“You knew it was there, then?”
“Yes.”
“And do you know what happened after that?”
“I deduced what must have happened. I went in to take my shower and when I returned the knife was gone. At about that time Edna became very solicitous. That night, after I went to bed, someone locked my door.”
“You knew that, then?”
“Yes. I wasn’t asleep. The lock made a faint clicking sound.”
“And you surmised it was Edna?”
“Yes. I felt certain it must have been.”
“So what?”
“So when Edna started pulling her astrological stuff and suggested I see an attorney whose name had five letters, and was associated with rocks, I realized she was trying to put me in an advantageous position in case something horrible should really happen. So I ran over the names of the leading criminal attorneys in my mind, and made things easier for her by suggesting you.”
“So you didn’t fall for that astrological stuff?”
“I don’t know. I think there’s something to it. But as soon as she brought the subject up, I appreciated the advantage of coming to you before anything happened.”
“And you suggested I get a doctor for the same reason?”
“That’s right. My niece made that suggestion and I saw the advantages of it.”
“And his shaking act?”
“I wanted to impress upon both of you that I was laboring under a nervous strain.”
“So you put that act on to impress the doctor?”
“If you want to put it that way, yes.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police or put yourself in a sanitarium?
Kent twisted his fingers together until the skin grew white. “Why didn’t I!” he asked. “Oh, my God, why didn’t I! If I’d only done that! But no, I kept thinking things were going to be all right. Mind you, I’d put that carving knife under my pillow and hadn’t done anything with it; and so I figured that, after all, I wouldn’t actually kill anyone. Just put yourself in my position. I’m wealthy, my wife wants to grab my property and put me in a sanitarium. For me to do anything would have been to deliberately play into her hands. I was in a terrible predicament. The worry of it almost drove me crazy. And then, after I consulted you, and saw the capable way in which you were going at things, I felt certain everything was going to be all right. It was a big load off my mind. I went to bed and slept like a top last night. I can’t remember anything until the alarm went off this morning… I was excited about my marriage… I didn’t look under the pillow.”
The airplane, which had swept into a landing, taxied up to a stop. Mason, watching the people disembarking from it, said, “Okay, Kent, I believe you. I’m going to see you through. If you’ve told me the truth, go ahead and tell your story to the officers. If you built this sleepwalking business up, as your wife claims you did in her case, to give you a chance to murder someone you wanted out of the way, say so now.”
“No, no, I’m telling you the truth.”
Mason raised his hand and called out, “Over this way, Sergeant.”
Sergeant Holcomb, flexing his muscles, after emerging from the plane, started at the sound of Mason’s voice, then, with Deputy District Attorney Blaine, at his side, came striding toward Mason and Kent. “What is it?” Kent asked in an apprehensive half whisper.
“Stick to your guns,” Mason cautioned. “Tell your story to the officers and to the newspapers. We want all the publicity we can get…”
Sergeant Holcomb said belligerently to Perry Mason, “What the hell are you doing here?”
Mason, with an urbane smile and a gesture of his hand said, “Sergeant Holcomb, permit me to present Mr. Peter B. Kent.”
Chapter 12
Perry Mason paced the floor of his office, listening to Paul Drake’s drawling voice as it droned out a succession of facts. “… Sleepwalking looks like your only defense. There weren’t any fingerprints on the handle of the knife, but Duncan now swears it was Kent he saw walking around in the moonlight. Duncan’s hostile as hell. Don’t ever kid yourself that that old windbag won’t do you all the damage he can. I understand that when he first told his story he said he saw a ‘figure’ sleepwalking. Now he says he knows it was Kent, and the only thing that made him think it was a case of sleepwalking was that Kent wore a long, white nightgown. He…”
Mason whirled to face Drake. “That nightgown sounds fishy,” he said, “doesn’t Kent wear pajamas?”
Drake shook his head. “Nothing doing, Perry. I thought we could bust Duncan’s story with that nightgown business but there’s no chance. Kent wears one of those oldfashioned nightgowns.”
“I presume the district attorney’s office grabbed it as evidence.”
“Sure, they have the nightgown that was found on the foot of Kent’s bed, presumably the one he wore.”
“Any blood stains on it?”
“I can’t find out, but I don’t think so.”
“Wouldn’t there have been?”
“The theory of the Prosecution is that since the knife was plunged through the bedclothes, the blankets prevented any blood spurting up on the hands of the murderer or on his clothing.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Mason said, “reasonable enough to convince a jury, anyway. What time was the murder committed?”
“That’s a question. For some reason or other, the district attorney’s office is trying to make it a big question, claiming that it’s hard to fix the time exactly. They’ve told the newspaper reporters it was sometime between midnight and four o’clock in the morning. But they’ve been questioning servants to see if they saw or heard anything around three o’clock.”
Mason, standing with his feet planted apart, head thrust forward, scowlingly digested that bit of information. “They’re doing that,” he said, “to pave the way for Duncan to change his story. I’ll bet you twenty bucks that they can fix the time of the murder within an hour, one way or the other, but Duncan said he saw Kent carrying the knife across the patio at quarter past twelve… Paul, did that clock in Duncan’s room have a luminous dial?”
“I don’t know, why?”
“Because, if it did,” Mason said, “they’re keeping the time indefinite until they can convince Duncan that it was three o’clock instead of quarter past twelve. A man with poor eyesight, looking at a luminous dial, could easily confuse the two times.”
Della Street, looking up from her notebook, said, “Do you think Duncan would do that?”
“Sure he would. They’ll hand him a smooth line, saying, ‘Now, Mr. Duncan, you’re a lawyer. It wouldn’t look well for you to be trapped on crossexamination. The physical facts show the murder must have been committed at three o’clock. Now, isn’t it reasonable to suppose that it was the small hand you saw pointing at the figure three on the dial of that clock instead of the large hand? Of course, we don’t want you to testify to anything that isn’t so, but we wouldn’t like to see you made to appear ridiculous on the witness stand.’ And Duncan will fall for that line, go home, think it over and hypnotize himself into believing that he remembers distinctly that the time was three o’clock, instead of quarter past twelve. Men like Duncan, prejudiced, opinionated and egotistical, are the most dangerous perjurers in the world because they won’t admit, even to themselves, that they’re committing perjury. They’re so opinionated all of their reactions are colored by their prejudices. They can’t be impartial observers on anything.”
“Can’t you trap him in some way,” Della Street asked, “so the jury will see what kind of man he is?”
He grinned at her and said, “We can try. But it’s going to take a lot of trapping, and in some quarters it might not be considered ethical.”
“Well,” Della Street said, “I don’t think it’s ethical to let a client get hung because some pompous old walrus is lying.”
Drake said, “Don’t worry about Perry, Della. He’ll work out some scheme before the case is over that’ll get him disbarred, if it doesn’t work, and make him a hero, if it does. No client of Perry Mason’s was ever convicted on perjured evidence yet.”