The Case of the Grinning Gorilla

“Then Hardwick said, ‘Very well. I don’t think Mr. Mason had any right interfering in this case. I think it was a matter that, to put it plainly, was none of his damn business, but in view of the circumstances and since he already has made this interference, and since my client desires to be fair, I am offering you twenty thousand dollars. That’s our top limit, and that’s all there is to it. Otherwise we’ll sit tight on the fact that the communication was a privileged communication made in good faith.’ ”

“And what did you do?” Mason asked.

“I sank my teeth into that offer,” Etna said. “I told him that we’d take it.”

“Good boy,” Mason said. “I have an idea that Hardwick was probably telling you the truth and that was their final offer.”

“That’s the way I figured it. Of course, there’s a lot of law involved. There’s the question of good faith, absence or presence of malice, a privileged communication, and all of that.”

“But, as you pointed out last night, when you come right down to a showdown,” Mason said, “when a multimillionaire, who is rolling in money and is able to indulge in all of his hobbies, proceeds to take it upon himself to persecute a working woman who is trying to make her way in the world... well, you know how a jury would have looked at it.”

“I sure do, and what’s more, so did Hardwick. I think I could have secured a bigger verdict out of a jury, but it might have been set aside and a new trial granted, and... well, we’re satisfied with twenty thousand dollars, aren’t we, Josephine?”

Mrs. Kempton smiled her patient, tired smile, but she was looking at Perry Mason rather than her lawyer. “Very, very much satisfied,” she said.

“I thought I’d let you know,” Etna said, “that I have charged Josephine five thousand dollars and she is keeping the fifteen thousand.”

“That’s fine,” Mason said.

“And I want to pay you some of that fifteen thousand,” Mrs. Kempton said. “I feel that I should. If it hadn’t been for you, Mr. Mason...”

Mason shook his head.

“But you did a lot of work in the case. You dug through those diaries and worked out a theory, and...”

“No, please sit down,” Mason told her. “Let’s get informal and friendly right away. I don’t want a dime from either one of you. I’m glad that you were able to make a good settlement. I think your lawyer made a very fine settlement. I agree with Mr. Etna that while you might have recovered more from a jury, that once Addicks had been brought into court he’d have fought the thing all the way through to the highest court in the land. After all, the thing that bothered him more than anything else was being ridiculed in the press and placed in the position of a wealthy man who had tried to make it impossible for a working woman to make a living.”

“That’s the way I felt about it,” Etna said.

“Now,” Mason said, “you can do something for me, Mrs. Kempton.”

“Anything in the world.”

“I want to know something about Helen Cadmus.”

“Well, she was a little — I don’t know how to describe it.”

“Go ahead, do the best you can. Do I gather that she was peculiar?”

“She’d had some terrific heartbreak in her life, I know that.”

“How long did you work out there with her?”

“Somewhere around two years I guess it was.”

“And your employment was terminated very shortly after she disappeared?”

“Two days later.”

“Was there anything in the termination of your employment that had anything to do with Helen Cadmus or her disappearance?”

Mrs. Kempton shook her head. “He fired me for stealing.”

“Think back,” Mason said. “Let’s try and get this thing straightened out. After all, it’s rather a coincidence that...”

“No,” she said. “Mr. Addicks was terribly upset about Helen. I think he was fond of Helen, and I think that...”

“Now wait a minute,” Mason said, “you say he was fond of Helen. Do you think that there was anything...?”

“Well — I don’t know. There was the relationship of employer and employee, and then a friendship on top of that. I don’t think — Benjamin Addicks isn’t an emotional type.”

“Well, let’s talk about Helen first.”

“Helen was very decorative and she knew it. She was very, very proud of her figure. She liked to be photographed and she liked to look at herself in the mirror. I know. There was a full-length mirror in her room, and several times I’ve noticed that she... well, she was proud of her figure.”

“What about the mirror?” Mason said.

“She stood in front of it and looked at herself quite frequently.”

“How do you know?”

“I’d open the door and come in and she’d be there.”

“You mean that she was fond of clothes, that she was looking at herself in the mirror and the way she wore clothes?”

Mrs. Kempton smiled. “All the clothes she had on you could have covered with a postage stamp.”

“Nude?” Mason asked.

“Not nude. Those bathing suits. She loved to take two or three squares of material and knot them around so that they’d make a cute, clever bathing suit. Of course, it wouldn’t have stood any swimming, and it wouldn’t have stood any great amount of wear and tear.”

“Did she wear those on the yacht?”

“Occasionally.”