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The Case of the Green-Eyed Sister

Page 20

by Erle Stanley Gardner


  “That is right.”

  “You were intimately acquainted with Mr. Fritch?”

  “I was in a way co-operating with him. Mr. Fritch wanted money. He thought I was in a position to get it for him.”

  “And you were trying to get money for him?”

  “I was trying to get the matter cleaned up.”

  “By getting it cleaned up you mean getting the Bain family to put up enough money to buy the silence of J. J. Fritch?”

  “Well—to get it cleaned up.”

  “Fritch had an apartment right across from yours?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who secured that apartment for him?”

  “I did.”

  “Now Fritch anticipated that he might have to remain out of circulation for a considerable period of time, did he not?”

  “I can’t tell you what was in Mr. Fritch’s mind.”

  “Didn’t he so communicate to you?”

  The witness hesitated, said, “Well, I believe that at one time he did say something like that.”

  “You went into Fritch’s apartment from time to time?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And he went into your apartment?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He had a key to your apartment?”

  “Well-”

  “Did he or didn’t he?”

  “Well, yes, he did.”

  “You had a key to his apartment?”

  “He asked me to—”

  “Did you have a key to his apartment?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You were in there from time to time?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Were you familiar with the preparations he had made to keep himself in a place of concealment in the event it became necessary?”

  “Just what do you mean by that?”

  “Specifically, were you aware of the fact that he had purchased a very large deep-freeze box, that he had stocked that with all sorts of provisions so that in case of necessity it wouldn’t be necessary for him to go out for anything, that he wouldn’t have to be seen in public, on the street, or even in the elevator of the building?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you know what that deep-freeze unit cost?”

  “Around seven hundred dollars I believe.”

  “And it was stocked with provisions worth a good deal of money?”

  “I believe so.”

  “More than a hundred dollars?”

  “I believe so.”

  “More than two hundred dollars?”

  “I believe around—well, around three hundred or three hundred and twenty-five dollars.”

  “Who put up the money for that?”

  Brogan squirmed. “Of course, I was in a peculiar position and—”

  “Did you put up the money which represented the purchase price of the deep-freeze icebox and the material that was in it, the foodstuffs?”

  “I loaned Mr. Fritch a certain sum of money.”

  “How much?”

  “Two thousand dollars.”

  “And do you know that that money, or a good part of it, went toward defraying the expense of moving into that apartment, of installing a television set and purchasing the deepfreeze icebox and the provisions that were in that deep-freeze icebox?”

  “I surmised that it did. Yes, sir.”

  “So by the time we divorce your efforts of all of the protestations of ethical integrity with which you have sought to surround yourself, the fact remains that you financed J. J. Fritch in his blackmailing activities?”

  “I don’t so regard it.”

  “You ‘grubstaked’ him?”

  “I do not so regard it.”

  “I do,” Mason said.

  “Well, you’re entitled to your opinion,” Brogan said. “I’m entitled to mine.”

  “Now then,” Mason said, “on the night of the murder you deliberately stayed away?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You were in a poker game?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You can prove where you were every minute of the time?”

  “Absolutely every minute of the time up until approximately eight-twenty.”

  “Where were you after eight-twenty?”

  “I stopped in for a bite to eat. Frankly, I don’t even remember the restaurant. It was some restaurant that caught my eye as I was driving along the street. It happened to be open. I looked in and there were vacant tables and an efficient-looking waitress was standing apparently with nothing to do, so I felt I could get some breakfast without too much delay. I stopped in for some hot coffee and something to eat.”

  “You had been engaged in playing poker all night, that is, all the night of the sixth and all the morning of the seventh up until eight-twenty?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “With how many people?”

  “There were seven people in the game, and every one of them can and will vouch for the fact that I was there all night.”

  “You had arranged this poker game deliberately?”

  “No, sir. I—well, perhaps I did have something to do with arranging it.”

  “Then you did it deliberately so you would have a legitimate excuse for being away from the apartment, so that you in turn could leave a note on the door and use this tape recorder in order to learn what Mrs. Atwood and I were talking about?”

  “Perhaps so. I could have had several motives.”

  “But that was one of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Primarily you wanted to know whether we were going to pay Fritch money for the recording?”

  “I was primarily interested in seeing how you had managed to erase the voice recording on that tape without going near it.”

  “But you did deliberately arrange to be absent during the period the murder was to be committed?”

  “Yes, sir. I—now wait a minute, wait a minute! I didn’t mean that.”

  “Then why did you say it?”

  “You said it. You put the words in my mouth.”

  “You gave yourself an alibi, didn’t you?”

  “I had a perfect alibi, Mr. Mason. You can’t involve me in that murder no matter what you do.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the murder was committed while I was seated in the presence of seven witnesses.”

  “You left the poker game in order to get some money, didn’t you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “When was that?”

  “At about five in the morning. I was only gone for approximately twenty minutes.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “To see a friend.”

  “What friend?”

  “I don’t care to tell.”

  “Why not?”

  “It might embarrass him.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I got fifteen hundred dollars.”

  “And what time was that?”

  “Five in the morning, Mr. Mason,” Brogan said angrily. “Two hours after the extreme limit that the doctor says J. J. Fritch must have been killed.”

  “How far,” Mason asked, “was it from your apartment to the place where the poker game was in progress?”

  “Approximately—oh, I don’t know, five blocks.”

  “You could have driven it in a car in five minutes?”

  “I suppose so. If I weren’t tied up in traffic.”

  “There wasn’t any traffic to tie you up at five o’clock in the morning?”

  “No,” Brogan said sarcastically, “I could have driven from that poker game to my apartment at five o’clock in the morning. I could have been there at five minutes past five. I could have stayed there until fifteen minutes past five. I could then have returned to my poker game at five-twenty. Now then, Mr. Mason, suppose you figure out how I could have possibly committed a murder that was committed between midnight and three o’clock in the morning by leaving a poker game at five o’clock. I have never yet bee
n able to turn back the hands of the clock.”

  Judge Kaylor said with some annoyance, “The witness will refrain from asking Counsel questions, the witness will refrain from challenging Counsel, the witness will confine himself to answering questions.”

  Mason said, “As a matter of fact, Your Honor, if the Court will bear with us I appreciate that question very much. I would like to answer it.”

  Judge Kaylor glanced at Mason as though he could hardly believe his ears.

  “As a matter of fact,” Mason said, “the solution is very simple. All he had to do was to drive to his apartment, stab J. J. Fritch with the ice pick, take all of the frozen food out of the big deep-freeze icebox, dump Fritch’s body in on its back with the knees and the elbows bent, close the lid and return to his poker game, stay there until eight-twenty, then dash up to his apartment, pull Fritch out of the deep-freeze unit, put him in his liquor closet, dump the food back into the food container, walk around the block, wait until nine o’clock, come hurrying up to his apartment and state that he had been at breakfast. The facts would then match the facts which we have in this case. The temperature would have been so tampered with that the autopsy surgeon would have been fooled into believing that death had taken place at somewhere around one o’clock in the morning, instead of four hours later.”

  Mason walked back, sat down at the counsel table, tilted back in his swivel chair and smiled.

  Judge Kaylor, leaning forward, glanced goggle-eyed from the witness to Mason, then to the deputy district attorney.

  “That’s a lie!” George Brogan shouted. “I never did anything of the sort!”

  “We object to Counsel’s statement. It’s not evidence. It’s not even logical,” Moon yelled at the judge.

  “Show me where it isn’t logical,” Mason said.

  The courtroom broke into such an uproar that it took the bailiff several seconds to pound it back into any semblance of silence.

  “Do you have any vestige of proof for this astounding accusation, Mr. Mason?”

  “It’s not an accusation,” Mason said. “The witness merely asked me a question. He challenged me to show how he could have committed the murder, and I answered that challenge.”

  “It couldn’t have been done that way,” Moon assured the Court.

  “Why not?”

  “The doctor wouldn’t have been fooled by any such an expedient.”

  “Call him back on the stand and ask him,” Mason challenged.

  There was an awkward interval of silence.

  “Are there any further questions of this witness?” Judge Kaylor asked somewhat lamely.

  “One or two more,” Mason said.

  “Very well, proceed,” Judge Kaylor ordered, but it was quite apparent that he was engaged in deep thought.

  Mason said, “You knew that Fritch had robbed a bank some years ago?”

  “I knew he was supposed to have done so.”

  “And that the amount of the loot had been approximately two hundred thousand dollars?”

  “So I understood.”

  “Fritch was not alone in that robbery?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You knew that the reports mentioned that he wasn’t alone?”

  “So I understand. He had a confederate, perhaps two. I don’t know.”

  Mason said, so casually that for a moment the full import of his question failed to dawn on the spectators, “Now, Mr. Brogan, were you one of the men who participated in that robbery?”

  Brogan started to get up out of the witness chair, then sank back down into it.

  There was a long interval of silence in the courtroom.

  “Oh, if the Court please,” Moon said, “this question is insulting. It is without any foundation of fact. It is simply a shot in the dark. It is asked only for the purpose of embarrassing and humiliating the witness.”

  “Let him answer it then,” Mason said. “Let him declare under oath that he wasn’t one of the members of that holdup gang. The crime itself has been outlawed, but if he now says under oath that he wasn’t a member of the gang he can be prosecuted for perjury.”

  Again there was an interval of silence.

  “I object to the question,” Moon said. “It’s—”

  “Overruled,” Judge Kaylor snapped.

  The judge glared down at the unhappy witness. “You heard that question?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You understand that question?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Answer it.”

  Brogan shifted his position, glanced at the ceiling, said, “I don’t think I care to answer it.”

  “The Court orders you to answer it.”

  Brogan shook his head. “I’m not going to answer it.”

  “On what ground?” Mason asked, smiling.

  “On the ground that the answer might incriminate me.”

  Mason grinned at the discomfited deputy district attorney, then turned back to Brogan.

  “You were losing in the poker game, Mr. Brogan?” Mason asked.

  “I’ve already told you I was.”

  “And at five o’clock you went out to get more money?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And returned with a considerable sum of cash?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you can’t tell us where you secured this cash?”

  “I told you I got it from a friend.”

  “And you refuse to divulge the name of the friend?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why?”

  “On the ground—I don’t think I have to.”

  “I think it’s incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial and not proper cross-examination,” Moon said.

  Mason grinned and said to Judge Kaylor, “Order him to answer the question and he’ll refuse to answer that one on the ground the answer will incriminate him.”

  “I object,” Moon said. “I don’t feel this is proper cross-examination.”

  Judge Kaylor, watching the witness carefully, said, “I’m going to overrule the objection. Answer the question.”

  Brogan doggedly shook his head.

  “Are you going to answer that question?” Mason asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Why not?”

  “On the same ground, Mr. Mason, you mentioned, that the answer might incriminate me.”

  Mason said, “As a matter of fact, the friend from whom you secured this money was a close, intimate friend, was it not?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “A very close friend?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Perhaps the closest friend you have?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “In other words,” Mason said, “you got that money from yourself. You were the friend. You left the poker game and went to your apartment in order to get cash out of the secret wall safe in that apartment, didn’t you?”

  Brogan fidgeted.

  “Answer the question,” Judge Kaylor snapped.

  Brogan looked at the judge appealingly. “Can’t you see, Your Honor, he’s just driving me into a position here where he’s going to pin this murder on me no matter what happens. I can’t combat that kind of stuff.”

  “You can answer questions,” Judge Kaylor said. “If you went to your apartment at that time in order to get money you can say so.”

  “I don’t have to say so,” Brogan said. “I refuse to answer.”

  “On what ground?”

  “On the ground that it will incriminate me.”

  Mason grinned. “That’s all,” he said. “No more questions. That’s all, Mr. Brogan.”

  “That’s all, Mr. Brogan. Leave the stand,” Moon instructed.

  His face red with anger, Moon said, “If the Court please, insinuations are not proof. Innuendoes are certainly not entitled to the weight of evidence.

  “I know, however, why they were made and I think the Court knows why they were made. I intend to prevent the garbled reports which
I am satisfied Counsel hoped would find their way into the press. I am going to recall Dr. Hanover and spike these rumors immediately and at once.”

  “Very well, call him,” Mason said.

  Mason stood up and beckoned to Della Street, who was seated near the back of the courtroom.

  Della left the courtroom and shortly returned carrying an armful of books. She placed them on the table in front of Mason, withdrew from the courtroom and a moment later returned carrying another armful of books.

  Dr. Hanover, taking the stand, looked down at the array of books which Mason had arranged so that the titles stamped in gilt on the backs of the books were visible to the witness on the stand.

  “Now then,” Moon said, “I’m going to ask Dr. Hanover a question. Doctor, would it have been possible for the conditions which you found when you examined that body to have been artificially induced by the body having been stored in a deep-freeze unit? In other words, is it at all possible that J. J. Fritch could have been murdered at five o’clock in the morning, the body kept for an interval of some two or three hours in a deep-freeze icebox, so that you would have placed the time of death at between midnight and 3:00 A.M.?”

  “Just a moment,” Mason said. “Before you answer that question, Doctor, I want to object on the ground that no proper foundation has been laid.”

  “I have already shown the doctor’s qualifications,” Moon said.

  “I’d like to cross-examine him purely in regard to his qualifications,” Mason announced.

  “Very well,” Judge Kaylor ruled. “That is your privilege.”

  Mason picked up a book. “Have you ever heard of a book entitled Homicide Investigation by Dr. LeMoyne Snyder, Doctor?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What is the reputation of that book?”

  “Excellent.”

  “It is a standard authority in the field of forensic medicine?”

  “It is.”

  “Have you ever heard of Professor Glaister’s book Forensic Medicine and Toxicology?”

  “Indeed yes.”

  “What is its reputation?”

  “Excellent.”

  “It is a standard authority in the field of forensic medicine?”

  “It is.”

  Mason started opening the books to pages which had been marked with bookmarks. Dr. Hanover’s fascinated gaze followed the lawyer’s activity as he spread the books open, piled one on top of the other until he had an imposing array.

 

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