The Case of the Sleepwalker's Niece (20 page)

Judge Markham frowned, said, "Mrs. Doris Sully Kent, will you please stand up?" The blonde young woman arose while necks craned toward her. "You will not leave the courtroom," Judge Markham ordered, "until Counsel has an opportunity to serve a subpoena upon you, and in order to facilitate the immediate service of such a subpoena, the Court will take a recess of ten minutes, during which Mrs. Kent will be instructed not to leave the courtroom. During the recess the jury will remember the usual admonition of the Court not to discuss the case with anyone nor permit it to be discussed in your presence, and not to form or express any opinion as to the guilt or innocence of the accused until the case is finally submitted to you. Court will take a ten-minute recess."

Judge Markham started for his chambers. The courtroom became a babble of noise. Mason, stepping to the Clerk's desk, had the subpoena issued, handed it to the bailiff with instructions to serve it upon Mrs. Kent. Casually, Perry Mason strolled toward the door which led to the judge's chambers. He was joined by Hamilton Burger, who said, with frigid formality, "I think it would be well for us to visit Judge Markham together, Mr. Mason."

"Oh, very well," Mason assented. Together, the pair entered the judge's chambers. Judge Markham, seated behind a desk which was piled high with law books, looked up from the index of the Penal Code which he was reading. His manner was that of one who has been interrupted in a hasty search for something important.

"I didn't want to make the suggestion in front of the jury, Judge Markham," Burger said, with cold formality, "but I feel that Mr. Mason's conduct amounts to a contempt of Court."

"My conduct?" Mason asked.

"Yes."

"In doing what?"

"In deliberately planting that duplicate knife in the sideboard drawer in order to confuse the authorities in the case."

"But I didn't plant any knife with any such purpose," Mason said.

Judge Markham frowned, his face was grave with concern. "I am afraid, Counselor…" he began. At something he saw in Mason's face he paused abruptly.

Burger said vehemently, "You can't get away with that, Mason. Edna Hammer has sworn absolutely, on her oath, that such were your intentions."

"But she doesn't know anything about my intentions," Mason pointed out. "She isn't a mind reader. She didn't qualify as a telepathic expert."

"But she testified that you told her what your intentions were."

"Oh, yes," Mason admitted, "I told her that."

"Am I to understand," Judge Markham asked, "that you now claim you made a false statement to her?"

"Why, certainly," Mason said, lighting a cigarette.

"What the devil are you getting at?" Burger inquired.

Mason said, "Oh, I knew she must have been walking in her sleep. You see, Burger, she had the only key to the sideboard drawer, and yet the knife had disappeared. Of course, there was some chance that Kent might have picked the lock or had a duplicate key, so while Kent was in jail, I thought I'd make another test. My theory was that Edna Hammer was herself a sleepwalker; that she was worried about her uncle, and went to bed with the thought of that carving knife preying on her mind. My experience with her, when she hid a cup in the receptacle under the coffee table, convinced me she had used that place to conceal things in before. So what more natural than that she should worry about the knife in her sleep, decide the sideboard drawer was not a safe hiding place, arise and, clad only in a nightgown, unlock the sideboard drawer, take out the knife, lock the drawer again and hide the knife in the receptacle under the table? I felt that the only way I could find out about this was by duplicating the circumstances, so I gave her another carving knife and impressed upon her how important it was that it should be locked in the drawer. It was a moonlight night and she went to sleep with the knife on her mind. Habit reasserted itself. When I start introducing my case, Mr. Burger, I shall show that this knife marked Defendant's Exhibit A was the same knife which I gave her to place in the sideboard drawer, and that it was subsequently discovered by one of Paul Drake's detectives in the oblong receptacle under the top of the coffee table."

"Do you mean you're going to claim she killed Rease?" Burger shouted. "Why, that's preposterous! It's absurd!"

Mason inspected the end of his cigarette. "No," he said, "I don't think I'll make any such claim. My case will doubtless be developed as we go along, Mr. Burger, but this discussion was confined to a suggestion on your part that I be considered in contempt of Court and also, I presume, held for disciplinary action on the part of the Bar Association. I merely mentioned this in order to explain that I had simply been conducting a test."

Mason turned and strolled from the chambers. Slowly Judge Markham closed the Penal Code, put it back into place in the row of books along one side of his desk. He looked at Burger's face and tried to keep from smiling.

"I," the district attorney said, "will be damned." Turning, he stamped from the chambers.

Judge Markham, looking over the courtroom, said, "You have now served your subpoena, Mr. Mason?"

"I have."

"I believe Mr. Harris was being cross-examined?"

"Yes."

"Come forward, Mr. Harris."

There was no response. Burger, craning his neck, said, "Perhaps he has stepped out for a moment."

"I had one more question I wanted to ask on cross-examination of Mr. Maddox," Mason said, "we might fill in time by having Mr. Maddox come forward, if the Court will permit me to reopen the cross-examination for the purpose of asking that one question."

"Any objection?" Judge Markham asked of Hamilton Burger.

"I may say for the benefit of Counsel," Mason said, "that the question has become necessary because of unforeseen developments, to wit, the fact that Mrs. Doris Sully Kent is going to be a witness."

"No," the district attorney said, "I'll make no objection to having the witness recalled. I think I have a question that I would like to ask him on redirect examination."

"Mr. Maddox will please come forward," the bailiff said. Once more there was no answering stir from the witnesses in the courtroom.

"Have you some other witness you can call?" Judge Markham inquired.

"Begging the Court's pardon," Mason said, "I would like to finish with the cross-examination of Mr. Harris before the case goes any further. The only exception I think I would care to make would be to ask a single question of Mr. Maddox."

"Very well," Judge Markham said.

There were several seconds of uncomfortable silence, then Judge Markham whirled around in his chair. "The Court will take a brief recess, during which the bailiff will find the missing witnesses," he said.

Mason turned around to Peter Kent, slapped his hand down on Kent's knee, whispered, "All right, Peter. Within thirty minutes you'll walk out of this courtroom a free man."

"Right between the goal posts."

"When did you get wise?" she asked.

"Darned if I know," he told her, sitting on the edge of the desk and grinning boyishly. "Little facts kept pricking away at my consciousness. Why the devil should Edna Hammer have been reading up on sleepwalking? Why should she have put a lock on her door? Why did the figure that Duncan saw walk across the patio stop at the little coffee table; and why did the knife that was locked in the sideboard drawer disappear? Why did Maddox call Mrs. Kent at three o'clock in the morning, when he knew that a conference had already been arranged? I discounted most of Duncan's testimony because I figured he was just one of those egotistical ducks who would commit unconscious perjury. Give him a button and he'd sew a vest on it. But he'd undoubtedly seen someone walking around in a nightgown. When he said he put on his glasses he was a damn liar. He hadn't. All he'd seen was a white-robed figure walking around in the moonlight. When he surmised, from subsequent events, that this figure must have been Kent, he hypnotized himself into believing he'd recognized Kent. He was sufficiently partisan to make himself more and more positive. But that didn't clear up the mysterious telephone conversation. Maddox was shrewd enough to avoid committing himself on the telephone call which Duncan put in around eleven o'clock in the evening to Mrs. Kent. His answers on direct examination didn't give me any inkling that he'd been present. I intended, of course, to cross-examine Duncan about any prior telephone calls, because Mrs. Kent's statement over the telephone that a conference had already been arranged through Maddox's lawyer indicated Duncan had been in touch with her. But Maddox did definitely state he hadn't telephoned Mrs. Kent at three o'clock in the morning. I didn't figure he'd perjure himself about something which could be checked up on. That made me start concentrating on Harris, and the minute I did that, I realized I was on the right trail. Harris was the one who had upset the apple cart all the way along the line. He'd been trying to get Kent convicted. When he realized Kent might have a good sleepwalking defense, he tried to blow it up by stating that the knife wasn't in the drawer when Edna locked it. He allowed himself to be subpoenaed as a witness. He'd evidently telephoned in an anonymous tip or two to the district attorney's office. Someone tipped Holcomb off that I'd been getting a duplicate knife to introduce to the case. When I asked Edna, she said she hadn't told anyone; but later on she must have told Harris."

"You weren't really trying to mix the knives up, were you, Chief?"

"Of course not. All I was trying to do was to impress on Edna's mind the importance of that knife in the sideboard drawer, so that she'd go to sleep with that thought uppermost in her mind."

"And then you figured she'd walk in her sleep again?"

"Yes."

"And take the knife?"

"Yes."

"And what did you think she'd do with it?"

"If my reasoning was right, she'd do the same thing she did before, of course – put it under the top of the coffee table. It was her little private hiding place for things she didn't want discovered."

"And Harris knew that?"

"Of course he knew it. He'd been surreptitiously living with her as her husband for over a month. He had a key to the house and a key to the new lock Edna had installed on her bedroom door. Moreover, the clews which pointed to him fairly screamed for attention. He'd been watching the house in Santa Barbara. If he'd been where he said he was, he'd have seen Mrs. Kent leave the house, get out her car and start for Los Angeles. He didn't see it. Therefore, he wasn't there. But, if he wasn't there, where was he? He could give the exact time of the telephone call which Mrs. Kent received at three o'clock in the morning. He could tell what she said over the wire. How could he have done that if he hadn't been there? There was only one other explanation: He'd been the one who had put in the telephone call. As soon as I considered that possibility, I realized that it was the only explanation. It had been right there in the open all through the case, clamoring for attention, and we simply hadn't thought of it. Harris, ostensibly, was watching the house in Santa Barbara to see that Mrs. Kent didn't leave. He wanted to rush back to Los Angeles, commit a murder, and then return to Santa Barbara. He realized that if Mrs. Kent left the house in the meantime, it would be highly advisable for him to know that fact. Therefore, he decided to call her on the long distance telephone. Naturally, he couldn't use his own name. Looking around for a plausible name to use, he picked on Maddox, because he figured it was a logical development for Maddox to try to get together with Mrs. Kent; the trouble was it was too logical; too well thought out. Through Duncan, Maddox had already telephoned to Mrs. Kent. By that telephone conversation, Harris accomplished two results which were very valuable to him. First, he made certain that Mrs. Kent was at her residence at three o'clock in the morning; second, he took notes of everything that she said so he could repeat the conversation and thereby make it seem he was there in Santa Barbara within a few minutes of the time the murder was committed."

"But why did he want to murder Rease?"

"He had two reasons. Rease was the only other heir to Kent's fortune, aside from Edna Hammer, who had recently become Harris's legal wife. By murdering Rease, he got one heir out of the way and then, by pinning the crime on Kent, he was going to have the hangman get Kent out of the way."

"But Kent had made a will disinheriting Edna."

"No, he hadn't. He was going to make such a will after Harris married Edna. That was why Harris arranged to have the ceremony a secret one. He thought he'd have a chance to get Kent out of the way before Kent learned of the marriage and changed his will."

"But Harris himself was the one who asked Kent to change the will."

Mason laughed and said, "That was a mighty ingenious touch. Harris is an adventurer, an exploiter and an opportunist. He realized that Edna Hammer was a mighty attractive young woman who was going to inherit a considerable fortune. He also had looked up the situation enough to know that Kent was kicking out every suitor who might be a fortune hunter. So Harris beat Kent to it by asking him to disinherit Edna after he married her. He was playing the same game Pritchard was. He'd picked up a little stake from somewhere and was using it to give himself a swell front, hoping he'd be able to marry a wealthy woman."

"But what if Kent had taken him at his word and had already changed the will?"

"No," Mason said, "Kent was too much of a business man to do anything like that. He wanted to be certain Edna was happily married before he made a new will. Looking back on it, I don't think Harris planned murder from the start. You see, he was just a sheik with enough money to put up a good front, and an ambition to marry into some real coin. He started, I think, as an opportunist, just one step at a time. First he wanted to get legally married to Edna. Then he saw such a splendid opportunity to get both Rease and Kent out of the way that he couldn't resist it. Edna had told him about Peter's previous history of sleepwalking, then, when Harris realized that his wife was walking in her sleep, taking the carving knife from the sideboard and hiding it, then going back to bed and going to sleep, Harris conceived the idea of capitalizing upon Kent's sleepwalking propensities. Therefore, on the night of the twelfth, after Edna had pulled her sleepwalking stuff and gone back to a sound slumber, Harris took the knife from where she had secreted it, slipped quietly into Kent's bedroom, after first unlocking the door with the key he had taken from Edna's purse, and planted the knife under Kent's pillow. Kent found it in the morning and was paralyzed with fright. Edna also found it. Both of them jumped at the conclusion Kent was walking in his sleep again. Edna knew she was a sleepwalker, but didn't know she had been getting the knife from the sideboard. Therefore, she didn't suspect herself. Harris had everything planned for a murder. I don't know how he'd planned it, but when the Santa Barbara business came up he changed his plans so as to take advantage of it. Harris had set the stage. All he needed was to find a good alibi. I unwittingly played into his hands by giving him the chance to go to Santa Barbara, return to Hollywood, and slip into Kent's residence. He had the key which Edna had given him. He only needed to go to the coffee table in the patio and raise the lid. If the knife hadn't been there, he might have had some other scheme of murder. I don't know. But the knife was there. All he had to do was take it, kill Rease, go to Kent's bedroom – by this time he'd had a duplicate key made to Kent's door – slip the knife under Kent's pillow and start back for Santa Barbara."

"Then it couldn't have been three o'clock in the morning when Duncan saw the sleepwalker?" Della asked.

"Certainly not. It was quarter past twelve. That was where coincidence happened to play right into Harris's hands.

"He skipped out?" she asked.

"Sure. As soon as he heard me say that Mrs. Doris Sully Kent was in the courtroom and we'd reached a compromise, he knew that she'd testify about that telephone conversation, and tell me frankly about the conference with Maddox and Duncan. Harris realized early in the game that the fact she had left for Los Angeles right after that telephone conversation was a circumstance which was going to put him on the spot, if anyone happened to appreciate the full significance of what must have happened. And Duncan's testimony about Maddox and he being together when they called Mrs. Kent at eleven o'clock damned Harris."

"And Maddox skipped out, too?"

"Yes. He was mixed up in that fraud so that his only hope of coming out on top of the heap was to get a good settlement from Kent. With Kent in jail, he hoped to deal with Mrs. Kent. When he saw that door was closed, he skipped. He wasn't running away from a murder charge, he was running away from a fraud charge."

"But would there have been a case against Mr. Kent if Rease hadn't changed bedrooms with Maddox?"

"Trace that back," Mason said, "and you'll find the suggestion came from Harris. Rease was a hypochondriac, and all Harris needed to do was to suggest he should change bedrooms in order to avoid a draft, and the thing was as good as done. Remember that Harris was the fair-haired boy-child around that house. Likable, magnetic and all of that, he enjoyed the confidence of everyone."

"Was the district attorney flabbergasted?" she asked.

"So damned flabbergasted he listened to me explaining the clews in the case to him in the Judge's chambers and stuck his cigar back in his mouth wrong end to, and burnt his mouth out of shape," Mason said, chuckling delightedly as he recalled the spectacle.