The Case of the Golddigger’s Purse

Mason said, “It puts me in something of a spot, Paul. The minute she pleads guilty to manslaughter, or to second-degree murder, Della Street and I are hooked. We then automatically become accessories after the fact, and it doesn’t make a great deal of difference whether we’re accessories after the fact to manslaughter or to second-degree murder. We can’t afford to take the rap.”

“I hadn’t thought of that!” Drake exclaimed in consternation.

“On the other hand,” Mason told him, “I can’t let my personal feelings influence my duty to my client. If I think a jury might stick her with a verdict of first-degree murder, I’ll have to make a compromise if it looks as though I can serve her interests better by a compromise.”

“She isn’t worth it, Perry,” Drake said earnestly. “She’s two-timed you all the way along the line. I wouldn’t consider her interests for a minute.”

Mason said, “You can’t blame a client for lying, any more than you can blame a cat for catching canaries. When a person of a certain temperament finds himself or herself in a jam, the natural tendency is to try and lie out of it. The trouble with Sally Madison was she thought she could get away with it. If she had, I probably wouldn’t have condemned her too much.”

“What are you going to do, Perry?”

Mason said, “We’ll get all the facts we can, which probably won’t be many, because the police have all the witnesses sewed up tight. We’ll walk into court on the preliminary examination and turn everything wrongside out. We’ll look around and see if we can’t get a break.”

“And if you can’t?” Drake asked.

Mason said grimly, “If we can’t, we’ll do the best we can for our client.”

“You mean you’ll let her plead guilty to manslaughter?”

Mason nodded.

Drake said, “I hadn’t realized before where that would leave you, Perry. Please don’t do it. Think of Della, if you won’t think of yourself...”

Mason said, “I’m thinking of Della. I’m thinking of her to beat hell, Paul, but Della and I are playing this thing together. We’ve played things together for a good many years. We’ve taken the sweet, and we’ll take the bitter. She wouldn’t want me to throw over a client, and by God I’m not going to.”

16

There were only a few scattered spectators in the courtroom as Judge Summerville ascended the bench, seated himself, and the bailiff called the court to order.

Sally Madison, somewhat subdued, but with her face still giving no clue to her thoughts, sat directly behind Perry Mason, apparently completely detached from the tense, dramatic conflict of the trial itself. Unlike most clients, she didn’t bother to whisper comments to her lawyer, and might as well have been a piece of beautiful furniture so far as taking any active part in her defense was concerned.

Judge Summerville said, “Time and place heretofore fixed for the preliminary hearing of The People versus Sally Madison. Are you ready, gentlemen?”

“Ready for the prosecution,” Ray Medford said.

“Ready for the defense,” Mason announced calmly.

The district attorney’s office was quite apparently trying to sneak up on Mason’s blind side.

So far, Tragg had said nothing about those incriminating fingerprints of Della Street’s on the murder weapon. Ray Medford, one of the shrewdest men on the prosecutor’s staff of trial deputies, was taking no chances with Perry Mason. He knew too much about the lawyer’s ingenuity to overlook a single bet. But, on the other hand, he was very careful to treat the case merely as a routine procedure, one where the judge would bind the defendant over to answer, and the main contest would be made before a jury in the Superior Court.

“Mrs. Jane Faulkner will be my first witness,” Medford said.

Mrs. Faulkner, clothed in black, took the witness stand, related in a low voice how she had returned from “visiting friends” and had found Perry Mason and Sally Madison, the defendant, waiting in front of the house. She had admitted them to the house, explained to them that her husband wasn’t home, then gone to the bathroom and found her husband’s body on the floor.

“Your husband was dead?” Medford asked.

“Yes.”

“You are sure that the body was that of Harrington Faulkner, your husband?”

“Quite certain.”

“I think that’s all,” Medford said, and then added with a disarming aside to Perry Mason, “Just to prove the corpus delicti, Counselor.”

Mason bowed. “You had been with friends, Mrs. Faulkner?”

She met his eyes calmly, steadily. “Yes, I had been with my friend, Adele Fairbanks, during the entire evening.”

“At her apartment?”

“No. We had been to a movie.”

“Adele Fairbanks was the friend to whom you telephoned after you had discovered your husband had been murdered?”

“Yes. I felt that I couldn’t stay in the house alone. I wanted her to be with me.”

“Thank you,” Mason said. “That is all.”