got the second two bags for me."

"Oh," Tragg said. "I should have realized Mason would be very considerate. And where were you while he was getting the groceries? Did you perhaps go to the living room or open the door a crack so you could peek in and see what was happening?"

"No. I simply collapsed. I sat in that chair until after Mr. Mason returned."

Tragg's eye roving around the kitchen caught the knife rack.

"Now here's an interesting situation," he said. "A knife rack with all sorts of knives attached to it by a magnetic bar-since the murder was committed with a knife… You'll pardon me, Mrs. Carson, if I make an inspection."

Tragg stepped over to the knife rack.

"You can see," she said, "that they're all there."

"I can, I can indeed," Tragg said. "At least they seem to be all here. All evenly spaced and… What's this?"

Tragg reached up and removed a wooden – handled butcher knife from the rack.

"Just one of the knives," she said.

"Well now, is it?" Tragg asked, turning it over in his hand thoughtfully. "It's a knife all right, but it seems to have been unused. It has a price in crayon written on the blade, three dollars and twenty cents."

She said, "I just moved in you know, Lieutenant. I've only been here a short time. I haven't had a chance to get fully provisioned and I-"

"But you've been here since-since when?"

"Since Sunday. I moved in Sunday. We put the fence in Saturday afternoon and I moved in Sunday morning."

"All this time and haven't had occasion to look at the knives," Tragg said. "By any chance, Mrs. Carson, while you were out shopping you didn't deliberately buy a knife that would replace the one that had been plunged into your husband, did you?"

Vivian Carson started to answer the question, then suddenly stopped and caught herself. "I… I…"

Mason interposed smoothly, "You don't have to answer Lieutenant Tragg's question, you know, Mrs. Carson."

Tragg turned to regard Mason with considerable displeasure. "And we don't have to have your company here, Mr. Mason," he said. "You've performed the introductions, you've served your purpose here. Now you just don't need to bother to hang around. Mrs. Carson and I are going to get along perfectly."

"I believe it is Mrs. Carson's house," Mason said. "I think she can decide who she wants to have present."

"That's not the way you were talking a moment ago," Tragg said. "You thought it was Morley Eden's house and, as I remember it, there's a restraining order preventing anyone from coming on these premises and as an officer of the law I might have to forcibly eject you, Mason. You wouldn't want to be put in the position of resisting an officer-and furthermore, I could take Mrs. Carson up to headquarters for questioning, you know.

"Now, just to keep matters from reaching an impasse, I'm asking you to go right back through that entranceway and out the side door. You can get in your car, drive back to Eden's part of the house and wait for me there. On your way, Counselor."

Mason bowed. "Because of the restraining order, and because Mrs. Carson knows she doesn't need to make any statement at this time, I will be only too glad to leave."

"And to wait at Eden's place until I get over there," Tragg reminded him.

"And to wait," Mason said, catching Vivian Carson's eye and frowning slightly as a warning to her.

Chapter Eight

IT WAS twenty minutes later when Tragg returned to Eden's side of the house. He found Mason and Eden in the living room.

"How was the interview with Mrs. Carson?" Mason asked.

"Not very satisfactory, thanks to you," Tragg said. "However, the lady told me quite a few things. She gave me more information than she realized."

"I see," Mason said. "Now how would you like me to give you some more?"

"I don't think I'd like it," Tragg said. "I fear you when you're bearing gifts, but go right ahead."

Mason said, "I would like to call your attention to the fact that Carson's shirt sleeves are wet up to the elbow, but the coat sleeves aren't wet except on the inside where water presumably soaked in from the shirt."

"And how do you know all this?" Tragg asked.

"I know," Mason said, "because a newspaper reporter told me so."

Tragg said, "You have very carefully called my attention to this thing. Just what do you think it means?"

Mason said, "There is a swimming pool on the place and we have a man whose shirt sleeves are wet up to the elbow. I think the two things go together."

"All right," Tragg said, "we'll look around."

Tragg started toward the swimming pool, then turned as he noticed that Mason and Eden had fallen in behind him.

"I don't think I'll need either of you to help me look, Counselor," he said.

"My client," Mason said, "will need me to keep track of what you find."

"Well, your client's wishes don't control me in the matter."

"All right then," Mason said, "I'll put it up to you this way. Do you have a search warrant?"

"I don't need one. There's been a murder committed and I can look around for evidence."

"That's quite right," Mason said, "and you have a right to keep all people away who may obscure or remove the evidence, but when you leave the vicinity of the murder and start prowling around the premises without a search warrant, the legal representative of the owner of the premises is entitled to-"

"All right, all right," Tragg conceded irritably, "I'm not going to argue with you. Come along, but don't interfere and don't try to remove or suppress any evidence."

Tragg walked out to the swimming pool, surveyed the barbed – wire fence stretched in a taut line across the surface of the pool and across the patio.

"That's quite a job," he said. "Quite an engineering job, also."

Mason nodded.

"You'd have to dive to get under that fence," Tragg said. "The wires are too tight and too close together for a person to crawl through. Well, let's look around."

Tragg took off his coat, rolled up his sleeve, got down on his hands and knees and started feeling his way along the side of the swimming pool, his right hand in the water, exploring every tile of the swimming pool to the depth of his elbow.

"Just what did you think would be here, Mason?" he asked.

"I don't know," Mason said. "I thought it was significant that the man's arms were wet."

"Of course it's significant," Tragg said, continuing to grope his way around the pool.

Vivian Carson, standing in the doorway of her side of the patio, asked, "May I inquire just what it is you're looking for?"

"Evidence," Tragg said curtly.

Tragg completed his circuit of the swimming pool on that side of the barbed – wire fence. "Well," he said, "I guess there's nothing here. We'll try the other side-although I don't see what you're getting at, Mason.

"Would you mind placing a chair next to the barbed wire on your side, Mrs. Carson? I'll place a chair on this side.. right on the tile border of the pool will be all right… Thank you very much. In that way I can make an inspection without going all the way around."

Eden brought out a straight – backed chair which he placed on his side of the fence. Mrs. Carson brought out a similar chair.

Climbing to one chair and then stepping over the taut wire to the other chair, Tragg let himself down on the other side of the fence and completed his inspection of the pool.

"I don't seem to find a thing," he said, his manner thoughtful.

Mason pointed to the cement steps leading up from the shallow end of the pool. "Did you feel all around those, Lieutenant?"

"I felt all around those steps."

"And in back of the steps? From here it looks to me as though the first cement step isn't right up against the swimming pool."

"Well, what about it?" Tragg asked.

"Under ordinary swimming – pool construction," Mason said, "I thought-"

"Okay, I get it," Tragg said impatiently.

The police lieutenant got down on his knees again, said, "I'll probably have worn out the knees on these pants by the time I get done with this thing. I… You're right, Mason! There's a crack between the upper step and the back of the swimming pool. I can get my fingers in it. But that doesn't mean anything."

"No?" Mason asked.

"Wait a minute. Wait a minute," Tragg said. "There's a ring here."

"What sort of a ring?"

"A metal ring and it's on a cord. I'm going to pull it, Mason, and…"

Tragg braced himself with his left hand, pulled with his right.

"This thing is moving," Tragg said. "It's on a cable. It… Well, what do you know, what do you know?"

Some ten feet back from the swimming pool a tile raised on a hinge, disclosing a square receptacle.

Tragg let go of the ring, jumped to his feet.

"So that's it," he said, "a concealed strongbox. Let's see what's in it."

"You stay here," Mason told Eden, then climbed up on the chair and over the wire fence to Mrs. Carson's side of the house. He hurried over to join Tragg. They looked down into a steel – lined recess that was nearly eighteen inches square and some two feet deep.

"Not a darn thing in it," Tragg said.

Vivian Carson, standing behind them looking down into the dark interior, asked, "What in the world is all this?"

Tragg looked up. "Suppose you tell us, Mrs. Carson."

She shook her head. "It's all news to me."

Tragg's brows knitted thoughtfully.

"Carson built this house, Mason?" he asked.

"That's my understanding."

"And the swimming pool?"

"The whole house, swimming pool, patio and everything."

Vivian Carson said, "So that's it! That's where he was concealing his money."

"What money?" Tragg asked.

"He jockeyed things around so that it was impossible to get any kind of a property accounting out of him," she said breathlessly. "Judge Goodwin knew that my ex – husband had been concealing assets and he was trying to force him to disclose them. He examined him at great length about whether he had any savings accounts, any safety deposit boxes, anything that… That's what he was doing when he constructed this house; he made this secret safe and he put cash and securities in here."

Tragg looked at her thoughtfully. "You're jumping to a lot of conclusions just because there's an empty hole here."

"All right," she said crisply, "what are your conclusions, Lieutenant?"

Tragg grinned. "I collect evidence. We arrive at conclusions after we get the evidence. If we jumped to conclusions and then tried to get the evidence to support those conclusions, we'd be in trouble all the time."

Mason said, "I think Mrs. Carson is making a perfectly obvious inference, Lieutenant."

"I suppose so," Tragg said, "but I always get suspicious of people who jump to too many conclusions too fast, even if they are logical. Is this the first time you ever saw this receptacle here, Mrs. Carson?"

"Yes."

"First time you ever saw this tile hinged back?"

"Yes, I tell you. I never knew anything about it. How does it work? Is it from someplace in the swimming pool?"

"It's worked from a place in the swimming pool," Tragg said.

Tragg went back again and inspected the step in the swimming pool. "Well, Mason," he said, "I guess that does it. We've solved the mystery of the wet shirt sleeves. If Carson was high – grading his income and kept things concealed from his wife, and probably from the income – tax people, this could have been his hiding place. Back of that cement step is a ring on a wire cable. By pulling it about two inches you actuate a lever and a spring raises this tile-and, of course, that furnishes a good motive for his murder."

"I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean by that," Vivian said.

"It's very simple," Tragg explained. "Loring Carson may have had a lot of money here-a great deal more than was found on his body. His wet shirt sleeves indicate he may have hurriedly opened the place of concealment and removed this large sum of money. Someone who wanted that money stabbed him and took the loot. It's that simple."

Mason said, "Who's jumping to conclusions now, Tragg?"

"I am," Tragg said. "I'm doing it because I wanted to see Mrs. Carson's reactions."

"All right," Vivian Carson said, "you can see my reactions right now. All you want.

"I'm trying to be fair, and I don't want to be a hypocrite. I'm not going to pretend a whole lot of grief that I don't feel. Loring Carson was a louse, a heel, but he was a human being and we had been married, which means, of course, that we had been very close. I'm sorry he's dead, but if property rights are involved I want to be protected. Anything that was in that place of concealment was really my property."

"How do you figure that out?" Tragg asked, looking up at her thoughtfully.

"Because Judge Goodwin wanted to award me more property. He felt certain that a substantial part of the community property had been concealed. Mr. Mason can tell you that. It's no secret. The judge said so in open court."

"Feeling that way," Lieutenant Tragg said, "if you had found out about this receptacle, you would have taken possession of any property that was in it?"

"Now just a minute," Mason said, "that's hardly a fair question. If she didn't know about the receptacle, she-"

"It's my question and it's a fair question," Tragg said. "It's a police question. Now I'm asking you, Mrs. Carson, if you had known about the receptacle, would you have taken anything that was in it?"

She met his eyes and said, "I'm not going to lie and I'm not going to be a hypocrite. I think I would have."

"Well," Tragg said, "at least you're frank and truthful. Under the circumstances, Mrs. Carson, I am afraid you're going to have to go with me to answer some more questions, and I'll be equally frank with you; we're going to get a search warrant for this house and we're going through it piece by piece. We're going to try to find what was in that receptacle."

"You mean I'm to consider myself under arrest?"

"Certainly not," Tragg said. "You can consider yourself as a young woman who is anxious to cooperate with the police in every way possible, who is only too glad to come downtown with me so you can answer questions and clear yourself of any possible suspicion… And, Mr. Mason, I'm going to ask the same thing of your client. I'm going to ask him to get in the car and go with us, and I may as well tell you, Counselor, that I'm going to ask you to leave the place at once. I'm going to get everybody out of here. I'm going to seal it up and then we're coming out here and we're going to search every nook and cranny."

"Go right ahead," Mason said irritably. "That's typical police psychology. You lock the door after the horse has been stolen.

"Loring Carson didn't walk out here. He came out here in a car. He probably drove his own car. Whoever came out here with him, took his car and drove away leaving him here. That means that in all human probability, Carson was dead when that other person left the house and-"

"I know, I know, I know," Tragg interrupted. "You're like all of these good citizens who want to tell the police how to run their business. For your information, Mr. Mason, very shortly after my arrival and as soon as I positively identified the corpse, I had the police put out an all – points bulletin for his car. We'll pick it up no matter where it is. We have the description of the make and model of the car and the license number.